As a child, I always dreamed of getting away from Louisiana. After I matriculated from high school I got the opportunity to do it. I tried out Los Angeles for a while. A few years later, I found myself in Evanston, Illinois, just one “L” ride away from Chicago. A year later, I spent some time in Madison, Wisconsin. If it wasn’t for all that snow…
I could write an entire book about what it’s like being a Southern GirlTM living in each of these states. They were all fantastic cities that I was tempted to make my permanent home. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to be a Louisianian. It came down to a few factors, but there was one particular fact that made me sure that going home was the right decision for me: I like our bigots more than the ones in other places.
I’m sure lots of people know the stereotypes about Louisiana: Confederate flags flying everywhere, barefooted Cajuns, the Ku Klux Klan, under-educated students, black people who were too stupid to leave during a hurricane, swamps everywhere, corrupt politicians. As a child, this is how I saw Louisiana portrayed every time I turned on the television or read a story set here. It was embarrassing. I longed to go some place more sophisticated, more enlightened, less racist.
It took leaving to put things in perspective. Sure, there are plenty of racists in Louisiana. However, it’s a different kind of racism than I experienced in other parts of the USA. Here, people are a lot more likely to own their racism. If you ask a Louisianian if they ever engage in racist behavior, you’re more likely to get an honest and accurate assessment than you would if you ask the average person up North. If they don’t like black people, they’ll tell you so.
Maybe people outside of the south aren’t as willing to make such admissions to others because they aren’t willing to admit it to themselves. That made it a lot more difficult for me to form relationships with many of them. If a person isn’t willing to acknowledge that, despite how fair-minded and liberal they perceive themselves as being, some of their actions might be harming someone, then they won’t ever stop being racist. I’d rather an honest relationship, where I can know where I stand, than one where someone gives the appearance of caring about others, but if it means sacrificing their own comfort you will be shit out of luck.
I wonder how many people would be willing to own their bigotry here, for all to see. Maybe we could move towards creating better versions of ourselves if we engaged in a little more introspection. Audre Lorde once said, “”The true focus of revolutionary change is to see the oppressor inside us.” Can you see the oppressor inside of you?
Do you have a tendency to exhibit certain kinds of bigoted behavior? Ablism? Racism? Transphobia? Classism? Sexism? Homophobia? Xenophobia? Something else?
What kinds of bigotry are the easiest for you to spot others engaging in?
Are there any situations where you have engaged in a behavior and then looked back and realized that it was really bigoted?
I struggle with classism. I’ve caught myself passing judgment on people based on ideas about their socio-economic status. I struggle with undoing years of B.A.P. tendencies. I’m not anywhere I need to be with this, but being on the receiving end of ablism for so many years has taught me just how superficial many of the things I once valued really are.
I also tend to take my cisgender-privilege for granted. I thought that I was savvy in this department, but one of my friends recently made me a lot more aware of just how much planning it takes for her to be able to do things that I have always taken for granted. I was pretty stunned to hear how fraught with danger “everyday activities” can be for her. Listening to her talk was extremely humbling and caused me re-think my belief that I had pretty much figured out the ins and outs of cisgender-privilege.
Being a person with disabilities (PWD), it’s a lot easier for me to spot ablism because I experience it so often. The obstacles that we fact are rarely discussed and almost never removed, even in progressive spaces (on- and off-line). If I use the words “my people”, I am most often referring to other people with disabilities. I often find that I have more in common with PWD than I do with those who only share another identifier (e.g. woman, person of color, mother) with me.
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I’ve been giving this a lot of thought in the context of other posts on the feministe recently. Its a hard question to answer though, at least without the benefit of 200 pages and 20 years. :)
The big one for me is Christianity. I grew up in home and community of Christian fundamentalists. As in walk behind the men, wear floor length dresses and never cut your hair. Also, beat your wives and children. And I can’t seem to let go of the bigoted belief that all Christians are sexist and hateful. Intellectually, I know my experience was atypical and I know that most Christians do not interpret the bible strictly (or even read some of the more hateful parts), but even after all of these years I’m having trouble correctly assigning blame to the people who hurt me rather than a broader group that did not inflict that harm even if they share some of the same beliefs.
Another big one is ablism. Until recently I didn’t realize how fucked up my views on ability were. Which is particularly weird since I’ve grown up with my parents and grandparents as PWD. I had a view in my mind of a PWD being someone restricted to their home or immobile and unhappy (my maternal grandmother). Since my other family members never seemed to be completely stopped by their conditions or unhappy about coping with their conditions (they were always so cheerful about and proud of what they could do) I never considered how much additional effort they had to go through just to access the things that I took for granted and how much our society is structured for my use rather than theirs.
I’ll stop now since I’ve already taken up too much oxygen, but of course there are many, many others.
Gosh, it’s quiet on this article…
Introductory note: I’m a heterosexual, white, cis, college educated, ablebodied (for now), neurotypical female.
I have a rather good nose for heteronormativity, I think.
And I respond really badly to Moroccan young men. I’m afraid that makes me part of a big big problem in my country… I compensate for my idiotic behaviour by being overly courteous. (Would you please do me the favour of lowering the volume of your musical appliance? Thank you, that is very much appreciated. I will now continue my reading of War and Peace. Ouch, I use class privilige there, I just realised)
Do you have a tendency to exhibit certain kinds of bigoted behavior? Ablism? Racism? Transphobia? Classism? Sexism? Homophobia? Xenophobia? Something else?
I am aware that I have some biphobic feelings, although I try to not express them (this may be the first time I’ve said as much) and it’s something I am aware of as a problem.
Despite being fat myself, I find that I am initially judgmental of other fat people. (And myself.)
I try to educate myself about racism and eradicate it in my thoughts and behavior, but I am now aware of times in the past when I said or thought something racist while considering myself to not be racist, so I no longer trust my own evaluation of my behavior on that score.
What kinds of bigotry are the easiest for you to spot others engaging in?
It is easy for me to spot sexism, homophobia, antisemitism.
Are there any situations where you have engaged in a behavior and then looked back and realized that it was really bigoted?
Yes. That is part of why I have a hard time assessing what kind of an ally I realistically am.
Yeah, disability taught me a lot. There are times I have wished (and been very ashamed of it) that I was in a wheelchair, because then people wouldn’t expect me to do what I simply cannot.
The cisgender privilege is something I’ve only begun to perceive, but I am trying.
Bint, I breezed through this post but can’t respond at length now—really have to get to work (and tonight’s union meeting night, so I may not be back until tomorrow).
In the meantime, have you read bell hook’s “Belonging: A Culture of Place”? I just got done with it, and it addresses a lot of what you spoke of. I took copious notes when I read it and have been meaning to post on it (if I can find the time! there’s so much there, it would either have to be a marathon post or a series!). Anyway, if you can get it at the local library, great, but if you email me, I will send you my copy as a gift.
I do find myself occasionally falling into the “I want a cookie” mindset. I’ve gotten better at it over the years but I still occasionally catch myself getting upset if people don’t give me “credit” for being a decent person.
As a fellow Louisianian who is now a northern transplant, I’m not sure I agree. Though when I was younger and had first moved north, I definitely would have. I’m not sure if it’s me getting older, setting down roots, and having to have serious thoughts about life choices and my future and such. Or maybe it was the long years of trying to negotiate the political distance between NYC and Louisiana. Hell, maybe it’s just a function of the fact that I’ve made my life in a part of The North which is drastically more cosmopolitan and left-leaning than the rest of the country*.
I think what broke me was the time some family came to visit and, walking through Chinatown, said some extremely fucked up things “jokingly” about Asians. Right out loud. On the street. At a normal conversational pitch. At the time I was dating a Chinese guy. That was probably the moment that “well at least they’re upfront about it!” sentiment broke for me.
My friends in New York couldn’t give half a shit about the race (or gender, or social class, or religion…) of anyone I date. Even privately – it’s just not on the radar for the people I choose to associate with. My Louisiana family would probably sit around a table with my Asian partner making slanty eyes with their fingers and openly calling them whatever racial slur as a “term of endearment” and/or “joke”. And later, my mother would privately give me a speech about how “difficult” it would be for me to be in an interracial marriage, and how “hard” it would be for any kids I had with this person, and how she just couldn’t possibly wish a life that terrible on her daughter*. And they’re Louisianians who consider themselves educated and civilized, even liberal!
*No really. I’ve actually had to hear this lecture multiple times already.
the footnote in my above post (which is in the mod queue) refers to the second asterisk. the first is a typo. sorry!
Acknowledging privilege doesn’t make it go away. I’ve known since a young age how lucky I am to have the things I have, to be treated by strangers the way I’m treated in public or in private.
Beverly Daniel Tatum, in Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? asserts that all individuals that benefit from a racist society are in themselves racist. And that’s fine – and by that definition (which I accept), I am. By the same assertion, you can claim that since I also benefit from a society that is ableist, and whatever-ist, I am all of those things as well. (By this definition, it would require a word that essentially connotes the same about transgendered or foreign individuals because while the majority of society can be transphobic or xenophobic, I can fear neither things. That said, it doesn’t mean that I do not live in a society where I benefit from being cissexual and locally born).
The question isn’t “Am I racist? Is she ableist? etc.” It’s “What can we do to make this go away? How do I stop pitying that American society doesn’t have the same goals as me and actively work to change it so that my kids don’t grow up and discriminate against their peers?”
