Actually, Wells Fargo has been getting sued quite a lot. First the NAACP, then Baltimore, and now Illinois.

The New York Times has some statements from former Wells Fargo employees, describing how the system works. Some of the details are jaw-dropping:

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

“We just went right after them,” said Ms. Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank’s top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.” [...]

Mr. Paschal, who is black and worked as a loan officer in Wells Fargo’s office in Annandale, Va., from 1997 to 2007, offers a sort of primer on Wells Fargo’s subprime marketing strategy by race.

In 2001, he states in his affidavit, Wells Fargo created a unit in the mid-Atlantic region to push expensive refinancing loans on black customers, particularly those living in Baltimore, southeast Washington and Prince George’s County, Md. [...]

“They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as ‘those people have bad credit’, ‘those people don’t pay their bills’ and ‘mud people,’ ” Mr. Paschal said in his affidavit. [...]

Both loan officers said the bank had given bonuses to loan officers who referred borrowers who should have qualified for a prime loan to the subprime division.

One example given: Loan officers would falsely claim that Black borrowers had declined to provide documentation of their income, which “flipped” the loan from prime to subprime.

As The Chicago Reporter Blog points out, Wells Fargo isn’t alone. Throughout the industry, Blacks get loans on worse terms than whites with lower earnings.

Wells Fargo is not the only lender giving high-cost loans more often to its highest-earning black customers. Nationwide, African Americans earning more than $300,000 were more likely to get high-cost loans than Asian, Latino and white borrowers earning less than $40,000, according to a Reporter analysis last November.

While income may not accurately reflect credit worthiness, fair lending advocates often point to the racial disparities between wealthy blacks and lower-income individuals of other races and ethnicities as red flags.

I hope these suits encourage a lot of other attorney generals to go rooting through records for evidence of lending racism.

* * *

One thing to keep in mind: It’s not like the lending market just suddenly turned racist now. It’s been like this all along; it’s just that sub-prime lending has made it especially evident.

(Thanks to Brian for reminding me of this story.)

Originally I wasn’t going to write any posts for IBARW. Then it was just going to be the one. I’m up to three* now. Because it’s been that kind of week. And since this post is about emotion it’s probably not going to be as polished as some of my other pieces. Or as polite. But, that’s the risk you take when you talk about race and racism with a POC. One of the things people tend to say to me (especially after they’ve tried to hammer sense into someone’s head for hours only to discover that bigotry can be a security blanket to some people) is that they don’t know how I keep my calm in these conversations. And I tend to wave it off, because really I don’t see a point in talking about the emotional impact of participating in these discussions. No, that’s a lie. I do talk about it. In safe spaces, behind closed doors with people I know I can trust. Because that’s the only place it’s (generally) acceptable to show weakness as an anti-racist POC. Otherwise the slurs and the misconceptions and the appropriation and the fucking fail will make you cry in front of people who have already made it clear that your feelings don’t matter to them.

Because if they cared about the feelings of POC they wouldn’t use racial slurs, they wouldn’t insist that we have no right to dictate the treatment of our cultural icons, they wouldn’t say that we were too angry (By the way, who stays calm and patient when someone is shitting on their shoe?) to discuss things “rationally”, they wouldn’t insist that being called out on their bigoted statements is more painful than being the target of bigotry. Basically they’d treat us the way they want to be treated and stop expecting POC to meekly accept being spit on, their culture, music, and religion picked apart for a moment’s entertainment, their families dehumanized and disrespected, their history and their literature discounted and ignored…all without ever once expressing their anger or their hurt. Because that’s the wrong tone. And of course when POC say “Turnabout is fair play, if I can’t talk about my emotions then yours don’t count either” suddenly we’re so cruel or we’re attacking or we’re still not using the right tone if we want to end racism. Because clearly if we’re calm enough and nice enough in the face of offensive behavior then everything will get better right? After all that’s usually what’s implied someone trots out MLK Jr. as an example of how POC should behave in the face of racism. I heartily suggest the next person to feel that urge spend some quality time reading Letter From a Birmingham Jail and recognize that nonviolent protests didn’t include smiling sweetly and eating shit.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Now this might shock and/or offend some people, but I have to say that today is not a day when I give a fuck. Because when POC have teaching moments? It costs us. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. It’s a sacrifice that we choose to make in an effort to improve things. It’s a moment (or more) out of our lives that we knowingly open ourselves up to things that any sane person would want to avoid under normal circumstances. Because there is no other option. Oh, we could leave the people saying awful things to wallow in ignorance. But in the long run isolationism is not actually a helpful position. Especially since we are living in a global society, and there really is nowhere to withdraw to for the long haul. So, we wade in when we can, and we try to make sure that if even if the person saying offensive things doesn’t get it; other people reading will have access to the right information. And sometimes when the fail is too big and the pain is too acute? We get sarcastic and snark the stupid. Because you have to do something to ease the trauma when you’re 100 comments in and people are still insisting that the 65 links to respectable websites, 23 bits of anecdata, and the entire weight of history are all wrong and it’s the fault of POC that racism isn’t gone because they insist on being people of color instead of “normal” white people. It’s hard enough to stand strong in the face of willful stupidity, don’t expect us to be nice about it too. Gallows humor is often the best coping mechanism available. For the record, anger is a perfectly valid emotion but don’t get confused…we have others too…you just don’t get to see them.

* This post is actually a couple of days old so I think my count is 4 or 5 posts now. Originally I wasn’t going to post this here, but after reading some of the responses to IBARW I think it’s important that a wider audience sees this and gets a little reminder of our reality.

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In case you haven’t been aware, this is International Blog Against Racism Week. It is, in fact, the fourth annual such week. A bunch of our posts this week have been tagged ibarw, but I did want to provide a pointer to the community where there is a massive collection of links from dozens, maybe hundreds, of bloggers taking part. As I say every year, we always blog against racism on the ABW but I still like to take part in ibarw. This time around I decided to tackle an issue I have not specifically written a post about.

Lately I’ve been thinking about intersectionality a great deal. In terms of my own work as an activist against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression and in how I would like to see the anti-oppression structures and organizations around me behave. Recently I had a big intersectionality fail which set the gears in my head turning. The more I contemplate it, the more I feel as though I want to center my activism around this concept. Well, moreso than I am doing at present.

For those of you unaware, Intersectionality is a theory which “holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, species or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination.”¹ You’ve seen us talk about it a lot as concerns feminism, and how mainstream feminists relate (or don’t relate) to women of color. How the issues that we face as people of color, as people of color from various cultural, ethnic and national backgrounds, AND as women are different to the ones faced by white women. They are related, but not always the same. We cannot divorce our gender from our race/ethnicity.²

As an antiracist activist I like to think that I am less prone to fail when it comes to issues of race and ethnicity, but as recent events have shown, I am not completely devoid of it. I hope that my experiences have helped me in that I can admit it when I fail and apologize and do better, but obviously not failing at all is the goal. I don’t often recognize what I’m on about in instances like that because I enter territory where the oppression is not about me, it’s about someone else. I can understand on one level and still not Get It on a deeper level.

