More on the Great Slagging of ABL over at Balloon Juice
Yesterday many of you expressed confusion about why I closed comments on this thread. Some of the comments questioning my judgment were written in good faith. Other comments were simply the normal jackassery from the expected 5-10 people.
I closed the comments not because I didn’t want to have a conversation about whether race relations is a zero sum game, or whether or not the photo was offensive, and whether I was wrong for using it. I’d love to have that conversation (or at least watch you have that conversation, and feel free to use this as an open thread to jumpstart that discussion.)
I closed the comments because of this comment:
You people take the bait EVERY SINGLE TIME. Everytime the white wing dangles these scooby snacks in front of you, you go for it.
They are baiting you with divisive issues. The Rapper in the white house. Blah blah yada yada.
You all deserve the blame just as much as the white wing echo chamber because if you just ignored their nonsense and let them wallow in their own filth they wouldn’t get anywhere and they would stop doing it. But no, you fall for it EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I think “stunned and speechless” is the best way to describe my reaction to that comment, and “disheartened and resigned” is the best way to describe my reaction to those who chimed in here and on Twitter to say “You’re misinterpreting” or “I don’t think he meant it like that” or “I think he meant liberals, not black people.”
You’re wrong. He meant it to be offensive. He did mean it like that. There is no question he meant it like that. What I find interesting is that rather than question the person who made the comment, folks questioned me. As if finding a way to render the comment non-offensive was more important than addressing the reasons that I was offended.
What followed in that thread seemed to me to be a roundtable discussion about me being a drama queen and taking things personally. I’m too emotional, you see.
For you women out there, imagine if you took offense to a sexist comment, expressed that you were offended at the time, and, indeed, had expressed offense at such rhetoric for months, but a group of men dismissed you out of hand, called you a drama queen, and made statements like “You’re always complaining about sexism. Why would you even want to be here? Why don’t you just go away? You’re the problem. It’s not us!” and then proceeded to discuss you, your identity, and your feelings as if you weren’t there. For you gay folks out there, same thing. Imagine a group of heteronormative folks trying to decide for you whether you should be offended about a perjorative attack.
Obviously the analogy is a bit twisted because this is a virtual world we inhabit, so it’s not the same as being in a room full of people while being ignored and spoken for, but it’s pretty damn close. Attacking someone based on their identity and then expecting the marginalized person to just “get over it” while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that the marginalized person is rightfully offended shows an incredible lack of compassion. Yet that is precisely what happened:
Why on earth would you keep associating with a site you consider racist? What does that get you? Either cut the drama and leave, or get Cole to seriously deal with the problem.
Though I did not see Exclamation Point Fred being the one to drive you off. Stunner really.
The point of me calling out these particular comments is not to shame the commenters, but rather to point out that such statements are offensive, that I believe the persons who made the statements knew they were offensive and intended them to be so.
By the time people began having the discussion that I intended to engender, I was pissed off to the point where I could not stand to sit here and watch people having an academic debate about me, my feelings, whether or not I was being a drama queen, or lame, or unself-aware. Certainly, because the rest of the folks on that thread had no stake in the “identity politics” they just moved on with the discussion while I sat there seething, wondering whether to bring it up again, or just shut it all down. And so I shut it down.
Yesterday during the Great Slagging of ABL, I remained silent. I didn’t have the energy to explain to people why I had closed the comments, I didn’t want to deal with the bullshit responses I likely would have gotten in return, and frankly, I was really disheartened by the attitudes of some people here.
Of course by the end of the day, my mischievous nature had returned, and, well, you know the rest.
On my blog, the conversation has continued in a positive and civilized manner, and I would like to repost a comment that I just read this morning because I think it is important to share (I note, with no small amount of irony, that yet again, this takes some whitesplaining):
I’d like to chime in here. Everybody’s heard the saying that money is the root of all evil. And while there is some truth to that, I think it misses the mark a little. It’s a lack of empathy that is the root of all evil. And I saw a buttload of lack of empathy over at Balloon Juice when you ran that picture of the fat redneck–but none of it was on your part. The people who felt so aggrieved and put upon made me feel sick. One insulting picture just doesn’t stack up against the 400 years of ugly racism that black Americans have had to deal with. One dumb picture of one dumb white redneck just doesn’t mean shit when you hold it up against the Aemrican legacy of racism, and anybody who thinks the two things are even within sight of each other is a staggeringly unself-aware asshole, and any such person desperately needs an empathy trasfusion.
