maybe the problem will just fix itself

[bossymarmalade]

Having now 'fessed up about my Warblers hate, I can move on to more interesting things:

A while ago delux_vivens posted about a white male poet being asked about his work by a black female poet, which went down just about as well as you could imagine. (Click on *AWP at Claudia Rankine's website to read Tony Hoagland's poem, Rankine's letter to him, and his reply to her wherein he calls her "naive when it comes to the subject of American racism" [!!!]).

Anyhow, a number of other writers/poets/etc. wrote open letters that are not so much about the exchange in particular but more to do with race representations in the States. The letters are archived at Rankine's site, but if you don't feel like wading through them here's some of the ones I found particularly interesting:



. Beth Loffreda - "Another effect of this period was that white people began to praise each other for talking about race. It was brave to write about it. But saying it is brave to write about one's whiteness is not unlike saying it is brave to live inside a house."

. Christina Springer - "in class, a girl smirks, then smiles. 'my family could have owned your family.'"

. Eleanor Henderson - "She nodded, cautious but interested, as I unfolded the plot. And then I told her. 'The narrator is a black woman. A maid.'"

. Francisco Aragon - "Then he emerges from the top of the ascending steps, college-aged like me. They spot his lighter hair, and something's aglow as they walk toward him, us."

. Hans Ostrom - "the report
was many things, but what it
wasn't was complicated,
sophisticated, news, or
helpful."

. Hila Ratzabi - "I even looked white, but never felt white. Everyone around me was Jewish. Some were browner than others, like my dad."

. Hossannah Asuncion - "I know enough of the imprecision of talking about race. It feels like choosing a violent failure or a violent failure--to say something or to not say something."

. Jennifer Chang - "I was any Chang, any Asian. I was a type, not an individual. A synonym."

. Jenny Browne - "My parents had sent me a letter in Africa reporting that my little sister was dating 'a black guy.' That was all he was described as being."

. Jocelyn Lieu - "Others who don't accurately peg me tend to think I'm American Indian, Latina, or Italian. They fill in the blank. They create the blank to fill in."

. Joelle Biele - "Later we talked, and I remember
wondering if time could take the island back
to what it was before Robert Stafford took
Elizabeth Bernardey as his slave, if the island
could just be a beautiful ruin ..."

. Maryam Afaq - "The discussion grazed briefly over the 'first wave, second wave, third waves' of feminism here in the USA and someone commented on how sad it was that 'the first wave has not even reached some places in the world.'"

. Maureen Seaton - "Equality is a big thing for me, justice is all I care about and it drives me crazy, but I never really knew a black person up close until I met Lori and fell in love with her."

. Nancy Haiduck - "Not in the house, but Annie had her friends,
and she could cook, and she could sew, but no,
she never did learn to read or write."

. R. Erica Doyle - "It's okay if you can't tell what I am. I know.

I know. I am trying to stay awake. I am trying to do all of this with love."

Comments

[arallara]

Thank you very much for the links. Bookmarking your post.

[bossymarmalade]

You are so welcome -- I hope you find ones that you enjoy!

[surpassingly]

Thank you for this post and for the links.

[pantryslut]

The very first quote sums up my perspective on this whole thing quite nicely.

But the one I still have open in my tabs is from Oscar Bermeo:

"Every time you read your friends/students//colleagues a "change" poem that isn't really about change, not only does a cat die but, more importantly, a much better poem goes unread."

[some_stars]

Thanks for linking to that delux_vivens post and Rankine's website. I have some semi-personal connections to various aspects of that situation and I'm glad I now know about it.

[buria_q]

claudia rankine's "provenance of beauty" anti-tour performance poem was fucking brilliant

[glass_icarus]

Thank you for posting these links! &hearts

[stoneself]

hoagland's response was a really clever evasion = "i'm not perfect"

[sixpita]

I think, upon reading it twice, that poem is more complicated than initially one might think at first blush. And while I think he reacted like a complete ass to her critique, I also think that his poem exposes a strain of white thought that most POC are not exposed to. Being who I am and looking how I look I've been exposed to it, people who don't think they're racist saying intensely racist things to me and about mine sometimes never dreaming that the olive skinned girl with the long, black hair that they're talking to is not Greek or Sicilian or whatever brand of swarthy-ish white (or, occasionally, model minority) person they've convinced themselves that I am. When I tell people I'm black, I almost invariably get the same response: a gaping mouth and a "you're black?!" Like I should have been wearing a sign or there should have been some obvious clue and I can feel the temperature of the room change and people are afraid of me. I'm suddenly that black chick. It makes me want to die sometimes.

[devilc]

I think, upon reading it twice, that poem is more complicated than initially one might think at first blush. And while I think he reacted like a complete ass to her critique, I also think that his poem exposes a strain of white thought that most POC are not exposed to.

This.

[ladyjax]

Interestingly enough, I think that a lot of POC go into situations like this thinking, "Of course you think that way because y'know, white folks." At least that's what I thought when I read the poem and his response. And I hear my parents in my head saying this along with, "Be careful, you know they'll only be your friend until you get good at something." But that could be due to my age (I'm 45 now) and how and where I was brought up.