This is why intersectionality is important — so that we can all strive to Get It on every level.

Striving for better understanding of intersectionality will help eliminate instances of Oppression Olympics — folks going on and on about who has it harder or better in this or that area is not going to solve the core issues. Focusing on just one oppression without considering how it intersects with others is alienating and often results in a lack of real progress.

This is true on the big picture level and all the way down to individuals. It’s even harder for some people to grasp that the resolution to one group’s problems may not lead to the resolution for everyone’s.

When groups or individuals fail at intersectionality it can often lead to people who should be working together instead feeling resentful or hostile toward one another (see again: feminism and WOC). It gets particularly messed up when people who work against one aspect of prejudice engage in prejudicial or oppressive behavior themselves then get upset when folks call them on their problematic behavior.

A recent example: A few months ago during a coda to RaceFail (called MammothFail), a series of events led a POC that goes by the handle neo_prodigy³ to call for a day of creativity featuring fans and writers of color. He created a LiveJournal community called Fen of Color United, hilariously shortened to foc_u. A lot of people were excited and jumped on board and loved the idea (because it was a good one).

Then (white) blogger Nick Mamatas pointed out that neo_prodigy had been involved in a heated debate a few years ago with Nick’s then girlfriend and, in that debate, neo himself had called the girlfriend a bitch and used other gendered or otherwise prejudicial slurs against her and her friends. Then neo’s female best friend, alundra001⁴, came along to call her a cunt, and neo had no problem with that at all. He encouraged alundra’s going after her.⁵ Nick pointed out that this was the guy in charge of our new “safe space”, as neo had advertised foc_u.

Many people were Not Pleased. When commenters and members of foc_u attempted to bring this up on the group and get clarification or explanation or even some kind of “that was wrong of me”, the comments were, as I understand it, often deleted or ignored. I participated in the foc_u day of creativity and had joined the community, but after it became clear that neo was not going to address the issue in any real way (see: evasion, blaming everyone else, strawmen, you name it⁶ ), I left.

I got the impression that neo_prodigy felt he shouldn’t have been called out on his past actions or that they did not matter in the context of the work he was doing with foc_u. They do matter, though, because the membership of the community (both that specific one and the wider SF/fan one) is made up of women as well as men. And the language he used and condoned and encouraged is not beneficial to, is offensive to, and is actively worked against by most of those women.

This is the biggest evil of Intersectionality Fail: not recognizing that your activism, useful and wonderful though it may be, does not give you a pass on other problematic behavior. No matter if that behavior is active, such as the above, or passive, as when the concerns of one group are simply ignored or not considered. People aren’t going to ignore your sexism just because you work against racism. People are not going to ignore your racism because you campaigned for marriage equality. No one is going to allow you to oppress others just because you’re oppressed yourself.

This issue is not limited to sex and race, it applies to all oppressions, marginalizations, prejudices, discriminations.

As activists, as people who wish to eliminate -isms, I think it’s imperative to get a better grasp on intersectionality and incorporate it into the work we do and the words we speak. I feel that marginalized groups have a better than average chance of making this work because we already know what it means to be casually dismissed or slurred against or even to have to suffer cluelessness. We just have to be willing to admit it when we don’t get it right and learn from that. I hope it then makes it easier to deal with when someone says “You’re engaging in these activities/this speech and it’s offensive/hurtful/wrong.” Even if they say it in anger or with the wrong “tone”.

Intersectionality doesn’t have to be about reactions to mistakes or fail, though. It’s also about taking in on yourself to learn, to form better bonds, to understand, to change yourself the way you’ve asked others to change. I’m working on it, and it’s hard. But I won’t stop, it’s too important.

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Footnotes

1. that would be from Wikipedia, yes.
2. Recent example of this very discussion right here.
3. neo_prodigy publishses under the name Dennis R. Upkins, which I assume is his real name.
4. It’s been postulated that alundra is actually just neo’s sockpuppet. This seems likely since she seems to exist solely to ego boost, back up, and attack people for neo. Specifically to say things he can’t/shouldn’t say — like calling a woman a cunt; because it’s completely acceptable  for another woman to do so. Tip: it is not.
5. You can no longer see the original posts where this went down because they are locked/private, but you can see Nick’s post and the explanations in the comments. Having seen neo’s original posts myself, I can say that the descriptions are accurate.
6. After he made a public post on foc_u about it in May I messaged him privately about my concerns. He body-swerved the issue by claiming I was only against him because I know the people involved and insisted that everyone else had “moved on.” Note: they had not. He then sent possible-sockpuppet alundra to taunt me a second time, telling me I was “doing feminism wrong”.

I was totally planning to talk about something other than race and racism today. But then I read this post about residential schools and the subsequent fallout in Canada. And it got me thinking about the long term impact of racism on our community and the half life of such a virulent disease. (Some of the comments also pissed me off, but again we’re back to context and respect and I’m just not in the mood today.) And the fact that even though reparations for the descendants of slaves has been a hotly debated topic for years now, no one seems to be willing to make reparations for the effects of racism itself. I’m not even talking about cash (or the famed 40 acres and a mule) moreso I’m thinking of steps being taken to heal the damaged thought processes that have become such a part of our society.

Obviously we can’t change what’s being taught at home. But, what about investing in teaching history properly with all the facts from K-12th grade instead of letting college be the place where people (those who take the right classes and pay attention in them) get a clue about race relations throughout history? Or spending less money on jails and weapons and more on targeted social programs and funding quality schools for all? Access to quality medical care and decent food couldn’t hurt, especially if we stop criminalizing poverty and start trying to eradicate it. There is so much that could be done to actually level the playing field and benefit everyone. Racism (and the other ‘isms) will destroy society if left unchecked so let’s vaccinate our children.

Mind you, none of these ideas are new and none of them are going to fix what’s wrong right here and right now. But, if we took a long term view and we set a stage for our kids where diplomacy and respect trumped “Those people are all X” and “We have to protect our way of life” then just maybe 200 years from now there won’t be a need for conversations about whether or not people forced into schools dedicated to destroying their culture and their language were abused “enough” to qualify for reparations. Possibly we could be a society that doesn’t think assimilation is the key to success. Maybe (and I know this is a big maybe) we could stop bigotry before it starts and really turn this into a post-racial, post-classist, post-sexist society?

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As is often the case during major online blowups of one kind or another, I have lately found myself having to explain more often than I would care to the difference between “You said something racist” and “You are a racist.” Granted, a lot of people, including anti-racist activists, make a step from the first statement to the next with no problem. But it isn’t always the case that someone who says racist or sexist or other oppressive/prejudiced things is themselves a prejudiced, racist, or sexist person. They can be, certainly. And if you give certain people enough time and space to talk, they’ll prove themselves so.

