Posts Tagged white privilege
Of Tea-Parties and Patriots: Liberty for Who?
Posted by illvox collective in Organizing on August 26, 2009
by Dave Strano
As town hall meetings on health care become the targets for disruptive protest and a growing “pro-liberty” movement gains traction and headlines, a full analysis of the situations we are facing as white working class people and an analysis of the strategies of the new “pro-liberty” movement is necessary.
I am authoring this piece as a white working class male that comes from a military family background, and identifies to some extent as being a libertarian. This description of myself is important as it helps color the perspective I am writing from, as any differences in my background, race, or socio-economic status would ultimately change the entire nature of this essay.
This piece is also mainly directed at white working class people that are active within this new movement. The reasons for this are many, as will become obvious as this piece progresses.
On race…
The Liberty Movement resembles the broader Libertarian Movement in a myriad of ways. One of these ways is in racial composition. To be plain and up front, the U.S. Right is mostly comprised of white people. These giant Tea Parties, our demonstrations and meetings are seas of white faces, with small sprinklings of nonwhite faces.
Whiteness is defined in many different ways by many different people. To many, Jews are not white. Up until the mid 1900’s, white skinned people of Irish and Italian descent were not considered white. Some folks still think this way.
I identify, for the benefit of this essay, a white person as any person with pale skin pigmentation that would commonly pass as white in this society. We don’t need to break this down any further. We know whether we’re white or not.
Most whites immediately become defensive when the word race is even brought up. We don’t want to admit we think in these terms. We don’t want to admit that race has anything to do with our lives or what’s going on in this country. We’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist and not talk about it.
We can act like Ostriches all we want. It doesn’t change that our movement is nearly completely white. Let’s admit that, understand that, and move on to understanding what that means for us.
On class…
When people bring up the term “class”, many white working people start to snicker. The calls of “leftist” or “socialist” or “pinko” come to the lips of many at the mere indication that someone may be conscious of class in America. Despite this tendency, especially within the ranks of poor and working whites, most white working people naturally view the world in terms of class, whether they’d admit it or not.
Our realities are shaped by where we stand socially, economically, and politically. The vast majority of whites, like people of all other races, live in precarious social, political, and economic realities. We live paycheck to paycheck. We live off over-extended credit. We live in debt. We don’t own much, if at all, in real estate. We live in stressful situations, where if one part of the chain breaks, we lose everything. Our very existence is one of insecurity and economic disaster.
Most people in the middle and upper classes of white society try to stifle this talk amongst us in the working or lower classes. Political, social, and church leaders try to erase the class line. But for those of us going home at night to trailers, slumlord owned apartments, or dilapidated houses, we tend to not forget the large suburban homes and mansions that these leaders sleep in.
Class exists. Just like race, we can’t make it go away by ignoring it. But why would we even want to ignore it? Our situation as working whites boils down directly to the idea of class.
Our class interests…
I start with the idea that most white working class people want similar things. We, as most people do, want security, freedom, prosperity, comfort, and safety. We don’t want to have to worry about where our next meal is coming from, how we’re going to be able to afford school supplies for our children, or whether or not we will fall victims to a “terrorist” attack. We don’t want to constantly fear losing our jobs or living the rest of our lives in precarious economic situations.
We now live in a country with a huge division between rich and poor. We live with a failed economy. We live in a nearly failed state. The government of the United States has systemically become a monstrous giant of bureaucrats and neo-tyrants. The whole government, every single politician, is part of this corrupt system.
Back home, in our communities, both rural and urban, we are losing our jobs. We are watching our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, dying in deserts and mountains halfway across the world. Our police forces are growing larger, just as our prison populations. We, as working people, are losing everything.
But, there may still be hope for us. White working class people are starting to organize on a national level for what we believe are our interests as a class, as physically manifested with the wave of “Tea Parties” and protests against what many feel to be an impending socialist nightmare in Washington, D.C.
Thousands have mobilized in past months to send clear messages to the politicians in charge of this mess that we won’t take it anymore. And now, we’re mobilizing to shut down what many see as a socialist attempt to take away our health care options and build even more government power.
But what do these mobilizations really mean? And what have we gained by disruptively protesting these town hall meetings on health care reform? Are we gaining ground? Or are we merely paving the way for further future losses?
Liberty
Typically, political scientists have defined the concept of liberty as a political idea that identifies that a person has the right to act according to their own will and desires. This is how many Americans would like to think about liberty.
At Tea Parties, political meetings, and other gatherings, most white working people keep this image of liberty, of true freedom, deep in their hearts. It tends to motivate how we view the rest of the world and our relationship to it. We see liberty manifested here in the U.S., and the founders of this country dying to ensure it existed.
The other liberty…
Let’s be clear, however about the concept of liberty. We’ve all been duped, plainly and simply. On this land, the concept of liberty as defined in the previous context has never existed. In fact, we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes so tightly, that we can’t even see how the word has changed meaning and been used against us.
Historically, because of the conditions in the United States, the concept of liberty in this country has taken on a much different connotation than the one previously stated. Liberty, in the United States, has become synonymous with the protection of rights to own property.
To many within the white working class, this doesn’t seem like a contradiction. Part of being able to determine our own wills and act in true freedom is being able to own property. We define freedom by the ability to own objects, to own land, to own cars, to own firearms. And we defend this right to own private property to the death.
However, the right to own property is the right that allows for the rich and elites to own everything that we produce. The right to property has become the legal and social basis for the rise in power of those that directly exploit us. Because it’s a protected right to own water resources, because it’s a protected right to own land that you will never live on or work on your own, because it’s a protected right to own a house and price gouge your tenants for rent, because it’s a protected right to own a business and pay your workers next to nothing, because we as white working people have helped protect these rights, we’ve laid the foundation for our own misery.
The concepts of freedom and private property, then, are at direct odds with each other. How can we be free when a corporation owns the rights to our water? How can we be free when a bank owns the land that our houses sit on? How can we be free when all of our food is owned by a field boss? How can freedom exist when a small minority own the very means of our survival?
We’ve become casualties of this way of thinking for centuries. The idea that property protection and liberty are one and the same has allowed for the rich, the political and economic elite, to swindle the rest of us.
In the name of freedom and liberty, we protect the right of 5% of the residents of this country to maintain ownership over 90% of the property and means of survival in this country. Modern liberty has become the freedom to starve, the freedom to lose our jobs without notice, and the freedom to have a bank take back its property from underneath us.
While the rich in this country pillage our paychecks, destroy our retirement funds, and take away our livelihoods, we gladly hand our resources to them. After all, liberty doesn’t exist without the protection of these rich people to own that property. They have the right to even own us, in fact.
By its very nature, the concept of private property has destroyed us and allowed the rich to ride all over us.
And it’s this thinking that has created and shaped our current “Liberty” Movement.
The Liberty Movement
The Liberty Movement, this new manifestation of centuries old U.S. patriotism, has spread across the country like a wild fire. Tea Parties, large mobilizations denouncing a rising “socialism” in this country, were held in cities across the U.S. in the Spring and early Summer.