I’m slowly becoming aware more and more about how bigoted I truly am. My family is extremely bigoted, and I’m desperately attempting to undo that mindset they instilled in me.
I would say I’m guilty of Ablism over anything else, though. Which, I have sort of an “entitlement issue” with. Somewhere in my mind, I decided that because -I’m- somewhat disabled, that it’s okay if I use Ablist language, and in the past, I frequently made catty remarks about those more disabled than I am – something I am making a point of no longer doing.
I’m reluctant to admit I’m a racist. I never thought I was, but I realized, I engage in racist behaviour. I justified it for years by saying, “I’m only joking” and “It’s not like I mean it, like those REAL racists”, but the truth is, I’m being hateful and hurtful, and a dear friend showed me, more kindly than I deserved, that what I say, matters.
I’m still coming to terms with my Transphobia as well. At first, I didn’t even believe the concept of Transgender was a legitimate one. I’ve been proven wrong. Then I believed that, “Well, I guess it’s fine if that’s what they want, but it’s weird, and I don’t like it” was a fine attitude. I was wrong again. I don’t notice myself doing this one as much, but I know I do. I need to become more aware of this, so that I can stop it.
And these are things I will continuously work on. I don’t think I’ve been very fair. How can I expect people to not be prejudiced against me for my disability, for my race, for my gender, for my orientation, etc. if I don’t first turn the mirror on myself and realize that ending bigotry starts with the self, not with others?
Honestly, I’ve always felt that the biggest privilege I have is that I was raised by two loving parents who supported me and each other. That goes a realllllllly long way as far as being translated into other kinds of success. So, despite all of our flaws, I work on not taking them for granted. We see research all the time on how children raised in different kinds of homes fare differently but I’ve never seen a term for “family privilege.”
I love the thoughts this post inspired, Bint. Thank you! As a white able-bodied queer Jewish trans woman with a comfortable level of money, I find it odd that the forms of oppression that I experience and the forms that really get me fired up and angry don’t always match up. I’m usually silently and tacitly accepting of all but violent transphobia, and anti-Semitism.
I’m not sure how much of me getting angry about racism or classism is just me trying (and possibly, I’m not sure, failing) to be Super Ally Girl. I don’t feel comfortable staying silent, but I also don’t know how much to let go, and in an effort to show that Really I’m Way Not Prejudiced, Seriously, I can and do overreact. Given motivations, this is probably a (well-intentioned) form of classism/racism that I nonetheless need to be working on
When the shoe is on the other foot, and my cis friends are going off on someone in front of me for transphobia, I often feel embarrassed. Especially when I’m not out as trans in that setting. Whether I’m projecting those feelings onto my reactions to class/race issues or not, I don’t know.
A slight aside: “Cisgender privilege” is a term that I find to be, really, multiple forms of privilege that are often conflated. On the one hand, medically, absolutely, I am trans and have to deal with a lot of the usual wretched crap with gatekeeper-therapists, doctors, and bureaucrats.
On the other, there’s the privilege of not being visibly gender-variant. A lot of time, this is what people mean when they talk about cis privilege. There is an imperfect overlap with trans people here; there are cis people who are read as trans, and there are trans people read as cis. I am in the latter category, and find this kind of privilege to be odd, since there is a complicated relationship between it and being trans, as well as the expectations of others. However, this privilege means that I am rarely actually harmed by others’ reaction to my trans nature. Since it rarely comes up, and I don’t have to think about it, I find myself accidentally stepping on my trans brothers and sisters in conversation a lot. If I don’t consciously think about it, I usually roll my eyes at stories about harassment and clocking, because it just doesn’t happen to me. So in that, I find that I need to keep a sort of trans-dismissal in check, as I’ve alienated more than one trans friend with a thoughtless “really? that actually happens to you? jeez, that’s never happened to *me*.”
There’s a minimizing that I’ll own up to. And, like my racism, it is a work in progress. And I’m not always proud of my actions there.
PrettyAmiable,
That’s the topic I’m addressing in my next post. However, so few people even get past the “Am I ___?” phase that I felt like this step does need to be discussed before moving on.
I have an inner oppressor. While I am usually able to stop myself from saying racist, classist, ableist, etc. things, I am genuinely disturbed by the fact that these thoughts and feelings exist within me, and continue to exist, even as I attempt to educate myself and erase these thoughts/feelings from mind. I was raised in a racist home, and while rationally I find racism and racist stereotypes despicable, I am still unable to stop myself from assuming things or having certain “gut” reactions to people of color.
Because I know my inner oppressor, I often find myself unwilling to participate fully in my favorite feminist online communities. I read Feministe and Feministing everyday, and comment on occasion, but I am very very hesitant when it comes to commenting on anything relating to race or trans issues. I also read Racialicious everyday, because race is the issue that I have the most trouble with, but I have never commented. I know that in my comments my intent would be to voice my support and to be an ally, but you just never know when a hint of your inner oppressor will show. A shadow. A slip of the tongue. A hint of ignorance, bias, prejudice…
I wish that there were some way to quickly wipe away my oppressor — to delete him/her from my brain. How can you erase all the conditioning that our families, society, the media, etc. etc. put us through? How do you erase the stereotypes and assumptions? How do you make YOURSELF a safe space?
Re: prettyamiable @ 7
I agree that acknowledging privilege does not make it go away, because privilege is structural, not individual. However, acknowledging and recognizing privilege is essential to giving up one’s *sense of entitlement* to the benefits of privilege, which is *not* structural. I live a pretty happy, comfortable life overall (granted, still living at home with parental support–next year this time might be less comfortable as my socioeconomic status drops off when I move out alone for grad school), but without recognizing how my happiness and comfort are partially enabled by my intersections of privilege I don’t see how I wouldn’t assume that I don’t have to give anything up in order to fight racism and classism and cissexism (which is one of the words you wanted) and ablism (and colonialism, because I am also a white colonialist).
Because, to address the second part of your comment, fighting against a structure of privilege *means* giving up entitlement to the gains of privilege, such as being thought better of because I can dress well-off every day of the week or having subtly but undeniably better general job prospects because my last name doesn’t sound “foreign” or expecting that every room I will walk into will be built for a person like me. Now, I don’t think that it is exactly a zero-sum game (i.e., everything someone else gains is a loss for me, etc.), but I have to be willing to live in the world I say I want. I can’t in all honesty do that if I don’t understand where I exist in the world that I currently live in.
(This is an amazing post and I have more comment to come shortly.)
I’m guilty of racism/classism. It’s weird because my husband is black, but he’s Nigerian. He talks and dresses in a way I can relate to. My racism tends toward those who wear the baggy pants and talk in a way that sounds uneducated to me. I’m constanly stopping myself, and even my husband, from holding unfair judgement based on a person’s dress and speech. I feel very bad everytime I do it, but I’m having a hard time ending that type of thought.
Bint, you brought up something which i don’t see much discussion about here on Feministe, is regionalism. the stereotypes that you listed about the South? i grew up with those stereotypes, i was taught them, and they are ingrained. i’ve been to the south a number of times (tho never to louisiana), but never for more than three weeks at one time, and i’ve just about never challenged those stereotypes. i still tend to see “The South” as a monolithic block, as if Charlottesville, VA is the same as Charlotte, NC is the same as Savannah, GA (all places that i have spent time in).
i go to Virginia pretty often, as i have family there, and every time i go, i go into a slow boil about places, roads, buildings named after Confederate figures. or the Confederate flags. or the love of guns. and it has not dawned on me until literally a couple weeks ago that, wow, what a convenient excuse that is! i can sneer at “them” or feel pity at “them” and feel smug and superior about myself, as if being a Northerner somehow inoculates me from being racist. i think that a hell of a lot of Northerners use that to rationalize away their own racism and is one of the mechanisms that we use to avoid owning up to it.
cos i am racist. how can i not be, given the environment i grew up in? my family, friends, neighbors all practiced that northern racism that is so pernicious, so smug and self-serving, so back-stabbing. oh, yeah, praise Martin Luther King, feel guilty about the people being set upon with dogs and fire hoses, throw a few bucks NAACP’s way, vote for Obama, but then go back to your smug little world where all your friends are white, you pat yourself on the back cos you were nice to that black man who is consulting for a week where you work (yeah that was me), and shake your head about “why are they still so angry, Obama’s president!” that’s how i see northern racism working, and being all smug about “well we’re not like those Southerners” just perpetuates that and perpetuates classism also.
i see the same dynamic play out in regards to transphobia – again, people won’t own it. it makes it very hard for me to know who to trust. i make friends with cis people, they play such a good game of “ally”, and then two years later, they stab me in the back – it’s happened. it’s one thing i appreciate about the whiteradfems we all like to rag on about – they are open in their hatred and i know where i stand with them.
Oh good. Haha, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m most fascinated by that topic.
As a note, I highly recommend Tatum’s book. It’s an incredibly well-written read that deals with controversial topics and tries to address their sources. I read it for a sociology class; it identifies itself as a psychological look at race relations, but none of the terminology requires a background in either discipline.
When I think about this, most of the time I worry about exoticism and about my tendency to make friends/chat with east asians more than any other race.
I pretty much never worry about my reactions to non-heteronormative sexuality because I don’t really have it in me to care about anyone else’s sexuality beyond whether if a girl is interesting to me. Trust me, I *really* do not care if you’re a transexual or some other flavor. Most of the time I don’t even pick up on it and generally have to be told–much like a person with Aspergers. Allthough, I *have* been disturbed by the fashion sense that a couple of transsexuals(?) from my freshman year at college had. Trust me, those guys were both wierder than me and seriously traumatized (I think).
