On the Palatability of “Racism”

by Shayna L. Fevre, Vanessa Deolinda Tottle, & Gabriel Diego Valdez

There’s been an obsession lately with the terms and definitions we use to describe racism. In the past few months, each of us has brushed up against large discussions regarding how the term “racism” is understood. The running theme from many who join in is that “racism” is too loaded a term, and is often likely to make the average white middle American recoil into his shell the moment it’s uttered.

These conversations, which we’ve observed mostly taking place between millennials of Caucasian descent, are signature of something both good and bad. Good because people are trying to be more aware. Ferguson and Eric Garner may be the headline-grabbing cases, but there are thousands of incidents that mainstream news has passed over covering because they haven’t been forced to do so. Keep in mind, channels like CNN only began covering Garner’s murder after video of police choking the man to death had already exploded across YouTube and alternative media outlets.

Yet it’s also bad because the conversations tend not to center on how people can find roles of support for a fight that’s been going on for our nation’s entire history, nor on how people can contribute to diminishing the power of racism in their own lives, but rather on how they can swoop in and fix the fight itself. It’s not an attitude of helping, it’s an attitude of taking over, of appropriating the fight as a cause celebre.

We also worry that once people feel they’ve done their share, it allows many who weren’t previously engaged in the conversation to recede back into academic, removed views. This creates a worrisome combination where young, well-meaning people enter the conversation, try to lead it instead of listening to what’s already taking place, attempt to make a big change, and – feeling they’ve done so – step back out and leave the conversation even more confused and misrepresented among their peers than it started.

STARBUCKS

Nowhere is this more deeply pronounced at this moment than in Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s announcement that Starbucks’ baristas, armed with no training, are being asked to engage customers about race. How many baristas will be singled out for this duty because of their race? How many customers?

As Think Progress writer Jessica Goldstein observes, despite 40 percent of Starbucks employees identifying as a racial minority, 100 percent of the people in the press photos are white. What’s offensive isn’t that Schultz seeks to discuss racism – it seems to come from an honest place. What’s offensive is that a panel of Caucasian business leaders feel they should come in and, instead of supporting an ongoing conversation, instead of – as Vox writer Jenee Desmond-Harris suggests – bringing in groups like the NAACP or ACLU to design a helpful program, and instead of selling books at their locations that discuss racism and racial injustice, they have decided simply to replace a hard-fought, ongoing conversation with one they thought of in the last few months. The attitude smacks of “We know better,” as if all civil rights leaders have been doing is waiting for a wealthy white man to come in and fix the problems because they’re too incapable.

Customers who discuss race will even be given stickers, as if a participation trophy, to show off their brief involvement in discussing “racism” – excuse us, Starbucks even refuses to use that word – discussing “race.” The notion that someone can do their part by talking about it for 30 seconds via awkward prompts like, “In the past year, I have been to the home of someone of a different race X times” and “How have your racial views evolved from those of your parents?” risk defenses that are, as Desmond-Harris puts it, the equivalent of asking people to respond, “But I have black friends!”

Asking strangers to respond to these prompts in front of strangers is asking them to reconfirm their implicit biases and use culturally ingrained defenses against acknowledging their own racism, not to confront them. It dismisses the possibility for nuance and context, and starts a brand new conversation without the training, history, or context of the old one.

The urge to redefine the conversation about racism stems from an attitude that the conversation itself is too uncomfortable in its present state. In the conversations we’ve observed and participated in recently ourselves, the most common factor is trying to come up with alternate terms or alternate understandings for “racism.”

The notion that either words or definitions are a problem means that we’re not strategizing about the fight over civil rights. Instead, we’re debating about how we’re going to talk about strategizing about the fight over civil rights. We’re several layers of Inception down from reality in this debate, to the point of bordering on a Portlandia skit.

“Racism” as a term is perfectly suited as both a word and in its definition without discussions over whether its associations should be retconned away. Those associations are important, that old definition is important because the baggage it comes with isn’t extraneous to the conversation; it IS the conversation. Cleaning up its definition, cleaning up the conversation, and making it all more palatable, is whitewashing the past in all meanings of the verb.