New organizations on college campuses and within communities have sprung up to continue the organizing efforts. The main enemy is President Barack Obama. His policies resemble a socialist attack on the American way of life, and they must be stopped.
Led mostly by rich politically ambitious organizers these rallies have brought together thousands of mostly white working class participants to start to fight back against this onslaught from the left.
However, many contradictions appear within this framework. Thousands of white working people, people who rely on foodstamps, unemployment payments, and even welfare checks, fill the ranks at demonstrations calling for an end to social services. White working people, full of fear about socialism and an attack on “liberty” (in this case, an attack on the property rights of the rich) turn against their own interests and sell out their own needs to fight the new socialism.
The unpleasant reality for working class and poor people who have participated and still participate in this new movement, is that we’re being used by these rich leaders within the movement to protect their interests, not ours. But that’s nothing new.
A history of playing for the wrong team
The history of the white working class has been a history of being an exploited people. However, we’ve been an exploited people that further exploits other exploited people. While we’ve been living in tenements and slums for centuries, we’ve also been used by the rich to attack our neighbors, co-workers, and friends of different colors, religions, and nationalities.
Since the colonization of the Americas in the late 1400’s, white working people have been the footsoldiers of political and economic elites seeking to dominate and control land, resources, and wealth, all at our own expense.
We have enlisted in armies to slaughter indigenous peoples. We’ve been slave catchers to trap and enslave Africans. We’ve been police officers to terrorize communities of color. We’ve been prison guards to keep other working people locked up. We’ve been settlers, occupiers, colonizers, and conquerors. These roles have done very little to benefit us, on the whole. We’ve been used to benefit a small minority of politicians, bosses, and aristocrats.
The blunt reality is that for the last five hundred years on this continent, white working class people have been used by mostly white rich people to colonize for, kill for, work for, and then better the living standards of those same white rich people, all the while sacrificing our own needs, wants, aspirations, and even lives. It really is as simple as that. No one denies the history of what has happened at working people’s expenses. Wars, poverty, homelessness, wage slavery… these are all ills created by someone, and perpetuated by us… the same workers who suffer these ills.
For some five centuries we’ve been used by the rich among our own race to promote their agenda and suffered because of it. Yet, somehow, we’ve still been convinced that it is in our interests to protect the rights of the rich to own as much property as they can, to protect the right of the rich to even exist, to protect these same rich people who would just as soon see us die for their benefit.
The heart of the matter is that for these five centuries, we’ve been too busy fighting the people who should naturally be our allies against these injustices. The rich whites have used our skin color against us, have used our human nature of fearing living beings different than us against us… they’ve used us against us. They’ve blinded us with these racialist ideas of “white supremacy” and “white pride” and “white nationalism” into fighting other working people of other races, while they sit on the sideline and laugh.
The New Liberty Movement plays directly into this situation, and turns us, as white working class people, against our natural interests as working class people, and against our natural allies. We’re still being used by rich whites to advance their causes, and lose everything that we desire and need.
Of socialism and healthcare
Let’s be plain. Obama is not a socialist. His reforms and the reforms of other politicians are not socialist. They’re not even radical. They’re truly reformist. And they’re truly state-capitalist.
Obama’s policies have not threatened the power structures of this country in anyway. The rich will stay rich. The poor will stay poor. Property will still be just as protected as it is now. Wars will still be waged on multiple continents. The systemic inequities that have created a mess for all working people will still exist.
But while these reforms, like public option healthcare, are not radical and do not fundamentally change any power relationships in this country, they still remain important bread and butter survival policies for poor and working people.
Just like people of all races and backgrounds, most white working and poor people have no healthcare. We’ve seen it disappear. We don’t have access to medical care when we need it. While national healthcare is not the answer to all of our problems, and shouldn’t be our ultimate end goal, it is a short term fix that we, as working class people, could probably use.
However, the red flag of socialism has been waved in front of our faces. We can’t see anything but the closet communist Obama taunting us and attacking our very way of life with these reforms.
And it’s this mentality that divides us from nonwhite working people even more. The vast majority of nonwhite working people are in support of this healthcare reform. They are in support of social service spending. They are in support of legislation that affects their survival as working class people.
We’re divided in a way that is fairly predictable. White working class people, people who have been bought off by the rich, would rather protect property rights that are used against us and our interests than work for healthcare and social services that we don’t like to admit that we utilize and need.
In our class based, capitalist society, white working class people protect property, while nonwhite working people struggle for social services necessary for survival. And thus, we as white working people play for the wrong team. And in the end, everyone besides the rich and the politicians ends up losing.
Let’s be honest. I don’t want the government to control healthcare. But I also don’t want to live in a property based society where I’m denied healthcare because I don’t make enough money. Until we get rid of that property based economic relationship, then I’ll gladly take social services from the state, just to level the playing field a bit between me and the rich boss that steals money from my paycheck, or the rich politician who guts money from our schools to fund occupations of other countries that benefit corporations he owns stock in.
Migrants and other scapegoats
Perhaps the most glaring example of how white working people are playing for the wrong team, and how the new Liberty Movement actively works against the liberty of all people, especially nonwhite people, is the role that the movement plays within the debate on immigration.
One of the attacks leveled at the government by the Liberty Movement is the government’s failure to secure the border. The white populist logic of the movement becomes quite clear at these times.
We have bought into the ridiculous notion that mostly brown skinned immigrants from Mexico or other countries are our enemy, that they are somehow stealing our jobs, that they somehow really threaten us. Let’s get real. Who’s really stealing our jobs?
Even with a generous estimate of the number of illegal immigrants working in the U.S. at 6 million (notice I said working, not living), this stands in stark contrast to the conservative estimate that nearly 50 million jobs will have been lost to outsourcing by 2015 since NAFTA came into affect in 1994. Well, let’s ask ourselves, who’s really stealing our jobs? Poor Mexicans? Or Rich White CEOs?
Leaders of the new Liberty Movement feed us ridiculous ideas of the “invading” brown hordes, and the rich whites that make up the upper echelons of organizations like the Minutemen and other similar groups salivate over our reactions. If we’re busy fighting the Mexicans at the border, and busy trying to round up all the “illegals” then we’re too busy to fight that real enemy, that one that keeps eluding us, the rich and political elite.
Most of us that keep falling for these lines initially might mean well. Heck, we only want to defend our families and our communities… but in reality, we’re weakening them even more, by fighting our real potential allies and diverting our attention from the real enemy.
And why are all these brown skinned immigrants coming here in the first place? Why is there this sudden rush in the last thirteen years to get into this country? 80% of all illegal immigrants have entered since 1994. Why is that? What happened in 1994 that affected working people in Mexico just as it affected us? The passage of NAFTA, a free trade program that benefits nobody but the rich people on both sides of the border!
The new Liberty Movement defends the liberty of rich people to own property, while attacking the liberty of movement of brown working class people. The new Liberty Movement doesn’t protect liberty, it actively attacks it and defends a system that makes liberty for all people impossible.