Where my problems start and end is generally elitism. With some classism as well. Though I really wonder if alot of these ‘ism have something to do with lonelyness, because it does seem that a feeling of isolation does drive my poor responses to certain people. I definitely have some “read a book!” feelings with some of my lower-class coworkers. I also have been plenty ablist wrt deafness, although I am concious of this and confront it when I think of it. However, having to deal with some other deaf person’s barely decipherable speech really makes me self-concious about the burden I place on other people. I really need to get around to learning ASL.
TheOpoponax, the desire for overt racism is about relieving paranoia on our part. When you know where you stand with people, you can upfront deal with their neurotic behavior. Pseudoliberals can really mess with us in ways that are so much worse than what a straight up racist can do. While not devaluing your experience, I’d say that it’s not especially topical. Being embarrassed is a pretty minor discomfort compared to insecurity and paranoia.
Coming back to respond to the post in general and not just the “southern racists are better because at least they’re upfront” idea -
ditto to what a lot of other folks have said. i feel like i’m pretty uniquely aware that i’m racist because of particular life experience; a lot of it comes from being a southern white girl who moved to new york city, went to a university where over 50% of the student body is non-white, lived almost exclusively in predominantly non-white neighborhoods, etc. this sort of life forces you to confront your shit, and as a southern girl, i have a lot of shit to confront. i’m way less aware and self-actualized about the other -isms; even though i’m queer i deal a lot with internalized homophobia and gender shit. i will admit i haven’t much confronted ableism except for in the most cookie-seeking ways.
I try really hard to fight regionalism. I’m from and in South Mississippi. People get surprised that I wear shoes and have Internet access.
There’s a great part in the documentary “Right America, Feeling Wronged” where Alexandra is interviewing two black men in Mississippi. She expresses amazement that they would voluntarily live here. They reply, “What, you think people up North don’t say n*****?” We do not have a monopoly on racism.
My bigotries:
I would not call myself transphobic…but I do admit to not really grasping the concept of it all. I mean, I understand that people are born transgendered, and I support efforts to bring one’s physical identity into line with one’s internal identity, but I have trouble understanding how a transwoman could ever understand a born-woman’s experiences, or why we do not have third or fourth genders to fit trans or intersexed people. I think my anthropology training is getting in the way–other cultures have gender categories to fit such people, why don’t we? It’s something I’m working to educate myself on.
I am classist. I have a real hard time feeling any sympathy at all for wealthy people. I come from a very poor rural clan.
I suppose I am ablist as well. I never thought of a broken limb or a temporary illness as disabling before reading amandaw’s thread on the topic of what to call non-disabled people. I also have trouble seeing the word “lame” as ablist (I never hear anyone actually referring to crippling disability as “lame,” so I suppose the connection doesn’t really hit me) and I have trouble letting go of the word.
This is an interesting thread. Thanks for it.
Bint, I apologize for not responding to your previous post–I found it overwhelming–but please know that I appreciated it as much as I do this one.
I think I am at my worst when I’m around acquaintances or sort of distant or newish friends (as opposed to people close to me who know my politics and generally expect that I will call them and myself out on things, and expect the same in return). Ableist comments are the most frequent ones I notice, mine and others’, but there can be a fair helping of things I recognize as racist, cissexist, homophobic, and misogynistic (not including all the stuff I don’t recognize) depending on the subject matter. This is why I am never comfortable calling myself a real ally, because I haven’t yet gotten over myself to deal with this stuff. Everytime I say I’m going to stop letting this stuff pass, I do it again. I think I’m braver on the Internet (though no less clueless and ignorant), but that’s probably because I can seek out blogs and communities where this behaviour is expected, rather than the other way around, so it’s not a personal achievement.
I also do a lot of “white washing” — assuming that everyone around me or everyone I talk to (or will talk to) is white. I do the same thing with assuming everyone I meet is cis, currently abled, and other “default” categories, but I think the white washing is especially significant because I so often do it in the context of being “anti racist”. The city I’ve grown up in is about 85% percent white (with a blend of of both Southern Ontario white supremacy and white liberal racism), and I’ve always lived in some of the whitest parts of town, so I got into this habit of complaining about how white my city was and I really need to move somewhere else in order to be “properly” anti-racist. The latter part is pretty much not true, as I’m sure I could manage to be racist in lots of different locales, and the former part basically involved me behaving as if all the POC people in my city just don’t exist. It wasn’t until a little under a year ago that I finally got clued into the consequences of what I was saying, but I still haven’t broken myself of the habit. I think it’s lazy thinking like that which is a huge part of my racism.
I also have a huge problem with intellectual elitism, with which I’ve been alienating friends since elementary school, and it took me way too long to see how this was tied into class. I know this is an incomplete telling, but I think I am going to continue this in a private space for myself, and try to create a more condensed and to-the-point (but still honest!) version for public sharing.
Well, wait. The thing is, the stuff that upsets you is really real, and worth being upset over. Obviously you shouldn’t tar all southerners with the same brush or make unfair assumptions based on stereotypes. But the south is full of homages to the confederacy, gun nuts, religious fundamentalists, right-wing terrorists/sympathizers, and the like.
The north/south difference about all that stuff is not so much that both groups are equally racist. It’s that racism isn’t just skinheads with confederate flag bumper stickers naming their kids Robert E. Lee and vowing to show the local n*****s their place. racism is a lot of other much more ephemeral stuff. which a lot of people in other parts of the country don’t like to see.
What’s the point of owning your bigotry if you feel no need to rid yourself of it? How can a better class of bigots be those for whom “I don’t like black people” is the end of the dialogue?
I am classist. I have a real hard time feeling any sympathy at all for wealthy people. I come from a very poor rural clan.
this doesn’t impress me as being classism, but legitimate resentment. your not having sympathy for wealthy people is not reinforcing the classist system that works against you and your family. it’s the actions taken by wealthy and middle-class people that are classist, at least that’s my take on it.
This was a great post, Bint. Gave me a lot to think about.
I’m from North Carolina, and… Yeah, between the last few years I’ve spent up North and my upbringing in the South, I’ve definitely noticed a difference. These are the observations of a white girl here, but fwiw… In the South, we *talked* about race. In spite of everything else, I think the Civil Rights movement made our Southern cultures ones that can’t ignore the factor of race. So, we talked about it. Yes, people were racists, and they were willing to admit it. They talked about it. They engaged with people of color. It wasn’t a taboo subject, and my hometown was far, far more racially integrated than what I have seen up North. I also think it helps that the South has a well-established civil rights infrastructure. When people experience racism, there are advocacy organizations and legal advocates that one can turn to.
In the North, I found myself in a small town with almost an entirely white population where POC routinely have run-ins with white supremacist hate group activity. What I found there is denial. People think of racism as a Southern problem, and not as something that they themselves have had to deal with. I also found the homogeneous white parts of the North to be much less savvy when it came to talking about racism. That is, people are nervous about using racial signifiers–and often for good reason. I’ve met loads of university students who don’t know the difference between the phrases “colored people” and “people of color.” And, as you observe, I find that people can be *very very* uncomfortable with talking about race–and tend to be the ones who say lofty things about a “post-racial America.” I was teaching a course at the time of Obama’s election, and an uncanny number of my students believed that the election meant that “racism in America is over.” I’ve never met a Southerner of any political persuasion who would ever suggest something so preposterous.
So -isms, for me? Well, as you know, I can be a really emotional person in an argument, to the point that I can lose track of privileges that I have in the argument–up to and including racial privilege. That happened with me very recently, actually. That is, I know that I don’t mean something in a racist way, but I become so invested in the argument that I sometimes lose sight of the racist implications and *context* in which I’m saying what I have to say.
At the level of basic, visceral prejudice, though, I often have catty thoughts and feelings about middle and upper class people–especially people who are born into money and who have never had to worry about things like health insurance and basic survival. Often, I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt even if they’ve shown me no reason to distrust them.
No
And, yeah… Having grown up in a racist, ableist, homophobic, classist, transphobic society, of course I’ve internatlized parts of…each of these things. The one I have the most trouble seeing in myself? Honestly, I’m not sure. Until I myself became physically disabled, it was probably ableism. Also, it’s hard for me to recognize and spot anti-semitism unless someone very blatantly mentions “the Jews.”
The Opoponax@23: I probably was not as clear as i should have been. what i caught myself on is, that i’m using my indignity as an excuse to say “i’m not racist. see? that’s racism, i’m not like that, therefore i’m not racist”. you’re right in that “honoring” these confederate figures is not right, but is northern racism any less pernicious? (Boston, anyone? its history of being a major port for the slave trade? riots over busing? the city with the greatest number of urban slaves having been New York City? York, Pennsylvania?)
Bint, this is an important topic. I realize that I have my own prejudices. To name two:
1. I become tense around African American men and teenage boys. My initial instinct is to see a threat. I have no rational reason for this fear. I probably picked it up from our culture. And I’m *Canadian* to boot, so it’s not just an American culture problem.
2. It is important to me to save money. I have a good job and can afford to do that. I can be judgmental of people who don’t have savings, and to feel that they are making the “wrong choices”.