I’ll wander off track for a bit here by saying that I’m a white guy. I had a splotchy record in high school at best, though my test scores were good. My father was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and had gone to graduate school there. And guess where I went to college? The University of Pennsylvania! How about that! And I was suspended twice for lousy grades, took 6 years to graduate, and graduated with a Bushian 2.52 G.P.A. Now, I’m not a politician, but I feel safe in saying that if I were ever to go into politics, I think it unlikely that anybody would ask whether I had been “worthy” of going to school there, whether I really “belonged” there, or had “earned the privilege” of going there. By any fair standard, Barack Obama “belonged” at Columbia, and later, at Harvard, far more thanb I ever “belonged” at the University of Pennsylvania. All I can ask is whether there’s some small difference between Obama and me that I’m missing. I feel like there is, though, sadly, few white people are willing to acknowledge it.
In this country today, black Americans have a moral authority when speaking about race that white Americans just don’t have. Maybe it seems unfair to some whites, but that’s how it is. Black Americans deal with racism every day in a way that I never will. That’s what gives them this moral authority. I don’t think it has anything directly to do with slavery’ that is to say, Barack Obama has no less authority to speak about racism here than somebody whose great grandparents were slaves because it isn’t being the decendent of slaves that bestows this moral authority, but rather being the victim of racism. And Barack Obama, no matter how wildy successful he has been in life, has without any doubt had far more hurdles to overcome in life than I have as a white guy, even a white guy who has not done anything spectacular with his life.
This is just true. I don’t have anybody questioning whether I’ve managed to achieve my spectacularly modest achievements without “handouts” or some kind of “unfair” help because of my color. I don’t get turned down for bank loans while somebody who earns less than I do, but belongs to a more favored race gets the loan. These aren’t things I have to deal with, or have ever had to deal with. But black Americans deal with this shit every day. That’s what gives them their moral authority in racial matters. Now, true, I guess some black people can and do give away that authority; Herman Cain and the Als West and Keyes spring to mind.
What I’m trying to get across is that it doesn’t matter whether the picture above offends me. It really doesn’t. As it happens, it doesn’t offend me, but if it did, I wouldn’t have any moral authority to whine and moan about it. Is this a double standard? I guess a lot of people would say it is, but I don’t think so. A downright insulting picture of or joke about white people just isn’t grounds for genuine offense, because it’s so trivial. A similarly insulting joke or picture denigrating a black person IS grounds for offense, as it comes along following a whole vast, ugly history of vicious, fearsomely violent, often institutionalized, racism. THAT’S why “jokes” that show watermelons growing on the White House grounds, or show Obama dressed like a witch doctor are racist, offensive and indefensible. If the day ever comes when some other race systematically humiliates and dehumanizes people like me every day of my life, after people like me have only lately overcome 350 years of institutionalized exploitation, then, and ONLY then, will I have any moral authority to raise a stink about a picture like the one above.
To wrap this up, I would like to ask that you not let a few whiny, self-entitled assholes get to you. I hope you’ll begin opening up yor pieces at Balloon Juice to comments again. I know, it’s easy for me to ask this; you’re the one who has to deal with all the shit that gets thrown at you. All the same, I hope you’ll think it over. We need to talk about race, as much as many of us would rather talk about almost anything else.
I’m posting the comment because although many of you “get it” (and thank you to those who sent me kind emails yesterday), I think that some of you truly don’t understand what drives me, but really want to understand. The rest of you don’t care and take pleasure in repeated and childish attempts to insult and demean me. You know who you are, I know who you are, so let’s try to proceed with that in mind.
I hope this will be a fruitful discussion for you to have with one another. My default position will be to not participate in the discussion unless I feel like it’s a positive one. I’m not going to spend my entire day fending off attacks. I just wanted to make clear where I was coming from to those of you with good intentions.
In any event, I’m busy today — I’ve got a purple lace glove to go buy.
As a sometimes lurker over at Balloon Juice (I don’t post, because BJ frankly has a pretty douchy commentariat,) I was particularly amused by the guy who hijacked the next couple comment threads to provide a continuous stream of consciousness of his grievances, which boiled down to: “ABL is too sensitive and melodramatic! That offends me deeply, and I’m not gonna stop screaming about it until someone comforts me!”
Well, ABL,
As one who grew up under segregation in this country, I can truthfully say that one has to experience and deal with a particular thing to really understand why those who are affected by it are offended by certain things. If one has not been subjected to institutionalized racism, one has no point of reference and doesn’t understand how debilitating it can be, or how it can, if allowed, damage the soul beyond repair. I applaud the Pennsylvanian for having some understanding of what life is like for millions of black Americans every day of our lives.
My. God. I think the whole fucking world has gone crazy. (am I censored?) I am so fucking tired of this shit. The leader of the free world is an intelligent black man. What does that mean? It means that every time OUR president does, or says, something, I do not feel like I am watching an episode of “I Love Lucy.” For 8 years every time the President of the US opened his mouth, I felt like I needed to crawl under something to shield the embarrassment. Now, when our President speaks, or acts, I am going “HELL YEAH!!!”
thanks, tri-b! and no censoring over here. no sirree. (except for offensive racist, homophoboic, or sexist language.)
i love the age of obama. and i am not ashamed to say it out loud, either!
