Archive for the 'Race' Category

Poor white boys: school leaving, male under-performance, and the disaster of masculine anti-intellectualism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2008
in Class, Men and Masculinity, Race, Teaching and Youth
. 27 Comments

Regular reader Frederick often likes to send me “grist for the mill”, as it were, and last week sent me this Telegraph article: White working-class boys becoming an underclass. In one of those periodic reminders that the UK and America are very different indeed, the paper reports:

White teenagers are less likely to go to university than school-leavers from other ethnic groups - even with the same A-level results, according to official figures.

The gap is widest among male teenagers from poor backgrounds, raising fresh fears that working class boys are becoming the education “underclass” in England.

According to a Government report, just over one-in-20 white boys from poor homes goes on to university.

This compares to 66 per cent of Indian girls and 65 per cent of young women from Chinese families.

The full report is here, in a PDF file.

The causes of “male under-achievement” are many and complex, and this study does not concern itself much with them. But it does seem clear that whatever the matrix of influences that lead young men to underperform their female peers, feminism is unlikely to be one of them. The study notes that even among recent immigrant groups in Britain, groups in which it can be safely assumed that the Western model of liberal feminism has not yet been fully accepted, girls outperform boys:

Overall, 58 per cent of men from Indian backgrounds and 66 per cent of women go on to university. Among Chinese families, 60 per cent of boys and 65 per cent of women go to university.

Anti-feminist voices, under the guise of concern about the well-being of young men, suggest that contemporary pedagogy doesn’t meet the needs of boys, who aren’t suited to long periods of concentration. The underlying racism of that charge becomes apparent very quickly when one looks at the much-stronger performance of boys from, say, Indian or Chinese descent. For a very long time, white European men have questioned the masculinity of Asian men, seeing the latter as somehow more effeminate. When we posit the ability to concentrate and “do school well” as essentially a feminine trait, then bigotry and anti-feminism collude to explain why so many East and Southeast Asian lads are doing so much better than their white male counterparts. The implication is that Chinese and Indian males are “more like girls” than “real” (white) boys.

I do think we see a performance gap between boys and girls in many places in the Western world. Much of that gap is attributable, I think, to a kind of masculine anti-intellectualism that has developed in response to the relatively recent success of young women in school. In both British and American society we define masculinity as, first and foremost, the absence of feminine characteristics. “No sissy stuff” is the first rule of Western manhood. As long as girls were systematically excluded from education, boys showed great aptitude for intellectually rigorous activity. Once girls began to be admitted to the same schools as boys, and began to demostrate the same intellectual abilities, the life of the mind lost its exclusive masculine cachet.

Boys can sit still. Look at any group of young Marines on the parade ground; paying attention is something well within the range of masculine capabilities. “Boys can’t concentrate as well as girls” needs to go the way of “girls can’t understand science as well as boys”, discarded as a vile myth that shortchanges the full range of human potential with which each and every one of us is born.

The real problem, as I see it, is a culture of “masculine anti-intellectualism” that seems increasingly rife among certain sub-groups of young men. Young men, particularly in Britain perhaps young working-class white men, are more likely than their sisters to see little practical need for education. Too many of these young men under-estimate the value of education, and over-estimate their ability to “make do” on their own, perhaps by doing “a little of this, a little of that.” Many of these lads are filled with ambition, but with little sense of how vital formal education actually is to realizing that ambition. And too many of these young men are eager for a perverse kind of masculine distinctiveness with which to assuage their own anxieties. Dropping out of school to work gives them that masculine distinctiveness, particularly as school is no longer (as it once was) an exclusively male province.

Does everyone need a formal university education? Perhaps not. But I do lament the unwillingness of many boys to buckle down and work. Knowing that earlier generations of the be-penised and the be-Y-chromosomed were able to master complex material and learn by rote, I don’t accept that men as a rule can’t thrive as well as women in the contemporary educational model. The problem is a lack of strong male role models who value education, the problem is a culture that emphasizes to young men that anything of real importance lies in an arena from which women are largely excluded.

Mildred Loving

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 6, 2008
in Marriage and Race
. 2 Comments

Mildred Loving has died. It was Loving — born Mildred Jeter — who with her husband Richard challenged Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, and eventually won the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia in the year I was born, 1967. She and her husband were lucky in love and lucky in their surname, but not lucky in longevity. Mildred Loving was but 68 when she died, and her beloved Richard died decades ago in a car accident.

I’m keenly aware that there was a time within living memory when my wife and I could not have been married in most U.S. states. Sixty years ago this October, the California Supreme Court struck down the Golden State’s laws against mixed-race marriages, leading to their gradual repeal across the country and the final victory in the Loving case nineteen years later. If my wife and I were the age of my grandparents, our marriage would have been invalid under the laws of this state and most others; if we had been the age of my parents (who married in 1964) and living in Virginia, we might too have faced arrest or “deportation” of the sort the Lovings faced. It’s a queer thought.

