When Did Pointing Out Racism Become "The Real Racism"?

I want to discuss something that's been on my mind for a bit. On Sunday night, right after the VMA's, (and before it-which-must-not-be-named), I had a long discussion with my 20 year old brother about why I was offended by Miley's performance. He's not totally up on social justice issues, and doesn't have the same context for this stuff as I do, but he's insightful, and willing to engage and learn. The discussion eventually segued into the nature of the word racist and how it is used in conversation of this nature.

He thinks that the word racist is "aggressive" and should only used to describe acts and people who do obviously and maliciously racist things (like... lynching I suppose?) because using it to refer to smaller, unintentional acts of racism immediately puts people on the defensive, and makes them unwilling to listen to you and your line of reasoning, even when you're right.

Now, while I see his point, and agree with his reasoning, I disagree with that sentiment. I think that it's even more important to explicitly label the smaller, unintentional acts of racism as racism, in order to help people recognize that no, you're not in the KuKluxKlan, but yes, pawing at a black woman's hair or calling a black man "boy", or dressing up as an "Indian Chief" for Halloween, or pulling your eyes back to make them slant is still, racist as fuck.

And I got this POV a lot in the comments of the article both here and over at GT over the last few days as well. Including this last one that I got just today:

That being said I don't believe that what is acceptable is one culture should be considered racist unless it actual causes harm to someone. And no one will convince me that dance moves are harmful to anyone other than the dancer.

To me, the unwillingness of people to call those smaller acts exactly what they are, feeds into the idea that racism isn't a big problem anymore. I think it contributes to the rhetoric that PoC are "pulling the race card" when they rightfully call people on their naked prejudices. 

I personally think it's incredibly important to start calling those "smaller" acts of racism out as racism, so that it becomes easier for the population at large to see why things like Miley's twerk obsession/appropriation is so problematic. 

Not calling out micro-aggressions as racism ignores the fact that Impact trumps Intent every time, and perpetuates the idea that a racist comment or joke is somehow purged of its racism because "I didn't mean it that way."

People take the label racist as a personal insult, when in fact it's just a fact of life. According to Jane Elliot:

"If you're not a racist when you leave high school, then you should have failed Social Studies because you weren't paying attention."

And I wholeheartedly agree with that. Being racist and/or prejudiced based on race is something that is ingrained in us. It leaches into our consciousness from television, movies, books, everything. It doesn't make you a bad person if you hold those prejudices. It makes you a bad person if you recognize that you have those prejudices and don't do the work to unlearn them. Because that's a huge part of intersectional feminism for me: consciously unlearning the prejudices that were fed to me as truth.

People don't get defensive when they're accused of racism because in their minds, they aren't racist, and accepting that they may have done/said something racist means acknowledging that they hold the "wrong" beliefs. It means facing the fact that they accept harmful ideas as part of their worldview. But "racism" isn't genetic. It IS something that you can change about yourself if you do the work. 

You can't fix a problem you don't know you have. How are you going to know that what you're saying is racist if people keep dancing around the word out of fear they'll offend? I'm sorry, but fuck your feelings. I'm already offended, and I have good reason to be. So I think I have the right to alert you to your racism and the fact that it's harmful to me.

I actually think that calling out racism might be the only education that PoC "owe" to white people. 

What about you guys? Is it better to tiptoe around the problem in order to avoid offending someone? Or is it more important to be clear and precise about calling our racist actions?

Here Is A Thing That Happened: I Accidentally Went Viral // Miley-Gate 2013

On Monday 26th August, 2013, I published an article entitled Solidarity Is For Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications Of Her VMA Performance. The article quickly went viral, accumulating over one million views, 700 comments, and 100K facebook shares in a little over 24 hours. That does not include the traffic that this blog received from cross-posting the article.

Response was divided, but largely positive, with many people emailing me personally to thank me for the piece, and a number of influential people reposting and discussing the article. This is a summary of the events that led up to my writing the article.

Comments Are Now Closed

The response to the Miley article has been way, WAY disproportionate to what I was expecting. While I've gotten some really sincere positive feedback, I've also had to deal with some devious trolling and personal attacks, and I'm not really able to deal with all of it on my own.

So the comments on this blog (and on the original article over at groupthink) are now closed indefinitely. I will likely never turn the GT comments back on, but the comments here will be back as soon as I think the trolls that have been circling find something else to do with their time.

I'm just one person, and I can't deal with all of the moderation on my own, and frankly this whole thing is stressing me out. So I'm taking a mental health sabbatical, and simply making this space a rhetorical one until further notice. 

