Your Serving Of Awesomesauce

So, I'm not writing stuff right now. Partly because someone told me I've been incoherent lately (which means that before I move on, I need to go back and polish some stuff), and mainly because I've been working my butt off and don't have time for everything.

So if you're here, and you're white, you need to go to this site:

http://www.counter-racismnow.com/

This site is the closest thing I've ever found to the elusive "magical fountain of knowledge about racism" (at least as it affects black folks.) Each post seems to be part of a coherent analysis of the role that racism plays in the United States' society, and it's fucking brilliant. So read it and learn something.

(Warning: The blog is a VERY straight and cisgender space. The Web site with which the blog is associated, http://www.counter-racism.com is likewise dominated, and particularly in the forum there is a LOT of heteronormative and downright homo/transphobic thinking. I ain't saying these guys are perfect, just awesome.)

Mississippi Goddam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBiAtwQZnHs

An old video, but one that I expect most young white people haven't seen. The song was written and performed by Nana Simone in the 60's as a protest against recent acts of racist terrorism. More on Wikipedia. The lyrics allude to numerous acts of daily racism, most of which are still committed to this day. It brings a certain depth of poignancy to the struggles of black people that can never be attained through white-produced media.

Threats to Western Femininity: as a matter of fact, they are.

A lot of things went through my head when I watched the "Women Are Heroes" trailer (source: Womanist Musings.) One of them was that, without a doubt, African women are a threat to the monolithic worldview that is white Western femininity.

The women in the video are not delicate. Many of them have prominent noses, pronounced brows, thick hands - features that, in the Western world, are not so much reserved for men as they are considered to be an intrinsic part of the "man package." They're not soft, like our women who often spend hundreds of dollars on moisturizers to maintain what men see as a natural trait. Many of them have crooked or brooken teeth and short hair - again, traits that the white man reserves only for the male of the species. Perhaps most shockingly to Western assumptions is their voices. The "soft lilt" that our men would have us believe is an inborn trait for woman is simply not there.

And yet they are real women. Their bodies (trans women aside; they were not featured in this video) and lives are a testament to that. Every day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, they are real women. When they eat, they are real women. When they get dressed, they are real women. When they make faces for the cameras, they are real women. Contrary to local rumor, they do not stop being actual women just because they don't perform the elaborate act that Western femininity requires.

In other words, their very existence is a threat to our concept of femininity.

I think it was around this point in my thought process that I connected it to what I had been hearing from black women all along - every female of their race is a threat to white Western femininity. Not to the women, who would actually be better off if their genuineness of the member of the female sex didn't hinge so delicately on their ability to fit the construct, but to the empire. The female side of the kyriarchy. Just by being there, by being a real woman who naturally has some trait that white men have deemed "not natural," they are a threat.

With that in mind, I've poked around the Internet and found some photos of such women - beautiful women, real women, who challenge our ideas of what womanhood is just by existing every day. They are wonderful and deserve to be celebrated.

http://www.wtsp.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/090926101407_Helen-Hodges.jpg
(Helen Hodges, everyday Californian woman and victim of size discrimination. Via Dvorak Uncensored: "Big Fat Black Lady" On Receipt, Woman Upset)

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/9943850/2/istockphoto_9943850-pregnant-african-woman-smiling-in-traditional-attire.jpg
(Stock photo. A very happy, pregnant African woman.)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQD8rCVsW9jTb5YZSqW2_876DJGvGHs-meSsZglH6bJZagDaXkjJB3EQjnSSbaL8ORUs577W696VlJAZq8JImltY0eZtpb_MWKC8dCJCLwhIZFG87DOzIOjzTRmtWiXy-5UOClaPZ2BQVD/s1600-h/BlackWoman
(Naked, fat black woman with the writing "Too Old To Be In An Anti-Aging Ad." Via Telling Secrets: Fat is Still a Feminist Issue)

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1436/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1436R-252672.jpg
(Stock photo. Young, fat, black woman posing.)

http://www.costume8.com/images/Funny/A1141-Fat-Boy-Disco-Hat-in-Black-Sequins-large.jpg
(Hat model, via costume8 - no link because I'm not pleased with some of their products.)

http://www.fashionfame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gabourey-Sidibe.jpeg
(Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her role in "Precious," rocking a dress so gorgeous that even I'd be tempted to wear it.) Via Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as Mammy)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzuRg9OaDnOOKEYuTy8uTthpOAeQSdGSk6Nwnk3B8g5eiRiuM7qd8az4BlFV0r9BhwNGa3KnI_DqMTo9E9yXdLejQx0Y-RmInu-A3LhBJ4CG__VNPURXCBxrkQDWIu3UWEhZmEQn47ZKP/s1600/obeseblackwoman.jpg
(Obese black woman. Via Acting White: Black Women Series - Weight, Body Fat and Attractiveness)

http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sisman-zenci-kadin-resmi-fat-black-woman-picture-234x300.jpg
(Unsure origins. Fat black woman in a black velvet dress.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2011/03/laquitablockson.jpg
(Dr. Laquita Blockson, the "Business Renaissance Guru." Via Your Black Woman: Professor Laquita Blockson Studies the Black Female Entrepreneur.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/11/donnabrazile2.jpg
(Donna Brazile, CNN commentator. Via Donna Brazile: Young Voters, Black and Latina Women Can Shape the Future)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes5/beautifulandfat.png
(Black woman with her back to the camera, being fat and beautiful. Via Shakesville: Happy-go-Lucky.)

Africa Page: Beautiful Black Women On Parade
(A collection of various black women. Some of the photos seem on the exploitative side; I'm not sure about this one.)

Be they fabulous, scholarly, happy, disgruntled, famous or completely unheard of, every one of these women is just as real, just as female, as Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe or Natalie Portman.

Oh, yes, Pokémon Black & White is racist.

(I went back and forth on this one for a while, trying to figure out whether to do it or not... I need to call this stuff out, but do we really need another white guy talking about racism? Etc. But it's got to be done, and since I'm a pretty big Pokémon player at the moment, I may as well do it.)

There were a lot of jokes going around when Pokémon Black Version and White Version were first announced. In America, the term "black and white" is practically synonymous with the race divide (as well as a particular damaging way of viewing the world, but that never got brought up), and a lot of people would going around saying things like "Black and White is racist!"

It was ridiculous and untrue. The names "Black and White" have very little to do with the race makeup of the game, and much more to do with the concepts of Yin and Yang, nature versus technology, and general color schemeyness. Still, I admit when I heard the title I had a sinking feeling that this was going to be awkward... and boy, was I right.