But not always.

I want to try and unpack this in a way that will benefit future discourse because I think this is a very important point. I’m not the only person to point this out, of course. But it helps me to be a better debater in the future if I make posts and put my thoughts in order.

The truth is, everyone can make prejudiced, offensive or oppressive statements. Many people have prejudiced thoughts. And I mean people as in humans as in everyone, not just those whose groups have historical power.

In the case of those who do not belong to the dominant group, those statements can be hurtful, but often do not have the same impact. This is due to power imbalance.¹ When someone in the dominant group says something prejudiced or offensive, many people will (perhaps correctly) assume that they said such a thing because they really think and believe it. And if a person really believes that prejudiced thing, they must be prejudiced themselves. This is not illogical.

However, humans often are.

Bias, prejudice, wrong thinking can be the product of conscious thought or unconscious/unexamined thought. It seems to me that a large percentage of people who bust out with really ignorant statements often do so because they have not ever, ever truly thought them through to their logical conclusions. If they did, or if someone challenged them to, their thinking could change.

Most activists realized this about people long ago. And thus many attempt to make a distinction between “You said something X-ist” and “You are a X-ist.”

Doing this is hard. Especially when the words that come out of people’s mouths are so very, very hurtful or very, very ignorant. It also doesn’t help when the person is acting like a jerk, all prejudicial talk aside. That is usually when people make the leap from “you said” to “you are” — I include myself in this.

So, two thoughts. One for those who say things that get them in trouble, one for those who hear/read these things.

First, the guide to How Not To Be Insane When Accused of Racism is very, very useful and I suggest you read it. Also, I urge you to read or listen carefully when someone takes exception to something you said/wrote. Are they saying that you’re an X-ist? Or are they saying that what you said is X-ist? If they say the latter they’re trying to make the distinction I’ve been talking about here, and you will not help the conversation by assuming they’re accusing you of the former.

If you are being accused of X-ism, then it would behoove you to examine what about your statement made people say that about you. Do not attempt to destroy, suppress or otherwise derail the discussion of racism (it’s not helpful either to you or to other arguing against you). And remember that admitting that you were wrong to say that X-ist thing is not the same as admitting you are an X-ist yourself.

Second, for those who see or read offensive, X-ist, prejudicial, or stereotypical things, I suggest attempting to make a distinction between what folks say and what they are. It’s not an easy path to take, and it involves a lot of giving the benefit of the doubt, patience, and tolerance. But I think it does help to start by saying “you said something x-ist/offensive” instead of “you are an x-ist because you said that” unless this person has proven, through past or further statements and actions that they are indeed x-ist.

Then you can have at.

That’s my advice, take it or leave it as you will. I do admit that for the activist, this can be hard. Especially when you run up against the thousandth instance of a particular prejudicial or offensive mindset. I make no claim on being perfect or even halfway decent in this regard at all times. I’m just trying.

I’m hoping for better discourse, but I have little hope of getting it from certain quarters of the population.

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1. A black person calls a white person a cracker: that’s not cool. But it does not have the same impact, or have the same level of wrongness, as a white person calling a black person a nigger. Still, doing both things is wrong, period.

By now, you’ve probably heard all about the dust-up surrounding Justine Larbalestier’s latest novel, Liar.

If you haven’t, you can start with Justine’s big post on the subject, and follow that up with this Publishers Weekly article, in which Bloomsbury has some very fascinating things to say.

The short version: Justine Larbalestier, a fairly well-known YA writer, wrote a novel featuring a bi-racial main character with short, kinky hair and fairly dark skin. These features and her bi-racial identity are crucial to her characterization and certain aspects of the book. This is particularly important because the character, Micah, is a pathological liar, which means that what the reader can discern as unequivocally true about her character becomes crucial to the reading experience.

Let me pause here to note that, unbelievable though it may seem, authors generally have very little input on the direction of the covers of their books. Often they have no input at all, and even when they do, publishers frequently strong-arm them into covers they are not happy with. Though it might seem strange for those who don’t have much experience in publishing, this is true of even relatively Big Name Authors, let alone one who is still building her career and reading base like Larbalestier. I just wanted to make this clear, because some people seem to think that authors have creative control or the final say over what appears on the covers of their books. Alas, this isn’t so (and, frankly– though certainly not in this case– one could make the argument that authors are perhaps not the best arbiters of what would work on their covers).

What happened is that Bloomsbury USA (her publisher) took this (truly excellent) book and designed a cover I suppose they felt would appeal the most to their base.

With a white girl. A white girl with long, straight, light-brown hair.

Here, take a look:

Now, pursuant to the discussion above (authors have not much/no say over their covers), plenty of photo realistic covers misrepresent characters in some way. Indeed, if you plow through the comments at Larbalestier’s blog or (if you dare) here at Boing Boing, you will see plenty of people happily Missing The Point and telling the sad tale of the time their red-haired protagonist was portrayed as auburn or something.

The publisher would like us to pretend that this is not a particularly egregious case of racist whitewashing (a problem endemic in publishing), but a matter of taste, perhaps even a bit of a literary game, a visual play on a admittedly secondary, but still valid interpretation of Larbalesteir’s text.

Don’t believe me? Let’s listen to Melanie Cecka, who worked on Liar, and defended the cover in Publishers Weekly:

“The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar,” said Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers, who worked on Liar. “Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?”

Well, imagine that! Never mind that the author herself, and any reasonable interpretation of the text, would say otherwise. Never mind that Micah’s racial identity is crucial to the book. She’s a liar, so of course she would lie about her race. And of course the publisher only intended to make a clever play on this fact with the cover:

“Clearly, our striving for ambiguity with this cover, and for it to be interpreted as a ‘lie’ itself didn’t work for everyone. But again, if this jacket proves a catalyst for a bigger discussion about how the industry is dealing with its books on race, that’s a very large good to come of this current whirlwind.”

As someone noted in one of the comment threads (apologies– I can’t find the exact one at the moment), it’s a given that Cecka and Bloomsbury would have put a black girl on the cover of a book about a white pathological liar.

Wait, what’s that? You mean to tell me that there are criminally few YA books that prominently feature black faces? And those that are tend to be relegated to the “Urban” section of the bookstore? You mean that a YA novel with a black face on the cover has never had the full weight of a publishing house behind it (announced print run for Liar: 100,000 copies)?

I’d hope this would speak for itself, but if not, here’s the explicit version: Bloomsbury is in high ass-covering mode, and they are grasping at the only defense they have, despite the way it disrespects both the text and their audience, because they know on some level that what they did was wrong.

Not just wrong, but racist.

Frankly, I don’t think we should let them get away with it. Write about this on your blogs, your livejournals, your facebook updates and your tweets. If you like, contact Bloomsbury by phone or email and let them know that you find this behavior unacceptable.

