Quoted
“I think we need to get away from the idea that an ally is an identity and think of it as work that you are doing.”
I’ve said it before: There is no such thing as “a racist.” There are people who hold racist attitudes and do racist things.
And I think it’s useful here to frame ally work the same way. You are not an ally. You are a person who is doing ally work.
This — sorry for the sexist language (see there?) — completely castrates the immediate defense mechanism that is triggered in whomever may feel accused by a statement of racist (sexist, ageist, etc.) action: “But I’m not a racist.” What people are really getting at when they say this is: you are making a statement about my character.
Of course, the conversation about whether or not so-and-so is a Good Person or not is a lot easier for that person to argue than is the conversation about whether something they did is harmful to someone else. Easier on their ego, at least.
And that’s why it happens. It happens every damn time. And it’s an understandable reaction, to some extent. But when the conversation about the racist action stops there, that’s when it stops being a normal, human reactions and starts being obstructive, unproductive, harmful.
Which is why we really, really need to work on reframing the conversation. And by “we”? I mean white people. White people, and men, and straight folk, and the fully-abled, and Westerners, and other holders of various sorts of privilege. Not the people who are lacking in that privilege.
And in this hubbub about who is or isn’t an ally: we need to understand the conversation the same way. It’s not about who you are. It’s about what you do.
(Quote from Lynn’s comment at Feministe.)
Meowser
| Tuesday, March 3, 2009 | 1:48 amIn other words, “Racist is an adjective, not a noun”?You pretty much summed up why I would like to see the noun “racist” abolished. Bigot is a pretty good noun when it actually applies (to someone who actively hates a certain group of people and/or goes out of their way to make the lives of people in that group more difficult). But most people who say and do racist (or other “ist”) things are not bigots, as such. If we had only bigots to worry about, it would be relatively easy; they wear sandwich boards advertising their hatebaggery, thus are much easier to spot. I went around for 44 years before I got an Asperger’s diagnosis not knowing that people (even my friends and family) were reacting to me strangely because I was aspie; it’s not like people were running around going, “Eww, an aspie, get away from me you aspie!” I almost wish they had; maybe I would have found out the truth sooner.
Being Amber Rhea » Blog Archive » links for 2009-03-05
| Thursday, March 5, 2009 | 8:31 am[...] three rivers fog » Quoted "Of course, the conversation about whether or not so-and-so is a Good Person or not is a lot easier for that person to argue than is the conversation about whether something they did is harmful to someone else. Easier on their ego, at least. [...]