It started when it was announced that Pokémon Black and White would be the first game to feature a black gym leader: Aloe (Lenora in America), the "Natural-Born Mama." I cringed as soon as I saw that, and her character design was no better: a wide-hipped woman with a big cloth hairband and an enormous apron draped over her front. Apparently the character designer thought it would be a good idea to design the first black woman in the games after a mammy.

And it doesn't get better. The next black character to be introduced is Iris, another gym leader. She, at least, does not appear to be based on a racist stereotype (though I could be wrong). And despite being a young girl, she is the most powerful Gym Leader that the player faces in White Version.

But...

In the anime, Iris is depicted as a "wild child." She roams around the wilderness and swings on vines to get from place to place. To compound how savage/untamed this character is, she lets her Pokémon live in her hair. This isn't the first time a game designer has done this - a recent Final Fantasy title featured a black man who raises chocobos and has a chick who lives in his hair. It seems to be popular opinion in Japan that natural black folks' hair is no better than an animal's nest. This isn't cute. It's disgusting. Equally as disgusting is their choice to play on the "untamed animal" stereotype for the character.

In the Black version of the game, Iris doesn't show up for very long, so you'd think they wouldn't have time to mess up... aside from the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS problem of "she spends most of the story arc babysitting a white/Asian girl whose Pokémon has been stolen." Yep, when poor Bianca is just too fragile to handle things on her own, Iris steps in to hold her hand through the ordeal. Which is not positive. It is racist.

Also, Iris is only available to fight as a gym leader in White Version. In Black Version, the final gym leader is Drayden... a white guy. Ho-hum.

The third black character is Marshal, a member of the Elite Four and the only black man in the Unova league. The first time I saw this guy, I got a pretty good of impression of him - he didn't seem to draw directly from a specific stereotype. Now, I'm not entirely sure. He uses Fighting-type Pokémon, and is depicted as a large, beefy brawler, which is par for the course with Fighting-type users, but it's also a common feature of black men in white entertainment - the thug or the soldier or prizefighter or whathaveyou. (I will point out that there is a lot of difference between a prizefighter or a soldier and a member of the Elite Four and master of martial arts. Namely, honor. But it feels suspicious to me anyway. Put this one down as a "maybe.")

Discussing this issue with a friend the other day, she and I agreed that the best way to start diversifying a game is in the non-League NPC's - the guys who just sit around towns and routes waiting to be fought. See, you can add in some Gym Leaders and the like and that's great, but unless they're also being represented in the general population, they become an exception, even an import, and are made foreign as a result.

Nintendo made some efforts in this regard. Firstly, the male backpacker sprite was given black-race-hair (although the character himself has fair skin, meaning he's probably mixed race, which is fine too.) And they added two black trainer types to the game: Dancers and Football Players.

Yes. The mind boggles.

Clerks? White or Asian. Fishermen? White or Asian. Female backpackers? White or Asian. EVERY CHARACTER TYPE WHO ISN'T A DANCER OR A FOOTBALL PLAYER? White or Asian.

They didn't even make any black cops.

In case I really need to point it out, this is another stereotype put into action: the idea of black physical prowess. Black men in Pokémon Black and White consist of excellent dancers, athletes, and one martial artist, period.

Oh, and Lenora and Iris are the only two black women in the game.

Now, I would be remiss if I said there weren't some good points as well. They're just not at the forefront of my mind, usually, because HOLY COW IS THIS GAME RACIST.

Mainly it centers around Lenora, because I've only seen a little bit of Iris and I'm not far enough in the game yet to see what Marshal is like. So we'll see what they did with her.

Firstly, in the American release (and in response to criticism from black Pokémon fans and allies), Lenora's description is changed from "Natural-Born Mama" to "The Archaeologist with a Backbone." And this makes many kinds of sense, since Lenora is, in fact, an archaeologist. Which brings me to my next point: aside from her design, Lenora is one kick-ass character. She's the lead archaeologist in Nacrene City. She has a significant participating role in a storyline that you have to play through in Nacrene before you can leave the city. She owns the museum. She's smart and in a position of power (as a Gym Leader.) And she is happily married to one of the researchers who works at the same museum (a white/Asian guy, of course, but she IS in a happy, monogamous relationship.)

In other words, she's one of the few black female characters I have ever seen that I feel like black children could be exposed to without the kick-in-the-teeth that accompanies so many portrayals. Now, I could be wrong - there could be something I've missed, and of course there's still the nasty role of explaining the "mammy" clothes, which could be more harmful than I'm giving it credit for. (Which makes me wonder how many white parents aren't explaining to their white kids what Lenora's outfit means. But then we're getting into "teaching tool" territory, and that's a subject for another post.)

Also, for once none of the black characters are criminals.

A final point: so far, I've limited this discussion to how the game treats two recognized races: black and white/Asian. And aside from the black/white mixed-race backpackers and an ambiguously tan male Psychic (who might be mixed race of any kind, Latino Mexican, indigenous North American Filipino, southern Japanese, or anything else you can think of) these are the only two racial groups depicted in the game. Meanwhile, the myriad of other races that comprise the visual and cultural makeup of the United States (and particularly New York, on which the Unova region is based) continue to be erased.

(By the way, I refer to the majority race in Black and White as white/Asian because the way these characters are typically seen is largely dependent on where the game has been released - the average Japanese player is going to see them as Japanese, whereas the average European-descended player is going to see them as European-descended, and the artists went to absolutely no effort to make a distinction between the two. Also because the region is based on an American location rather than Japan, so there's no way of telling which the artists intended.)

Quote of the Day

A comment on the Womanist Musings post "There Are More Sites Of Oppression Than Gender":

I'm a WOC, and when I look at gender in movies,I don;t get to neatly parse out where gender ends or race begins. Cos they exist simultaneoulsy. Cos yknow, WOC EXIST.

Intersectionality. It's a tough one. It's easy to get it into our heads that we can break down the ways that we are oppressed into easy-to-categorize boxes, but you can't. Just like I couldn't leave a comment (on a post about class privilege) about my class disadvantages without mentioning all of the non-class factors (religious beliefs, education, gender identity, etc.) that have a very real impact on how desperately I need the money for my own safety as well as how much money I will have to spend for it.

Intersectionality means that we are more than the sum of our parts. A black woman is not just black + woman; she is a unique individual that suffers a unique set of stigmas and stereotypes. For instance, she may be expected to erase her race from her hair for the sake of beauty - something that neither white women nor black men are expected to do. Likewise, a trans gay man is not just gay + man + trans. People may assume of him, if he has a vagina, that he wants to be the "bottom" in a sexual relationship. This isn't something that happens to cis gay men OR to trans straight men (though it happens frequently to trans and cis women).