So many of my students today happily date across racial lines; so many successful marriages in my family today are between folks of widely disparate backgrounds. I rejoice that this blending of color and culture has become so easy and so natural. I rejoice too in the sacrifice and the courage of couples like Mildred and Richard Loving, and am happy to think of them together again — at last — this day.

I am happy also to note that in her last public statement, as reported by the New York Times, Loving, with her unique moral authority on the subject, called for the right to marry to be extended to gays and lesbians.

Sunday night thoughts on whiteness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 27, 2008
in Ethnicity and Race
. 11 Comments

I got home from my run in time to catch most of Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the NAACP convention in Detroit. I’d heard him a few times before, but was mesmerized by what he had to say tonight. I can’t find a full transcript online yet; if someone has one available, I’d be grateful for a link in the comments.

The fellow who introduced Dr. Wright used his first name repeatedly, evidently driving home the point that Barack Obama’s pastor speaks as part of a prophetic tradition that goes back as far — or farther — than the first famed Jeremiah. Those who splutter in righteous indignation at the reverend’s now-ubiquitious “God damn America” sermon would do well to reacquaint themselves with the Old Testament biblical tradition. I’m sure that this point has been made by many others, but it deserves repeating: prophetic language has political implications, but is not the same as political discourse. Only someone with a poorly-formed theology could assume that God will not punish America as he punished His beloved Israel. If God could allow the holy city on the hill, His beloved Jerusalem, to be sacked repeatedly; if he could permit and perhaps even will the first and second temples to both be destroyed, if his prophets could suggest that that destruction was earned and deserved, then it is jingoistic hubris to say that God holds the United States in higher esteem.

Watching Dr. Wright early this evening, I thought about the discomfort so many white Americans have with frank expressions of black anger. I thought as well about this comment by Fred, written in response to this post. Fred:

Maybe it is a matter of semantics, but I do not completely understand your comment on whiteness. “I have willfully refused to reject, renounce, or even seriously reflect upon my whiteness.” Skin pigmentation is an immutable trait, so what is there to reject or renounce. Should people also renounce their “blackness”? Or is “whiteness” some kind of euphemism for being a racial bigot?

When I wrote about “whiteness”, I wasn’t writing about my ethnicity or my skin pigmentation — but rather about a specific kind of privilege. One of the best-known short explanations of what white privilege is comes from Peggy McIntosh: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. (A few years ago, Amp at Alas, A Blog posted his marvelous update on male privilege, riffing on McIntosh’s work.) When I write about renouncing whiteness, I am not talking about rejecting my European-American heritage; I’m talking about doing everything I reasonably can to avoid unconsciously benefitting from the system that McIntosh so effectively describes. Continue reading ‘Sunday night thoughts on whiteness’

One of those “something’s gotta give” moments

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 25, 2008
in Blogging and Race
. 3 Comments

I’m sticking an entire post below the fold, and leaving the comments turned off. It’s pretty damn stream-of-consciousness, and though I am as sober as can be, I may regret this post in the morning. It’s been a very emotional day. Continue reading ‘One of those “something’s gotta give” moments’

On Lorna the Jungle Girl and the dark-skinned natives: a reluctant challenge to Amanda Marcotte: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2008
in Books and Race
. 84 Comments

UPDATED: Both Amanda and Seal Press have issued clear and heartfelt apologies for the images that appeared in It’s a Jungle Out There. The images will not appear in the second edition of the book. I honor the swift and unequivocal response from both Amanda and her publisher, and in light of this necessary and rapid apology, give the book my continued and wholehearted endorsement. I appreciate in particular that Amanda and Seal both take full responsibility for the very unfortunate decision to allow these images into the book, and am particularly heartened that the publishers acknowledge that Amanda herself was in no way involved in the editorial choice to place these comics in the text.

UPDATE TWO: I was wrong. Again. The endorsement of the text stands, but as long as the words on the page are presented next to racist images, I cannot recommend buying or using this book. I enthusiastically support a new edition of the book. Though the apology by Amanda was eloquent, concise, and sincere, it is only a first step to action. And the immediate action that must be taken, and is being taken, is the production of a new edition without these images. In whatever way my endorsement counts, please understand that it is only for that new edition. I do not suggest buying currently available copies from Amazon or another source until that second printing becomes available.

The original post remains:

I’ve got Lucy Kaplansky playing on my Itunes. She’s one of the artists I play when I need calming down.