We’re failing and being used
The new Liberty Movement is not a failure. It’s highly successful for accomplishing what the leaders of this movement want. If our interests as white working class people mirror those of other working people, the interests of the rich and political elite within our own movement mirror those of the rich and political elite within the government. The leaders of our own movement seek to keep the infighting amongst working people of all backgrounds and colors alive. Again, if we’re too busy fighting each other, then we can’t fight them.
We as white working class people are being used at these mobilizations. We’re fulfilling our old role of being foot soldiers for the political elite, for keeping other poor and working people in line. We’ve blinded ourselves again.
How else can we explain the willingness of hundreds of people without healthcare to actively work against legislation that would provide them with that healthcare?
And the worst part is, we don’t really gain anything from this situation. We’re failing ourselves. All of our work within the New Liberty movement, all of our energy, money, and talents are going to reinforce the same predatory economic, political, and social systems that keep us, as white working people, exploited and living in misery as well.
Our allegiances to these leaders, to people like Ron Paul, to people like Alex Jones, our acceptance of their white populist talk, our willingness to attack migrants, to disrupt attempts to provide healthcare to working class people, our willingness to cling to these ideas of the “other” liberty, the protection of property and not of people, are the biggest reasons that we are doomed to continue to live this way. We will continue to live paycheck to paycheck (at least those of us that have jobs) and in constant fear of eviction or foreclosure. We will continue to have to choose between new schoolbooks for our kids or dinner for the whole family. We will continue to see our retirement funds looted, our world destroyed, and our family members being killed in wars. And we will continue to not be able to do anything about it, unless we change our strategy and direction.
Moving forward
If we as white working people envision a world of safe, free, and economically secure communities, then we must act now. We have to start to identify our allegiances to that of our class, and not our race. We must create a revolutionary white identity that can actively work against all forms of domination that ensure that we will never enjoy true liberty.
Migrants and blacks are not our enemies. White rich people are not our friends. We must reverse this paradigm and start to work alongside movements of nonwhite working people against all predatory political, economic, and social systems. This means not just working against the state, but also working against capitalism. The state and capitalism are two faces of the same coin, a coin that must be thrown away.
We also must work actively against white supremacy in all its incarnations. Our future depends on this. If we as white working people want to enjoy freedom, then we must not be used by the rich to deny it to others and ourselves. The more we act as footsoldiers for the rich, the more we ensure that our freedom is also unattainable.
Historically, we as white working people have seen our allegiance become an allegiance to whiteness, to being white. We can relate to other white people, no matter how poor or rich. They’re white like us, and that’s something we can identify with, come to terms with. So of course, our natural enemies become nonwhite peoples.
The only problem with this idea is that we’ve had it wrong for centuries. We’ve been kept blind to the true nature of what is afoot here, as to what’s really going on. Look around us. Who fills the trailer parks with us? Who works in the factories or fast food restaurants with us? Who is beside us working in the fields, picking produce that we’ll never really be able to afford? Is it rich people, especially rich white people? Hell no, it isn’t. It’s brown people, black people, yellow people. It’s people who have different shades of skin than us. They are the people that are in similar situations to us, living paycheck to paycheck, suffering like we do. So why then would we view them as our enemy?
Allegiances, traditionally, are made amongst people who have common interests. In an historical sense, white skinned working people have overwhelmingly believed that our interests are based on skin color. We have to work for the betterment of the race, for our culture, for our identity. The truth, however, could never be further away. Whose interests do these beliefs really serve? White workers? In some sense, the answer may be “yes”. Working for the advancement of the white race at the cost of other races does buy us relative privileges and even some luxuries. In the end, however, we’re still poor, we’re still being used to make other people money. And those people aren’t non-white working people.
We have a stake in creating a new social paradigm and movement that goes beyond the idea of liberty being a protection for property ownership. We have a direct interest in fighting white supremacy, the state, and capitalism. Our freedom is intimately woven into the freedom of all working people. Until we are free as a working class, we will never be free as individuals, no matter what skin color we are.
I don’t want to end on an abstract note. I want to end with a couple concrete steps that white working class people can take to work to build a movement for real liberty.
- Actively work against groups like the Minutemen, the Klan, the Christian Identity Movement, and others that seek to divide us as working class people from other working class people based on their race, gender, sexuality, nationality or religion. These people are class traitors and ensure that we will never see freedom for ourselves or our families, as they keep us fighting other working class people and not the real enemy: the rich. Disrupt their attempts to organize and to recruit. Make it known they are not welcome at gun shows or other events where you are present. Not joining their organizations isn’t enough, we must actively stop them from organizing at all.
- Actively work against leaders of the New Liberty movement that organize against nonwhite working class people. Alex Jones, Ron Paul, David Duke, and others are trying to ensure that we will turn on migrants and other people of color rather than turn on rich people, most of whom happen to be white.
- Organize debtor’s unions and tenants unions in your neighborhood. We must come together with our neighbors to defend each other from foreclosures and evictions. Create networks of people in your neighborhood that can show up and help defend each other and prevent evictions.
- Refuse to pay any debts you have and organize rent strikes. Don’t pay your hospital bills, your credit card bills, or any other debts you have. Don’t give these people that have been exploiting us any more of your money.
- Support GI resistance to war and occupation. Many working class people are refusing orders to deploy, and resisting the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in other ways. Lend them your support at couragetoresist.org
- Don’t join the military, help prevent your family members from joining the military. This institution has robbed too many working people of their lives by convincing them it’s their patriotic duty. We must stop falling for this line, and fight for our class, not for the political elites.
- Follow the examples of other working class people and occupy your workplace if threatened with layoffs or terminations. There have been occupations of workplaces in the U.S. and across other countries as the economic crisis has broadened. These reclamations of workplaces have ended with workers receiving back and severance pay, and sometimes even preventing their workplaces from closing
- Organize with your neighbors to grow food for your communities. Don’t rely on the economic elites for your food any longer. Starting a personal garden is a good first step, but community gardens can provide more food for more people, and create important community ties and working relationships.
- Be ready to actively defend your neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities from the police and state forces. Take whatever measures you deem necessary to do so.
- Don’t get a job as a cop or prison guard. These jobs also reinforce racial divisions within our class, as well as create domestic armies to use against us when we do work toward our own power. Cops are not our friends. The police systemically exist to protect the rich and their property. Prison guards are not any better. Especially with the expansion of the war on drugs to include a war against Meth, many white working class people are finding themselves in prison and on the other side of the bars from their neighbors in guard’s uniforms.
- Do anything you can to take back resources from the rich. We’ll keep this suggestion intentionally vague. The rich have all the food, all the money, all the wealth, and all the power. Let’s take it back. Any way we can.
Via IAS
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A Post Racial South Africa??
Posted by APOC-Philly in Uncategorized on June 26, 2009
White Supremacy in South Africa
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Harjit Singh Gill on APOC at the Left Forum
Below are two selections from a “Prefigurative Politics: Building New Social Relations” panel from the Left Forum, which took place this month in New York City. Harjit Singh Gill of Planes For Baskets speaks on some of the history of Anarchist People of Color nationally and in the Bay Area, as well as some of the choices and challenges facing APOC formations.