Intersectionality is one of the hardest facets of oppression to learn, because you can't just learn the rules for each category of oppressed persons and then stack them up like Dominos to figure out what each person is suffering from. Which I think is the point - an identity isn't just a list of labels. It's a melting pot that uses all of the ingredients put into it to create a person, and a set of stigmas for that person, that will taste similar in some ways to those who share ingredients but also has a taste of its own.

That may or may not make any sense.

GUYS.

I have a friend, a woman incidentally, who is always finding gray smudges in her house. On the walls, on the refrigerator, in the food. It's no mystery how they get there - her husband works with vehicles and he's always coming home with filthy hands because he's something of a slob.

Nothing weird there. Nope, nope, nope.

But my friend is ALL the time bitching about these "black" smears. Hubby comes home, his hands are "black." Touches the cheese with dirty hands, the cheese is "black." Smears gray stuff on the front door, the door is "black."

This kind of microaggressive behavior falls into a pretty gray area. Even a lot of black people are hesitant to say whether this is really problematic, because it's so commonplace and nobody really thinks that black skin = dirty, do they? (At least, not anymore... not most of them, anyway.)

I'm going to stick my white foot out here and say YES, this is problematic. YES, calling something "black" when it is dirty will breed racial prejudice. For exactly the same reason that calling something "gay" or "retarded" when it is wrong, meaningless, or just plain unliked breeds prejudice. Calling something "dark" when it is, in fact, morbid or morally wrong breeds prejudice - how can we associate darkness with things we are afraid of and not become afraid of things that are dark?

If my white audience isn't convinced, picture this - a small, black child listening to my friend, or any other human adult in earshot, exclaiming "This is black! It's disgusting!" Remembering what my life was like as a fat child, I can guess how xe would feel. Unclean. Unwanted. A burning urge to jump in the bathtub and scrub xis blackness away so that xe could be clean and white and right. The idea of putting a child through that kind of identity trauma is nearly enough to give me flashbacks to my own.

It's not harmless, it's not meaningless, and the kid sure as heck isn't going to figure out that when you said it you didn't mean "black-black." So please, for the sake of a child's innocence and self-worth, KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.

So, It's Black History Month.

The one time of year when talking about black folks' suffering in "the mainstream" doesn't make you PC or oversensitive or whatevs. And, according to Renee of Womanist Musings, white people spend loads of time talking about the bad stuff we used to do to black people and isn't it nice that we don't have to do that anymore.

At the risk of making it all about white folks, aren't we a bunch of douchebags. (I use "we" in the loose sense, not the literal sense, though I have plenty of douchyness to account for.)

At the same time, I feel like I can't pass up this opportunity to bring awareness to a form of history that is often forgotten (or believed not to exist), inasmuch as the alternative for me is to erase it even further. So here are a few things to get white brains going in a less self-absorbed direction:

Womanist Musings: Why I Am Skipping Black History Month
Womanist Musings: Black History Month
Womanist Musings: Cotton Picking Day
Womanist Musings: Black History Month For Sale
Womanist Musings: Jim Crow Renaissance This Is Celebration?

Blaque Ink: Black Adversity: The Opposite Of White Privilege
Womanist Musings: For Rent: Whites Only
This one's so about white people: Love Isn't Enough: How to Be An Anti-Racist Ally
TransGriot: What You Don't See Is As Important As What You Do See
TransGriot: 'Reverse Racism' Are White Racist Words
TransGriot: Renee's Rule

These are a few posts that share some of the basic concepts of racism as it exists today - equally as important as black history. And remember, social justice isn't just for one month. It's an all-year thing. So read these posts, then bookmark the sites for later and keep on reading. I may not look like it because I prefer not to blog about race issues (being racially privileged, I'm not exactly qualified to comment) but I spend a good chunk of my off-time doing just that.

Rethinking This Whole "Racism" Thing

Between Tim Wise and Noel Ignatiev, I've been doing me some thinking.

And I'm thinking they're right. (I know, I know... I think the white guys are right, what a concept.) I do think that attempting to disclaim whiteness when dealing with PoC is an utterly stupid idea, because the only thing it could possibly accomplish is to disenguilt the pale people of their connection to and at least former complacence in racism - not a good idea. So if a PoC refers to you as white, live with it.

On the other hand, what good does it do for you to identify as white to white people? 90% of the time, the only thing it will do is get you privilege. If you're very careful - if you make it pointedly clear to everyone you interact with that while you may be white, you are against racism - you may lose a tiny bit of that privilege, but still, "not playing by the rules" is a more forgivable offense than "not being white."

Many PoC have used the phrase, "The master's tools will never demolish the master's house." While I sort of grasped the general concept of "your oppressor will never try to help you unless he can do so without undermining himself," it has become clear that there is more meaning in it. In some countries - and certainly in the United States - being white is like being a member of the Catholic Church.

For those who haven't had the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic (or read about someone having the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic), here's how it works: Every person born into a Catholic family is baptized into the church as a baby. They go through the ceremony, get wet, yadda, and get their name enrolled in the Church's records. And in most cases, your name stays there for life. Even if you apostatize, even if you swear off everything your church stands for, even if you become a dedicated Satanist for the rest of your life, unless you fight tooth and nail to get your name taken out of the roster (and sometimes even then), you are counted as a member of the Catholic Church. This wouldn't be too bad if it was just a clerical issue - whoever's in charge of your new religion probably doesn't care what some fusty old church has to say, particularly if you've become an atheist - but it's not. Instead, the Church will use their artificially bloated member list at every opportunity to try and get power. You don't think Catholic law should become dominant in a given country? Look how many card-carrying Catholics there are in that country! Want to prosecute the Pope for complacency in child rape? You're going after a nation, and I have the papers to prove it. (This is the really insidious part: even Catholics don't have a say in how they're represented. Even if they hate the Pope. Even if they approve birth control or would like to sell the Vatican and use the proceeds to buy food for the hungry, their names still get used to back up the very things they oppose.)

Likewise, when you have the right set of genes to be assumed white and don't do anything to make people think otherwise, even if you don't agree with the principles that Whiteness has dropped on the country, you will be used to support its principles. Answer "White" on racial surveys? Politicians will point to the enormous white majority to justify racist laws. Be yet another pale face in your social circle? Somebody will think of a racist joke to "share," and they won't hold back on your account. Even arguing your innocence of a speeding ticket could cause a problem - the cop might give it to you anyway, or he might let you off and go home feeling happy and secure that he's helped out another innocent white person.