One thing that helps…. As a transgendered (Caucasian) woman, there are people who look at me and see a freak. I understand that is wrong and prejudiced of them. Because I know how prejudice feels, it is easier for me to understand that my own prejudices are wrong. I can acknowledge that my prejudice is there, recognize it, accept it, then put it aside, and choose to act differently.
This post is is very thought provoking, which might be why it’s slow moving. I consider myself to be very self-aware in general, to both my strengths and my faults. But since I spend a lot of time combating the racism, homophobia, biphobia, sexism, etc. of my family, looking at my own ingrained -isms and -phobias means that I need to take a step back. Yes, I am less of these things than they are, but I cannot possibly be free of them. So I will spend some time ruminating on this today and try to come back and answer as honestly as I possibly can later on today.
In the meantime, thank you for this post, your previous post, and your thoughtful commenting in the ad hominems thread.
Really? It’s not classist to not feel sympathy for someone who simply makes more money than you? It’s not classist to stop seeing them as a person rather than their paycheck?
racism is a lot of other much more ephemeral stuff. which a lot of people in other parts of the country don’t like to see.
Like sundown towns in the north. Loewen has an interesting book on that topic. I met him on a train once and we had an interesting discussion about it.
http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247844286&sr=8-1
My Louisiana family would probably sit around a table with my Asian partner making slanty eyes with their fingers and openly calling them whatever racial slur as a “term of endearment” and/or “joke”. And later, my mother would privately give me a speech about how “difficult” it would be for me to be in an interracial marriage, and how “hard” it would be for any kids I had with this person, and how she just couldn’t possibly wish a life that terrible on her daughter*.
I’m another northern transplant and my southern West Virginia family has done that exact thing with my Sri Lankan husband, although it was more the extended family (aunts, uncles, grandparents) than my parents, who got told up front that they’d better be nice or I’d be very pissed and they may not get to see said horribly disadvantaged grandchildren.
But in myself, I try really hard to at least not give voice to, and to also try to stamp out whenever I find myself thinking, some of the really nasty shit I was brought up to believe. And it’s really ingrained, so it’s really difficult to even catch sometimes, but hopefully I’m getting better at it.
@prettyamiable: It isn’t classist if we’re using the construction of prejudice + power= ___ism.
What real power does a lower class person have to wield over a higher class person? While personal prejudice is always a great thing to work, it doesn’t raise to the realm of societal issue the way a high class person being prejudiced against someone with less power does.
Perpetual tentative acceptance like this moderating system is why I prefer the bold faced racism.
and I’m fucking out.
Excuse the last sentence, but I’m pretty mad at being in the moderation bardo for days on end.
Well, we all have our privileges in one fashion or another. It’s easy for me to spot homophobia, biphobia, racism (most particularly hispanic and asian and how whiteness is entrenched), sexism and ablism. This is all due to my own personal experience of being a bi deaf woman who lived in Mexico in her teens who chose a career in a male dominated field.
I tend to be guilty of classism and other privileges by ignorance. For example never realizing the extent to which I benefit from cis privilege. It’s one thing to not tear someone or something down, it’s quite another to realize you’ve been artificially lifted *up*. Understanding *both* these aspects of -ism is extremely difficult, and I find many people who understand the one but not the other., including myself.
Hey, I live in Evanston! Welcome!
These sorts of threads make me nervous because they encourage me to indulge in a weird blend of self-pity and self-hatred — neither of which are very productive, imho. It’s hard for me, though, to figure out how to be honest about the way my particular cultural coordinates have made me who I am, with all of my strengths and fallibilities, without hating that part of myself which has been shaped by colonialism, or transphobia and transmisogyny, or racism, or ablism — I mean, so much of who we are comes from the way in which we’ve internalized (and reacted to) our culture of origin.
So I was raised watching movies like Zulu, which celebrates a British defeat of a great African nation – I was raised hearing stories about my American and Australian ancestors, and how they’d “tamed the frontiers” of their nations. And those sorts of stories powerfully captured my imagination as a child, and even now, when I know better on a superficially rational level, I can still feel the emotional pull of the myths of my forebears, the myths of white history.
I have sympathy for men, when they defend sexist ideals such as chivalry and masculinity, because what those men see in chivalry and masculinity is the grandeur of the Arthurian mythos, the honor of enlistedmen in WWI, the sacrifice of men on the Titanic for women and children. But ultimately I reject masculinity and chivalry because while I understand and recognize what men yearn for (and a part of me yearns for it too) I have a woman’s perspective, and a feminist perspective – I see the way in which women are turned into chattel, turned into mute objects either to be cherished, used, or destroyed by men.
So when I start to get angry about having to do the work of untangling the salvageable parts of my very white, colonialist cultural heritage from all of the stuff that needs to be junked, I try to keep that in mind, and avoid the twin enemies of self-hatred and self-pity.
@Natalie: I was thinking of the classism thing as less “I oppress them” and more “I am less good of a person for thinking this way.” There is a point where, when bad things happen to rich people, it goes beyond “rightful comeuppance” and falls into “that’s what you get for being rich.”
Poor-on-rich classist thinking is also, I would venture, a very big factor in why the wingnuttiest of the wingnutty policies, even those which are directly opposed to the interests of the poor, gain so much traction down here. Education, especially “over-education” (by which they mean higher education) is a sure sign of wealth for many poor rural people. All you have to do is tell them “those rich professors want to do X, are you going to let them?” and even if it’s a great policy that will benefit poor people, many will say HELL NO! and vote against it. Read Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War for better examples of what I mean.
I guess what I fight most is transphobia– because I have so internalized “don’t cut genitals” from my vehement opposition to FGM, male circumcision, doctor’s “sex assignment” at birth of the intersexed… it’s very hard for me to “turn that off” when the person in question is actually asking for GRS. Living as the other sex? sure. Hormones even? ok. Asking a doctor to conduct surgery on your genitals? aaaeeeiiiii!!
And I’m pretty certain that response makes me transphobic EVEN while I realize that many trans people don’t have surgery.
I’m very good at seeing and calling out sexism and classism. Calling out homophobia and racism, I think I’m so-so at.
I have, like vivian, become tense when walking alone past male African Americans (teenage or adult)– but I’m pretty certain that’s because they are men and not their race, as I’ve become very tense when alone walking past white men, or Asian men, or Hispanic men, etc, and I haven’t noticed that I’m more likely to be afraid of any particular race than just the fear of a lone woman in the presence of a group of strange men. Which probably is illogical but at least not racist.
@eruvande: That’s a good point, and I will check out the book.
Hating rich people was a definite thing I had to deal with when I was younger. I grew up in a way that left me with a lot of sympathy and understanding for the struggles of being poor, non-white, female, not-hetero, fat, and non-able bodied. This is not to claim perfection or anything, but I was immersed in these realities. I understand a lot about them.
But when I went off to college, I was suddenly immersed in a world that was wealthy, white, and upperclass. The culture shock was extreme. But one thing I had to deal with was the reality that I had been raised to hate rich people. I am not talking about resentment, or reasonable acknowledgement of their privilege. I am talking about seeing that they were rich and hating them for it.
I had to learn that being “rich” is not a panacea. I don’t know what you call that, but I guess it is some kind of classism. I feel like by not letting them be people beyond their class roots, I was somehow putting myself into an inescapable class box too.
As I worked through this, I learned about the value of my class experience. For one thing, I was a very independent person. At eighteen, I had had several jobs, and was confident in my ability to make a living. I didn’t feel dependent on anyone for my livelihood. I might not live well, but I knew I could meet my own basic survival needs. This was something that was generally not true of my wealthier colleagues. I came to appreciate the value that that sense of self-determination had. It is a form of freedom and power.
Wow, this post (and the ensuing comments) are going to take a lot of digestion. On second read through, I say this:
I come from a weird (unique?) perspective on many -ist issues. I grew up in a lower middle-class racially diverse outer-borough neighborhood in NYC. In kindergarten I was bussed to a mostly white public school. After that I attended the local parochial school which more closely represented the racial mix of the neighborhood.
As a teenager, I lived in rural NC. The local high school was about an even mix of POC and white (POC being almost exclusively African-American except for three or four Phillipino kids who were all the same family). It was also a pretty equal mix of poor, rich, middle and upper-class. (There was only one high school – no choice but to attend it regardless of parental feelings).
I am white, but I have always been more comfortable (especially while living in NC) spending my time with POC – especially WOC, because I had more interests in common, and more experiences in common with them then with my white contemporaries.
As an adult I am a single mother (divorced, but in rural NC that is the equivalent of never being married) with 4 children and 1 grandchild for whom I am the sole support and this brings some stigma with it. I’ve spent my entire adult life living at less than 50% of the poverty level, and a good portion of it either under-insured or uninsured as far as health care goes. And I have spent almost an equal amount of time living in NY and NC at this point. I was financially better off in NY, but not by much.
I have not been diagnosed with any physical or mental ‘disabilities’ (I don’t like that word, but haven’t come up with a better one yet, so I’m stuck with it for now) but live in fear of them because of family history of adult on-set illness.
I am not homosexual or transgendered, but have been perceived as both and lived with the prejudices against both for long periods of time.
On paper (re: resumes) I come across as a white, middle-class woman with some college (though not a degree yet) and often get initial calls for jobs interviews. I rarely get jobs. I am overweight by most standards, I have very bad teeth (see health insurance), and I own one ‘good’ suit that no longer fits as well as it should. I own several ‘cheap’suits. It usually only takes on in person visit for my resume to be dropped into the ‘undesireable’ pile (read: trashcan).