This is a hard post to write. I’ve been in the forefront of those defending Amanda Marcotte against charges of appropriation and racial insensitivity. One month ago today, I wrote an enthusiastic review of her new book It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. I stand by the content of the review, which was based entirely on the words contained within the short, readable, accessible and often captivating text. But what I didn’t review, or even analyze in private, were the illustrations from the book.

It’s a Jungle Out There chooses, not surprisingly, a jungle theme for its imagery. Using pictures from the Marvel Comic series “Lorna the Jungle Girl”, the front cover is complemented by perhaps ten illustrations inside the book. Some of them are reproduced here. Marcotte’s theme is that feminists face a misogynist jungle; her blonde Lorna seems — and I say seems, because I don’t know what Amanda’s exact intent was — to be doing battle against those forces. On the cover, Lorna is about to spear a crocodile. But inside, Lorna does battle with dark-skinned natives. In the worst of these, Lorna delivers a mighty kick to a man with black skin and a traditional mask; she does so to rescue an apparently captive white man. Read Ilyka’s post for more.

When this discussion first came up yesterday at Feministe, my first response was to say that the images were surely intended ironically. But upon reflection, and after reading the many responses in that thread, I reconsidered. I don’t question Amanda’s intentions, or those of Seal Press. I don’t for one second believe that Amanda that anyone involved with producing the book made a consciously racist decision. But racism has damn all to do with intention, and a great deal more to do with perception. And it’s hard, very hard, to see these images as anything other than horribly racist. Given the desire to have this book appeal to the widest possible audience, I can’t for the life of me figure out how the potential interpretation of these comic drawings wasn’t taken into account. Continue reading ‘On Lorna the Jungle Girl and the dark-skinned natives: a reluctant challenge to Amanda Marcotte: UPDATED’

Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2008
in Academia, Mentoring, Pasadena City College, Race and Teaching
. 3 Comments

As most readers will know, the feminist blogosphere continues to go through an unusually painful period of discussion and debate about race, sex, and intersectionality. And while it really isn’t all about me, I find it, if not ironic, oddly serendipitous that this semester finds me on a hiring committee to select a new African-American specialist for a tenure-track position. The first round of interviews unfold this afternoon and tomorrow.

Confidentiality protocol bars me from disclosing too much about the hiring process, but I can share what has already been made public. After more than two decades, my colleague Pete Mhunzi, who taught both African and African-American history, is retiring. In this depressed budget climate, we had to fight tooth and nail to get a replacement position approved; some in the administration wanted to fill the Africanist position with a series of adjuncts.

At the beginning of the year, we sent out the standard notice for a new tenure-track hire. Because we are a community college, we need someone capable of handling several different intro courses: African-American history; the History of Ancient, Early Modern, and Modern Africa; modern U.S. Survey. We received a number of excellent applications, and starting at noon today, we’ll meet the most promising candidates, the one who survived the “paper screen” process.

When we were first writing the hiring proposal last year, there was some debate amongst the members of the committee about non-academic qualifications. We have only one professor who teaches African and African-American studies; the retiring holder of that position served not only as a classroom professor but also as a mentor to black students on campus, advising the BSA and so forth. Though just three decades ago, the campus was nearly 25% black, today the percentage of African-American students has plummeted to the mid-single digits. Some of that is due to the changing demographic of the San Gabriel Valley and of Southern California in general, some of that is due, frankly, to a decline in the number of African-American high school graduates who are attending any kind of college.

As far as I — and the other members of our committee — were concerned, it’s vital that the new faculty member we choose be committed not only to mentoring all students, but have a particular interest in working with young African-American men and women. Of course, this doesn’t mean we asked for or are demanding that the person we hire be themselves black. (Even with tenure, if I, as a member of a sitting hiring committee, announced on a public blog that race was a qualifying factor, I’d be in a massive heap of trouble. Heck, I might not be allowed to serve on a committtee again. Wait a minute… naw, bad idea.) Continue reading ‘Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist’

Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 13, 2008
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Race, Teaching and WAM 2008
. 55 Comments

I’m taking a break from packing for our spring break trip to offer a Sunday afternoon post. We’re off tomorrow to the place where ‘Canes roam, where Democratic delegates wait in limbo this spring, and where dear old Gianni Versace breathed his last. It’s a region I love visiting every year, but gosh, I’m always as happy to leave as I am to arrive. It doesn’t help that I love the sun and the sun doesn’t love me. (My friend Joe and I used to run shirtless together; Joe, an ER physician, always called me a “melanoma farm.”) And I’m eager for the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Later today or tonight, I’m going to close comments I have closed comments on this post regarding the Amanda Marcotte, feminists-of-color, plagiarism/appropriation/attribution fight that happened across our corner of the blogosphere this week. I don’t regret having taken the tack I did in the original post, but I do appreciate the many and disparate voices that weighed in here. The general rule that threads rarely stay productive after the 200th comment may not have applied, but better not to push it. Two other threads with good discussions of this issue were at Feministe and Amptoons. I remain convinced of two things: first, that Amanda did nothing to deserve the opprobrium directed her way; two, that the mainstream, predominantly white feminist blogosphere (of which I am most decidedly a part) has more to do in terms of both listening and crediting what we hear.