And let me just say this, even if it were unequivocally true that Black Covers Don’t Sell (the thinking that pervades the industry), that would still make what Bloomsbury has done equally abhorrent. Money and marketing does not give you a free pass to be racist. “Practical” considerations don’t make it okay to pretend that a black character is white just to attract more readers. For the record, I doubt this is true, but you know what? I don’t fucking care. Morals for profits has never been an even trade.

I am very glad that this conversation is happening, but not in the way Cecka seems to think it is. I’m glad that we are finally getting a glimpse behind the curtain, an insight into the way racist thinking pervades the still almost-entirely-white publishing industry. I am also glad that we are seeing the vast disconnect between multi-cultural, engaged, and online YA readers and the apparently clueless people publishing books for them. It has been heartening to read the multiple posts by librarians and bookstore buyers who have expressed their desire for more black and non-white faces on book covers, because their readers are hungry for them. ***

In the spirit of that, here’s a great list of YA about POC, compiled by a YA reader of color as part of a guest post on Larbalestier’s blog. And if you know of other great YA that explicitly feature a person (or people!) of color on the cover, please link to it in the comments. Surely the best way to prove Bloomsbury wrong is to make sure that Black Books DO Sell.

*** It’s not really appropriate for this post, but I do want to get into the impression that some people seem to have that books about race are therefore about racism (scroll down a bit). I am baffled about the presence of most of those books on that list (Their Eyes Were Watching God?) Invisible Man is about racism. It’s also one of the finest books of the 20th century. The rest? They’re about the experiences of black people in regards to a whole host of issues, of which race is an integral part. Why do some feel it’s okay to dismiss books as being “about racism,” even if it were true? Is this just another example of the apparently pathological desire of some people to pretend/wish/pray that race doesn’t exist, such that any mention of race becomes, in their minds, automatically a depiction of racism? Does this say much, much more about them than the books they discuss? But yes, another post.

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We talk a lot about racism in America (particularly the violent sort of racism usually tied into supremacy groups) and it tends to be viewed as the only “real” problematic behavior by a lot of people. A smaller set of conversations also recognize aversive racism (stereotypes, even “positive” ones are not okay and often are completely invalid), and occasionally we even wade into this new ground of what I call “victim” racism. What’s that? That’s when people say racist things and then swear up and down they are not racist and are deeply offended at any implication that they are racist. This one often involves someone saying things like “Why is it okay to have the United Negro College Fund? That’s reverse racism” and seems to be rooted in a refusal to grasp even the slightest bit of historical context. Then again, it’s not like high school history classes are about putting events in context. For some reason in most places that doesn’t happen until college and by then the classes are mostly optional. But that’s a whole other conversation and while I might write that post, today’s offering for International Blog Against Racism Week pertains to the things that don’t get discussed outside of closed doors most of the time.

Namely what happens when you grow up in a culture saturated with racism and you are a POC. I’ve talked some about learning to love my appearance, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about learning to love my culture. About learning to see being black as a gift and not a curse. There’s a community on LJ called Oreos which is devoted to black folks that don’t feel like they are like “those” black people. And of course there is no true yardstick of blackness, but then again that feeling of being separate isn’t about being black enough, it’s about not liking the parts of yourself that you’ve deemed as being too black. Quiet as it’s kept, I went through this whole phase where I was the black friend that said I didn’t mind white people saying nigger or who sat there silent and uncomfortable while the white people around me said things about black people and then offered (sometimes with a hint of shame) that they didn’t mean black people like me.

And of course my discomfort with myself meant that I had my share of conflicts with the “mean” black girls of such renown. Now that I am a mean black girl? I can totally see what they were trying to do when they teased me for always hanging out with white kids and my (terrifying) tendency to put up with the kind of ill shit that I’d slap someone for now. It wasn’t (just) about being mean, it was about knocking some sense into me. Because I drank from the Goblet of Internalized Racism and in between my moments of looking down on them for being ghetto (too loud, too rough, too dark, and whatever else I was so busy judging I couldn’t even consider the reality that we were growing up in the same damned neighborhood) I was setting myself up to play Happy Token Darkie. And no one likes to watch a black person coon…well except for bigots. I can’t even claim that I had no idea that I was cooning, because of course when I heard the “those black people” comments a part of me wanted to scream at them. But I didn’t. Not at first. Certainly not at Whitney Young (admittedly it wasn’t anywhere near as overt as at Downers Grove North) and it took me a while once I was surrounded by overt racism to start to find my blackness and my love for my skin and my culture. But in the pressure cooker that was life between 15 and 25 I finally found it and I’ve had to learn over the years since to nurture it and let it grow.

Of course this process hasn’t been easy or comfortable or even particularly straightforward. Because self-hating black folk have a lot of reasons to keep the hate. Start with the rewards they can reap from the establishment for jumping on the bandwagon (if I never see another black Republican sharing a stage with a guy who makes no secret of being proud of flying the Confederate flag it will be too soon) and add all the pathology that can form as a result of the reinforcement provided by the institutional racism that is part of our society and you get people that have their whole identity invested in telling other black people that they are doing it wrong. And this phenomenon isn’t limited to Bill Cosby’s rantings about pound cake, La Shawn Barber or whoever is playing Uncle Ruckus this week. They’ll expound on the subject of marriage in the black community (bonus points if they trot out that tired old gem about more black men in jail than in college), the evils of single motherhood (Welfare Queen anecdata is a given, but the real deal involves expecting them to have a crystal ball and foresee any possible changes in their circumstances), or explaining why black women aren’t attractive (something about being too independent, not feminine enough, or just flat out saying that only lighter skin tones are attractive to men of any color), because tearing each other down is a primary drive when you’ve internalized the message that you’re worth less simply because of the color of your skin. Hence we get fun things like colorism and growing up hearing about “acting white” and even the train wreck that is skin bleaching.

Now, the purpose of my posting this wasn’t to have a Race 101 conversation about terms and being nice to people who didn’t mean to say “those black people” or even to have the age old “Why are all the black kids sitting together?” discussion. No, it’s a Race 498 conversation about the insidious way racism worms it way into the fabric of a society. It’s a chance to point out that saying “My black friend X says that nigger doesn’t bother him…” doesn’t win you any cookies in a discussion about race because the people you’re talking to have already swum that stream and they know X has some shit to deal with, but that shit isn’t part of *this* conversation. See, I don’t care about your black friend (though I do want you to reevaluate how you define friend if there’s any sort of power imbalance in the relationship since generally people don’t want to torpedo their career by telling a colleague off mid-meeting) or if you’re crying hot bitter tears about someone calling you a racist. Because that’s your problem to work out, and I will never think being called a bigot (especially after you say something ignorant) is more painful than being called a nigger. I’ve been called both over the years (and I’m sure someone will say I’m projecting), but I can laugh off bigot pretty easily while nigger always draws me up short for a second or ten. So no, I don’t care about fixing race relations by using the “right tone” or about comforting the “victims” of the crime that is being called a bigot.