I have issues with white people. I have issues with POC. I have class distinction issues. I probably issues with the GLBT community that I just haven’t recognized yet (and I hope someone will point them out to me if I ever cross a line inadvertently). I have difficulty communicating in person, probably because of my own insecurities over the way I look, and often miss social clues that would be blatantly obvious to anyone else. On those occasions when I do inadvertently make a comment that is hurtful, I do my best to examine my behavior and never make the same mistake twice.
I often come across as looking for a cookie, when what I really want is for someone to point out where I’m out of line (see lack of confidence above).
I mostly feel that I am not welcome anywhere, because I don’t fit into any particular stereotype anymore. And this has gotten much too long and not really said anything of substance.
I struggle with questions of privilege, because I often can’t see where I benefit from it. When I get over the self pity I realize that I do benefit in many ways, I just don’t notice them because I’m concentrating too hard on the ways that I don’t.
So thank you Bint, for making a post that forces me to start thinking again, instead of just reacting.
I live in a part of the country that is pretty homogeneous, (mostly white & primarily christian). Like a lot of people who see themselves as progressive/liberal and open minded, I struggle with conquering the stereotypes I am exposed to, particularly those regarding groups of people I have little interaction with. For the most part I think I’m fairly successful.
The one serious aspect of my own bigotry that I can’t seem to get over is my exceedingly negative feelings towards christians. I know rationally that not all christians are out to force the rest of us to live according to their religious laws, discriminate against the LGBTIQ community & vilify and/or convert atheists like myself, etc. But my gut response is to assume that every one of them is a militant, hateful, clinic-bomber, until proven otherwise.
I’ve thought and pondered about this for years. Sometimes I feel bad and want to get over it. Other times, I’m not so sure I’m wrong.
In any case, I was particularly interested in what you said about people owning their bigotry. Perhaps I should be more honest and up front about how I feel about christians. To that end, I’m admitting to it here.
Christians, I’m sorry, but when I first meet you it’s just impossible for me not to assume that you’re a hateful person who is out to oppress me, take away my rights and prevent others from achieving full equality under the law.
I actually really love it when individual christians prove me wrong, though.
Not meaning to threadjack, but a followup:
These comments are awesome, and really eye-opening. I noted above that I’m rarely terribly sensitive to all but the most obvious transphobia while still being trans myself. And now… I think this kind of honest response from people that I’ll assume to be progressive-identified has really opened my eyes as to the degree of work that still remains to be done on getting trans issues understood, and helped me to step out of my own experience.
This may not have been what you intended, Bint, but it’s really helpful. Thank you again for this post/thread. :)
I dunno. The class issue is still difficult for me to agree with. Upperclass have financial power, sure, but that isn’t the only kind of power represented in that struggle. When the majority, in terms of numbers, stops seeing well-off individuals as individuals, I take issue with not calling that classist as well. Or, alternatively, any upperclass against lowerclass prejudice should be identified as prejudice if that’s what eruvande finds herself guilty of. And, at least part of the benefit derived from being the top 1% in terms of income isn’t strictly derived from the subjugation of the middle and lower classes – it’s often because life with money is just easier.
Classism is different than racism, systemic discrimination against non-Christian faiths, homosexuals, transgendered individuals, etc because it’s a physical minority, whereas the benefactors of other -isms are both the physical and financial majority.
I had my first awakening to my own privledge on the bus home from school in the seventh grade. I rode the “black” bus because my folks were poor intellectuals and we lived on the “black and poor” side of town. The enclave I lived in was racially mixed, bohemian, and very well educated. This was not true for the rest of my bus. I had a strong emotional revulsion to the differnce. Possibly because their lives were so close to mine but not mine. It was easier to sterotype, then really think about how precarious the factors that defined my identity were. That is, it was easier to do ’till I realized I was doing it.
Now a days I find my self struggling anew with my own internalized sexism. I have just had a baby boy and I find it much harder to break gender norms in regard to him than was for either of my nieces. That old cliche that its more okay for a girl to “act like a boy” than for a boy to “act like a girl.” Or even for a totally oblivious baby boy to crawl around in a pink onsie. This is clearly about me and not him.
Bint: Thanks for the post! I normally lurk, but wanted to respond to what you said.
As a fellow Southerner I wonder how much of the dynamic you described is class based? I’ve lived in the deep South and in Texas, and I’ve noticed that my relatives and the people I interact with who are most likely to admit their prejudice openly to me are working-class white Southerners. I haven’t heard nearly the same type of things from more educated upper-middle or upper class people, although I’m sure that many of them are just as prejudiced. This might have something to do with my own background as a white, educated middle-class woman with working class roots, who is gay without easily visible gay signifies. Or maybe it is actually part of a larger dynamic?
To answer your questions, I tend to catch prejudice against queer/lgbt people, people of color, and with disabilities pretty easily especially when the prejudice intersects with gender prejudice and stereotypes. It always feels like more of a blow when it happens in progressive circles (I guess because I assume that those people should know better). I’m also less likely to ignore it when it comes from people who should be allies but aren’t. Challenging them seems less pointless than challenging a Christian fundamentalist over the fact that I did not chose to be gay and have not forfeited my right to be treated with dignity and have rights because of my “sinful behavior”.
I need to be better about stereotypes based on fear. Homeless men scare me, especially homeless men who talk to themselves, smell bad, and seem intoxicated or on drugs. I have problems thinking of many homeless people as people rather than threats, which I know is dehumanizing. Groups of young men especially when they are rowdy put me on my guard too. I’m sure that racial stereotypes help drive this type of fear in some instances, so its something I need to be aware of.
I have a huge tendency to engage in classism against people of my economic echelon or above (middle to upper-class white folks), and particularly rich white liberals who think that just because they vote Democratic, they should be given cookies or fawned over, or that they do not have any prejudices of their own (particularly when it comes to able-bodied privilege, white privilege, or straight and cis privilege). It’s weird, but rich white liberals are exactly the sorts of folks who have given me the most grief for my (multiple) disabilities–whether in the form of “You’re not REALLY disabled, you can still walk” or “My best friend’s brother’s roommate’s mom has fibro-whatever, and she took this vitamin supplement and was CURED; why don’t you try it?!” Calling them on their privilege tends to lead to epic whining: “But…I’m not ablist/racist/sexist…I treat everyone equally!” and related derails.
What complicates my prejudice is that I come from the sort of environment that tends to mold these types of people, and I grew up in it.
Kristin said:
In the South, we *talked* about race. In spite of everything else, I think the Civil Rights movement made our Southern cultures ones that can’t ignore the factor of race. So, we talked about it. Yes, people were racists, and they were willing to admit it. They talked about it. They engaged with people of color.
This just plain amazes me, because in the Louisiana community I grew up in, talking about race was just NOT DONE. My feeling was that if I, as a white person, talked about race — or even acknowledged it as a phenomenon in the most neutral of ways — I would get accused of being a racist.
It was pretty limiting. My high school used to have events where you were supposed to dress up a certain way. One of them was “Twin Day” where you came dressed as a “twin” of your friend. I figured this was a chance to do something anti-racist and so I asked one of my black friends if she wanted to go as my twin. We owned identical t-shirts from a band event and so we agreed to wear them, and the same color blue jeans. We both knew why I suggested this but we didn’t TALK about it, which might have been more valuable than just showing up in the same t-shirt. (For the record, nobody cared.)
After I moved away I was riding a subway with a friend and he said “This line tends to have more white people, and that other line has more black people.” A factual observation. It’s because one line is fed by black neighborhoods and the other by white neighborhoods. But I was horrified that he said that, out loud, in public. What if someone thought he was racist! He thought that my discomfort was the weirdest thing.
Anyway, I wound up moving away from Louisiana too, but I know better than to try to go back. There are things that I miss — people in Louisiana know how to party and how to just plain enjoy life more than in any other place I have lived, and I’ve lived in a lot of places. But I don’t want to deal with bald-faced racism. And, even more than that, I don’t want to live in a place where so many people hate and despise me for being who I am, a person who values intellectual endeavors, and a woman who refuses to shave her legs and put on makeup and otherwise perform femininity in the way they expect.
I couldn’t deal with the constant hatred and poison beating away at me every single day. I know that in the place I live now there are still some people who hate me for being what I am, but I would rather they pretend not to. To me, that’s a first step.
So, Bint Alshamsa, while I enjoyed reading your post and hearing your point of view, I disagree really strongly that it is better to live in a place where hatred and prejudice is practiced openly. It came close to destroying me.
I wonder if that’s an individual difference in how we respond to that sort of thing, or whether it’s luck in the sort of problems we encountered, or maybe it’s because whites and people of color have different experiences.
Thanks for the post.
I’ve got to call one out that I see here.
“Gun Nut” is used by (mostly) northern liberals as code for a whole slew of assumptions about racism, homophobia, sexism and a particular brand of right wing fanatacism. I think this stereotype frequently holds big elements of regionalism and classism.
I’m slightly to the left of Emma Goldman and way more queer, but I have guns.
Sorry. Not meant to derail. Just callin’ it like I see it.
I grew up in an extremely white part of California, and in retrospect I was a racist little f*** when I was young and my horizons were small. Exposure to greater diversity via literature and the internet, and then moving into a situation where whites were only plurality (and occasionally minority to east Asians) cured me of most of this, but I still need to run an internal self-check loop to catch impulses I know are wrong.