How does it make you feel when he fellates Wall Street and acts as a tool for the bloodsuckers in the health insurance industry?
Uh-uh. Not here. Take that language and non-substantive comment back to Balloon Juice, buddy. We don’t do that here.
Thank you.
I saw your tweets but didn’t know what it was all about. Vainly, every time you guys type BJ, I do a double take because I think you all are talking about me. I rarely go there. I don’t know the folks. The format is not user friendly, to me. So I only go if someone sends me something in a link.
Shake it off sister, get back on your horse and ride.
I’m flattered that you thought my “thoughts”, such as they were, were worth publishing more widely.
I also wanted to say that this post at Balloon Juice in now up over 400 comments, but since it seems like there are still things to learn from each other, I wonder if you might start a new thread about all this.
One last thing I’d like to weigh in about… Something struck me while I read all the things people wrote, something that never quite made it up into my counscious thoughts before, and that is how fucked up this whole thing is, from beginning to end, since ultimately, it seems like–and here’s my epiphany–what’s behind the whole mess is this belief that many white people seem to have that being mindful of how what we say might come across to black Americans, and trying not to use words or expressions that are hurtful, are intolerable burdens.
I mean, really, that’s what so much of this comes down to, at least as far as I can understand it. “I can’t believe that you want me to THINK about what I say, and the words I choose! What kind of shit is this? Do you know what a bother it is to NOT pepper my speech with 10 or 20 words that you find offensive? Why that might amount to a full .00000003% of my total vocabulary! What a crock. What gall you have to restrict my choice of phrasing so savagely! What about MY right not to care about your feelings? What kind of fascist are you, anyway?”
I mean, what the hell, how hard is it to be careful not to say “you people” when you’re talking to black people? Is that really such a burden? And I don’t know you, but I’m guessing that there can’t be more than 10 or 20 expressions that really set your teeth on edge. And I don’t know all of them, but I can leave the ones I do know of out of my speech without being unduly brutalized by fascistic minority sensibilities. And when I stumble upon one I didn’t know, I try to file that one away as one to stay away from. It just seems like simple consideration to me.
Why is this so hard for some people? It makes me think of some stories I’ve heard about from, what, 40 or 50 years ago, when there were white people who seemed so aggrieved when black Americans tried to get American society to wean itself off calling people “negroes”. “Hell, we’ve always called them that. Now they don’t want to be called ‘negro’ any more? What’s with these people? What more do they want from us? I mean, ‘negro’ isn’t so bad, right? There are a lot of worse things we could be calling them, right?” And then there’s the line, you still hear it from a few real weasels like Limbaugh or somebody like that, the one that runs, “Well, the NAACP is the National Association for the Advancement of COLORED People! What the hell? THEY can call themselves ‘negroes’ but now they don’t want us to? How selfish can you get?” And of course there was the legendary tantrum that dumb radio woman had a year ago or so when she whined that “Black people can say [you know the word], but we can’t? That’s so unfair! That’s so wrong!”
It’s so fucked up that some people think that the tiny bit of work it takes to try to dump a few words from their vocabulary is so much more burdensome than the raw feelings black Americans deal with when they hear those words. Why can’t we all make the minimum of effort not to needlessly wound our fellow citizens? And while I’m on the subject, what is the preferred term for what I’ve been referring to as black Americans? Is there some better way of putting it? I’ve been bitching about insensitive white people, but I don’t want to become what I’ve been criticizing myself, even unknowingly. A lot of people say “people of color” or “POC”, but that would seem to take in other groups, too, like Hispanics and Asians. What’s the most tactful and respectful term to you?
Duncan, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your post (almost as much as I appreciate your ever-changing nym). You really hit the nail on the head, and my only gripe is you pretty much negated my whole next post in one fell swoop!
As for the word thing, yeah. Back in the day, I took shit for asking not to be called Oriental. I would say something like, “I prefer Asian American.” Most people were cool with it, but a few weren’t. One even had the gall to tell me, “Well, I see the Oriental Market, blah blah blah” while I slowly turned red.
I managed to hold my temper and tell him that the older generation has a different view, blah blah blah, but inside I was thinking, “Why the fuck is it so hard for you to call me what I ask to be called?”
That’s really the crux of the matter.
I managed to hold my temper and tell him that the older generation has a different view, blah blah blah, but inside I was thinking, “Why the fuck is it so hard for you to call me what I ask to be called?”
That person doesn’t even believe what they are saying. They would not go to Chinatown or K-town and call people “Orientals” to their faces, even at the “Oriental Market”.
People who insist to the point of tears that they should be able to call us “niggers” because they claim to have heard it in a rap song once get the treatment: why do they feel so entitled to impose labels on others according to their ignorant view of the world? What makes them believe one must sit there and take it?