I care about what racism is doing to little girls with Afro puffs sitting at the mirror and wishing for straight hair. I care about little boys that can’t quite imagine their dreams coming true because of the color of their skin. In these discussions about race and representation? It’s not about the dominant culture finding us worthwhile. It’s about making sure that our children can find themselves worthwhile. It’s about being able to see our reality instead of the ugly lies that pass as the stereotype of the week. So yes, while it is a TV show, it isn’t *just* a TV show. They say money is the root of all evil, and I suppose that’s technically true. But racism is the toxin in the water flowing over those roots and unless and until we manage to purify the stream, evil has more than a toe hold in this world. It will make sure the Tree of Life continues to bear a bitter fruit that poisons us all. Combating it will require more than laws, pretty words, and the occasional step forward in the recognition of racism. It’s hard internal work that we all have to do, even if we’re not all doing the same kind of work.

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…about all this “birther” crap, in which fine upstanding folk who are legitimate natural-born citizens of this fine country (the US of A, because we’re all from it or want to be from it, of course) incessantly and illogically question the fact that our president is also legitimately natural-born…

…is that they’re not crazy. They’re just fucking racists.

I mean, it’s obvious with the Republicans. They’re just using this shit (and other shit) to blow smoke over their attempt to scuttle single-payer healthcare. But all these individual teabagging crackpots who jump up at rallies and rant about Obama being from Kenya? They’re not really crackpots. They’re just the same old garden-variety racists we’ve always had, using “he’s not a citizen” as a euphemism for “he’s not completely white OMFG he’s got 50% black cooties straight outta Africa and I bet the White House smells funny now somebody go get a roooope!!!”

See, although African Americans are generally better-off than other racial groups in this one respect — we don’t get the “But where are you really from?” schtick quite as often as Asians and Latinos/as — there’s still quite a bit of feeling out there that we aren’t really Americans. Yeah, even though we built the place. Even though most of the people saying this aren’t really (Native) Americans either, if that’s how they want to play it. It all just comes down to one very simple fact: that “American”, in the minds of these people, equals one thing — white.

So it really doesn’t matter how much proof gets shown to confirm that Obama is too, really, truly, an American. The birthers aren’t going to buy it. Because the only proof these people will accept is a 100% European American genetic makeup, or 99.44% with the incriminating .66 hidden acceptably far back in the family tree. That worked for McCain — don’t see the “birthers” going after him, do you? But since that ain’t gonna happen in Obama’s case, they’re never going to shut up.

We don’t need a new term for the birthers. They’re just the usual plain, boring old racists wearing new clothes and chanting new slogans, because they’ve figured out that slurs and hate speech just don’t have the same cachet these days. But underneath the new trappings, they’re the same old shit. So can we please stop paying so much attention to them and get back to healthcare?

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Quite recently, something rather nasty happened to K. Tempest Bradford. On this blog, you know her as the angry black woman.

For various reasons, Harlan Ellison believed Tempest to have said some nasty things about her, so he wrote a publicly available letter which she discusses here. It contained the following paragraph (the “she” refers to Tempest):

She is apparently a Woman of Color (which REALLY makes me want to bee-atch-slap her, being the guy who discovered and encouraged one of the finest writers and Women of Color who ever lived, my friend, the recently-deceased Octavia Estelle Butler). And she plays that card endlessly, which is supposed to exorcise anyone suggesting she is a badmouth ignoramus, or even a NWA. Ooooh, did I say that?

Harlan later apologized to Tempest for this behavior, writing that:

Apparently, I received inadequate information, some of which I interpreted incorrectly, some of which was simply wrong.

Tempest accepted this apology. You can read his apology and her acceptance here.

I have no interest in dredging up the fight that caused these things to happen, and for all emotional intents and purposes the fight has been had and apologized for, and the apology accepted, said and done. However, this fight did happen in public, and I’m glad to see that the Carl Brandon society has written an open letter about it, outlining some guidelines that they hope science fiction and fantasy writers who are interested in opposing racism and sexism will bear in mind in the future.

The full text of the Carl Brandon society letter is here. Here’s an excerpt:

1) The use of racial slurs in public discourse is utterly unacceptable, whether as an insult, a provocation, or an attempt at humor. This includes both explicit use of slurs and referencing them via acronyms.

2) Any declaration of a marginalized identity in public is not a fit subject for mockery, contempt, or attack. Stating what, and who, you are is not “card playing.” It is a statement of pride. It is also a statement of fact that often must be made because it has bearing on discussions of race, gender, and social justice.

3) Expressing contempt for ongoing racial and gender discourse is unacceptable. Although particular discussions may become heated or unpleasant, discourse on racism and sexism is an essential part of antiracism and feminist activism and must be respected as such. There is no hard line between discourse and action in activism; contempt of the one too often leads to contempt of the whole.

I think these principles are abstractable to many contexts. Thanks to the Carl Brandon society for an intelligent response.

MY president weighed in on the Gates arrest and said pretty much what every right-thinking person has said on the subject in specific and the subject in general. Take a peek:

Again, I don’t feel the need to say much about this because what all went wrong here is pretty much obvious. But I’ve heard from friends of mine that there are white folks who still absolutely do not get it. “He should have been more polite” is your first step into Failandia, people. Don’t take the second.

Any time someone tries to tell me that racism is no longer a real problem, that the police don’t have a huge race problem, or that “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about,” I will point to this story and then probably hit them upside the head while they’re distracted.

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It’s not even midnight and everyone at my sister’s house (where I’m visiting this week) is asleep. Guess I’ll post some links.

Professor Gates’ version of the story. This is a must-read if you’re interested in this story.

I guess I ought to link to the police report, too. (Pdf link.)

Charles Ogletree, Professor Gate’s lawyer, gives his version of events.

“…black men, no matter who they are or what their status, aren’t allowed to challenge white police officers, which I suppose is similar to saying black people aren’t allowed to have titles, authority, or clout.”

John McWhorter, a writer whose politics are somewhat to the right of “Alas,” has an interesting take.

I haven’t found a transcript of Obama’s comments on Gatesgate, but you can get the gist from this news story, or watch the video:

Shark-fu at AngryBlackBitch weighs in, discussing her own experiences in Cambridge.

Roy Edroso surveys right-wing blogospheric reactions. Unsurprisingly, most of them are on government’s side.

On white people saying “I wouldn’t have acted like that, if it had been me.”

“This is what happens to black men in America” Kate Harding’s take; too long to sum up, well worth reading.

Police Discretion and Arrest Power

Racism Review: “The irony, for those that have followed Gates’ scholarship closely, is that he has tended to downplay the significance of institutional racism in the contemporary U.S.”

* * *

I’m sure there are about a zillion more… feel free to leave more links in comments. Or, you know, just comment there.