The tendency that really bugs me, because it’s against my own group and you’d think I’d know better, is the impulse to rank other Queers on how ’straight seeming’ they are. I hate it, but I always feel a little moment of revulsion at a characteristic ‘tell’ gesture or inflection.
I think I needed to see these comments more than anyone else may have. I’m just reading and thinking about what’s being said before I comment more.
I find AtheistGirl’s mention of christian phobia interesting, because this raises the question again of the power dynamic (currently being hashed out on rich vs poor, actually).
There’s a kind of hatred that has no real basis in anything, that makes you miserable, that does not ultimately affect the object of your hatred, and which indeed can be used by said targets to further their aims, as conservatives often can do to get people to vote against their own interests. I think this kind of hatred IS a problem, but a different sort than the privileged hatred that is the other type of hatred under discussion.
Where the one who hates the other has the power, has the social and economic structures in place reflecting the power differences, and who uses those to maintain said structures to their benefit.
Both need to be torn down, but I think it’s necessary to see the difference.
So as far as hating Christians…yeah, I used to do that, too. I hated going to to church from as early as I can remember, I thought the bible was full of stories, some interesting and some not, but anyone believing them to be true had to be incredibly gullible and/or stupid and so on and so on. Didn’t hurt anyone but myself, though, really, and these days I’m apathetic if you are Christian or not — if you are intolerant, for whatever reason, then my apathy avaporates pretty quickly…the difference is these days I wait to see what you do, I guess.
HOWEVER…the social, political, and economic structures that are in place do favor Christains over all other religious groups including particularly atheists and agnostic (which is where I would place myself) is indeed very strong, and at certain points in history have had devastating results. So if you are Christian, be aware you have extensive privileges from that, and while many of those privileges have been muted in this country due to our Founding Fathers, there’s a large group of you who have worked since to restore the privilege that comes with being Christian…
Hm. That rambled/winded on a bit longer than I meant…
It’s true that there is a difference between hate with power and hate without, but it does need to be considered that power can be situational as well as structural. Say I (an atheist pansexual, with plenty of resentment of Christianity) am acting as a hiring manager for my employer. A woman comes in who is well qualified, shows no indication of disrespect, but wears a very visible crucifix pendant. I certainly submit that I would be totally out of line to reject her application on that basis. Her group may hold power over my group, but that does not change the situation when I personally hold power over her specifically.
The gunnut thing has come up for me as well – somewhat different context, being Canadian. Guns are not part of our culture in the same way as the US. Owning a handgun is virtually impossible.
In the past, I have definitely been guilty of making all kinds of assumptions about people who owned guns. It wasn’t until I dated someone from the North where owning guns is pretty normal, as is hunting, that I realized how class-based this was. There are a ton of class dynamics in the rural-urban divide in Canada, especially between the southern (more urbanized) and northern (largely rural) parts of the country.
There are complex race issues around gun ownership here as well – (illegal) handguns associated with Black and South Asian gang activity, rifles with white, rural, often working-class communities (of course erasing Native communities entirely).
Nentuaby @ 57: agreed.
Not to derail, but I’ve seen that type of dynamic in practice in the lesbian community leveled by more butch or “gender-non-conforming” women at more feminine gender “conforming-women”. In my experience, the same community and sometimes the same people can be incredible hateful to transgendered people and especially transgendered women too.
Gendered policing doesn’t always conform to gendered power dynamics and structures in wider society. There is more than privilege at work, although that’s part of it. But people can lack gendered privilege and still hold really misguided and harmful concepts of gender. I would argue that the problem is not just power dynamics, it is also about respect for people as people.
To expand on my previous comment, the rural-urban thing is a huge one for me. I grew up in Toronto – Canada’s biggest, most diverse city, and I have made all sorts of negative assumptions about people from rural communities. Mainly that they are racist, homophobic, and transphobic – as if people from the city are not!
This is a very interesting post, but makes me a bit uncomfortable reading “I’m racist/ablist/etc” because, you know, it kind of shoves into your face that this is not a safe space. I mean, I knew that before, but still.
I’m biracial, but struggle with that label. I appear white, I pass as white, until someone asks me “Are you like 100% Irish or what?” My mother is Cuban, born there, and came to the US when she was nine. I identify most with my Cuban side, my Latina side, because that’s what I’m used to being around. We hang out with my Cuban side of the family OFTEN, as we are all very close. I notice when we are around my dad’s family or a bunch of white people, I may appear to “fit in”, but inside I’m kind of uncomfortable. But I know I pass as white, I know I don’t face racism like someone who does not pass as white (yet still encounter racism when someone “discovers” who I am), so I just feel weird saying I am biracial. But I know I am. Ahhh, confusions. So, racism for me is kind of a weird thing. Since I pass as white (and you know, half of me IS white), I kind of feel weird saying I don’t benefit from white privilege. Because I do, as long as I can pass as white. Which I often do in a public setting. But when people find out I am Latina/Cuban, it’s like, I can see their faces change. And then I get asked stupid questions or people make stupid comments or whatever. Sometimes I get made fun of, or stereotyped. When I read racist comments or see racist comments on TV or in person, it hurts me personally. Like, a lot. I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to justify my race or saying I have a lack of white privilege, but this whole topic of race is something I’ve been struggling with. For a while.
I am also physically disabled, so much so that I require nursing and cannot be left alone. I have Muscular Dystrophy, scoliosis, and a trach. Being disabled in this way, it’s hard for me to see mild depression and other similar things as disabilities. And ugh, I know that’s wrong, and I am trying to change this pattern of thought. But it’s hard.
While I don’t consider myself judgemental of people who are working class or poor, I know I benefit from my class status. We are middle class, I went to an expensive college, I can purchase an expensive cell phone if I want to, we stay at nice hotels, etc. So, class + power = classism, certainly. But, ALSO! intersectionality plays a part in this. If I were to lose my parents, I would be very poor. Disabled folk are the poorest of people, often living on the streets. I don’t work, and receive a small monthly check from the government. I could NOT live on the money I get. So, class for me has the potential to be fluid. Fluid concept. But now, yeah, I benefit from class, but because of my disability I find myself being able to pick out classism and tackle it within myself and move on.
I really want to write more, but I fear I am taking over this blog with my rambling :)
Debbie–I have a friend from Toronto area who is like you were. He’s never really even visited towns. I am about to move to Toronto and am afraid I’ll meet too many people like him who seem prejudiced against small town people and think the big city is the best place to live. It’s interesting that after meeting him and a few others from big cities in university, I’ve started to have a prejudice against big city people! I’ve started to get this stereotype of big city people as people who have never been in the woods or seen a cow but think the city has everything and any place that’s small is really boring.
On the other hand I can see why people might think small town people are different when in Ontario the conservatives seem to win the most outside cities. This seems to be true in a lot of places in America too. But much of Northern Ontario is NDP so people shouldn’t make too many assumptions.
I grew up in a small city (50 000 people) but have a lot of family in a small town.
On a different topic, I’ll admit that until I read certain blog posts, I’d wonder if disabled people really needed to be in a scooter or really needed that parking space. I thought trans people were, well, different. I thought fat was unhealthy and could usually be gotten rid of through eating better and exercise. So I am glad for this blog and others. I have learned a lot.
debbie: I grew up in deeply rural Ontario, and boy do I agree on the rural-urban divide thing! The things said in the other direction, of course, aren’t great either — in order, that they are particularly classist, sexist, rude, and self-serving. And bad drivers.
Another one that I see here that rings true to me is the description of Lousiana as a place where race was not talked about at all, whatsoever. I remember the same thing about my home town, and when I moved to Toronto for school and people spoke openly and freely about race…it was a huge culture shock and made me deeply uncomfortable. But after I got used to it, I liked the way it was handled in the city* more. Pretending that you don’t see race at all and neither does anybody else, is not less racist than understanding how you do see it. I don’t know if that’s any comfort to those who are hurt by such commenting, but there it is.
Further to that, I also remember back home in high school, noticing that what few non-white people there were grouped together in racial cliques, and I’d always found that very strange — *I* certainly hadn’t seen anybody excluding them (I know better now, but at the time…). Until I found myself among a peer-group where white people were in the minority, and yet most of my friends were white (or half-white half-asian). It made me think. A lot.
*In the city and the suburbs. For the life of me I cannot mentally separate the concepts. I mean, I understand the difference on paper. But not in my own casual thoughts.
“Situational power” — sounds like just another name for “reverse discrimination.” There’s a huge, huge, huge difference between discrimination supported by an entire social structure and discrimination as practiced by a single individual. While I don’t condone either, in general the interesting thing is one’s self awareness about what is happening (you as a crucifix hating hiring person vs you as a straight white male who literally reads other straight white males as more competent w/o thinking about it) can differ considerably. I *also* find it interesting how it’s so much easier to bash the individual, situational discrimination and remain entirely unwilling/oblivious/etc to the larger structural discrimination.
Oh and the most telling part will be that the structure in place will enthusiastically support complaints of the “situational discrimiination”…. if that don’t set your alarms off, nothing will…
True; they are different. I was merely pointing out the existence of situational power because you defined a type of hatred “that has no real basis in anything, that makes you miserable, that does not ultimately affect the object of your hatred“. Many hatreds exist that stem from very different causes and need to be remedied in very different ways, but that is not a property innate to any class of them.