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Smack A White Boy- DC APOC Reports Back!
Posted by APOC-DC in Anarchist People of Color, General on March 27, 2009
SMACK A WHITE BOY: REPORT BACK
Oh YES we did!
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B |
lame it on hypocrisy and a failure to understand that Americans are getting exactly what they asked for when they elected Barack Obama as the new president. Act Now to Stop War & End Racism Coalition (ANSWER) will probably blame it on the low turn out. I can hear them saying to each other right now “… if only more people came out to protest the war, someone would have to listen”. Only in your wet dreams could fucking the war machine be that easy.
On Saturday March 21, 2009 Autonomous People of Color (APOC) blocked the ANSWER coalition march as they aimed to launch the beginning of the post-Obama anti-war movement. You must say their dramatic direct action totally failed unless they completely misunderstood those tactics. What occurred was nothing more than a laughable continuation of the pageantry that is a result of lazy, “American-style” activism. You know the scenario; it’s the same old crazies, middle aged white men with long hair and beer bellies singing “peace is what the world needs”, code pink theatrics, crusties and your faithful Negro tokens fronting a group run by white authoritarian socialists. Have you heard about the new direct action that stands in front of the war-profiteers place of business while nobody’s home with no intention other than to shout into a crowd full of angry people, take pictures and peacefully walk away? Yes, and it’s called “wasted opportunity”. There were chocks full of rocks on the way to visit the war profiteers. I know that I can’t expect them to be that creative, but haven’t they learned anything from the people they claim to be in so much solidarity with? Hezbollah flag waved high! How bad do they want this war to end? I think its as bad as they want to end racism without confronting their own white privilege.
Then there were the Pictures. A ton of press waited for them as they did their victory speeches, just waiting to capture the moment when they reached their climax. Understand that the pictures are very important because without the pictures, nobody would have believed that they had ever even been there. What did they change? They left no permanent mark, just empty threats within empty parking lots. It was the kind of march that follows the leader, without missing a beat or falling out of line. Tell me I’m still sleeping on them, but this CANNOT be what they had in mind.
Yet they pat themselves on the back for getting people ‘in the streets’. It’s this pacifist, debilitating, and self-serving state of activism that promotes holding signs, chants and permitted marches for a good time on a Saturday afternoon. It must be fun to be against the wars when you’re not the target. This is the activism that starts at the rally and ends at the closest McDonalds or Subway. You really know the anti-war movement is dead or at least in its death throes when the same people holding anti-imperialist and anti-corporate signs are the same people standing in lines that stretch out the door of two of the most well known and exploitative fast food chains in the world. The march over the memorial bridge must have really left them too pooped to put their generic signs away first before replenishing their bellies and collapsing back into their typical, complacent, monotonous lives. This is the reason why I personally took direct action to confront the self-important, smug, liberal activists that think that their “kind” of direct action stops wars. APOC had to educate them that an organization that has “END RACISM” in its name can still perpetuate white supremacy. APOC had to reclaim our space and show the movement exactly what direct action looks like. We wanted to confront racism so we blockaded their march and did it.
To all of the naysayers that are worried about what APOC does with it’s time: This was not a public anti-war action. This was an anti-ANSWER distraction. We did not march with them, we infiltrated their ranks unnoticed and surprised them with a blockade once the puppets had walked away. If even for a moment, we broke the fringe-left spell. The ‘leaders’ had no clue what happened, all they heard was that some ‘minorities’ were causing trouble. Minorities? Black, Yellow and Brown people make up the majority in Washington, DC and we won’t leave until we are forced out. As far as APOC is concerned “Smack A White Boy” served its purpose as it was self-determined and we have nothing to prove to you. APOC is building power and plans on even more ambitious direct action in the future. For everyone of every color that stood in solidarity with us: Thank you. For all the people that said we were ruining their march: Your welcome.
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Obama’s Election: Lessons for Defeating White Supremacy and Rebuilding Revolutionary Resistance
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on November 18, 2008
By Michael Novick
The election of Barack Obama has been greeted in a variety of ways: elation and relief (tempered by fear of a racist backlash or assassination attempt) by supporters, particularly US Africans; predictions of enhanced recruitment opportunity by organized white supremacists; doomsday predictions by conservatives. On the left there have been “exposes” of Obama’s Zionism, militarism and dismissal of the particular needs of Black people or the working class. A group of DC anarchists has called for a disruption of his inaugural. – But any analysis needs to start from this reality: masses of people in the US feel they have helped make and change history by electing Obama. His victory is indeed historic in many ways. It required the largest voter turnout ever, and the highest percentage of registered voters to vote in decades. Obama gained a clear majority, the highest percentage by a Democrat since FDR except for Johnson’s landslide after the JFK assassination. He ran the most expensive campaign in history. He is the first “bi-racial” (called Black or African-American) president-elect, and incidentally the first child of an immigrant, the first Hawaiian-born, one of the youngest, and by far the least “embedded,” president. Moreover, his was the first victory by a self-proclaimed ‘anti-war’ candidate in the midst of a war. But Obama’s victory hardly signals that we are a “post-racial” society, as evidenced by the self-contradictory self-congratulation of those who proclaim that “by electing the first Black president” we have shown that we are “color-blind.” Exit polls showed that about a fifth of ‘white’ voters acknowledged that “race” was a significant factor. Interestingly, of those, 30% voted for Obama. One explanation of this is the fact that Obama’s race made his intellect acceptable. US voters would never have elected a ‘white’ candidate as obviously intelligent as Obama. Yet they accepted and understood that a ‘Black’ candidate would have to be twice as smart, twice as cool, as any ‘white’ to have a chance to succeed. Paradoxically but perhaps most essentially, Obama’s election is also a manifestation of the extent of the radical left’s weakness, irrelevance and inability to communicate. Over the past eight years of Bush misrule, what effective strategies or serious ability to develop a countervailing force or consciousness has the left or the anarchist movement manifested? In that vacuum, people made a judgment that Obama represented the best hope for the kind of change that could be achieved through electoral means. This was not merely because he was ‘Black,’ but because he was intelligent, calm, organized, and an effective and reassuring campaigner. McCain’s charges of ‘inexperience’ didn’t stick because Obama was attractive as a relative outsider not deeply corrupted by long tenure in Washington, DC or in office. His mild centrist critique of the Iraq war made ’sense’ in a context in which the anti-war movement had proven incapable of making a dent or marshaling an extra-parliamentary opposition and resistance to the war. Within the Democratic Party spectrum — and the anti-war movement has been tailing the Democrats for years — he was the electable ‘opponent’ of the Iraq war. To imagine that a proclamation of opposition to Obama’s inauguration as a capitalist and statist will do anything to overcome the left’s weakness, irrelevance and inability to communicate — in fact, that it will do anything other than deepen and intensify those failures — is the height of arrogance. I have a different take on what we have to do or learn in response to Obama’s victory. It starts with the perspective that the greatest on-going weakness of the left strategically and politically is a refusal to recognize the nature of this society as an Empire based on white-supremacist settler colonialism. Related to that is our greatest tactical flaw, an inability to practice authentic self-criticism, through which we learn from our errors and defeats in order to eventually overcome them and win. Our failure to do that has engendered a deep defeatism in masses of people — manifest as accommodation to Empire and unwillingness to struggle against or even make a sharp break with the system. One thing this election has demonstrated is how far into the past the revolutionary militance of the civil rights and Black power movements and the mass anti-imperialist opposition to the Vietnam War and domestic colonialism have receded. McCain’s inability to make the Bill Ayers smear stick to Obama was because not only Obama but most of the electorate was no older than 8, or perhaps not yet born, when Ayers was an armed-propaganda radical. That period of revolutionary optimism, when the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army or the WUO were the tip of the iceberg of a massive upwelling of rebelliousness and armed resistance, is now ancient history. (Speaking of white privilege and class, Obama never would have associated with ex-BLA members, nor would any have been on the board of an Annenberg charity.) No amount of posturing could “Recreate 68″ (or even 2000) in Denver for the DNC or in DC for the inaugural. 