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.