I’m really good at spotting sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and I tend to be variably okay at spotting racism, ableism, or fatphobia.
It’s easy to miss the subtler expressions (where people try to present their viewpoints as natural rather than being openly hateful), but in general, people stick to certain tactics when they’re doing oppressive things, reacting to other people doing oppressive things, or defensively blocking attempts to call them out for doing oppressive things.
I’m definitely not perfect on dealing with any -isms. What keeps me going (even after I fail, and I guess especially after I fail) is that letting things slide causes pain. Engaging in these acts causes pain. Like, getting past the automatic defensiveness so many white people have when called on racism doesn’t help if you still fail to call out racism as it’s happening.
I think everyone internalizes this stuff – we’re trained to, how can we not? – but I don’t think this should be a reason to avoid accountability or action. It’s not that having privilege (white, cis, heterosexual, temporarily able-bodied, thin, etc) makes anyone a bad person, but it doesn’t absolve you from responsibility for your actions relative to that privilege.
I’m torn on offering examples of my own privilege – some of the explicitly acknowledged transphobia in this thread is making it difficult for me to read it straight through, and I don’t want to add to anyone else’s pain. At the same time, I do think accountability is important. I will say, I definitely have said and done oppressive things and carry oppressive beliefs. I try to deal with them rather than ignore them as they’re identified, but there’s no stage where I think it’s safe to even think “I’m done with this work.” Not for anyone. I guarantee that anyone who thinks they have it figured out, that thinks “Well, I’ve rooted out my racism” or “I’ve solved my transphobia” will stumble again.
I am not very good with transgender issues. After spending time immersed in trans literature (books, blogs, etc), I have come to identify as genderqueer myself, and I think that’s precisely where the problem lies — I am completely apathetic about my sex. I am annoyed when people look at me, see a dude, and expect me to act in a traditionally masculine way, because I am not a traditionally masculine person… but I am also annoyed when people look at me, read me as a gay dude, and expect me to act as a traditionally feminine person. I am neither. I’m me, and like most people, I am a mix of masculine and feminine traits.
The transgender narrative — the one about being assigned one sex at birth but later coming to identify as the opposite gender — is, insofar, outside my realm of understanding.
I think this leads to me thinking or saying some transphobic things, the kind that come out of ignorance, not hatred. Which is why I am generally quiet in the internet trans circles I frequent.
I think I still deal with a lot of deeply internalized fatphobia, too, which probably stems from the same place my eating disorder did — pure self-hatred, no matter what my body may look like. Most of my fatphobic thoughts are of the automatic, looped kind that come from 22 years of “Best Beach Bods” and dieting ads and a cultural obsession with the starved figure, and I give myself a mini-lecture every time. But it still makes me feel like a shit person.
I could go on, because as a white, middle-class person (who receives plenty of male privilege despite my personal identity outside the binary), I certainly have plenty of -isms deep within me that I’m working on. But this comment is long enough.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Some people are expressing hurt at reading admissions of bigotry. I’m not sure the benefits of admission are worth the cost of potentially harming an already marginalized person by making them feel unwelcome or unsafe here. For that I apologize. My soul searching and self-flagellation should be done on my own time and in my own space.
I need to clarify:
I said that some of the stuff here was hard to read, but:
I don’t feel unwelcome here, in Bint’s post.
I meant to untick the trackback on that specific post because I didn’t want to bring that discussion into this thread.
Owning my privilege is hard for me in general, because half the time I feel like arguing about why what I think makes sense despite the obvious objections to it. I feel attacked when people attack privilege, because I feel like I (as a white, currently abled, cisgender person) am expected to devote vast mental resources to feeling bad about my privilege, even though I know the point of these discussions isn’t to make me “feel bad,” but rather to help me learn how to behave in ways that do not reinforce structural injustices. I am sometimes tempted to tell people to “suck it up” when it comes to the injustices they face, because that’s what I feel like I have to do when facing sexism and bi-phobia. I do not know where these resentful, counterproductive feelings come from, but I am trying to address them.
I think regionalism and the urban/rural divide play into these feelings. I recently moved from the Northern Midwest to the Southwest. When I lived in the Northern Midwest, I was not afraid to call out ‘isms because I expected people to know better, and felt like the weight of academia supported my pursuit of progressive social values. I thought my family was embarrassingly prejudiced, and I was very proud of the liberal slant of the city/suburbs I was from, seeing it as a corrective to the regressive red-state values of the state as a whole, particularly the rural areas. When I moved South, I expected ignorance, and my expectations were confirmed – the number of people (city people! well-educated people! young people!) who thought nothing of making extremely prejudiced remarks shocked me. At first I fought it, not quite as hard as I had up North because I was scared of ending up friendless. I think this was wrong – if I had been more adamant, my circle of friends might not carry so many prejudices, and I might struggle less with the resurgence of ‘isms I feel welling up inside me. But I was in a new place, and scared of being alone, and now I have to cope with the prejudices of people I otherwise adore as well as the increased influence this prejudiced culture has had on me. Interestingly, my group of friends in the South is much more racially diverse than it was in the Midwest, but I think this has more to do with being in a more diverse population (back home, I lived in a very very white suburb.)
In terms of race, my gut racist reactions are stronger against people of color who conform more closely to whiteness. I have trouble navigating racial difference, because I waver between thinking of people of color as radically different and thinking of them as being exactly the same except for surface looks. I am currently trying to break out of the same/different dichotomy – I am trying to see difference as plural and positive. I am trying to see heterogeneity within a larger whole. I am trying to see people’s cultural experiences as important, without treating those cultural differences as grounds for division and alienation. I am trying to listen more closely to my friends of color when they speak about their experiences, but sometimes I am at a loss when trying to figure out the appropriate response. When talking about race, I am afraid of offending or hurting people, and sometimes remain silent even among other whites because I have not yet excised my own racism. On the flip side, we actually do talk about race more down here – up North, we only talked about race in terms of liberal politics, as an academic problem. Mentioning race in real life marked you as a racist (to the point where my mother feels the need to say “not that there’s anything wrong with that”, tongue-in-cheek, any time she mentions that someone is black).
When it comes to sexuality, my prejudice is almost solely directed at myself. I am at times very comfortable with my identity and at others deeply uncomfortable. When I was growing up, I didn’t know there was such a thing as being gay. I first learned about being gay from my homophobic church, but when I got to high school a friend basically argued me into realizing homophobia was stupid. From then on, I didn’t really give a shit what sex a person was interested in (and still don’t), and as soon as I found out bisexuality was an option, I identified with it (girls are allowed to date guys AND girls? it’s allowed? people do that? it sounded so right to me). I dated a guy who was bisexual, and had more non-straight friends than I did straight friends. It was a complete non-issue among all of the people I was closest too. Then I moved, and suddenly homophobia went from marking someone as a weird asshole to being the standard default. I got scared, went back in the closet, and fell silent. Now I’m kind of trying to come back out, and facing far more internalized homophobia than I did the first time. I worry that I am not really bisexual, because heterosexual relationships can be fulfilling for me (but couldn’t a homosexual relationship be too? girls are so beautiful, in all shapes and sizes…).
Jemand describes my struggle with GRS almost perfectly: “I have so internalized “don’t cut genitals” from my vehement opposition to FGM, male circumcision, doctor’s “sex assignment” at birth of the intersexed… it’s very hard for me to “turn that off” when the person in question is actually asking for GRS. Living as the other sex? sure. Hormones even? ok. Asking a doctor to conduct surgery on your genitals? aaaeeeiiiii!!”
Those are just a few of the most pivotal, complex aspects of my (often unsuccessful) struggle against my own ‘isms. It feels kind of good to finally say some of this, and I hope it’s received in the spirit that it’s offered – I am trying to be honest, even about my ugliest thoughts, so that I might be able to change them.
Um, that was really long. I’m sorry. I just feel like this stuff is so complex, it merits a complex response…
Re-reading that post, my first paragraph reads as being extremely ignorant. I want to make it clear that I know that those thoughts are bad and oppressive. I do not think them all the time, but rather they are things I catch myself thinking often enough that they felt like things I needed to declare at this metaphoric baggage check. I think it’s easier to check privilege (and worse, active racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc thoughts) if it’s done publically, because then I have to hold myself accountable to people who are on the right side of these issues. If my comments made someone uncomfortable, I apologize.
I agree with the few commenters who brought up the fact that people here are just recognising and asserting the fact that they’re something-ist. they don’t sound like they want to change it. it’s disappointing
Hmmm,
I want to cut things off before it goes too far in that direction. I will leave this thread open for just a couple more hours, so that anyone else who feels harmed by it can speak their mind about it. After that, I’m closing the shutters and moving on to the next post on this topic.
@hmmm:
I identified the -ists in myself that I recognize in myself because that’s what the poster asked us to do.
If she hadn’t asked it, I wouldn’t have posted it because, as some people have said, hearing other people claim their prejudices is upsetting to people, but a consistent thing we white women are asked to do (not that everyone in the thread is a white woman, but I am) is listen to what people of color are asking for and giving it to them.
It’s certainly possible I didn’t respond in the right way, but in response to a post that asks a list of questions, I thought the appropriate way to respond was to answer those questions.
Of course I want to change, but in this case I don’t think responding to what was asked is wrong.
Good lord do I hear that.