47% of high school seniors in the US today were registered to vote in time for the election, and I suspect an overwhelming majority of them cast their first ballots. They were born while the first George Bush was president! Who better to speak to them than Anti-Racist Action, which has historically been an attractor of high schoolers? Yet ARA’s current ability to do outreach, education, agitation and organizing in high schools (or prisons, factories, community colleges or the military) is miniscule. The DC call relates that anarchists opposed and disrupted the last two inaugurations, and therefore should do the same again. This flawed reasoning lacks a material analysis of the consciousness of masses of people in relation to the electoral process and the presidency. Bush’s two stolen victories undermined the authenticity and legitimacy of the electoral process and of the imperial presidency. For his first inaugural, he was anointed president by the Supreme Court after having lost the popular vote. For his second, he was plagued by an unpopular war and evidence of vote flipping and vote suppression. Protesters and disrupters were speaking for millions when we denounced the inaugurals and the presidency, and our message fell on receptive ears. The current situation is far different, and blaming it on the voters is another example of the left’s lack of self-criticism and ability to grow. Obama’s victory signals a new lease on life for the presidency, electoral politics and the two-party system. Obama won by a clear majority, in which voter suppression was a negligible factor and in which all minor parties together barely hit 1% of the vote, including McKinney, Nader, Barr and Baldwin combined. His inauguration, even apart from the historicity of his “Blackness,” is being welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the US population as proof of the “mystery and majesty” of electoral democracy. In that context, a disruption wouldn’t express the unease of the general population in a radical and uncompromising way, but would be taken as an alienating slap in the face. It wouldn’t be seen as a call to a higher form of direct democracy, but as a rejection of the popular will expressed through a peaceful, honest and democratic election and transfer of power. Now is the time for a sober reassessment of how to grapple with these new realities. Obama did not merely collect millions of dollars from hundreds of thousands of people — he established a relationship with them. He organized effectively tens of thousands of volunteers, and turned out tens of millions of people to vote. Why has the left or the anarchist movement been incapable of inspiring, stimulating or organizing anywhere near that level of support, involvement, voluntarism or participation? How can we start to do so? Obama accurately read the demographic, technological and ideological changes that are taking place in the U.S. and effectively offered himself and his campaign as a vehicle for implementing or realizing some of the aspirations those changes have generated. Obama seized on the opportunity of the latest and deepest capitalist economic crisis to develop a compelling narrative of how a lack of regulation, a lack of attention to the ‘middle class,’ and an arrogant unilateralism in ‘foreign policy’ weakened the economy, national security and the fiscal stability of the state. Neither the statist left nor the anarchists are anywhere close to having the intellectual, political or organizational capacity to challenge that narrative or that definition of “change.” Unless and until we engage in a thoroughgoing self-criticism and re-orientation towards an anti-colonialist politics of decolonization as the basis of an effective anti-capitalism, we will be playing with ourselves on the sidelines of history. We need to put forward and undertake effective organizing strategies, not merely demands, for self-determined direct action against economic and environmental devastation, mass incarceration, militarism, occupation and anti-immigrant hysteria. We need to participate in building self-reliant communities of resistance. It is only oppressed and exploited people who can make revolution, and save the planet by saving ourselves. Go to the 25% of ‘homeowners’ who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth and unite them with the homeless. Go to 30% of “War on Terror” veterans who report no earned wage income, and who have massive unemployment rates, and help unite them with GI resisters, with teens resisting recruitment, or with millions of prisoners and their families. Then we can begin to make some history of our own. The editorial above appears in the November-December 2008 issue of “Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education,” Volume 21 Number 6. A free sample copy of the entire issue is available by writing ARA-LA, PO Box 1055, Culver City CA 90232, emailing antiracistaction_la@yahoo.com, or calling 310-495-0299. Subscriptions are $18 a year in the US, $28 institutional/international, payable to Anti-Racist Action at the above address. Comments and responses are most welcome.
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We’re Still Proles: Their Elections Are Never Our Victories
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on November 12, 2008
By crudo
Last night I watched with several other anarchist friends as Obama became the next President of the United States Government. As someone who battled drug addiction and worked as a community organizer, counter poised to someone like McCain and Palin who own several houses and planes, (while claiming to be ’just like us’), it’s easy to get excited about things changing in this country. After all, just the idea that a half African-American President will be in office is enough to make many people think that the fundamental nature of the power structure in this country will change in a significant way. Some even believe that the very essence of their lives will change in the country. After all, that’s what Obama sold us on. Yes we can, change, hope…
But our lives have changed in the past year, even with Obama already in office. Let us not forget he has already served in the halls of power, as the government launched wars into other countries, increased repression against US citizens, deported migrants, and as the prison population within this country continues to grow and grow. Even Obama’s platform for election offers threats against Pakistan and Iran, calls for more corporate mercenary groups like Blackwater to go into Iraq, the buildup of a ground war in Afghanistan, new ‘clearer coal’ and nuclear energy (ha!), and continued attacks against immigrants. While many were excited by the fact that a person of color would possibly be heading the government, many failed to look past Obama’s color themselves and see that he still represented the interests of the rich and not the working class.
Here in the Central Valley of California, things have only been getting worse for us. We lead the state in poverty. We lead the nation in foreclosure. We face problems with drugs, pollution, air quality, jobs, police brutality, racism, and more. We have been hit hard by the California budget crisis and the economic recession. The Governor of this state repeatedly launches attacks on unions and workers. We are the front line of the attack by the rich against the rest of us. At the same time, ‘our democracy’ locally has been hard at work – against us! In the past year or so, as regular readers of Modesto Anarcho know very well, local governments in the Central Valley have managed to criminalize dumpster diving, shoot down needle exchange programs, further criminalizing squatting, shut down medical pot co-ops, beef up surveillance technology and police weaponry with grants from Homeland Security, round up and deport immigrants, launch attacks against the homeless, and so on. Of course, none of these things have been done with our say or even our vote. The landscape of our lives is not our own. Our terrain is decided upon largely by outside forces made up of people of a higher class than us. They make the laws, the put them in place, they own the police, courts, and prisons, and they own everything else. We work for them, we go to war for them, and we are killed by them. But every four years we seem to forget all that, and instead believe that we are somehow participating in a system that allows us to really change this society, albeit in a small, symbolic way.