The Master's tools may not destroy the Master's house, but the unfortunate fact is that this concept of white supremacy will not be destroyed as long as us pale people remain complacent. A hundred well-read, well-argued, and intensely frustrated voices of color can explain the problem over and over again, but as long as white people believe that the pale are all on their side, most of them are never going to listen to them. This isn't fair, it isn't right, and it's supremely racist, but it's a fact. And us pale people - be we racially "white" or not - are in a unique position to do something about it.

But am I saying that the pale hold the sole power to end racism? Hardly! This is only one facet of anti-racism work, and it does not happen a vacuum. People like Noel Ignatiev and I have only come to realize this was even a problem because of the hours of hard work from PoC. And even if the white majority can be made to stop believing in the sanctity of the white race, that effect will not dissuade them of the inferiority of other races. Nor can it end oppressive lawmaking, increased poverty in communities of color, and many other issues that PoC face. In many aspects, PoC have and will continue to take the lead, with white/pale people assisting as is necessary and beneficial. This just happens to be one issue (possibly the only one) that pale people, specifically, must fight on their own.

MUST SEE: Tim Wise on White Privilege

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc

Full transcript:

'Cause if you know the history of the whole concept of Whiteness, if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason, you know that it was a trick - and it's worked brilliantly.

See, prior to the mid- to late-1600's in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race - those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term, really ever, before then. In fact, in the old countries of Europe, we had spent most of our time killing each other. We didn't love each other; we weren't one big, happy family. The side of my family that comes from Scotland, hell, they didn't even worry about fighting people outside of Scotland. Highlanders and lowlanders just fought the hell out of each other. So there was no white race, but in the colonies of what would become the United States, what did we see in the 1660's-1670's? We began to see that Africans of indentured servant status (many of them not enslaved yet, they were not necessarily permanently enslaved; some were, others were indentured like many poor Europeans for periods of seven to eleven years - they could work off their indenture and then they would be free labor, technically) realized, as did the white indentured servants, the Europeans (who hadn't even been called white yet) that they had a lot of things in common, like the fact that they were all getting their clock cleaned by the elites. And so they would get together, more than our history books taught us. To fement(?) rebellion against the elite, to try to get a better deal for themselves on the basis of economic necessity and economic justice.

And what did the elite do? When you see that you're outnumbered by black and white folks who are penniless, landless, peasants, you have to do one of two things: you either have to kill them all, but you can't do that, 'cause who's gonna work? Rich folks weren't going to. They had to get poor people to work. The whole point was to be a person of leisure, back in those days. That was the goal, was not to work. So you couldn't kill them all, you didn't want to kill them all, you'd have to do the work yourself! You'd have to build your own levy. Build your own house. No. Pick your own tobacco! Harvest your own cotton... no. We're not going to do any of that. So you can't kill them, but you can co-opt them, and so the elite in Virginia, for example, in the colony, begins to give certain carrots to people of European descent, saying things like "You know, we're going to let you own a little land. Not much, but just a little. And we're going to get rid of indentured servitude, now you're free labor - and by the way, once you're free labor you get fifty acres of land. Just because you're free labor, see, so we're going to cut you in on this deal. We're going to let you enter into contracts. We're going to let you testify in court, and here's the best of all: we're going to put you on the slave patrol. To keep those people in line," right? The idea was, "you're still going to get your clock cleaned. We still don't like you. We still aren't really going to empower you or change your economic subordination, but we're going to make you honorary members of this team, and you're going to help us keep those other people down."

And so they got a little taste of power, and it did effectively divide and conquer those coalitions - those rebellions began to stop almost instantly. Fast forward to the Civil War era, you have rich white folks in the South where I come from, standing up and openly admitting that the reason they're prepared to secede from the Union - and the only reason they ever articulated publicly, EVER - was to maintain and extend slavery and white supremacy, not only where it already existed, but into the newly acquired - that is to say, stolen - territories from Mexico, to the west. That was what they said. Now we lie about it. We say it wasn't about slavery. That it was about state's rights. Yes, the right of the states to keep and maintain slaves, exactly. But back then they had no shame, so they didn't try and cover it up. They only said it, but once again the rich didn't want to go and do the work - are you kidding? No. They're going to get poor people to go fight for them. And the poor folks didn't even own slaves. Now think: how do you get poor people, who don't even own the shirt on their back - let alone slaves - to go fight to keep your slaves for you? You've got to convince them that their skin is more important than their economic interest, because think about it: if I am a farmer who has to charge you a dollar a day or two dollars a week to work on your farm, to harvest that tobacco or pick that cotton, but you can get a black person to do it for free (because you own them), who's going to get the job? Not me. In other words, slavery actually undermined the wages, and the wage-based economic floor, of the typical white working-class or low-income person. But they were told, "if these people are free they're going to take your job." No, fool, they got your job. That's the point. And so at some level, again, working-class white people being harmed by white privilege. Relatively, being advantaged, right? Being given a leg up, being given a membership to the club, but in absolute terms being kept economically subordinated by the very thing that gave them a sense of superiority. How's that for irony?

Then in the present era - this hasn't stopped, this is not ancient history - now we have people running around insisting that we should close the border with Mexico because, if we don't, the wages of working-class people will continue to fall, the implication being that the only reason workers are paid like crap in this country is because the border is opened. But if you believe that, you would actually have to believe that if that border were closed, then all these owners of capital and industry would just say "Oh, well, you figured us out. Here, it's a raise." Do we really believe that the only thing keeping bosses from paying people more is the presence of low-wage, medium-semi-skilled labor from south of this artificial border? Is that really what we believe? We know that if that border was closed, it isn't going to be closed to capital. It isn't going to be closed to goods. If you have a border that can be crossed by capital, looking for the highest return on investment or goods, looking for the highest price, but labor is chained to its country of origin, how is that going to work to the benefit of working people? By definition, it doesn't. By definition, it emiserates the working class. Divide, and conquer.