For me, recently, it was something transphobic I said recently. It was a situation where I was running a small discussion group, and someone phrased a comment in a transphobic way, and I countered her — but I picked up her phrasing in my counter. I rephrased immediately, but I was just sort of gobsmacked at myself. I’d thought I knew a lot better than that.
I haven’t talked about it on any of my own blogs because it’s possible people involved could be reading (and could be reading here for all I know) and I can’t be more specific than this, and I think this is too general to get at any real deep examination. But it was something I felt very strongly for days and really did want to find a way to write about — that amazement, that disappointment, that little sense of “damn, I’m never going to quite get the oppressor out of my head, am I? Not all the way.”
Ugh.
But I don’t want to sound defeatist. I don’t think beating the oppressors — even when you are the oppressor — is all about personal purity. A lot of it is about action in the world. Your own actions, and how you can try to affect social actions. And even if my lizard brain might sometimes catch my tongue by surprise, I can sure as hell redouble my determination to fight, for the causes that affect me directly, and the causes that don’t.
in re people in the north and unacknowledged racism: in Stereotypes and prejudice by Charles Stangor, round page 293 http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3yJm1h1OblEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA293 was a particularly relevant study that determined self-identified liberals were less likely than conservatives to exhibit racism against someone who obviously needs help, like the wrong-number guy in the original scenario, but more likely to prematurely hang up on black wrong-number callers than white ones.
So yeah, basically it’s not so much that liberals are inherently less racist, it’s just that a liberal value system includes the strong idea that racism is BAD, so when confronted by a situation in which there is an obvious racist response a liberal will avoid it, but when they can rationalise it it’s another matter.
PS re the actual question I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend that was a black person, most of the people I hung out with in school were russian/jewish or asian – cos of statistics mostly, my high school was predominantly anglo and asian and my family friends are all russian. But I often catch myself staring at dark skin in public places, I guess just because it’s unusual, and then I freeze up because my brain is going STOP THAT STOP THAT and I overcompensate by not-looking and feel awkward for several minutes. IDK if that is just my social awkwardness or what, it happens with anyone unusual looking (…or attractive). So I guess the personal bigotry bit comes in considering dark skin or obvious disability or whatever to be unusual.
Hey Bint, I’ve said this in other places, but I wanted to address this thread directly, as I am sure many who have read it don’t frequent my blog or Questioning Transphobia:
I think the idea of this post is good and important. Making it acceptable to speak up about ones -isms is often an important step in dismantling those privileges. Speaking in the language of the oppression you are being privileged by does not acknowledge your -ism, though, it merely gives you an opportunity to feel justified in saying shitty things out loud. I’ve seen this happen in discussions of language and racism, for example, where white people will start throwing around racist language as “part of the discussion,” but it quickly stops feeling like a process to dismantle that and instead feels like indulging it. Most of the commenters seem to get this.
I made my comments about my feelings of being a trans woman of surgical history and seeing that described in terms of mutilation at my own blog because I didn’t want to derail what I see as some important conversations happening. Apologies if I came across as “What the hell was Bint thinking???” because my frustration was with some comments, not your post (and I even edited my post to make sure it was clear the second quote was a comment, not your words). I think it is possible to address our -isms without resorting to the sort of language that will continue to reinforce them.
Thank you for taking on these very difficult, very touchy conversations. I have appreciated your writing here, and I look forward to your next post.
gudbuytjane, this comes from the structure of the community-space. If very few minority faces are there to translate your words into expressed feelings, when then, it becomes all about yourselves. It was truly amusing in some ways to see all of the North/South racism voiced by mostly whites. Oh well.
and yes, this moderation system doesn’t help. Ban me or don’t. But don’t pretend that this is remotely fair or even a good idea.
i think this post wasn’t a great idea :/
my apologies, i didn’t finish reading the rest of the comments. i don’t want to harp on the concern i have as it seems to be the one many others have.
At least you could say so, lucullean, in real time.
Bint writes: Here, people are a lot more likely to own their racism. If you ask a Louisianian if they ever engage in racist behavior, you’re more likely to get an honest and accurate assessment than you would if you ask the average person up North. If they don’t like black people, they’ll tell you so.
Bint, I’ve always noticed this too, and it explains so much of white yankee politics: They say they aren’t racist, so they aren’t, period. They will not have you or anyone else implying such a thing. The End.
If you tell a southerner, “what you are saying/doing is racist”–they usually say, “how?”–not issue a blanket instant denial of the whole possibility. (doesn’t mean they will agree with you, but WILL hear you out)
By contrast, the yankee instead flips out at the whole concept and word: YOU CALLED ME A RACIST, ZOMG! It then becomes all about them.
So, oddly enough, the acknowledgment of racism in the southerner, can lead to a further discussion about racism. The denial of racism by the yankee means everyone has to go back to GO. (do not pass GO, do not collect…)
And speaking personally, transphobia (radical feminist variety) is something I have continually struggled with and still do. I’ve come a long way, but you simply can’t accept something as Gospel for decades and emerge unscathed. I make an effort to read trans women’s blogs every day; this practice has had an overwhelmingly positive influence! (And I love TransGriot, QT, Sexual Ambiguities, etc…I am now a big fan of these women’s strongly feminist work.)
(possibly unrelated musing: What did we do before the internet introduced us to cool folks from around the world? Often, we stayed naive and uneducated.)
Vivian @29: I become tense around African American men and teenage boys.
As a white girl with a racist father, I used to deliberately piss him off by saying certain black boys/men (Michael Jackson, Billy Dee Williams, Sidney Poitier) were cute or sexy. I totally meant it of course!
But I developed a certain knee-jerk habit of constantly sexualizing/exoticizing black men… and I didn’t fully realize I was doing this until I was older, and consequently, didn’t perceive this habit as a manifestation of racism (i.e. objectifying) for a long time.
After all, it infuriated my father so much, how could it be?
shah8: Excuse the last sentence, but I’m pretty mad at being in the moderation bardo for days on end.
Ohhh, me too, but look at it as just being too cool or controversial to let your words go out into the cyber-ether without being checked and double-checked. ;)
PS: One of my posts is still in moderation.
I can’t even respond, it seems.
In case this ever makes it through….
http://ciderpress.livejournal.com/214072.html
I’m often most aware of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. This is likely because, as a female, I am a frequent recipient of sexist behavior, and I have been close with/am related to/have friends that are homosexual or transgender. Other bigoted behaviors likely don’t cross my mind as often because I’m not as exposed to them.
This is a very tough question—not because I can’t think of anything, but because it forces the person answering the question to admit behaving in a prejudiced way.
I most often find myself not necessarily outwardly exhibiting, but definitely thinking, through a fatphobic lens. I find myself continuing to slip into the “it’s unhealthy,” “you can take the stairs up one flight, get off the damn elevator,” etc., mentality. Even typing it makes me feel kind of queasy.
Thank you for this post; I know a lot of people have expressed concern over problematic comments, but I think that ultimately, admitting bigoted behavior like that “out loud” is a really good reminder of how ultimately terrible prejudices like the ones expressed here are to the person that holds them, and serves as an impetus for change.
Yeah, the purpose of my post wasn’t to call Bint out, but to point to certain problematic statements that are routinely made about trans people (and trans women specifically) that were stated in this thread.
Also, if I didn’t post about it, my head was going to explode.
I don’t actually regret the pingback, but at the time I was worried about disrupting the process more than I needed to be.
jemand said:
I guess what I fight most is transphobia– because I have so internalized “don’t cut genitals” from my vehement opposition to FGM, male circumcision, doctor’s “sex assignment” at birth of the intersexed… it’s very hard for me to “turn that off” when the person in question is actually asking for GRS. Living as the other sex? sure. Hormones even? ok. Asking a doctor to conduct surgery on your genitals? aaaeeeiiiii!!
If there wasn’t this MASSIVE emphasis on genitalia defining who we are as a person, trans men and women wouldn’t have to undergo these radical surgeries to conform to YOUR expectations.
If society could accept women with little estrogenised penises and men with the capacity to have babies, then this would all be a non issue.
Unfortunately the first questions a pregnant woman is asked is “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” and the answer is based on the genitals seen in a scan.
If schools were to stop teaching “Boys have penises and girls have vaginas” then once again, this issue would cease to exist.
Classism is the hardest for me to get through. I used to hold some very privileged ideas about race, but thanks to some early calling out I hope I am more able to STFU if POCs are discussing issues of race without centering the discussion on my hurt feelings and need for cookies (I really hope this is the case).
Issues of class are hard for me. I’ve been destitute – one iffy circumstance from homelessness. Still, I have a middle-class background. I know how to navigate that word as it is my own. Even though I have a history of personal abuse at the hands of “poor” and rural men and I used that as a shield for my own messed up reactions to “poor” and white and especially rural folks. I can get past some serious “gut-level” reactions and assumptions (they will be ignorant, mean, angry, drunk, bad parents, prone to violence etc.) it’s a tough one to work out for me.
I think that even if there weren’t a huge emphasis on genitals defining sex/gender that people would still get surgery. I don’t believe that society is responsible for the existence of trans people, just responsible for how we’re treated and (usually) objectified.
That is to say, my reasons for seeking surgery had to do with comfort in my own body, not with what others expect of me. The problem isn’t whether or not trans people seek surgery (this is not a problem, but how such surgery is marked by cis people – how involuntary surgeries are invoked in opposition to surgeries that trans people voluntarily seek, how so much is weighted on what genitals look like, and so on.
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