When we were gathered in Cambridge two weeks ago for the Women, Action, and Media conference, I chose not to go to the panel on women–of-color bloggers. I missed out on the chance to meet the likes of Blackamazon, Brownfemipower, and Sudy. And I’ll be honest: I weighed whether to go up until the last minute. I talked to a few people at WAM whom I trust, and who were familiar with the often bitter and bewildering exchanges I had with many of those same bloggers in last year’s long and exhausting Full Frontal Feminism fiasco. (Do a search in my archives or in the archives of half the feminist blogosphere — first in May, and then around Thanksgiving, things got heated.) These friends told me that while there was some potential for good, it might be best if I didn’t go to the Women of Color panel. That was my gut intuition as well. Perhaps I flatter myself unduly, but I wondered if, in the aftermath of all that had happened, my presence would be a noticeable irritant. It would be hard — given that I was just about the only man over forty at the entire conference, and the only one in a bright pink shirt — for me to be unobtrusive. So I didn’t go. Continue reading ‘Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together’

Conversation, conversion, and the enduring stain: rebuking Jonah Goldberg on race

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 25, 2008
in Race
. 31 Comments

Jonah Goldberg alternately entertains and infuriates, and today, he’s definitely leaning towards the latter with this column: A Race Conversation? What Are You Talking About? Writing about Barack Obama’s highly-publicized and well-received speech on race last week, Goldberg marvels:

…when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama’s call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: “What on Earth are you people talking about?”

Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter’s pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I’d been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses — often entire majors — dedicated to race in America.

In other words, Jonah thinks the “conversation” began a long time ago, has continued for far too long, and probably ought to be dropped. Obama’s claim that a genuinely honest discussion hasn’t even started is too much for Goldberg to bear, and Jonah uses his one good trick (the clever use of obscure cultural references) to belabor the point that, well, we’ve been talking about race forever and a day. Can’t we stop now, he wonders in his affected, privileged weariness? For God’s sake, hasn’t Trent Lott suffered enough?

Jonah reminds me of the chronically unfaithful husband who, after years of screwing around on his wife, finally makes a serious commitment to monogamy. He pledges everlasting loyalty — this time — and is incensed that after two full weeks of keeping his pants zipped, his wife wants to go to therapy to “talk through their issues.” What’s there to talk about, he wonders? Isn’t the past the past? Can’t you just get over it? We talked last week, for Pete’s sake!

White people who are tired of talking about race often behave like newly sober alcoholics, eager to “focus on the future” and “forget about the past.” Because they aren’t drinking anymore (or lynching anyone this particular afternoon), they are annoyed when those who have been victimized by their recklessness or their privilege insist on “having a conversation” about what’s happened — and what may still be happening. “But I’m different today”, says the former drunk who’s just taken his 30-day chip at an AA meeting to his wife; “you should trust me now.” Continue reading ‘Conversation, conversion, and the enduring stain: rebuking Jonah Goldberg on race’

Andrea Smith denied tenure

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2008
in Ethnicity, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Race and Teaching
. 37 Comments

Brownfemipower has taken the lead on reporting the story of Andrea Smith’s denial of tenure at the University of Michigan. Read here and here, and see the report in the Chronicle of Higher Ed here.

It’s a strange case. Smith had been given a joint appointment in American Studies and Women’s Studies at the Ann Arbor campus; ’twas the latter department that nixed her promotion while the former supported her tenure cause. She’s also the director of the campus Native American Studies Center. Few of us are privy to the details of her file, and the Women’s Studies department at Michigan has not commented on why it has denied Smith tenure. But to those of us familiar with Smith’s published work, the decision is inexplicable. Her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is a master-work of both advocacy and feminist scholarship, and is used in women’s studies courses across the country. (It’s on the short list of books I’m considering rotating in to my women’s history syllabus).

At research universities, the proven ability to publish is a critical part of getting tenure. So many assistant professors struggle to get anything notable into print; Smith has already done so by producing a text that is not just interesting but fundamentally ground-breaking. She’s got another book coming up: Native Americans and the Christian Right, which is available for pre-order.