Better yet, let them go to the middle of their nearest ‘hood, stand at the bus stop and exercise their right to free speech all they want by calling people “niggers”; see what happens to their butts.
In my view, they should be made to tell exactly why they have a problem with minorities defining for ourselves how we are to be addressed, especially by strangers. We know the reason: they have been taught all their lives they get to treat anyone in their path however they g/d well please, and no one has anything to say about it. They need to be forced into that realization, themselves.
I cannot even express how thankful I am for this post and the one I quoted at BJ. I was stunned at the reaction. I thought to myself, “Really? Again?” And I was very upset by it. Thankfully, once I got over being upset and began to fight back by banning certain folks determined to derail the conversation and by asking that people keep the thread on topic (the horror! the horror!) the conversation progressed in a much better manner. Also, thankfully, Cole totally has my back (despite the delusions held by the Jackasses that I have some how extorted John in some way or that John has some set of rules he requires me to follow). Interestingly, it was John who initially suggested I close comments when the Jackasses went off on my Libya post. I chose not to do that, but rather to direct comments to a place where I could moderate them (fully knowing that the Jackasses are, above all else, cowards and would never come to talk shit “to my face” as it were because they would not be assured of having back-up from the other Jackasses.)
I am not going to stop poking at that nest, and now that I have decided to heavily moderate the threads on my “identity politics” posts, I hope that the Jackasses will behave themselves. I have stated my position, I will give warnings, and then I’ll ban their asses, and as evidenced by whiny emails I’ve received, they seem to truly not have lives outside the BJ Playground. They can continue to talk shit about me being a bad writer and not deserving of front-page status or whatever other nonsense — I actually find their attempts to insult me by slagging my writing skills/style to be hilarious in that they are so ineffective — but I’m not going to sit there and take it anymore (which is what I decided to do by initially eschewing commenting on yesterday’s post). I simply don’t care that people are frustrated that I’m interfering with their little boys’ club. I won’t stop digging no matter how loudly the Jackasses howl, because they are an insignificant (albeit loud) portion of the commentariat who rarely have anything substantive to add to a post, and my posting and bailing is unfair to me and to the people with whom I’d like to share ideas and who like to share ideas with me. You know, the adults who aren’t in it just to taunt and act the damn fool.
/not proofread
ETA: this comment wandered off course. Back to the point: I will likely use your comment as the basis for another post on the matter, but today is a day of rest and basking in the Prince afterglow. :)
I thought to myself, “Really? Again?” And I was very upset by it.
Well, that’s what I thought. As for so-called “identity politics”, whites-first, whites-get-the-best, whites-rule, males-rule, white-xn-males-rule politics is the original “identity politics”. None of them, regardless of who they voted for in 2008, can stand to see it usurped, and coming to its end. Oh well, sux to be them.
Srsly, u don’t need to explain urself. You can if u want to because sometimes it helps to get that stuff off ur chest.
When I read that comment the first thing that struck me was that it was used ambiguously on purpose to whack you with history while being able claim plausible deniability. It’s like swinging a baseball bat at us and purposely missing; we still get the message that u could have hit us with it. We all relate to our histories in different ways and people who know that and still swing that baseball bat need to be called out on it.
You nailed it, Duncan. And I can tell you why these nitwits think that having to watch what they say is a horribly repressive double standard, as bad as anything that ever happened to black people: Because privilege, unreflected upon, inevitably turns ordinary people into whiny little shits.
The same mechanism also neatly explains MRAs, the prerevolutionary French aristocracy, and petulant Wall Street millionaires. It’s like the grand unification theory of douche.
I think the fact that those posts of yours generate 300-500 comments over at BJ indicates just how big the hornets’ nest is — by which I mean: It really matters that you’re doing this.
In spite of the 5-10 complete assholes, there’s an important conversation developing, on issues that make a lot of us very uncomfortable. Though being uncomfortable is often, as one might expect, uncomfortable, it is also often important.
It’s just not worth it. Too many whites still expect the targets of their massive race hangups to do their work for them. I’ve taken to telling them they need to do like the rest of us, get up off their duffs and go take a course on the topic from an expert.
I quit playing that game, now decades ago. If you really want to get labeled “selfish”, take this route.
No, instead, the general sentiment is that we are to educate them on this country’s race matters for FREE, while we beg and cajole them to stop being assholes in their personal lives, such as in those BJ threads.
Sorry, that’s not why our ancestors subjected themselves to getting kicked around by theirs, in the efforts to force this country to live up to its lofty ideals.
As Asiangrlmn just said, they are not worth it. She was benevolent enough to limit it to 10% of liberal whites. I say, the percentage is more like 90%.
maybe it’s an age gap thing. i still can’t quit the game… yet, anyway. but i sure as hell am getting close.