To my new readers, I hope you will stay, and that you find other content here that you find engaging. I haven't forgotten you, and I've very grateful for your eyes, and your time. To all the people who have shared and tweeted and commented, I'm grateful for your willingness to be part of this discussion, and engage in meaningful dialogue about an important issue.

And to the ladies and gents of GT, you are the tits and I love you so much for being so amazing and helping me deal with the massive spectacle this has become. I deeply treasure my Trouser award and I have never felt so appreciated!

Feminism: Why Miley Matters OR Our Relationship To Pop Culture Does Not Exist In a Vacuum

Yesterday's post on Miley's VMA performance and the racism she put on display has gotten way bigger than I ever expected. I originally wrote it for Jezebel's Groupthink forum, then cross posted it here. Between the two, the article has racked up close to 12K shares on facebook, nearly 100K views, and enough tweets that I've been getting follow requests to my private twitter account all day; and the numbers will likely only have grown by the time I hit publish. 

But while on a superficial level I'm glad that so many people have read and shared my work, the bigger emotion that overtakes me is relief. Relief that so many people get it. Relief that so many people understand that there was something very, very wrong with what Miley did onstage that night, and it had nothing to do with her costume. Relief that this many people understood that Miley's performance was not a stand-alone occurrence, but a symptom of a much, much bigger problem with the way that blackness, and specifically black womanhood is portrayed in our culture.

Solidarity Is For Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications of Her VMA Performance

Editor's Note: The response to this piece has become a little overwhelming and I'm having some trouble trying to reign it all in, but do know that while I may have to deal with derailers and trolls over on Groupthink, I will not tolerate them here. This blog is my safe space and I will not let anonymous commenters change that. I will be heavily moderating the comments of this article, so think before you post. If your comment accuses me of "reverse racism" or includes derogatory remarks. It will be deleted. If you slut shame Miley Cyrus, your comment will be deleted. If you derail the conversation in any way, your comment will be deleted. Be forewarned.

As a black woman, I feel like I owe a debt of gratitude to Mikki Kendall, of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen fame for managing to so perfectly encapsulate years of subjugation of black women by white women. With those five words, she was able to instantly zero in on why Intersectional Feminism is so necessary if the feminist movement is to progress. 

Because Miley's performance last night, and the subsequent ignoring of the racial implications of what she did is just the latest incident in the long line of things that shows me as a black woman, that white feminism does not want me, or care to have me.

Jezebel's piece on the performance chose to focus on the slut shaming that has been thrown Miley's way in the wake of the performance. All fine and good. Slut shaming is bad, don't do it. On that we can all agree. What it didn't acknowledge was the incredibly racist nature of that performance. So I brought it up.

Okay.... but can we talk about the problematic and racist nature of her performance? Her literal use of people as props? Her association of her newfound sexuality with the traditional codifiers of black female culture, thereby perpetuating the Jezebel stereotype that black women are lewd, lascivious and uncontrollably sexualized? Can we talk about the straight up minstrelsy of that performance? Can we talk about how not a single black person won an award last night even though the people who did win awards have been mining black music and culture for years? 

No? Ok... I'll just sit at the back of the bus then. #solidarityisforwhitewomen

See the problem isn't that they talked about slut shaming. That deserves attention. The problem is that they completely sidestepped the other glaring teddy bear in the room, and that is the commodification of black female sexuality in Miley's performance. But it's not a thing that white women deal with, so it didn't warrant inclusion or discussion by the white-led mainstream feminist media.

On Tone Policing: Why It's Bullshit And Why You Need To Stop

One of the things that bothered me about the discussions that happened online over the HS debacle in the last few days was the rampant tone policing by defensive white women. It didn't happen a ton, but it happened enough that I was genuinely annoyed by it, especially since tone policing is a tactic that MRAs use all the time to derail feminist discussions. To see white women (who are supposed to be allies) use those same tactics against black women as a defense against their justifiable anger, and to protect themselves from accusations of racism was more than a little enraging. 

So in an effort to make sure that no one is ever confused about why tone policing is bullshit and will automatically label someone as racist/sexist in my mind, I've pulled the following quotes from this great piece (which you should read in full) that explains it better than I ever could hope to do:

 It’s cruel and ridiculous to expect a person to be calm and polite in response to an act of oppression. Marginalized people often do not have the luxury of emotionally distancing themselves from discussions on their rights and experiences. 

Tone policing is the ultimate derailing tactic. When you tone police, you automatically shift the focus of the conversation away from what you or someone else did that was wrong, and onto the other person and their reaction. Tone policing is a way of not taking responsibility for fucking up, and it dismisses the other person’s position by framing it as being emotional and therefore irrational. 