Of course, being able to publish is not the only prerequisite for tenure. Teaching counts for something, even at mammoth state institutions. But the statement released by faculty and students at Michigan (available here, in PDF format) makes it clear that Andrea Smith has immense talents as a teacher and mentor. Her students and colleagues are asking that letters in support of her tenure case (which has been appealed) be sent to

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Anyone who reads the feminist blogosphere is aware that the most painful struggle of the past year, played out in so many places, is over the issue of the intersection of racism and sex. A number of prominent women of color have written, time and again, of feeling marginalized or ignored by white feminists. Whatever your feelings on the issue of race, gender, and intersectionality, it’s disastrous PR to have the Smith denial come at the hands of the Michigan Women’s Studies department. To a community of activist women of color, many of whom are already suspicious of the bona fides of white feminists, the Smith decision can only serve to increase a sense of cynicism about the prospects for real inclusion.

I’ve never met Andrea Smith or heard her lecture. I wouldn’t recognize her on the street. But I’ve read her work and been galvanized by it. I’ve chatted with people who have worked with her and heard her speak at conferences. Anecodotally, everyone I’ve heard from says she’s not merely a competent and inspiring teacher, she’s an extraordinary one. Her more than one-dozen published, peer-reviewed essays, her edited anthologies, and above all, her first masterwork “Conquest“, are building blocks of a tenure file that would put those of virtually any other junior scholar to shame. The Women’s Studies department at Michigan surely has its reasons, but until it makes those reasons clear, the shock and anger and alienation generated by their denial of tenure to Andrea Smith will continue to spread. And that’s bad news for all feminists.

And here’s hoping that if Michigan doesn’t come to its senses, someone else (are you listening, USC?) makes a nice offer. Soon.

The troubled Sanger legacy: some thoughts on Planned Parenthood

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 3, 2008
in Abortion, Feminism and Race
. 19 Comments

Last week, the topic of Planned Parenthood – and its historically uneasy relationship with women of color — came up again. Feministing covered the story of what happened in Idaho; a caller pretending to be a white racist phoned in to the local Planned Parenthood office, offering a donation “because the less black babies, the better.” Instead of telling him off, the PP employee — who happened to be the VP of Development for Idaho — laughed nervously, but accepted the donation with the reply that the caller’s concern was “understandable.” Of course, the call was a set-up, done by a group of activists eager to expose what they believe to be a pattern of racist practices by the nation’s largest organization dedicated to ensuring access to reproductive care.

There was also a heated exchange, much of it now taken down, between blogger Apostate and Guyanese Terror (BlackAmazon). I’m trying to piece together what happened (having, as usual, come late to the debate) but it seems as if BlackAmazon made a brief reference to the racist legacy of Planned Parenthood, and that earned Apostate’s ire. Reading through the near-100 comments at Feministing, you can get a brief primer, replete with links, about the issue of Planned Parenthood and an-often problematic relationship with women of color.

I teach an introduction to women’s history course, as my readers know. I don’t teach a “great woman” theory of history, preferring instead to emphasize social and cultural developments that impacted women’s lives over the past four centuries. But I know that my students are hungry for heroes, and like many feminists, I offer Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) as one for the class to consider. Sanger, of course, coined the phrase “birth control” nearly a century ago. She founded the Birth Control League, which eventually morphed into Planned Parenthood. She played a key role in advocating for the development of oral contraceptives, and lived long enough to see Second Wave feminism flourish and the Pill hit the market. Arrested and jailed for her advocacy, she spent over half a century fighting for the fundamental right of women everywhere to be autonomous over their own flesh. It’s a stirring story. Continue reading ‘The troubled Sanger legacy: some thoughts on Planned Parenthood’

Ms. on Ward Connerly and affirmative action

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2008
in Feminism, Politics and Race
. 20 Comments

The spring issue of Ms. Magazine will soon be available. One highlight of the upcoming issue will be a detailed and searing expose of Ward Connerly, the infamous anti-affirmative action crusader.

I haven’t blogged much about affirmative action here, though I have long supported it in both principle and action. In 1996, when Connerly succeeded in getting Proposition 209 on the California ballot, I was on the steering committee of the college’s campaign against the initiative. 209, which ended up passing by a fairly wide margin, struck a serious blow to outreach efforts across the Golden State. (Famously, the percentage of black and Latino students at UCLA and at Cal plummeted). Connerly repeated his California success in Michigan a decade later, with the “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.”

The Ms. expose focuses on several aspects of Connerly’s career and mission. For one thing, his anti-affirmative action work has made him a very rich man; Ms. reports that Connerly receives well over $1.6 million per year from the non-profit anti-affirmative action charities he controls. (Most of the funding comes from the construction industry, which profits enormously when Connerly’s propositions ban the “minority set-asides” that level the playing field in bidding for government contracts.) As Connerly (who is, of course, partly of African-American ancestry) continues his fight against affirmative action, he makes a very nice living.