In the thread about the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates in front of his home, Ron asked how we could be certain that the cops involved were racist. We don’t know what was in the cop’s head, after all. Maybe a white guy who acted exactly the same way would have been arrested, too.¹

The call for certainty in these situations has the effect of making racism — and bigotry in general — invisible. It’s very rare that racism conveniently announces itself, wearing a white hood and handing out white business cards that say “I am a white racist, beyond any possible doubt.” In particular, racism cloaked in authority doesn’t act this way.

Racism can usually only be proven statistically, in the aggregate. We can look at pay data and notice that, even when qualifications and experience are similar, white people are paid more than people of color. We can look into statistics about police shootings and see that black and latin@ people (especially men) are much, much more likely to be killed by cops than whites.

But since we are not magical telepaths, we are incapable of looking at any particular shooting, however unreasonable, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt what was going through the cop’s head the moment he² pulled the trigger. “Maybe the cop just got no sleep last night! Maybe his wife left him, and so he was especially violence-prone! Maybe that particular cop would have been just as willing to shoot a white suspect at that moment!”

The same argument applies to any social interaction where racism is suspected. “That store detective might have followed a white boy around, if the white boy had been wearing those pants! That bank teller might have been just as rude to a white customer, for all we know! Maybe the real estate agent just forgot to show the houses in the nice neighborhood that day, and would have done so regardless of race! My cousin once asked to feel my hair, and I thought it was nice!” Blah blah blah.

It’s easy for us white people to think of it that way, because racial discrimination isn’t part of our daily lives. For us, we read a single, isolated report in a newspaper or on a blog, and we can say “well, there’s no real proof here… maybe it was all a coincidence…” We’re able to do that because we experience racism mainly as isolated news stories, not as a persistent pattern of ill-treatment in our life.

I’m white, so this next part is speculative. But I imagine that if I were a person of color, the constant encounters with ambiguous racism would wear me down.³ Because in some ways, it’s harder to defend against or respond to ambiguous racism than to overt racism. (Over the years, I’ve heard many Black people say so, both online and offline, but I don’t remember a specific name to cite — but this is not, of course, in any way an original thought on my part.) If the store clerk says “you have to get out, because we only serve whites here,” that’s as clear-cut as can be. Most people — even most white people — will admit that’s racist and wrong.

In contrast, suppose — after serving the white person ahead of you on line politely — the clerk makes you wait five minutes while she talks on the phone, is rude when she talks to you, and demands ID before accepting your credit card? You think this is racism, but will any white person acknowledge it? Or will they just think you’re a troublemaker, playing the race card, seeing things that just aren’t there.

A lot of our sense of reality is taken from what the people around us are willing to acknowledge. Has everyone seen the movie “Gaslight”? From Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a sinister action which, depending on the exact circumstances of the situation involved, could be considered a form of intimidation, torture, harassment, or psychological abuse. It is a technique used to either scare a person, or to cause them to appear to discredit their own judgment or even sanity in front of others. The classic example of gaslighting in its simplest form is changing things in a person’s environment without their knowledge, and then telling them they “must be imagining things” when they discover and ask about the changes.

I think the demand for certainty and proof before racist incidents can be acknowledged, is how white people are collectively⁴ attempting to gaslight people of color.

“Maybe she just had indigestion that began as she started ringing you up; maybe she doesn’t like your perfume. How can you know for sure this is about race? Isn’t racism too serious a matter to level accusations without proof? Look, that other clerk who was there is black, and she didn’t object. Are you saying the black clerk is racist, too?” And on and on.

And if all you look at is the one, individual incident, maybe that way of talking about racism makes sense.

But for people who are assaulted by a lifetime of usually ambiguous, racist incidents, it would be a kind of slow suicide to try and view the world that way. It would bring about ulcers. Which is why expecting people of color to view the world that way is unfair and unjust.

1. In fact, Ron said implied he was certain this was true — “If I walked out my front door and out to the street yelling at a couple of cops and didn’t get out of their faces I bet my white ass would be in cuffs too.” — ironic how the need for certainty and proof is sometimes flexible. (back)
2. Or she. But usually he. (back)
3. I do experience ambiguous anti-fat attitudes sometimes, but that’s a subject for another post. (back)
4. Not 100% of white people, but a lot of white people (back)

‘Nuff said.

Apparently, not only is Jim Crow alive and well, he isn’t even pretending to be hidden any more. What makes me say that? Well let’s start with a curious incident in Philadelphia. Seem a day camp paid for their kids to be able to swim one day a week at a private club. First time the kids show up to swim? They get booted out for changing the complexion of the club. The money is to be refunded, but I don’t think that’s going to make up for being told that the club doesn’t allow minorities. And then, when a new location offers their pool? The responses to the news article announcing it make it clear that this wasn’t a one off incident. A whole lot of folks in “post-racial” America are still spouting the same old bigotry. And you know, after a good five minutes of yelling (because for some reason I had deluded myself that things were much better than they used to be), I got myself under control and fired off an angry email and had a few unpleasant thoughts about Philly and moved on. I even told myself that as bad as the situation was, at least things weren’t *that* bad.

Until this morning, when someone sent me a link to an article about Eric Frimpong. Now, I’ve made no secret that feminism and I are not on the best of terms and in a lot of ways I’m more of a womanist than anything else. But, as I read the article and notice the victim rights groups led marches and blasted his supporters for not believing the victim I find myself thinking of a great uncle that I never got to meet. Because he was killed long before I was born. In fact if it weren’t for stumbling into an adult conversation I’m not sure that I would have known anything about him. Why? Because he was lynched for looking at a white woman. And it was totally by accident that after he was killed, her father took the land that he was sitting on when Miss Ann was supposedly assaulted by his reckless eyeballing. At least that was the story around those parts in those days. And I guess have improved if these days a falsely accused MOC gets to live (albeit in jail) instead of wind up as strange fruit. Of course I wouldn’t call that much of an improvement when you consider how much he’s lost as a result of being charged and convicted. And you know, I always hear about the American justice system and how much better it is now. But when someone can be convicted despite DNA evidence that points to someone else entirely? I’m not so sure that Jim Crow isn’t sitting comfortably in the courtrooms too.

As some of you know I’m a mother of two boys. And we live in Chicago (a town with an ugly racial history all its own), and now that my oldest son is a pre-teen we have all kinds of conversations about sex and relationships and other things that make him turn red and me grit my teeth and tell myself that I must let my baby grow up. But, I don’t know how to prepare him for a world where even with DNA evidence pointing to someone else he can be convicted. I don’t know how to prepare him for the possibility that he’ll be turned away from an activity he paid for because of the color of his skin. Then again, I guess my grandmother probably struggled with how to prepare me to navigate life in a city where on top of the gangs and drugs incidents like the the Burge torture cases preceded Ryan Harris case and Lenard Clark cases. Now the last two cases happened after I was already grown and gone, but make no mistake she worried all the time about what could happen to me (I’m the one with a big mouth that had a white cop call me a pushy nigger bitch when I was 12) and to my cousins. Because I have a great uncle that I never met and she had a brother that only lived in her memories. And the last thing any of us want is for Jim Crow to grow fat and strong and sassy again.