But the best example of all, perhaps, in the contemporary era - in the greater New Orleans area after Katrina - here you have two communities that were the worst hard-hit: the Lower Ninth Ward, mostly black community, 94% African-American, about 40% official poverty rate, heavy working-class community, and right across the canal, St. Bernard Parish Chalmette, 95% white, also working-class, high levels of poverty, economically very similar. And at the end of the day, in those first few days of September 2005, more similar than they probably would have realized. Because when those levies broke, they all got their stuff jacked. They all got their stuff destroyed. But if you had asked the white folks in Chalmette - and I've done it - who was the cause of the problems in the greater New Orleans area part of that flooding, they would have pointed across the canal at those black folks (wouldn't have called them black folks) and would have said "there, that's the problem." 70% of the white folks in St. Bernard Parish voted for David Duke, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, former head of the largest Ku Klux Klan group in the United States, when he ran for governer in 1991. Seven out of ten gladly voted for him, because he was blaming black folks for all of their problems and they bough it. What's the irony? The irony is that while they were blaming black people for their problems, while they were blaming black people for the conditions of the greater New Orleans area in which they lived, nobody was paying attention (least of all they) to the fact that these white elite politicians, either in Baton Rouge or in Washington, whose job it was to secure those levies, to make sure that levy funds were spent in the proper way and that they were spent at all, those mostly white and mostly elite politicians did nothing at the end of the day, it wasn't just the black folks in the Lower 9th Ward they didn't care about, they didn't give a rat's ass about those poor and working-class white folks either. And yet when the people of Chalmette - people of St. Bernard Parish - got back into session, first time they had a city council meeting, parish council meeting after the flooding, the lights aren't even on yet. The water isn't even hooked up, and the first order of business was to pass an ordinance saying that you couldn't rent property in St. Bernard Parish to anyone who wasn't a blood relative. Now I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why they'd want to pass a law - that law had never existed before - but now that it's been emptied out and you don't know who might be coming back, that's a damn good way to keep black people out, isn't it? 'Cause if you're 95% white to begin with, if you pass an ordinance that says that, that's a great w-you can't say "no blacks need apply," you can't say "no blacks allowed," but that was an ingenious way to get around the law. Now, they got caught, there was a lawsuit threatened and they got rid of the ordinance. But my point in bringing it up is to say, once again, "divide and conquer" is working. These white folks in Chalmette need to march across that canal and join hands with the black folks who've been sitting there, more than willing to work with them for an awful long time, and march on Baton Rouge, and march on DC, and march on the Corps of Engineers, and recognize their commonality of interest. But the whiteness, and the lure of whiteness, has tricked these have-nothing-in-their-bank-account white people into believing that they got more in common with the rich white folks on St. Charles Avenue, that didn't lose anything in that flooding, than they have in common with the black working-class folks who live about five hundred yards away.

This is a brilliant, powerful, and utterly illuminating piece. One of the biggest flaws I have noticed in anti-racist work (at least on the blogosphere), from people of any color, is the simple inability to connect with white allies. They express the problem, they express their rage, and they have that right, but it is rare for someone to actually communicate, to cause the white person to truly appreciate that they useful in the battle against racism and in fact have a sizeable stake in it. This communication may not be cathartic, and one often feels that the other party does not deserve such treatment, but it is vital in the acquisition of allies - something that other marginalized groups have already discovered. Tim Wise (likely by virtue of being white himself) has managed to communicate with the white mind, bringing to light one of its greatest flaws - to believe, because of the repeated affirmation of their whiteness on all sides, that even the most disenfranchised white person has more in common with their own oppressors than with their fellow oppressed. This is, in a word, bullshit - and I will try to remember that in the future.

(I will also remember to double-check my sources. I wasted a huge amount of time transcribing the talk, optimistically thinking that I was doing something useful, when there was already a PDF version available. Oh, well.)

(Via stuff white people do.)

Undercovers: Pilot

This review is a bit belated, on account of I only got around to watching the episode yesterday (on account of spy shows aren't usually my thing), but here goes. Starting with race issues, since they're the elephant in the room here.

First of all, my predictions were correct: the main couple are a pair of Oreos. While I won't argue the importance of having any black characters in the main roles, it is pretty obvious that they were written by white people who have no idea how black culture works in the middle class. (Furthermore, while the creative minds behind the show were hoping to get black actors, their casting call was unracified, so... yeah.) In a way that's good - who says a role has to be intended for a black person for a black person to get it? On the other hand, who says it's not cool to write a leading role specifically for a black person? In addition, almost the entire supporting cast consists of white people. I guess that's how you be an acceptable black person in this country - hire white people to run your catering business, rescue white spies, work for white government agents, etc. I know they didn't mean to show it that way, but it's thoughtless.

The show has also been criticized for hiring two black foreigners (Gugu Mbatha-Raw is English; Boris Kodjoe is Austrian-born German) to play their American roles. Its critics have in turn been criticized for being too picky - after all, nobody had a cow when British Hugh Laurie was cast as American Dr. House. Well, that's all fine and good, but Dr. House isn't exactly the sole representation of cranky, middle-aged, white male doctors on television. Or one of only a handful of white leads, period. Here they had a chance to represent an entire demographic of American people with two roles, and they felt they had to bring in foreigners? Are American black actors just not good enough, or what?

The bottom line on race: Black protagonists are a great start, but they're a start. Keep working, folks.

Then there's the sexism angle. It continues to bother me that no woman is allowed to be a spy unless 1: she is partnered with a male spy, 2: she is married to a male spy, or 3: she is going to sleep with a male spy at some point. Also, the portrayal of Samantha and Leo's past relationship also bugs me - not because they had one, but because her repeated insistence that he could not be a turncoat comes across as an interference of her personal (womanly) feelings with what would otherwise be sound judgment. (The fact that Steven was Leo's partner for some time but does not feel this way compounds the idea.) She turns out to be right, which does vindicate the problem slightly, but the fact that they never confront this assumption leaves some niggling doubt in my mind. Then there's the scene where she has to hit on a guy she is repulsed by in order to obtain information.

On the other hand, Samantha gets some totally kick-ass moments. She disregards her husband's irrational insistence that she stays "safe," and in doing so manages to save Steven and Leo. Then when she takes off to try and stop the bad guy, she not only takes out his minion without a problem, but stops him single-handedly while Steven is busy rescuing Leo. That, dear reader, is girl power. And it rocks.

Also, the white guy got shot. That was funny.

But what about the show itself? Does it have entertainment value? Definitely. I'm a little irked by some of the spy tropes (ooh, we're spies, we get to go to these exotic European locations!), but I enjoy the storyline, I enjoy the action, I definitely enjoyed Samantha's dress, and I appreciate the implication that they can successfully juggle their spy careers with their catering business. And I loved the little robot-shaped flash drive. So cute.

However, there is one last thing that I do not appreciate: the continued normalization of the overworked middle-class citizen. They spend all day working so they can afford all these luxuries that they're now too tired to enjoy - what's the point? Heck, what's the point of working so hard every day that you're always too tired for sex? More than a spy job, it struck me that these characters needed some time off to rethink their priorities. Maybe they're not so middle class; maybe they're struggling just to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs. But I doubt it. It certainly isn't made to seem that way.

I will, of course, keep watching to see how things play out.