But being emotional does not make one’s points any less valid. It’s also important to note that, by tone policing, you not only refuse to examine your own oppressive behavior, but you also can blame that on the other person, because they were not “nice enough” to be listened to or taken seriously.

And the kicker:

Tone policing assumes that the oppressive act is not an act of aggression, when it very much is. The person who was oppressed by the action, suddenly is no longer a victim, but is “victimizing” the other person by calling them out. [...] But anger is valid. Anger is valid, anger is important, anger brings social change, anger makes people listen, anger is threatening, and anger is passion. Anger is NOT counterproductive; being “nice” is counterproductive. Nobody was ever given rights by politely asking for them. Politeness is nothing but a set of behavioral expectations that is enforced upon marginalized people.

Summary? As a black woman, I am entitled to the full spectrum of human emotion, and that includes anger. My anger is justified when it is in response to oppression and oppressive tactics. By you questioning my anger instead of addressing the issues I've raised, you are telling me that I, as the marginalized member in the discussion have a responsibility to make you comfortable before I try to enact change.

I am not responsible for your feelings. I am responsible for making my life better for me and for the people who are similarly oppressed. I give no shits how recognizing your complicity in an oppressive system makes you feel, and I don't have to. No one gives a shit about how it makes me feel when I am told that things would get better if I just "asked nicely". You don't think I've tried that? The reason I'm angry is that I tried playing by your rules of niceness, and you ignored me. 

Obviously, not everyone needed to read this, because most of you ladies on Jez totally get it and I'm grateful. But for the few who don't, I hope this makes you recognize why you will always be forced to deal with the anger of oppressed people.

If after reading all this, you're still butthurt about your fee-fees*, read this piece on how to deal with being called out.

*Yes, that was anger.

Solidarity Is For White Women (But It Doesn't Have To Be)

I've been discussing the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag over on Jezebel for the better part of two days now, and I've noticed that a lot of people had been replying to me in the threads to say that they didn't know, or didn't really understand what happened with this Hugo Schwyzer debacle, so I figured I'd compile all the best links I could find and post them into one spot (off the Gawker server) so people can browse them as they see fit. 

First, a (slightly edited) summary, from the comment I posted on Jezebel's pitiful response of an article: 

Basically Hugo Schwyzer wormed his way into feminist spaces and used white feminists as a shield against criticism for his racism from WoC. Feminist WoC complained, Hugo blackballed and harassed them, and the WoC were labelled troublemakers for making a fuss. 

Come to find, last week HS basically has a meltdown on twitter, and admits that Yes! He is a racist, misogynistic fuck, and he knew it the whole time! He lied to everybody! 

So now, all the white led spaces that ignored WoC's protests are faced with having to deal with the metaphorical jizz on their face, (for empowerment, naturally) from having been TOLD repeatedly by feminist WoC, that he was harmful to feminist spaces and specifically to WoC, and choosing to side with an abuser.

Now, for follow up and background information, start with these:

• Hugo Schwyzer Has What Appears To Be A Major Manic Episode On Twitter
• Controversial "Feminist" Hugo Schwyzer Has A Very Public Meltdown

And continue with the the following:

• Storify of Solidarity Is For White Women
• Does Feminism Have a Race Problem?
• We Need To Talk About Hugo Race And Feminism
• #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen Has Nothing To Do With Hugo; Everything To Do With Listening
• The Soapbox: On #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen; Feminism Is Not Black And White
• Retired Male Feminist Inadvertently Prompts Meaningful Conversation
• H Is For Hubris, Hugo; S Is For Sordid, Schwyzer
• 1o Thoughts On Mental Illness, Abuse And Survivors
• Now Collecting: Hugo Schwyzer Apologists
• I'm The Sex Worker Who Was Outed As Hugo Schwyzer's Sexting Partner
• What I Think of Apologies

The links aren't in chronological order or in order of escalation unfortunately, but together they give a pretty comprehensive view of everything that's happened in the last two days I think. If you have found other links, let me know and I'll add them to the list.

I'm really glad that so many people seemed to be willing to have this discussion even if the editors at Jezebel, XOJane and The Atlantic aren't. I'd also encourage you to engage Mikki Kendall (who started the hashtag) directly on twitter if you have any other questions or concerns I guess. I mean, I can answer stuff from my perspective, but she started this, andI don't want to speak for  her if I can avoid it. Anyway, happy* reading!

*By happy, I mean I hope you don't puke.