JOE FLYOVER

The idea that racism and the conversation that surrounds it isn’t palatable, that it’s not tasteful or appealing enough, so we ought to change it, we ought to come up with easier delivery systems – the notion that a term representing a long history of pain and suffering – that those associations, however messy and complex, are too burdensome for someone who’s white to want to cope with is insulting to everyone involved.

First off, the white middle American we spoke of earlier – he was called Joe Flyover in one conversation – he doesn’t care what you call it. Fox News and conservative talk radio give it a word and then spend hours bitching about it. The power is not in the word or how it’s used. The power’s in the bitching. They have the editorial and organizational ability to take any word and burn it down overnight, and we are sick of liberals retreating from one term to the next, seeking new ways to lighten the conversation and make it more palatable, in the search for some magic phrase that will finally convince Middle America.

Secondly, Joe Flyover can be convinced, but the notion that some shift in description is the key to that rather than hammering home the point with pictures, video, arguments – every tool at our disposal – is disrespectful to Joe Flyover. It isn’t the term or conversation that loses him – it is that disrespect he feels when he knows you think he’s too stupid that all it takes is a magic word or phrase to make him magically convert his opinion or change his worldview. People who disagree with us are adults, too.

Joe Flyover is smart and hardworking or he wouldn’t have been able to own that house that’s being flown over in the first place. Joe Flyover is not a focus group to be won over by adding “super” or “sugary” or “minty fresh” or whatever the hell we want to add to the front of “racism.” And that includes avoiding the term “racism” altogether so we can, as Starbucks puts it: “Race Together.”

Joe Flyover can handle the difficulty of the conversation over racism and, in the end, that’s the only way his opinion might change. This obsession with being better at kvetching than Fox News, or outbitching talk radio, of just being that much simpler so that poor Joe Flyover will understand – it’s undoing us. We don’t need to invent new words and new meanings; we need to reinvest power and faith back into the old ones.

USING ONE WORD, DEFINE “RACISM”

The notion that the word “racism” can make someone of a certain privilege uncomfortable because of its associations or complexity is the entire point. The struggle we face isn’t in making “racism” more convenient an issue to face. For everybody who’s not white, it is the experience of facing it on a daily basis that is inconvenient. If the term or the conversation is difficult and requires nuance and explanation, and it’s messy and painful and too confrontational, then good, because all of those associated feelings that can’t be put into words – that’s the definition. That’s the conversation.

The conversation does not need participants who will enter, try to fix everything, and leave 30 seconds later. The conversation does not need African-American, Latin-American, Asian-American, Native American, and other minority voices replaced. It needs those voices boosted.

The mess in your head that “racism” as a term and conversation creates, the cognitive dissonance of what it brings up and what people of a certain privilege have taught themselves to ignore in their everyday lives – the abyssal void that keeps people from being able to marry those two things together – that’s the definition. It’s not meant to be easy. It’s not meant to be palatable. We shouldn’t transform it so that it is. It’s not meant to be defined in a neat, compact phrase everybody can agree on. It’s definition is created by the disagreement it causes, between you and others and especially inside your own head.

Working from a clear or sound bite-appropriate definition of “racism” is not important at all. It’s illusory because understanding of the word is experiential on both ends. You can’t describe “hate” or “love” or “sadness” or “anger” to someone who hasn’t felt that themselves and been the target of someone else feeling that toward them. The problem is that we have all denied having each of those feelings at some point in our lives, and those emotions are much more basic, much less cultural, much less complicated. If we can deny those basic feelings in ourselves so easily, how easily can we deny something more complicated in ourselves, like racism?