The damage done to women (both white and non-white) by Connerly’s movement is deftly explored in the new Ms. Continue reading ‘Ms. on Ward Connerly and affirmative action’

Pain, poetry, privilege and moral triage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Feminism, Links, Poetry and Race
. 4 Comments

The Full Frontal Feminism discussion continues in various fora. I’m struck this morning by this long, powerful, angry, passionate, frequently funny poem by Ilyka: Letter to a Puppet. It’s written more to a well-meaning commenter than to me, but I’m provoked and stirred — in the best way — by it. Poetry frequently gets things across to me that prose can’t. This bit is haunting me right now:

Moral triage was performed,
and some people
were just going to have to sit in the waiting room
a little fucking longer than they had been,
and they’d been there for hundreds of years already, that’s the really shitty part.

I thought that was sad,
and hateful,
and patronizing. That it was said in an earnest,
well-meaning,
conciliatory,
and no doubt civil tone–
well. It didn’t make ME any less angry,
let’s put it that way.

Speaking only for myself — not for Jessica Valenti, not for any of my commenters, not for anyone else — I do perform moral triage all too often. And time and again, as much as I say I don’t want to play the “oppression Olympics“, I do create “hierarchies of hurt”, saying “well, we can’t fight all the battles at once, so let’s pick the most important ones.” My instincts and my training, and yes, my whiteness, lead me to see the mistreatment of women (all women, irrespective of color or class) as the Greatest Crime. And I’ve been called out more than once for continuing to rely on the problematic Shirley Chisholm model, the one in which I get a famous black woman’s blessing to perform “moral triage.”

And let me say this as well: speaking only for myself and for no one else, I don’t think anyone in the “women of color” community has been “hating” on me. I’d like to think I can distinguish between being the target of righteous anger and being an object of mindless hate. In the blogosphere, I’ve been on the receiving end of both from time to time, and have noticed that there is a difference. Saying “Hugo is a privileged ass who doesn’t get it” is very different from saying “Hugo is a self-loathing mangina”.

Thanks, Ilyka. I loved the poem, and it’s got the chinchillas who live in my head racing extra-fast on their wheels.

White men teaching feminism to women of color: a post about class, privilege, and the need for humility, curiosity, and flexibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Feminist Pedagogy and Race
. 19 Comments

With the re-emergence of the Full Frontal Feminism discussion this past week, I’ve been called to reflect on the challenges and privileges that come with being a middle-class, heterosexual, Christian white man who teaches gender studies. (I say “gender studies” because, even though PCC still has no such formal department, I teach courses on Women’s History, Men and Masculinity, Lesbian and Gay History, and “body” history.)

I’ve written about the problematic nature of my role as a man teaching feminism before. Here’s part of what I wrote three years or so ago:

I do acknowledge that having a man teaching women’s history to a class filled with women (and always at least one or two other men) is problematic. I know just how important it is that young women have feminist role models who, in both their work and their private lives, can live out feminist principles. But higher education is not just about providing role models! It is about the principle that knowledge itself has no sex, and that all human experience is equally worthy of study by all human beings. When we limit the teaching of women’s studies to women, we send the message that this subject is not, somehow, worth the time and attention of male academics. This does not mean that a male teacher confers a legitimacy his female colleagues do not — though some students may perceive it that way. But it does mean that it is immensely counter-productive to “ghettoize” (I use that term carefully) an academic discipline by suggesting that only some folks can teach it.

… “being a woman” does not guarantee compassion or empathy with other women! Women of color in the feminist movement have spent years having their concerns marginalized by their white, upper-middle class sisters. What makes a wealthy white woman more qualified to teach her Latina and African-American sisters than, say, a Latino man — or for that matter, a white man? Feminists who insist that the oppression of sex transcends racial and economic discrimination do a colossal injustice to the experiences of both men and women of color. My point is simple: if we are going to take a teacher’s sex into account, we must also take his or her race into account — and that sets up a slippery slope towards the extreme Balkanization of academic disciplines.

Of course, most of my critics in the “feminist/womanists of color” blogosphere haven’t said “Hugo can’t teach women’s studies merely because he’s a middle-class white Christian male.” Too suggest otherwise is to erect a straw-woman to knock down. What is clear is that my pedagogical decisions (like assigning Full Frontal Feminism in the way in which I did, and managing the discussion the way I did), combined with my maleness and my whiteness, raises a number of questions about teaching, feminism, sex, race, and power.