But, on the tips of many people’s tongues will come the cry, “but if we don’t vote, we have no voice!” This is a confusing statement, because voting in it’s essence takes away your voice, and give it first to the electoral college and then to the candidate that it puts in power. You have no voice, only a free pass to the rich person of your choosing. Besides, even if you voted for the leftist, most liberal candidate, you’d still be a wage slave. You can’t vote against being forced to sell your time, energy, and labor in order to survive. Under capitalism, a system where the rich control every aspect of our lives and livelihoods, elections only change some of the bosses on the top, not the system that is bellow them. After Obama is sworn into office, people will still rot in prison. The bombs and bullets in Iraq and everywhere else will keep exploding. The planet will keep getting hotter. Immigrants and the poor will still be targeted. People will still be harassed and attacked by pigs. People will still lose their homes. Capitalism needs poverty, destruction, and war to continue – but it also needs presidents and people willing to give them power. Isn’t it time we stopped being the passive voters that they want us to be? Let’s stop validating their system and believing in it. From the bailout to the horrors of everyday life – we know that their democracy is nothing by slavery to capitalism.
The alternative to electoral politics has always been direct action. We must organize as a class of people against the ruling class. We must break the divisions within ourselves such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. Our true power lies in our ability to suppress and destroy class society, to gain space and territory for ourselves. We have felt this power on the streets of Modesto and elsewhere during the May Day marches and walkouts that involved tens of thousands and brought the city to a standstill. We have seen it in the ongoing occupation at DQ-University, where poor people of color have lead a struggle to take back the land. We have experienced it in the community struggles to shut down the Tallow Plant, the Covanta Incinerator, and also stop racist groups like Save Our State. We have watched it in the rent strikes in Ceres, homeless tent cities in Fresno, riots against the police in Stockton, and the Copwatch programs against police brutality in Modesto.
Now, more than ever, the system of capitalism wants us to feel good about the election. That “we the people” have elected one of our own, we have brought change to America. We can forget about the past 8 years and go back to our lives as passive workers, consumers, debtors, and renters now. Our eyes, ears, and thoughts will be filled with a thousand empty slogans about how a great victory has been reached and obtained for us as a people. But it is not our victory, it is a victory for the elites and the rich. If we believe that it is a victory for ourselves, then we are living in a fantasy land. We have to understand that the system is trying to manufacture a belief in ourselves that we have something in common now with the power structure. Hopefully, we will see that this is bullshit. The rich want nothing more than to hold hands with us and gallop into the sunset, despite the fact that a economic and ecological disaster lies just on the horizon. Our victories will always be when we drive the police out of our neighborhoods and set fire to the prisons. When we take over the means of production and share the resources as a community. When we take back what has been stolen from us, day after day. These are our victories, we need only start to make them real.
Via Infoshop
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This is Your Nation on White Privilege
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on September 22, 2008
By Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested. ”
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the
1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’ re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look. ”
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
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Discussing White Identity Out of Context Perpetuates Racism
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on September 10, 2008
Although whiteness (contingent social construct) is invisible to the vast majority of white people (a contingent category of people), simply making whiteness explicit and visible is not necessarily antiracist. Making whiteness (contingent social construct) explicit does not in itself challenge the construct, but may instead strengthen it. Particularly, portraying the contingent social construct of whiteness as a necessary social construct reinforces racism.
White identity is defined by othering of people of colour.
The vast majority of white people (or persons with white privilege) are not consciously aware of the contingent social construct of whiteness, but they are very much aware of it subconsciously or implicitly. White people are implicitly aware of this contingent social construct, because it is constructed by calibrating whiteness as normal and othering people of colour. People of colour are considered “ethnic” and their culture is considered “cultural”, while “white people” and “white culture” are considered (implicitly) the negation of what people of colour supposedly represent. To even denote a people or cultural practise as “ethnic” suggests that there are people and cultural practises that are “not ethnic”, which is why the distinction is created in the first place.
In other words, the (implicit or explicit) social construct of whiteness works together with denoting people of colour as the Other, i.e., not of the national heritage, culture, or identity of “white”-majority nations. “White identity” is mainly a negative definition. When a person of white privilege addresses another person of white privilege, “white” is defined implicitly as not “blacks”, “Asians”, “minorities”, or “those people”. When a person of white privilege addresses a person of colour, “white” is defined implicitly as not “you people.”
Portraying whiteness (contingent social construct) as whiteness (necessary social construct) is racist.
Perceiving people of colour as having a “race” is the standard white narrative. Perceiving white people as having a “race” is more common with people of colour, but this perception is often based the recognition that people with white privilege have extra advantages. (For example, majoring in philosophy is sometimes considered very “white”, but this is based on the recognition that white people on average have a higher socio-economic status relative to people of colour within white-majority countries. When people say that majoring in philosophy is very “white”, it is not a statement about genetic differences in mental capabilities between “whites” and “non-whites”.) Hence, when people of colour are pointing out whiteness, they are not necessarily claiming that whiteness is something biological or that it is necessary to the fabric of reality.
Although making whiteness (contingent social construct) explicit may be subversive in that it usually makes people with white privilege uncomfortable, discussing “white identity” out of the context of white privilege and racism presents whiteness as a necessary (or natural) social construct. “White identity” is defined by othering people of colour, and a focus on whiteness that omits this aspect (from an antiracist perspective) reinforces the status quo, the idea that the white-versus-other divide has nothing to do with inequity. Hence, the act of making whiteness (contingent social construct) explicit but out-of-context (i.e., not as a criticism of racism and white privilege) perpetuates racism.
Vis Restructure
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Intersectionality 101
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on September 1, 2008
- just because you understand one kind of oppression doesn’t mean you will automatically understand another.
just because you are a woman doesn’t mean you understand the experience of racism. just because you are a gay man don’t think you can map your experiences onto the oppression of the disabled. just because you are woman do not think you can know the shit a lesbian has to put up with. do not generalize your experiences to the experiences of others. listen to what those other oppressed groups are saying. don’t put your words in their mouths.
- do not rank oppressions.
ranking oppressions is a losing game for the oppressed. standing up to all oppressions is the only way to win. sitting there saying one oppression is worse than another is only reinforcing oppression all around. help all your brothers and sisters. not just the ones like you.
- do not make a person who is part of two oppressed groups choose one oppression or the other.
do not put women of color in a position of criticizing sexism by agreeing with you but giving a pass on racism by not criticizing you – don’t be racist. do not justify your indifference to heteronormativity by pointing out you work against ableism. do not ignore queer issues that are important to your sister just because you’re straight. consider that people do experience more than one oppression at a time. listen to what these people have to say – it can teach you a lot about the nature of oppression.