Skip This One: It's A Boy Girl Thing

Being a trans guy, I'm into genderflip movies. It's just one of those things, like gay men being into gay male movies, kids being into movies about teenagers, and the entire film industry being obsessed with movies about white people. (One of these is not okay, but that's been covered by much more qualified writers than I.) Basically, I like these movies because some small part of them reflects the kind of things I go through, or would like to go through. I also watch them just for a laugh, because hey - nobody's serious all the time, not even the super serious trans man.

This one, though, can be skipped.

It's A Boy Girl Thing is a (SPOILERS!) romantic comedy about two white teenagers of opposite sexes. Nell, the girl, is fairly well-off. She's educated, well-mannered, nicely dressed, and hoping to get into Yale University. Woody, the boy (nice name, eh?), comes from a working-class family. His clothes are worn out, his manners are lacking, and his mom can't cook very well. He'll be lucky if he gets into any university.

Nell and Woody hate each other with a passion. So much that they get into a fight in a museum, which awakens the statue of an ancient god (for serious), who does some magical mist-fu that causes them to switch bodies. I will admit, this part of the movie is actually pretty entertaining. Aside from a couple of blunders, the two actors playing the roles do so very well, and the jokes are mostly funny. (Very raunchy, but funny.) The film does an average job of subverting gender roles, in that the characters do learn to appreciate each others' hobbies, but the male is still such a dunce that he can only learn to appreciate something that he already appreciates. Long story. The movie also comes down a little bit on classism, and has a bit in support of rap music, which is nice.

Those are the redeeming qualities. Now for the bad stuff.

First of all, the film just misses its mark. It's supposed to be about the differences between boys and girls (or so one would assume, based on the title), but it's as much, if not more, about the differences between class levels. It's entertaining, but it doesn't fit the title. Another gripe of mine - minor, I will admit - is that the setting of the film is a little too reminiscent of The Fantasticks. The two live right next to each other, she in a nice house with a neat lawn, he in a shabby house with a filthy yard, and while the families are presumably locked into feud, secretly their fathers would like nothing better than to see them together.

Those are just infractions - things that are a little annoying, but don't really ruin the movie for me. No, what really gets me is the bigotry. While the film fights gender roles and class divides with one hand, with the other it dispenses racism, homophobia, and slut shaming in the traditional "I'm not really bigoted" way that white cinema tends to do.

First of all, let's look at the racism. There are exactly two characters of color in this film (neither of which are the protagonists, naturally). One of them is a randy, apelike, teenaged black boy who is obsessed with sex to the point that he cheats on his white girlfriend regularly. The other one has very little character, but is a motorcycle-driving Latino who will have sex with any girl on campus at the drop of a hat, and comes dangerously close to destroying Nell's virginity (except he doesn't - more on that later). Of course the filmmakers didn't intend the film to be racist, but when the only lesson we learn is that teenaged boys of color are all sex machines who will cheat on/destroy the innocence of your white daughters, guess what I call it. Yup.

Also, it is implied throughout the film that the black character is extremely well-endowed, which never fails to catch the attention of the characters who get an eyeful of his junk. 'Cause all black guys have big penises, get it?

Now the homophobia. This is mostly character-driven, in a scene where Woody (in Nell's body) attempts to have sex with the aforementioned Latino, only to realize at the last minute that it's a terrible idea because he's not into guys. That's not bad. In fact, it was a great idea. But then he starts going on: "This is so gay! He's gonna make me his bitch!" He's more worried about having a "gay" experience - which he is certain will be demeaning and disgusting - than he is about having sex with someone that he's not into.

Just in case you thought this was just a character thing and had no bearing on the writers' views: first, no effort is made to contradict Woody's opinions, and secondly, it happens again, at the end of the movie. The aforementioned black character, having been dumped and thoroughly humiliated by his girlfriend, finds himself naked at a party, in front of a gay man who is obviously impressed with his super-sized black junk. Lesson #2: Don't cheat on your girlfriend, or else the gays will come after you. And while you might not think that's a bad thing, the filmmakers obviously believe that it would be gross and embarrassing.

After those two whoppers, this one is more of a footnote. See, there isn't actual slut shaming in this movie per se, but its effects are quite visible. Nell, trapped in Woody's body, is thoroughly convinced that her hymen is her virginity, and that if Woody in Nell's body has sex, that means that Nell is no longer a virgin. This would be horrible, because she was saving her first time for someone special. While there's nothing wrong with Nell's desire to wait for her first sexual experience, there is something hugely wrong with her assumption. Regardless of whose hymen is abused, if Woody had gone through with his plan, all it would mean is that Woody had sex that night. Nell wasn't there, she didn't have sex, she's still a virgin, end of discussion. And again, the movie does nothing to counteract this idea.

So, that's it in a nutshell. You might think that these things are minor - after all, nobody is going to watch one movie and think "Well, gee, I guess all boys of color are bad and gay sex is disgusting!" Can't I just forget the bad parts and enjoy the movie?

Well, no. Because the bad parts are in the movie. And people are going to watch this film and come away with a niggling subconscious idea that white boys, like the eventually honorable Woody, are better potential mates than boys of color, just because this movie showed it. A conscious knowledge to the contrary cannot completely overcome a subconscious suspicion. And this movie offers way too many of them for comfort.

Brush that hair!

I've been reading about hair lately. Mainly black hair (and other types of curly hair), and the ways which white society declares it to be inferior to straighter hair because it cannot be "tamed" (read: made to lie flat). Some good posts on this subject include Nappy Hair in the Jolie-Pitt World at Womanist Musings (focuses on black hair) and Hair Stories Redux at Justine Larbalestier (a broader look at "other" hair in general). Anyway, it got me thinking about what I've been through with my own hair.

I don't have black hair, or even curly hair, so I can't say whether or not any of my experiences are comparable to people with other kinds of hair - though I can say with certainty that some of them aren't. But here goes.

As far as hair goes, I actually scored pretty high in the hierarchy. My hair is long, wavy, and golden-blonde. From the time I was three years old I heard nothing but good things from my mother about how beautiful my hair was, even prettier than my sister's because it had "body." Mother was incredibly protective of my hair (both mine and my sister's, actually). Most of the time it was locked into a braid, protected from the hair-mussing activities of a couple of young kids. Once a week she would let it down and brush it out.

Before I go on, I need to explain one thing about my mother: she is incredibly ignorant, clueless, and self-centered. She cannot comprehend the existence of any experience that is not basically identical to what she has gone through, and she thinks that she can fix anyone's problems by giving them the solution that worked for her. Have I mentioned my mother is pink-skinned?