RISK AND REWARD

Can these conversations seeking to lead an already-led movement, or this Starbucks effort to replace the old conversation with something more palatable, make a difference in someone’s life or make them confront problems they haven’t? Absolutely. In some circumstances, they will. The question is, will the benefits of conversations being held this way, free of context and nuance, seeking to leave that cognitive dissonance and that history out of it, stressing only the most appealing forms of discussion about racism – will that teach people the right way? Will that do more damage to how people believe racism should be approached as a topic, will that train people of certain privileges to appropriate the topic as their own rather than to educate themselves about the work others have done?

Institutional and systematized racism are problems, clearly, but the third rail of a topic that’s already treated as a third rail is implicit bias. We can walk into a Starbucks and agree that the first two forms are a problem, and walk out, and feel good about ourselves, as if we did our part and made some change. We even have the sticker to prove it. We can’t walk into a Starbucks and – in 30 seconds – do anything but burrow further into our own implicit racism.

Think of it this way. It’s easy to insult the way someone else looks in that span of time – that’s called gossip. We don’t gossip about ourselves. That’s unnatural. We defend ourselves from gossip. How do you look in a mirror and accept criticism from a stranger serving you coffee in the space of 30 seconds, if that long? We don’t. We’ll make the conversation more palatable, we’ll come to snappy conclusions, we’ll judge others but not ourselves, and come away feeling as if we did our part when we’ve made no corresponding change in the real world, or worse yet – further adopted an attitude of co-optation toward a pre-existing conversation.

As Medium writer Tressie McMillan Cottom puts it, “It takes a lot of training and a lot of institutional support to teach people things they would rather not hear.” She warns, “We may be at a point when the language about race and racism has been so degraded that it can be a corporate initiative. By definition that means having little potential for risk and some amorphous attention value. If talking about race is a shortcut to the sort of medium fame that is all the rage on social media, then talking about race is meaningless.”

That’s the risk. Will it happen? Not necessarily. But it’s a hell of a risk, and the reward seems to be a temporary cultural appeasement for those who most need to be confronted, at a time when that confrontation is primed. The reward is replacing an old conversation that’s gained power because of what we see in the news with a new conversation that lacks the history, training, and time to delve into anything meaningful. The reward is feeling like participation trophies are good enough when it comes to discussing racism, that 30 seconds is good enough, that acknowledging it in others but not ourselves is good enough.

The fight against racism and for civil rights needs white allies, not white leaders. It needs minority voices boosted, not white ones drowning them out, and it needs us all to confront the bias we each hold, no matter how progressive, so that we can begin to face what’s inside ourselves down, so that we don’t seek to make “racism” more palatable a topic, but rather begin to acknowledge that our discomfort with it is not a problem with the term or the conversation, but rather in ourselves.

Have You Heard… Marvin Gaye?

“What’s Going On”

by Gabriel Valdez

“Have you heard Marvin Gaye?” is a silly question. Of course you have. His songs are on the radio all the time. But have you sought him out lately, not to listen to in passing when tuning the radio or on the overhead speakers at a mall?

In the wake of Ferguson… “wake” isn’t even the right word because it pretends the moment has passed. In light of Ferguson, in its shadow, however you want to put it…please seek out Marvin Gaye.

His 1971 song “What’s Going On” talks about poverty, striking workers, violence in the streets, and a war in its second decade that no one wanted to be a part of in the first place. Whether the quality of Marvin’s musicianship or the quality of our country at the moment, the song is as relevant and compelling today as the day it was recorded.

“What’s Going On” was conceived by Four Tops member Obie Benson. He had witnessed an anti-war protest in which police had senselessly and violently beaten protestors. Al Cleveland wrote the song with Benson, and it was revised by Gaye, who wanted to infuse it with the emotion he felt when exchanging letters with his brother Frankie, a soldier trapped in the Vietnam War.

Once his brother returned home, Marvin reportedly told him, “I didn’t know how to fight before, but now I think I do. I just have to do it my way. I’m not a painter. I’m not a poet. But I can do it with music.”