[fightingarrival]

Respectfully, I'd have to disagree. Depending on the time of year, my skin tone floats around crayola-color brown in terms of blackness, and you might be surprised to learn what amount of racism white people are willing to air out in front of your darker-skinned brethren, thinking we won't be offended because in their mind they're only talking about *those* people - not realizing that even though I can speak Standard American English, that I in fact am those people.

That poem has shown me nothing new in terms racism, I've experienced it plenty. And even if it were the first time I'd been gifted with that spedific lesson, I don't know what I'd have learned from other than what my hother had already told me: "Racism is alive and well, (in America.)"

[fightingarrival]

*mother

And I'm 21. The new generation ain't that much better than the old one.

[sixpita]

Randomly, Chew FTW!

[fightingarrival]

Chew is my favorite comic right now, it needs all the love. :)

[sixpita]

Well, I can't speak to the experiences of my darker complected brothers and sisters, but I will say this: the ugliest things that have ever been said to me WRT race have always come from people who were ostensibly my friends. They knew I was black but, for whatever reason, didn't understand or didn't care how I'd feel to be told to "go back to Africa" or being reassured with platitudes that amounted to me being a credit to my race.

[fightingarrival]

One of my most memorably and mind-bogglingly racist conversations I've ever had in my life was also with a white person who was ostensibly my friend, and my appearance codes very unmistakably as black.*

Looking at your response down below to aquaeri, I think you're underestimating the stupidity, ignorance and boldness that privilege can bestow upon a person.

*She, um, "confided" to me that she never took trains that came out of [the ghetto] to get to the north of the city. (There are two trains that come from the south: one from [the ghetto] and one from [the suburbs].) She was, you know, afraid of *those* people. Nevermind that I was one of those people in every sense of the word - I was black, lived in that neighborhood, and took that very same train to go to the same school as she did every day, all of which she very well knew.

I may or may not have orced out and dropped her like a hot coal.

[aquaeri]

his poem exposes a strain of white thought that most POC are not exposed to

Really??? That's not remotely the impression I get from reading the writings of PoC about racism. I think I went through a Hoagland-like phase myself and it was PoC who called me on it. And I'm still in the racism 101 class.

[sixpita]

Maybe I need better phrasing, but being aware that thinking/saying things like that are racist and being privy to them are different things. I don't have to had someone tell me all their feelings about "that type of black person" to know that it's racist, it just happens that no one sees me as black so they don't think twice about saying it to my face whereas they would be less likely to say it to someone who coded as black to them. And I guess, also, there's this level of discourse where people, like Glenn Beck, say those things in the course of catering to an audience that is presumed not to include POC. That is, he gets on TV and spouts his BS and he's not talking to POC, even though he surely knows everyone's going to hear it anyway.

And maybe I'm misunderstanding you entirely. I shouldn't even be awake right now.

[aquaeri]

As for being awake: I probably have an unfair advantage right now (I'm in Australia, and I'm guessing you're in the US, and it's evening here).

I was thinking in terms of what I've read about explicit vs aversive/implicit (nice white liberals who don't think they're racist) racism. And how explicit racists don't seem to be all that afraid of telling PoC to their face what they think; while aversive racists don't (because they don't believe they're racist), but all the evidence is that PoC can tell what they think anyway.

(examples: here and here.)

Hoagland strikes me very much as an aversive racist who's just becoming aware of it and feeling guilty about it. I find it hilarious that he calls Rankine "naive" when he strikes me as naive about his own aversive racism and how getting to the guilty stage about it isn't really that much progress. And it's something that's happened to thousands of nice white liberals before him, like, eg, me. And during the guilty stage (I like to think I'm just about mostly past it) one tends to get confessional, and imagine that PoC haven't heard/seen it all before, and I can't blame Rankine for rolling her eyes a lot.

I don't know if that relates to anything you were saying, but that's what I was thinking about.

[sixpita]

Oh, yeah, that's definitely an aspect of what I was saying. Even though I tried, it's hard to make generalizations about this kind of thing. I think a lot of people get to that guilt stage and then stop. They lack the tools or the will or something to push themselves past that point into actual anti-racist thought, which POC pretty much know. We see it even when they don't and whether they express it or not.

[aquaeri]

I agree with you completely and I want to write a bit more about getting stuck at the white guilt stage but I'll do it in my own DW.

[delux_vivens]

I also think that his poem exposes a strain of white thought that most POC are not exposed to.

How would we not be exposed to it? Its ever present.

[sixpita]

I guess I mean the way it's exposed and not that it exists. Obviously most overt racists aren't going to care about spouting off, but I think tacit racists and a certain type of over racists tend to be more careful about who exactly they're airing their opinions about "those people" to.

[lilacsigil]

Thank you for the link and the excerpts. It makes me sad that such an important topic is hosted by such an inaccessible site.

[aquaeri]

Yes! the topic is important, the responses are great, the website designer should be taken out back and given a Serious Talking-To. It's rare I'll go to that much effort to read plain text.

[sajia_kabir]

I'm not the only one, eh? They totally passed up an opportunity to make people procrastinate on their term papers *coughs*.

[rydra_wong]

Thank you so much for the links.

[vi]

Thank you for linking to the issue and posting the excerpts - I found the site hard to navigate!

[the_future_modernes]

I would love to read that stuff and I tried, but the website design is bloody annoying to get through.

[timeasmymeasure]

That last quote is gorgeous!
Thanks for linking and posting =D

[delux_vivens]

*waves*