After a while she stopped braiding, and my hair would get tangled rather worse. Well, okay, no biggie. It was harder to brush and yadda, but she was oh-so-careful and tried to be as gentle as possible, so if either my sister or I complained, then we were obviously overreacting. She couldn't seem to comprehend that the results of her actions might be different from her intent - but then, she never was good at being "gentle." (There's another post in that.) She'd sink the brush into a tangle and pull down, and most of the pressure would go straight to my scalp. As soon as I complained I'd be reassured that "it's not that bad," which she obviously knew because I was the one being brushed.

Anyway.

Later on she turned hair care over to me, and that's when the problems started. See, my mother's a flat-head. Her hair is straight and lies down perfectly, so she thinks that all straight hair should do that and if it doesn't then it's a failure on the owner's part. Well, my hair is poofy (the aforementioned "body"). When it's properly clean, it floats around my head and will not lie flat unless I really put the effort (read: abuse and/or water) into it. Which I don't want to do, because my fluffy hair has personality, and I like it that way. But my mother is convinced that it denotes a lack of hygiene, and unless it's perfectly flat, she accuses me of not brushing my hair.

The only way I can get it to do what she wants is to let a day or so of oil build up in it, and then it's time for a shower, you scumbag. (She has something of a hygiene obsession, which could make another post.)

The flip side of the coin is that when you have "perfect" hair (luscious, full, wavy, blonde hair - see also mine), you're expected to love it. You should count it as one of your assets, and treat it like your most prized possession. You should brush it obsessively, condition it, put pretty things in it, and otherwise make it into a showpiece for everyone else because it's just so nice to look at. Obviously this isn't on the same level as telling someone they should hate/change their hair because it's "bad," but it's damaging in its own right - especially for a FTM who couldn't care less if he has traditionally attractive female locks.

Becoming Your Label

As I've said, people have a lot of labels. Some of them they wear for life, like their skin color; others fade with time, such as age and class; others come upon them suddenly and in a life-changing event.

I can name the labels that came upon me that way: atheist, transgendered, anti-racist.

When a label comes upon you, it often comes as something of a surprise. Sometimes you've purged a label that already covered that aspect of yourself, but sometimes the other label comes in and forcibly removes the old one. And sometimes you're surprised by a label that's always been there, because something you've just seen or done has made you deeply, acutely, aware of it.

I've had all of this happen to me at one point. Releasing my "Christian" label was an intensely painful process; taking on the "atheist" label took several months. When I took on "transgendered," I had already discarded "cisgendered" as a label that had never applied and adopted "girlfag." When I discovered "white," it was more a realization that it was more than just a skin color - that there was an identity that went along with it and that it was something worth mentioning about myself.

In each case, I had to figure out what the label meant for me. And in each case I went through roughly the same process: reading, learning, trying to understand the societal nuances that made this label, comparing myself to other people who had this label. And I made the same mistake each time: trying to become as similar as possible to other people who had the same label.

It started out when I became an atheist. Even though I use that label to describe myself, I'm not an atheist by the popular definition. I believe that there may be gods out there (not an overarching God, but smaller gods), and perhaps some kind of ghosts, and while I will not outright believe a claim without any evidence I will not immediately disclaim it for lack thereof if it is not actually possible for me to acquire evidence. (You might call me a "somewhat credulous skeptic.")

But when I got out on the Internet and started reading the writings of other atheists, I found that our beliefs didn't really match up. Most atheists prefer a "nonexistent until proven otherwise" approach; a demand for hard evidence before they believe in the proffered spirit. I see nothing wrong with that; they haven't have the same upbringing I had, regaled with tales and the occasional witnessing to miracles that, if they happened as reported, could not reasonably be explained scientifically. I would also not expect them to take these stories as evidence, since most of them were related to me through parties and their veracity is greatly suspect. But I cannot discount them.

And yet, I tried to. Not intentionally, of course. But the more I read of other atheists and their rather stricter worldview, the more I began to feel the subtle societal pressure to conform to the same standards. After all, if so many of them believe this way and I don't, it must be because I've got something messed up. And after a while I found myself parroting the things they were saying, repeating the "pics or it didn't happen"-style phrases, and insisting that gods were all in people's heads.

After a while - and with the help of my sister - I realized that there was a problem. There was no good reason for me to be acting that way. I had reasons to believe the things that I did, and denying them wasn't making me more skeptical, just conformist. In essence, I was trying to be the most atheisty atheist I could be.

I had the same problem when explaining my atheism. I originally abandoned my faith not because of evolution, or science, or the many horrible deeds committed by Yahweh throughout the Bible, but because I had been shown that Jesus was not the Jewish messiah. But when people started asking me why I wasn't a Christian, I started abandoning that story - in favor of the much more commonplace (and rather overdone) explanations I had heard from other atheists. Again, I was trading in my identity for the group identity.

It was harder to do that when I realized myself as transgendered. Right away I realized I didn't fit the "standard" (see also: stereotype): I wasn't male-to-female, I wasn't attracted to the same sex, I hadn't pervasively felt from the time I was young that I must belong to the opposite gender. It didn't take me long to realize that my limited grasp on the subject was... well, limited - in fact, that's what led me to taking on the label in the end. But even after I had learned the subject extensively, even after I knew that people could manifest at different times and be attracted to different sexes and identify as androgynous or two-gendered and everything else, I was always trying to discount my own experiences. I would compare myself to others, and since I never fit the common story - I didn't identify as male as a child, I was never uncomfortable with my lower genitalia, I wasn't attracted to the same sex - I was convinced on some level that I wasn't really trans, or that I wasn't trans "enough" to count. I think in a way I was still trying to convince myself that I didn't have to be trans. But in a bigger way I was making myself feel inadequate because, after failing to fit in with the larger world around me, I had found a world that I actually might belong to - and I still didn't fit in. I felt like I was the freak among freaks.

The third event deals not so much with a label I like to use, but in a label that due to my upbringing I am saddled with, and bear the results thereof: "white."

In an earlier post, I mentioned the blog Stuff White People Do, an educational resource on "the ways of white folks - I mean, some white folks..." I followed a link from one post to another post (readable here), and in the comments section there was a discussion that had become rather heated.

The post, you see, was on the way some white people treat black women. They see them not as vulnerable human beings, but as people of steel, capable of taking whatever flak the world throws their way. This stereotype, the black ladies explain, is perpetuated by modern media, which has portrayed every black woman ever as that type of character (which they refer to as the "sapphire" stereotype), or as an older, takes-no-guff, fiercely-protective and overweight woman (the better-known "mammy.")

White people read this, and understood this, and knew that the black women were right and they needed to do better. So they asked (and I wondered) a seemingly innocuous question: "How do we treat you like people?"

The reaction was swift, completely unenlightening, and deeply revealing of the problem at hand: "You know already."