“What’s Going On” may be about a moment in time, but it captures a struggle that surpasses that moment. It reminds us to each find our own way to fight. It’s a song that does the rarest thing – it recognizes the desperation in its listener, however deeply it’s hidden. It acknowledges that desperation and commiserates with it, and then asks, “What now?”

Ferguson Sacrificed Itself to Give Us an Opportunity

by Gabriel Valdez

Protestors setting their community alight in acts of brazen defiance? I’m so glad people are supportive of these acts of frustrated protest. That such civil disobedience can raise $121 million in our country over a weekend is remarkable. Truly, we understand our long history of protest against a justice system established to find the poor and downtrodden guilty of being poor and downtrodden, that ghettoizes minorities, and reports on those less fortunate as if they were animals.

Those successful riots and acts of defiance were in The Hunger Games, though. Why do we find those acts compelling on a movie screen and, days later, turn around and condemn them in Ferguson, Missouri?

We just had our hearts moved by the struggle of a people who feel oppressed and must violently rebel. We saw the sacrifices they had to make in order to do so, sacrifices that most of us have never had to face and might not be willing to make. We just saw it in a movie, now it’s happening in real life, and we have the gall as a people to feel more empathy for the characters who are made up with names like Katniss and Peeta?

We look on in horror at buildings burning, at tear gas in the streets, at injured being loaded into cars and rushed to the hospital. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I don’t want anyone’s livelihood to be ruined. Yet in many ways I am thankful this is happening. I was worried this would fizzle out, that people would shrug and go back home and there would be protests but they would have lost their heart. Instead, people who were willing to risk life and limb in order to display their frustration with a broken justice system forced this conversation to be front and center. Today, we cannot ignore it.

They did it using the very tools we so often cheer on screen. Why can’t we cheer them the same way here?

When any of us don’t get what we feel we deserve in our lives, sometimes we get angry. On a city-wide (or nation-wide) scale, when what you want is justice, equal treatment, and a fair trial according to the rule of our land, getting angry is going to mean fires and rocks and lord knows what else. But you know what? Every ethnicity – Irish, Germans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, African-Americans, every single ethnicity – has had to get monumentally angry at some point in our history in order to get heard. To say your ethnicity’s moment of anger was somehow more warranted than this one doesn’t leave the door open behind you.

When the system so clearly breaks, moments of such widespread anger are the only thing capable of causing change over time. To pretend as if the residents of Ferguson are doing anything different than what every race has a long history of doing in the United States is, to put it quite simply, insanely racist.

Is Ferguson’s reaction too violent? Is it too destructive? You know what? I’m not going through what they’re going through. I am not qualified to be their judge. If you’re sitting at home, watching news anchors call them traitors or field reporters trespass to shove cameras in the faces of those suffering, then chances are you are not qualified to be their judges either. Whether they intend to or not, Ferguson burned down their city last night for so many other cities that face the same struggle. That their city burned down last night means other cities might not. If we cheer their cause. If we pay attention.

You want to be exactly like your heroes on screen, like Katniss and Peeta and Luke and Han and Leia and Maleficent and Captain America? You cheer on this cause. You don’t avert your eyes. You witness it. You let it burn into you so that you remember how damaging and painful injustice is. This moment can be a memory that changes something, that makes all that pain worth it. Or it can be a moment that happens again and again and again.

There is no difference between what happens on-screen in a movie and what happens in real life, except this: You can change what happens in real life. You can be the hero. All a hero is made of is the willingness to help. Don’t waste this opportunity to make your voice known. Don’t waste this opportunity to stand up for people who are suffering. A city burned. How much pain do you have to feel to burn your city? Do something about that pain. Be brave, make mistakes, but do something about that pain.

Go Watch This: Black Lives Matter — Requiem for Mike Brown

by Cleopatra Parnell

Organized protestors delayed the St. Louis Symphony on Oct. 4 when 50 stood up and began singing “Justice for Mike Brown.” The audience had just returned from intermission. The orchestra had not resumed playing, but most of the audience was in their seats.