- look for how your oppressed community oppresses other groups, and try to stop it.
really, what good is an anti-homophobia group that is sexist? what good is an anti-sexism group that is racist? with oppressed groups oppressing each other, is it any wonder there is so little progress from the oppressors? oppressions are interlocking and mutually reinforcing – if oppressed people cannot work together, what makes you think the oppressors will work with you? help each other.
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McCain, Obama & White Privilege
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on August 19, 2008
By lynx
Saw something interesting on the AP wire today, apparently Obama has decided to be more overt in opposing identity-based smear tactics against him and has explicitly called out the RNC for fear mongering. Here’s his exact words:
“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me… You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills” [from the Associated Press]
McCain, of course, reacted with indignation and accused Obama of playing the Race card by accusing McCain of playing it, a charge that – to McCain’s credit – would be inaccurate.
Thing is there are plenty of other folks on the right wing of American politics who are more then happy to use identity politics to paint Obama as “other” and not to be trusted, whether their anointed candidate approves or not. So while McCain himself has preferred to go light on the fear mongering and instead to portray Obama as inexperienced and lacking substance, he still very much benefits from all the work that others are doing on his behalf to drive white america away from the big scary black man with the muslim-sounding name. That’s who Obama’s comment was directed towards, and if he was really honest McCain would recognize that.
The concept of “White Privilege” is a tricky one, and over the years I’ve had a fair share of beef with how that concept is frequently mis-used to whip up people’s feelings of white guilt and get them to shut up and follow orders (needless to say, I am NOT a fan of the authoritarian left). But if you can get past the bullshit, it’s an important concept. In a nutshell, the theory behind White Privilege posits that (relative to people of color) White people in America gain certain social benefits, strictly because of their skin color and irregardless of class, that are systematically denied to others. These privileges include basic things like the fact that a white person who is arrested is statistically less likely to do serious prison time then a black person picked up for the same crime with the same evidence. At the more abstract level, white people are consistently portrayed as the default in our media and mass culture. A white guys is just a guy, but a black guy is always a black guy.
Obama’s candidacy is the perfect example of this phenomenon. In the year or so that the campaign has been running I don’t think I’ve read a single article on him that didn’t mention, usually repeatedly, that he’s black. By contrast, articles describing the campaigns of his white opponents rarely if ever mention their race – unless they do so with reference to Obama. McCain doesn’t NEED to bring up Obama’s race and make it an issue, the press does it for him whether he wants them too or not. Same goes for his supposedly “muslim” background. Despite the fact that the man’s mother and father were both Athiests and that he was raised secular before converting to christianity as an adult, the internet is full to the gills with chain letters and innuendo about how he’s a “closet” Muslim – some kind of Manchurian Candidate who’s keeping his true religious affiliation a secret until he can get into office and invoke Sharia Law by executive order. Anybody who takes that shit seriously can go join the tinfoil hat brigade as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t influential. Unlike Clinton, McCain can honestly say that he hasn’t encouraged that type of thing and has even actively discouraged it on occasion, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t benefit from it.
And that, dear friends, is White Privilege in a nutshell.
To be clear, I’m not calling McCain a racist, except in the general sense that we live in a racist sexist classist homophobic society and it’s virtually impossible to avoid unconsciously absorbing some of those attitudes. All I’m saying is that McCain stands to benefit from prejudice against his opponent in a very direct way. And for people seeking to understand how the more subtle racism of modern America works, this is a perfect object lesson. Despite his working-class origins, the fact is Obama is a member of the ruling class
and by every indication throughly enjoys the enormous power and privilege that goes along with that. If racial and cultural prejudice can have such a dramatic effect on him, consider how much more dramatically that same background prejudice affects poor and working class folks who share his skin tone but lack his Ivy league credentials and gifts for oration.
So what’s a candidate to do? McCain can’t very well change his skin color and opt out of white privilege, any more then I can. But he can denounce it. He can get up and say to all the people that are saying they’ll vote for him because they just don’t feel “comfortable” with Obama because they think he’s secretly a Muslim (and that that’s apparently a bad thing) and is thus not a “Real American” – or who just straight up don’t want to vote for a black man – that he doesn’t want their votes and he has no intention of winning the election because of unfounded prejudice against his opponent.
Not that I expect that to happen, this is politics after all and winning is the most important thing to any politician. The fact is that in a year when barely 1 in 10 Americans approves of the incumbent republican president, McCain’s only hope for winning as a republican is to pull in all the conservative democrats and independents who’ve been scared away from the Obama camp by identity politics. Without the racist vote McCain loses. And he knows it. And for a guy like McCain who’s big on doing things his own way that’s got to suck. If he wasn’t an uber-rich member of the ruling class and a willing poster boy for our oppressors, I could almost feel sorry for the poor bastard.
PS: Frankly, I suspect the difficulty of carrying the general election as a republican this year is why McCain won the nomination – to the centrists he was the only one with the cross-party pull to bring in enough conservative democrats and independents to win the general election in a year when Republicans as a whole are deeply unpopular, and to the hard-right wing of the party that’s hated him for years, nominating him in a year where it’s practically impossible for him to win was a good way to get him and his presidential aspirations out of the way.
PPS: Please keep in mind that I am not voting for Obama or McCain and hope none of you do either. This election – like every election – I’ll go in, vote on ballot initiatives, and when it comes to candidates check “other” and write “none” for all offices because “none” is the number of candidates on the ballot who can offer real change.
Via Soundtrack for Insurrection
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Defining Whiteness
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on August 14, 2008
White as a term describing people refers to light skinned people of European descent. Whiteness is about white race, white culture and the system of privileges and advantages afforded to white people in the U.S. (and across the globe) through government policies, media portrayal, decision-making power within our corporations, schools, judicial systems, etc. The prevailing white culture in the United States is least likely to understand how “whiteness” works. Whiteness also brings about images of “white power” and “white pride” which promote blatant acts of racism. Using the term “white” can create a shortness of breath for many people understandably. We are not about promoting any of the negative and racist forms of using “whiteness.”
While “Whiteness” has become a study and area of research in many universities (“Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status.” Wikipedia and we are interested in that aspect, this blog is dedicated to everyday whiteness and everyday experiences from people out in the world, on the streets, in their neighborhoods, at work, etc. For now, we offer Beverly Tatum’s thoughts on Whiteness as our initial framework
Beverly Daniel Tatum points out that most white people do not think to describe themselves as “white” when listing descriptive terms about themselves, whereas people of color usually use racial or ethnic identity descriptors. Tatum suggests this is because the elements of one’s identity that are congruent with the dominant culture are so normalized and reflected back at one that one is apt to take such traits for granted. This is not the case for identity aspects of those who are defined as “other” by the dominant culture, whether it be on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other micro-cultural aspects.
Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity (revised) 2003
We will continue to define and name whiteness, as we go along, using the written word, poetry, art and film. We will engage the left and right brain, the heart and soul.