And I (though I did not participate in the conversation), and several other white people in the thread, said "No, I don't."

It was all nonsense, of course. I already knew what had to be done. In fact, I'd already written about it in my Peach People post. But I'd fallen prey to that quintessential white fallacy: getting hooked on labels.

One of the black ladies had mentioned that white people tend to be bad at socializing with black women. I (and, I expect, the other white persons who asked the same question), remembering that I was a white person, hastily made the conclusion that I had made a mistake in my line of thinking and that I had somehow missed some crucial piece of information that would teach me how to treat black women like people.

What I, and seemingly a number of other white people, had failed to realize was that I was completely overthinking the situation. And it was the black ladies - one very patient and frustrated black woman, in particular - who finally put us in our place and made at least one white person (that'd be me) feel very, very silly - and very, very white.

See, once again I had conflated a label with an identity. First I assumed that because the label "white" applied to me, I must be vulnerable to the same fallacies as the other white people that had been described. Then I assumed that the label "black" entailed some kind of enormous cultural gap - something that made the fact that they were also human and women rather trivial when deciding how to treat them. If I really wanted to know how to treat a black woman as a human, all I needed to do was see her as - well, a human.

Each of these stories belies the same problem in the use of labels. There is no doubt that labels have a purpose - they enable one person to get a loose grasp on another person's identity at a quick glance. But labels are not an instant guide to an individual's personality. Each label is a facet of a person, not the whole person - and yet their entire being is affected by that facet. Labels are further divided into sublabels, which in turn are shaped by quirks and nuances that make the overall label nearly meaningless. Labels are not useless - it is true that all persons with a particular label have something in common, whether a little or a lot. But it is important not to overvalue their meaning, not to assume any specific meanings for a label, and not to get so hooked on one label that you ignore the other facets of a person's being.

And yet I managed to do it three times before I ever figured out what I was doing wrong. Sounds like I've got some work ahead of me.

How To Be A Peach Person

In my introduction blog, I covered a bit about race labels and why I don't like identifying myself as "white." I proposed "over-privileged peach-skinned bastard" as an alternative, which I later shortened to "privileged peach person."

After a bit, it occurred to me that there were facets of this "peach" thing I wasn't covering. For instance, I don't feel it's appropriate to refer to all white persons as "peach" - white supremacists and clueless middle-class WASPs, for instance, can keep on being white. It's more than a race; it's a mindset. So what exactly is a peach person?

To be a peach person, you must meet all of the following requirements:

1. You must belong to the "white" race.
2. You must be aware that as a light-skinned person, you are more privileged than persons of other colors, particularly in the company of other light-skinned people.
3. You must acknowledge and accept that you have no special right to this extra privilege, but that you have it anyway.
4. You must be willing to employ that privilege, as well as other resources at your disposal, to try and make that privilege available to persons of other colors. How you do this is up to you. Call people out on racist remarks, lobby to get persons of other color into influential positions, band with persons of other color to form an interracial alliance, whatever you are able to do.
5. You must accept that the superiority of fair-skinned people is an illusion, and remember this at all times. As others have said, check your ego at the door. No matter where you go or who you are with, remember that light-skinned people are not nicer, purer, smarter, or more human than people of other colors.
   
6. You must own your white heritage. No matter what you call yourself, you are still the product of a long line of oppressors - a line that shows few signs of letting up - and as such, persons of other color will be disinclined to trust you. You need to accept the stigma of being pale, just as other races have been forced to accept their stigmas.
   
7. You do not need to make an official commitment or label yourself an "anti-racist" or anything else. You only need to be willing to accept that your skin color is only your skin color, and the privilege you have exists only because you were born into a profoundly unjust society, and that you have a responsibility to try and correct the imbalance that granted you that privilege.

That is what it means to be a "peach person." To call yourself peach is to disown your "white" ego - to accept that you, too, have a color, and are no different (essentially, if not culturally) than those of darker shades. You are not "lowering yourself to their level." You are declaring that the level you thought you occupied before - that white people believe themselves to occupy on a daily basis - is an illusion, perpetrated by a pale-skinned society so caught up in itself that has almost forgotten it exists.

(I cannot take credit for everything in this list. In fact, I really cannot take credit for any of it. It is thanks to the excellent anti-racist blog, Stuff White People Do - and the many lists of advice for anti-racist allies that they link to - that I have come to understand any of this, much less condense it into a single train of thought. The owner and contributors have opened my eyes tremendously, and I thank them for knocking me off my own white pedestal.)

An Apology

As I have mentioned, I am white (unfairly privileged peach-tone, as I prefer it). As I have mentioned, all peach-toned persons from the United States are racist, whether they mean to be or not. Having thought about myself, I've realized that I've (unintentionally) had a number of racist thoughts/perceptions through the years, and I need to apologize. By having these thoughts, I have unintentionally contributed to a system which marginalizes minority races, especially those of darker skin color, and that is unacceptable. So here is my apology.

I'm sorry for not trusting blacks and Latin Americans as implicitly as I do other races just because of your skin color.
I'm sorry for assuming that Hispanic Latin Americans are shoddy parents just because you shop at Wal-Mart and buy beer.
I'm sorry for seeing a black person in town and thinking "Whooooa, cool!" You are a person, not a novelty item.
I'm sorry for thinking that I might date a white girl or a black guy, but a black girl would just be too weird.
I'm sorry for ogling the Asians who are out shopping for groceries.
I'm sorry for being so ignorant at age 20 that I was actually surprised to learn that South Africa had urban cities in it.
I'm sorry for referring to everyone of a darker color as "black" or "Hispanic" or "Asian" or "Native American" (or whatever other label you can think of), but failing to specify when someone is European-descended.
I'm sorry for opposing affirmative action. (I do, however, think that there are better alternatives. Though since I'm peach-toned, I could be wrong.)
I'm sorry for instinctively dissing hip-hop because it was invented by dem underedumacated black doodz.
I'm sorry for even having to use the phrase "dem underedumacated black doodz." Especially since you've probably had more schooling than I have.
I'm sorry for ignoring media by and about persons of darker color because I was convinced that I wouldn't be able to relate to it.
I'm sorry that my perception filter allows me to look at a crowd of all-peach people and fail to notice anything odd.
And finally, I am very sorry for feeling that I was superior to my (racist) dad.

I am not asking for forgiveness. I am not attempting to make reparations or whatnot. What I did was inexcusable. This is just me saying that I was a jerk, I realize that now, and I regret it and want to do better. Now I am done apologizing, and I'm going to spend my energy on more constructive things, like learning how to erase the internalized racism I'm currently dealing with and how to call it out when I see it in others.