I don’t know what it’s “like” to be a woman. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up poor, or to grow up non-white, or to grow up in a religious minority. Sometimes, even in recent days, I’ve made the classic white male liberal mistake of trying to establish my progressive bona fides by the classes I took taught by radical women of color, or by talking about my marriage to a mixed-race woman. That’s a cheap and ineffective strategy, and it tends to infuriate the very people I’m trying to convince. I can recite the books I’ve read, I can name-drop until the cows come home, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a tremendous amount of white privilege.

I’m forty, older than most of the folks who’ve been involved in this debate. I’ve been teaching gender studies here at PCC since 1995, my third year at the college. And even after all this time, I know I still frequently “don’t get it”. Unlearning the acculturation to privilege is painful, it is hard, and the hardest and most painful thing about it is it never, ever ends. Every time I start to “believe my own press”, and begin to imagine that I have become a particularly enlightened being, a person who has transcended his class, his culture, and his sex, I am brought rudely back to earthly reality. I have a penis and a Y chromosome, I am melanin-deficient, and my speech and my bearing reflects a carefully-bred confidence that comes from privilege. Whether or not I think my sex or my race or my class matter, my students (almost none of whom share that particularly constellation of privileges) are likely to see me as a very familiar sort of figure: the older white man who knows a lot (or thinks he does) and is eager to enlighten them.

My women’s studies classes average 45-50 students now (before 2004, I taught in a smaller classroom and had only 30-35). I need to cover women’s history in America from the pre-Columbian era to five minutes ago, and I need to cover contemporary women’s issues — especially feminism — at the same time. I have 75 minutes twice a week in which to pull this off; I have no teaching assistants. The room is too crowded to have us sit in a circle, and the size of the class means interactivity will be severely limited. Lecturing, therefore, is going to be the primary pedagogical tool; that’s of necessity as much as of inclination. The students do write journals, they do initiate discussions from time to time, but most of the time, it’s me talking to them. I make my lectures as captivating as possible, and when I’m “on”, I’m a pretty damn good orator. Which is fine, except that having a middle-class white man strut and fret in front of a classroom that is made up primarily of first-generation female students of color doesn’t do much to undermine the patriarchy. The more I exhort, the more I inspire, the more I risk reinforcing something very traditional.

I can’t do anything about the size of the class. (Indeed, because it is a popular class, I was asked to consider moving into a larger lecture room that accomodates 150. I turned down the offer and asked for two smaller sections instead, and was told that wasn’t feasible.) And I can’t do anything about my maleness, my whiteness, or the fact that I grew up in Carmel, went to prep school (though I was kicked out!) and live a moderately comfortable life. But there’s still a lot I can do, even with the limitations of a large class size and my own privilege. And the chief thing I need to continue to do, and to get better at doing, is to remain teachable.

Actually, that’s not quite enough. As I was reminded this week, “remaining teachable” is essentially passive. It asks those who want me to change to do the work of teaching me. Perhaps it would be better to say that I need to work on three things in particular: humility, curiosity, flexibility. The arguments over Full Frontal Feminism haven’t changed my mind about the usefulness of the book as a highly accessible primer. But the arguments have reminded me to be a better listener to criticism, more humble about my role in facilitating learning, and to be more actively curious in seeking out alternative views to provide to my students. I need to better, too, about being flexible. Like most ageing academics, I get attached to the “way things have always been done”, and tend to be loth to update my syllabi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I teach gender studies courses because I want to raise up young feminists. I want to inspire men and women alike to become informed agents of personal and collective transformation. I want them to reflect upon the past — and upon their own lives. I want the result of that reflection to be a strong sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. I want them to be committed to justice for the vulnerable and equality for all — but I also want them to begin to liberate themselves from self-doubt and self-loathing. I believe that personal happiness and public virtue are, in the end, deeply compatible (as a Christian who grew up listening to my mother’s lectures on Aristotle, I could hardly believe otherwise!) And in the end, I want my students to be happy, free, kind, independent, and good. That has been my goal for a very long time.

My male body, my family background, and my white skin have opened many doors for me. I cannot close those doors retroactively. I’m not ashamed of my masculinity, my heterosexuality, or my class. (See the OKOP post.) But I’m not inordinately proud of these things either. Privilege is not the consequence of virtue. It’s simply a fact, and it’s one of which I have to remain perpetually cognizant. Sometimes, privilege will blind me, and I will need help to see the right path. But in the end, privilege is both an advantage and an obstacle to good feminist teaching. And as long as I am aware that it is a double-edged sword, and as long as I remain committed with evangelistic zeal to my students’ growth, I’ll do a good job.

That is, if I work harder at humility, curiosity, and flexibility.