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Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade (he’s the idiot. No, not Doocy, the other idiot. No, not Gretchen Carlson….) has a problem: it seems that there’s too much race-mixing in America. Not between whites and Blacks — I mean, that goes without saying — but between the Irish and the Italians.

I am not making this up:

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, “We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other …”

At this point, his co-host tried to — in that jokey morning show way — tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn’t get the message, adding, “See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes …. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society.”

As Steve Benen notes, Kilmeade goes on to say, “In America, we marry everybody. Some will marry Italians, the Irish….”

Yes, Americans will even marry the Irish. How will America cope as we move into the bold tomorrow of 1873 if good Americans are willing to marry the Irish? Next thing you know, people will be suggesting women get the vote and a Catholic could win the presidency and that the government regulate the amount of cocaine in our tonic water. It’s madness, I tell you. Madness!

I’m sure glad that the election of Barack Obama means the end of all racism. I mean, otherwise, one would read this article about a Philadelphia swim club that banned 60 paying African-American kids from their pool because they would “change the complexion” of the club and think that there was sure a lot of overt racism still going on in this country:

The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers’ first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.

“I said, ‘The parents don’t want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,’” camp director Aetha Wright said.

Don’t worry, though. There’s a perfectly logical explanation that totally shows this isn’t racist.

“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

Well, yes, the complexion would probably change from lily white. Which is a bad thing because…uh…non-white people are inferior. But that’s not racist. As noted, Obama’s election has ended racism forever. And thank God, because otherwise, this kind of crap would make me ashamed to be a white person.

(Via Jill Tubman)

(Spoiler warning!)

1) We paid the extra couple of bucks to watch in 3-D. The 3-D was so well-done, so utterly natural and looked so good that we all stopped noticing it after the first fifteen minutes. Not really worth the money.

2) Why is everyone saying this film is such a weepy? Yes, right at the start of the film (in the film’s best sequence), the main character meets a girl, falls in love, gets married, has a long and happy lifetime with his love, and then she dies once they’re both in old age. We should all have misery like that.

Because I had heard so many “bring a hanky” comments, I really expected a major character (maybe the dog?) to die at the end of the film. This probably improved the film for me, since I actually thought a major character might die.

3) The bad: Even for Pixar, the lack of female characters in this movie is extraordinary; of two important female characters, one is the protagonist’s wife who dies in the first fifteen minutes, the other is a bird named Kevin. Why is Pixar unable to imagine a story with a female lead? Needless to say, it fails the Bechdel Test.

4) The good: The main character is elderly, which makes UP the only children’s flick I can think of to feature an old protagonist.

5) The even better: The secondary protagonist, Russell, is a fat little boy — and there isn’t a single joke about his size, anywhere in the film.¹ A positive, non-buffoon fat character with no fat jokes — That’s pretty much illegal in a children’s movie, isn’t it?

Heather MacAllister once said:

Any time there is a fat person onstage as anything besides the butt of a joke, it’s political. Add physical movement, then dance, then sexuality and you have a revolutionary act.

6) In addition, Russell is a positive, non-stereotypical Asian character, and the actor who did Russell’s voice, Jordon Nagai (who was seven years old when they cast the part), is also Asian-American. In a more reasonable world the race of actors doing the voices in animated films wouldn’t matter at all; but with major live-action movies casting white actors to play characters that were originally Asian (as in “21″ and “The Last Airbender”), it’s nice to see Pixar go the other way.

7) And by the way, good story, good animation, and lots of great visuals. The dog characters were pretty consistently funny, as well.

1. He does have trouble climbing a rope, but the way they depicted that didn’t emphasize his fat. (back)

Been looking all over for the Natasha Raymond poem by that title. Natasha and I performed it with my friend Elise (menshed in “My Favorite Beatle” below) in venues around Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Natasha, like most mixed race people, got that question a lot, and as a light-skinned black woman I could and can relate.  “What are you?” these inquiring minds always asked her.  The poem runs through her various possible responses: human; a woman; various fractions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Kim Jong-il.  It ends with her fantasy of turning the tables, questioning her questioner, then deciding there’s no need for that, “because I already know what you are.”

I get that question from white people and from blacks.  Bus riders, online daters, anybody and everybody sees me as fair game for it.  Whites are a little more circumspect in recent years about voicing the question, but it still hangs on the hedges of their teeth, behind the roses of their mouths, wishing it could utter itself.

What am I?  I identify as African American, black for short.  That’s one answer.  If you look at me you can see some European heritage, pretty obviously, but no whites in my families’ woodpiles for five generations back.  Unless you count the ones that passed, like my paternal grandfather Vandeleur Rickman.

But that’s another story.

What am I?  If I want to get technical with my answer, I use the term ”high yella.”  Then I’ll talk a bit about the history of color consciousness.  My father’s family and most of my mother’s belonged to the “paper bag club.”  That is, their skins were no darker than your typical grocery bag.   How relieved June’s and Denny’s folks must have been when they found each other, two properly pale people.   Yes, they loved one another, but the main thing was that they’d have paper bag babies.  But my middle sister, Julie, was born darker than either of them, darker than me; she was saved from ostracism only by her “good” hair.  Then, when I was six years old and she was four, I cut it all off her head.

That’s also another story.  I’ve already written and sold it.  It’s called “Cruel Sistah,” and they reprinted it in the Year’s Best Fantasy #19.

What am I.  When the dreadlocky man on the sidewalk outside Ross Dress for Less asked me that I igged him.  He didn’t want an answer anyways, I could tell that from how he kept on saying the same thing over and over again without waiting for me to reply.

To riff off what I wrote in my first post here, maybe you’ve never wanted to ask that question, because you thought you already knew me?  Or maybe not.  Could be you’re unsure now and always have been.   Could be that unsureness is quite all right with you.

What am I?  I am beyond what, and way, way into who.

And this is my last post.  If you don’t know me by now, you will never, never, never know me.  Woo-oo-oo.

Thank you, Tempest, and thank you everyone who has commented me.

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My friend Elise Bryant wrote a play called The Zoo-zoo Chronicles about her life on the University of Michigan campus in the 1970s.  In the first scene, Elise’s stand-in moves into a four-bedroom dorm suite with three white women.  As an ice-breaker, one of the white women asks their new Black (we capitalized it back then) roomie, “Who’s your favorite Beatle?”

Silence.  For three full seconds.

Elise’s stand-in rises in righteous anger.  How dare these strangers assume she likes a Beatle, any Beatle, Beatles qua Beatles?  Corporate rippers-off of Black culture, lily-white wannabe Blues singers, what would any self-respecting Black woman see in them?  After making it clear the answer is “None of the above,” Elise’s stand-in goes on to become fast friends with at least a couple of these women, bonding in sisterhood with them over sit-ins; student strikes; love ventured, gained, and lost; all the standard 1970s joys and perils of life.  What sticks with me, though, is that initial moment of hegemonic attitude and challenge, that culture clash right at the beginning, that careful mapping out of common ground and unacknowledged gaps in the “favorite Beatle” call and response.