It’s an intelligent and respectful demonstration that reminds us the movement in Ferguson continues. In many ways, protestors of a democracy turning further toward oligarchy, military-industrialism, and prison-industrialism have been disorganized the last two decades. The Occupy movement was a bright spot, but was short-lived and disorganized. Tea Party protests on the right failed to attract great numbers or develop any consistency to their message.

This year, with a climate march in New York measuring 400,000 people, and ongoing demonstrations in Ferguson, St. Louis, and beyond entering their third month, we have found the face of a movement.

That face is not Michael Brown’s. Most people would not recognize him. All the news has shown are blurred video images. That face is not Trayvon Martin’s. We know his hoodie, but we don’t know him. That face is not John Crawford’s, who we only know slumping to the ground dead on grainy footage.

No, that face is the face of a police officer, unremarkable, wearing sunglasses or perhaps riot gear. That face is indistinguishable, because that officer is holding a gun. You don’t look at the face. You look at the gun. That face is the use of force against the disadvantaged, both foreign and domestic. Whether shot in a Walmart or struck by a missile because you live in the same apartment building as a wanted man, we are now a country for whom trials and the justice system are vestigial organs.

The face of America’s protest movement no longer belongs to the latest man shot dead in the streets. The face of that movement belongs to the barrel of a state-issued gun. If you thought demonstrators were angry and organized over men who were shot, imagine how effective we’ll be now that the gun is so clearly pointed at all of us.

Silent All These Years — American Terror Story

WARNING: This post contains graphic, documented footage of police and military brutality.

by Vanessa Tottle

What is there to say about being black? I held a weeping friend last night. She had clawed scratches in her deep black face. I thought that only happened in the movies.

What is there to say about being a woman? I wish I weren’t. That is what you’ve made of us: I wish I was a white man with a gun and the badge to give me freedom to exorcise my demons on the body of another.

What is there to say to you, America? You have taken all my freedoms to give to new Middle Eastern despots who do not want them, who in 20 years will turn around and need fresh wars to overthrow their horrors.

And you will send in our black babies and brown babies and red babies and yellow babies who are by then old enough to go to college but won’t, because college will be a luxury and useless in the service economy that serves white men with guns and the badge to give them freedom to exorcise their demons on my body. On the body of the daughter I may one day have. On her daughter’s body. As tradition dictates.

Ask not what you can give for your country, it was never handed out. You have to give a life in service behind a counter at minimum wage, or a life in service behind a rifle at even less.

Women have to give our bodies, which were never fully ours. They are rentals, waiting for the day their mark is called and we submit ourselves to what we’re often told is duty. The mistake was thinking we were never built on bodies, swaddled in the blisters of smallpox blankets. The mistake was thinking we were never built on bodies, on the backs of bent black slaves. The mistake was thinking we were never built on bodies, on a Mexico that stretched to Washington State. On the Iroquois and Mohawk, on Comanche, on Aztlan and Navajo and Inuit, on Puerto Ricans and Spaniards and Filipinos, on the corpses of Latin America, on Cubans, Guatemalans, on Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Egyptians, Libyans, Afghans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, and how many dead little kids making shoes and jeans in pan-Pacific firetrap workshops.

The mistake was thinking democracy made us better than dictatorships and communists. The mistake was thinking democracy was anything but brand loyalty. The mistake was thinking a serial killer deserves to be the world’s police.

And now we are the world’s police. And look how they act. They shoot the black and poor in store aisles, at gas stations, outside convenience stores. We shoot Muslims in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan. We are the country with a gun and the badge that gives us freedom to exorcise our demons on the bodies of others.

I am terrified to be a woman in America.

I am terrified to be a human in America.

I am terrified to step out of my home when in America.

I am not the only one.

If I could cut this uterus from me and lay it in Congress’ chambers as their prize, I would. If I could bleach my skin a blinding white, I would. That is what you’ve made of us. You could have it all, America, and I could go about my life free from all your terror.

Thank you to Amanda Smith for verifying all video is real footage.