I’ll be speaking…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 10, 2007
in Feminism and Race
. 2 Comments

…tomorrow afternoon out at Claremont Graduate University. Working title: “Divided Hearts, Divided Loyalties: Race, Class and the Question of American Feminism.”

Hint: Shirley Chisholm will come up.

A note on white privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 27, 2007
in Ethnicity and Race
. 8 Comments

Thanks to Barry (Ampersand) the 16th Erase Racism carnival is up. It’s there I found a link to this powerful post from Naima: “It ain’t privilege, it’s injustice”. It begins:

a particular phenomenon in the immensely white Leftist circles at yale is a rhetorical and ideological obssession with the notion of White Privilege.

it is not uncommon to hear a white liberal campus organizer at yale say something along the lines of, “we white students at yale walk around enjoying a great deal of privilege because of the color of our skin - it is because of this privilege that we must work to uplift the citizens of new haven.”

…as a blactivist at yale, i have found it rare to emerge from an organizing conversation or meeting with a white peer without a guilt-stricken or self-righteous allusion to “White Privilege.”

I have a hard time believing that in 2007, any “white liberal campus organizer” would use the verb “uplift”, unless they did so with tongue planted firmly in cheek!

Still, I smiled when I read this. I had impeccable liberal credentials during my undergraduate years at Berkeley in the mid-1980s. My freshman year, I participated in anti-ROTC and “divest from South Africa” demonstrations. Later, I worked with groups that sought an ethnic studies requirement for graduation; that mandate was eventually put in place my senior year. In my ethnic studies classes (where I was often one of the only white men), I alternated between being adversarial and apologetic. Both served a purpose. When I was adversarial, I provided a helpful foil; when I was apologetic for my white privilege, I was demonstrating my good intentions, if nothing else.

I grasped quickly that white privilege manifested itself in a variety of ways. It had never occurred to me to question why it was that store managers never followed me around, worried that I would shoplift. It never occurred to me that it was unusual to have the first police officer to pull me over for speeding (when I was 17) address me as “sir” and let me off with a warning. It never occured to me that it was a huge confidence-booster to have most of my classes taught by professors who looked as if they could be my uncles or aunts. Realizing that the color of my skin gave me this unmerited privilege was eye-opening.

Of course, I quickly became adept — as many well-intentioned and earnest young white liberals invariably are — at bringing up my white privilege as often as possible. I said things like “I’m really becoming aware of how privileged I am” or “I never knew how many things I could take for granted because I was born with white skin.” I also began to believe that if I pre-emptively apologized for having this privilege, I could redirect the anger of “people of color” away from me and towards those “other white people”, the ones who weren’t as enlightened as I.

It’s almost axiomatic on college campuses that a significant percentage of white progressives are eager to expiate real or imagined guilt. One rather simple (and to many people of color, exasperating) way for white people to prove their progressive bona fides (and get rid of that pesky guilt) is to throw some acknowledgement of their own white privilege into virtually every sentence. It’s similar to what some young men do when they first start discovering feminism. These anti-racist newbies (of which I surely once was one) imagine that approaching virtually ever situation with an “I’m sorry” on their lips is one road towards the acceptance they crave.

The problem is that many young white liberals value expiating their own guilt over really getting rid of race-based privilege. Naima:

if the world were organized by “White Privilege” rather than “Racism,” a police officer might be especially kind to white people while nonetheless providing people of color with legal protection, aid, fairness under the law.

and so the white Leftists who think they are down because they have got the courage to lamentably declare, “We’ve got White Privilege,” it would be more accurate and truthful to say instead, “We are beneficiaries of racism,” or “We participate in a racialized system of oppression.”

how much more reluctant is the race conscious white activist to admit that his “privilege” has a consequence, that his whiteness is more than merely a personal reality about his own social power but is also an agent of violence.

Bold emphasis mine. That was me for a very long time. Talking about one’s own “white privilege” and, better yet, claiming to “renounce” it (as if that were genuinely possible), is immensely satisfying. It’s also more than a little self-centered. Reading this post, I’m reminded that all too often, the language of “white privilege” serves to re-center the discussion of racism away from its victims and back on to the sensibilities of the privileged and the powerful.

I don’t make apologies for my cultural whiteness any longer (see my “Happy White Boy” and first OKOP post on that subject). But of course, no one was ever asking me to apologize for preppiness or a long-term subscription to Town and Country. What the activists of color I’ve worked with have asked me to do is, first of all, be honest as North Star asks the white Yalies to be honest. It’s not enough to cop to white privilege — we who benefit from that privilege do so at the expense of others. In this case, privilege is a zero-sum game.

And of course, the real problem is that talking endlessly about “white privilege” reinforces its power. Endlessly lamenting something you think you wish you didn’t have simply makes it seem all the more potent.