Because I did have a favorite Beatle.  Still do.

When I was six I saw the Beatles’ debut on Ed Sullivan and knew this was gonna be something big.  Drew them with my Crayolas playing Gibson guitars when teacher told us to illustrate Kalamazoo’s industrial base in action (Gibson had a factory there).  After college, singing with my rock band, I studied the chord progressions for Beatles’ songs like “Yes It Is,” then stole them and wrote my own.

Why?  Was it because I wanted to be white?  No.

Because they were good.

It’s not inconceivable that whites sometimes admire and emulate the cultures of people of color.  And sometimes it works  the other way.  Sometimes it’s not a matter of being forced to accept the dominant paradigm but rather of identifying with certain of its elements….

John Lennon was my favorite Beatle, right from the start, though it took me till after his assassination to articulate the appeal.  Basically, I loved Lennon for his unabashed idiocy.  The man was never afraid to make a fool of himself.  Audacity wins me over every time.

Is it audacious to take the stance of a cultural tourist towards territories supposed to be well inside the boundaries of the dominant paradigm?  To treat as fodder for my own dreams the harmonies and psychedelic insights of white men given license to rebel?  To tune myself to the excellencies they discovered within themselves almost by accident?

Maybe it would make as much or more sense to expand the meaning of the word.  Say my favorite Beatle is Michael Jackson.   Or Prince.  Or Sly Stone, or George Clinton, or Jimi Hendrix, or any of the other small-b-black rockers trampling down marketing categories with gorgeous unconcern.  Ya think?

Who’s your favorite Beatle?

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At the start of the month, Megan McArdle — who is, I think, pro-choice — wrote:

But in this case, I think the analogy to slavery is important, for two reasons. First of all, it was the last time we had an extended, society-wide debate about personhood. [...]

Listening to the debates about abortion, it seems to me that really broad swathes of the pro-choice movement seem to genuinely not understand that this is a debate about personhood, which is why you get moronic statements like “If you think abortions are wrong, don’t have one!” If you think a fetus is a person, it is not useful to be told that you, personally, are not required to commit murder, as long as you leave the neighbors alone while they do it.

Conversely, if Africans are not people, then slavery is not wrong.

Although Megan is (I think) pro-choice, I’ve certainly heard this argument made by pro-lifers any number of times. But “lack of personhood” was not, in fact, a major pro-slavery argument. I’d recommend listening to (or reading the transcript of) this lecture by Yale historian David Blight, in which he outlines the pre-civil-war pro-slavery arguments.

The entire lecture is worth your time, but here — heavily edited for space — is Blight’s outline of the important pro-slavery arguments.

Now, there are many ways to look at pro-slavery. Deep, deep in the pro-slavery argument–I’m going to give you categories here to hang your hats on–deep in the pro-slavery argument is a biblical argument. Almost all pro-slavery writers at one point or another will dip into the Old Testament, or dip into the New Testament–they especially would dip to the Old–to show how slavery is an ancient and venerable institution. [...] You can therefore assume it was divinely sanctioned. [...]

A second kind of set of arguments, I’ve already referred to, are the historical ones. Here it is not just the venerability of slavery, how old it is, but it’s the idea that it has been crucial to the development of all great civilizations. That slavery may have its bad aspects but it has been the engine of good, it has been the engine of empires, the engine of wealth, the engine of greatness. How would you have had Cicero? How would you have had the great Roman philosophers and thinkers? [...]

Pro-slavery ideology is also part of–at the same time it’s resistant to–the greatest product arguably of the Enlightenment, and that is the idea of natural rights; natural law, natural rights, rights by birth, rights from God, being born with certain capacities. Now pro-slavery writers were inspired by this to some extent, but many of them will simply convert it. They will convert it–they’ll take portions of John Locke that they like, and not the others–and they’ll say the real rule of the world is not natural equality, but it is natural inequality. Humans are not all born the same, with the same capacities, abilities.

Now, then there’s a whole array of economic arguments, and the cynic, the economic determinist, simply goes to the economic conclusions of pro-slavery and nowhere else. [...] “You will say that man cannot hold property in man. The answer is that he can, and actually does, hold property in his fellow, all over the world, in a variety of forms, and has always done so.” [...]

Some would get worried and they would discuss slavery as a necessary evil–this system entailed upon them. [...] “But the question is, in my present circumstances, with evil on my hands, entailed from my father, would the general interest of the slaves and community at large, with reference to the slaves, be promoted best by emancipation? Could I do more for the ultimate good of the slave population by holding or emancipating what I own?” [...] he develops a highly intricate theory of how he’s going to use slavery to save black people. He’s going to ameliorate their conditions, he’s going to make their slavery on his plantations so effective, so good, such a even joyous form of labor, that he will be doing God’s work by improving slavery.[...]

There are many pro-slavery writers who developed, like James Henry Hammond, what I would call the cynical or amoral form of pro-slavery argument; and this is a potent form of argument when you think about it. [...] “The only problem with slavery in America,” said James Henry Hammond, is that too damn many northerners didn’t understand it is the way of the world as it is, and they ought to stop talking about the world as it ought to be.” [...] “Is it not palpably nearer the truth to say that no man was ever born free and that no two men were ever born equal? Man is born in a state of the most helpless dependence on other people.”

And then there’s the whole vast category of racial defense and justification of slavery. [...] Probably the most prominent pro-slavery writer to make the racial case–and they all did–but probably the most prominent was George Fitzhugh. [...] “The Negro,” he said, “is but a grownup child and must be governed as a child. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian. Like a wild horse he must be caught, tamed and domesticated.” [...]

And lastly, there was a kind of utopian pro-slavery. [...] In Hughes’s vision and Hughes’s worldview slavery was not only a positive good–it was the possibility of man finding a perfected society, with the perfect landowners fulfilling their obligations, supported by a government that taxed the hell out of them to do it, and perfect workers, would make the South into the agricultural utopian civilization of history.

It’s politically useful for pro-lifers to pretend that abortion and slavery were similar debates, and that the major argument for slavery was the claim that Africans were not people. But that’s simply not true.

(Note that in the lecture I’m quoting, Blight’s intent wasn’t making a case about abortion in either direction — Blight isn’t shading his arguments towards a pro-choice or pro-life outcome, he’s simply explaining the history of pro-slavery arguments. Can pro-lifers cite similarly non-biased sources to support their argument?)

See also: Ta-Nehisi.

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P.S. I can’t resist pointing out that the first few arguments Blight lists — the institution goes back forever, it’s in the Bible, and it’s the foundation of civilization — are also the major arguments used in the present day to argue for banning same-sex couples from marriage.