In some ways this is unexplored territory to ask white folks to seriously and consistently engage in dialogue around racism. There is an extensive history of white people standing up against racism AND many present-day speakers, groups, university classes and conferences that speak to whiteness and white privilege. We are interested in building on those events and inspiring speeches to an ongoing conversation. It’s a way for white folks in particular to ”grease the wheels” and do our “warm-up” exercises after years of avoiding the conversation or not working through our ideas out loud for fear of being called a racist. We know the most common assumption about white folks and racism is the use of racist jokes, white supremacy groups, and white people thinking that racism is a ”minority” issue. We’re asking for a new assumption and a new paradigm to grow here.
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“It is Good What You Are Doing”
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on August 13, 2008
By iwbe
European culture is rooted in competion, othering and superficial values.
Othering is not only imposed to people who look different, so different races/nationalities, but also to other whites.
A white life is defined by what an individual white shouldn’t be. For example, a white should not be like poor white people who are labeled as “white trash”. White people who are not successful or who don’t meet the criterions of a positively stereotyped “white” [successful, decent, polite etc.] are used as a bad example how not to be.
Because whiteness is fluent throughout history, “white values” change. When it was once socially valued among southern whites to be plantation owners and to be therefore white supremacists, today the term “white supremacist” and the association with it changed: White supremacists are the “real racists”, who are bad, and nobody wants to be like them.
With that liberal whites find their new socially accepted niche:
argument 1: I am not a white supremacist, I am not a blatant racist, therefore I am not racist.
argument 2: I care, therefore I am anti-racist.
I think also because of othering and identifying and defining one own self with what a white is not liberal whites want to do “something”, what is socially valued in a Eurocentric worldview – social work.
Somebody who does social work is within a competitive society automatically “better” than other whites who do nothing.
And like missionaries in the past, who probably honestly believed to do “good work” to other people by forcing them to become Christians, liberal whites feel enlightend and start to educate others. This mindset creates paternalists as well as “teachers”, who don’t longer reflect on their own actions.
You can find this attitude whereever you go and therefore unfortunately also among so-called white anti-racists.
Whites learn to “be good” and at the same time they learn not to challenge the status quo. In the middle of it you can find the liberal white.
It is more important how they label what they are doing than what they actually do or what they are.
Doing “anti-racist” work is regarded as positive because blatant racism is no longer valued. Therefore, somebody who is “concerned” but doesn’t confront other whites, is considered as good, “it is good what you are doing”, because these “anti-racists” help them to disconnect from one’s own racism. “Anti-racism” becomes a comfort zone to feel better than “other whites”. Because they don’t expect that their own problematic attitudes are being challenged. Labels become like a protective shield – don’t challenge me because I am already there. Like often in a Eurocentric mind-set, it is more important to be socially accepted and praised for “good work”, because honestly challenging racism makes interactions with other whites sometimes difficult. Serious white anti-racists don’t longer do “good work”, but are considered as some sort of traitors only a few whites want to be associated with.
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White Privilege… It’s Everywhere I Am Not
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on August 12, 2008
By Blackgirlinmaine
I guess the reason I won’t ever be a blogger who writes about current events is because I have a tendency to come late to the party, but that’s life when you have an almost 3 year old and only 24 hours in a day.
Last post, I wrote about Jesse Jackson and the n-word but at that writing I hadn’t yet heard the story about ole Elizabeth from The View and the rather um, emotional discussion that occurred between the ladies of The View about the n-word. Plenty of folks have already wrote some fabulous stuff specifically about that conversation, however at another blog the issue of white privilege came up and for some reason this weekend that stuck in my mind.
Seems white folks don’t always get why they can’t use the n-word, some even say it feels unfair… after all if its such a hateful word, why the hell should Black folks use it? Seems maybe we should all bury it. On the surface that feels like a really warm and fuzzy argument and maybe if it were not for this little pesky thing called white privilege, I might almost agree but I don’t.
Before I get into my rant, let me say upfront, I don’t write an academic blog, I am a former quasi-academic, long story short after I got the masters degree a few years ago, I decided I had had enough of school. So I say this to say that when I blog, I just write, I don’t for the most part add sources but if you are reading this feel free to google anything I say and find the references yourself.
Now that we have that out of the way, lets get the rant on… Many years ago Peggy McIntosh wrote a piece that is often used to discuss white privilege, it basically highlights the many invisible perks that white folks get just by nature of being white. Simple things like knowing for instance you can pretty much do what you want to do without fear… or at the very least live in a state and not have to travel 2 states over to get your hair done.
With that paraphrasing of Peggy’s piece, I am reminded that maybe on some level the reason whites don’t get why they can’t use the n-word is not so much rooted in the fact that they care about Black folks (not saying that they don’t) but more rooted in the fact that its one thing that Black society has basically said no about, you can’t use that word and in general to be white in America does not mean hearing no all that often compared to if you are a person of color in America. After all for the average white person throwing out a casual n-bomb at the very least will earn you a mild scolding if your n-bomb falls upon Black ears to possibly getting your ass kicked. Depends on the Black person hearing it and honestly the kind of day they are having.
See, its funny when the spousal unit and I were talking about The View and my reaction to Elizabeth (honey, stop crying… get over yourself, use those tears to help folks if you really want to do something productive). It was my white half that brought up white privilege and how in his 40 years of life, 13 which have been spent with yours truly, that its been only in these last 13 years that he realized how many things he took for granted as a white man.
Imagine walking around in a large city when the urge to take a sudden and powerful bowel movement hits (I know this is sounding crazy but stick with me), well the spousal unit just looks for a nice hotel and wanders in and uses their facilities. The first time he shared this with many years ago, I looked at him like he was crazy, see when I used to live in Chicago and found myself in a similar predicament it never dawned on me to go to a hotel. Perhaps, because I have had experiences when traveling and staying at top notch hotels where just my appearance required showing a key card and proof I really belonged at the hotel and wasn’t loitering. Its a small thing but it was one of the first times I stopped to ponder how we, Black folks and White folks at times can inhabit different worlds.
In more recent days, a white girlfriend and I were discussing local beaches we take our kids, and my pal shared that she regularly uses one particular beach that is private… I knew the beach in question but was fascinated that she regularly just used it with no concerns, I even asked her aren’t you concerned that the organization that owns it might ask you to leave? She told me no; see white privilege allows you to go and do seemingly simple things like shit or use a beach with no concerns that someone might question you, hound you, or disturb you in any way. Damn, it must be nice…
However back to my original point, I see some whites irritation in not being allowed to use the n-word rooted in the fact that to be white in America unless you are at the lowest rings of the socio-economic ladder is to not have to hear the word no, it means always having a choice.. and yet Black folks have said no, you cannot have this word. That said, I am not saying we as Black folks need to hang onto this word as a commenter on my last entry stated maybe its time we look for some new language in general and I agree.
That said white privilege is everywhere, maybe instead of getting pissed about what you can’t say, it would be better to look at what you can do and strive for ways to achieve parity so that everyone can shit when needed.
Via Blackgirlinmaine
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Tim Wise on White Privilege
Posted by illvox collective in Uncategorized on August 10, 2008
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What Do You Say?