Comments on: This Is Where White Guilt Comes From

By: Lots (and lots) of link love « The Feminist Texican

Lots (and lots) of link love « The Feminist Texican — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:26:07 +0000

[...] Feministe: This Is Where White Guilt Comes From [...]

By: Orodemniades

Orodemniades — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:32:33 +0000

Dude, I hate moments like that. Most of the time I am sitting there thinking, Really? It’s [year] and you’re still saying that? Really?? Sometimes I’m on the ball and can comment with putting on, as someone commented in another blog, without putting on my Rage Goggles first.

Still. And then there’s the embarassment of knowing an asshat who would say something like that in public.

By: Maria P.

Maria P. — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:55:23 +0000

Thanks for this post. I wrote one on my own blog a month or two ago on the exact same thing. A visiting journalist was saying that local people’s resentment at being an internal colony was ridiculous and not worth considering. I realized then that we were three upper-middle class white westerners discussing whether or not oppressed people have the right to be angry. Thankfully, the other resident who was participating is involved in social justice as well and had been arguing the same point as me, so our silence itself might have been meaningful.

This post made my day.

By: hexy

hexy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:00:57 +0000

I’m curious to know what your girlfriend’s response was, and how she feels about it.

While I’m far from reluctant to speak up and call out a lot of shitty, oppressive language (I do admit there’s some I’m more reticent on) I wouldn’t necessarily do so to people I had just met who were friends of my partner. I would, however, expect my partner to do so. I’m far less frequently disappointed on this front than I was when we started dating.

By: Phrone

Phrone — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:08:51 +0000

I’m not white, and I’ve had similar experiences to the ones you described. I think a lot of anti-racist people have that experience, so I would hesitate to call it the source of “white guilt”.

I know I’ve seen “white guilt” used pretty disparagingly on anti-racist blogs, and I think there it was connected with an overzealous and sort of reverse tokenization/fetishization. Like, I’ve heard people on Livejournal say “Oh, I want to be friends with POC because I know I’m going to learn more about anti-racism from their posts!” To me, it was creepy, because it was not seeing myself and other POC as people, who posted stupid stuff and generally talked about their lives, but as almost ~*~mystical forces~*~ that were going to make you anti-racist.

By: DaisyDeadhead

DaisyDeadhead — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:58:10 +0000

Danny: And while what Daisy says can work and feel good spitting off a smart ass reply can be read as a sign that you are more concerned with one upping someone instead of showing them the error of their ways, which could lead to said unecessary confrontation.

I am not taken as seriously as all that… sounds like somebody important talking.

Really, due to my age, class, sex, self-presentation etc, I am read more as a folksy old hippie (known as charmingly “scrappy”) than someone into “one upping”–in fact, I don’t think anyone has ever said that about me (IRL), now that you mention it.

Why some people can get away with snappy, scrappy put-downs and others are thought to be personally one-upping = that’s a post all by itself.

By: BadKitty

BadKitty — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0000

Jeremy – I have no delusion that my protests at racist/sexist/homophobic comments are going to actually change the mind of the person making them. However, I have trained people who make those comments not to make them around me. My hope is that if enough people do that, they’ll start thinking twice about making those comments to anyone.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:09:38 +0000

Jeremy: I have a hard time speaking up to strangers about something that makes me mad unless I am able, willing, and prepared to fight about it (and I mean fight, because usually this shit means conflict, yelling, fisticuffs). It was easy when I was younger and more cocky — I used to bank on the fact that nobody was going to kick the twenty-year-old blonde in the teeth in public even if she was extraordinarily mouthy. I like the idea of having the ready-made snappy comebacks but that’s exactly the type of thing I forget when it matters — but even that can be considered confrontational in most circumstances.

Maybe it’s the Midwest Nice that makes it so goddamned difficult. But thinking about it, actually, I sort of use that in my favor, because I can smile and say, “That’s not it at all, and here’s why” even at work with the unwashed public and they’re far more likely to engage, however briefly, about it.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:24:53 +0000

Yeah Lauren, that’s part of what made this situation (and other like it) particularly difficult to manage: I had just met these people. A couple were childhood friends of my girlfriend, but the guy in question was just a casual friend from high school. When it’s your own friends, there’s a different set of tools to react…but it’s a whole heckuva lot more ambiguous when it’s pseudo-strangers. This definitely played a role in my inability to articulate, you know, any response at all.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:17:45 +0000

I forego the snappy comebacks and keep it personal, but as kind as possible, as in, “You know, it’s hard sometimes to be your friend when you say shit like that.” I try to make it clear that I dislike the behavior, but that it is also worth isolating myself from that behavior down the line. I don’t know how effective that would have been in Jeremy’s situation, considering he may or may not have been among friends.