The Dangerous Necessity of Racial Self-Critique

Cross-posted at Rachel's Tavern.

I was listening to V103 driving to work this morning, a popular music station here in Atlanta. There was a heated discussion going on. I'm not a fan of the DJ and local celebrity host Frank Ski, but in comparison with the guest, Frank Ski was a towering fountain of wisdom. His guest was dismissing Don Imus as irrelevant because "Imus was just repeating things heard at barber shops" and the Rutgers basketball team "weren't the finest sisters around anyway". The ignorance was astounding. I flipped the station just as he started talking about how going to protest in Jena was pointless. This is why I'd make a terrible professional commenter... I have limited time in my life to listen to garbage like that in order to criticize it.

In response, Frank Ski was making some good points about institutionalized racism, internalized racism and "slave mentality". But I have to wonder... what was gained by granting his misogynist self-hating guest such a massive forum? Why do these interminable, repetitive conversations continue to fascinate so many people?

Recently, every time I hear similar criticism I think about the corresponding lack of reflexive self-criticism among white people, and wonder about its effect.

Minorities in America engage in massive amounts of self-criticism. Sometimes it's valuable and useful, in fact vital, because it helps people move forward as individuals and in communities. Other times it's damaging and wasteful. There's a whole economy built up around self-criticism, particularly by African-Americans. Bill Cosby's sold-out "what's wrong with black people" tours come to mind. Among Asian-Americans, criticism often takes place between genders and also between generations. "FOB vs. Twinkie" comes to mind. Blame your parents, blame the men, blame the women, blame your children, blame yourself. Blaming white people is pretty far down the list for many people of color. Another example: I was reading a desi magazine called "Little India" which had an editorial called "Damn Cricket". The next issue had a counterpoint called "Damn Those Who Damn Cricket". Both articles seemed to accept the premise there was something fundamentally wrong with Indians that needed to be fixed. Even when self-critique is done at a very sophisticated level, it frequently ends up on a pessimistic note.

When someone tips over from self-criticism to self-hate, a responder feels the need to jump in. "We're not that bad. We're people with pride and strength and dignity..." Other responders are so wounded by the expression of self-hate that they overcompensate in defense, refuse to see ANY flaws and won't be drawn into the most moderate, sensible self-critique. Back and forth should ideally be a dialectic moving us all forward. So often, it just turns into an endless seesaw. Hate of self-hate is still hate.

Some white people (e.g. Bill O'Reilly) live in a bizarre mirror world where minorities "won't take responsibility" and it's white Christian males who are "under attack" in the "culture war". But how many white men give sold-out lecture tours on the topic of What's Wrong with White America? I wonder how much money Tim Wise makes in a year from his tours and books? I think sociological/anthropological critique on the academic level is often counted as "attack on the white man," when in fact it's undertaken from the viewpoint of an artificially ahistorical, decontextualized observer, and has nothing in common with the kind of self-critique I'm referring to.

Lack of reflexivity frees up a lot of mental space to focus on other things. There's less anxiety. On the other hand, it may act as a force to make the social thinking of white people simpler, less three-dimensional. I wonder if greater harmony in race relations will come when we are all LESS self-critical, or when we are all more self-critical, but in a balanced fashion?

For the New Year, I've been thinking a lot about how to balance compassion and truthfulness. I won't say anything worse than I already did about Frank Ski's guest. The truth is that he hates women and he hates his own people... but I hope he eventually gains a better perspective on life.

Happy New Year!

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*Updated (to add my response to a comment asking if Noam Chomsky was "self-hating")

Two issues here:

Is critiquing dominant culture, as a white person, really the same as a white person’s self-critique of white culture? In my opinion they overlap but are really not the same at all. Critiques of dominant culture can include non-white cultural hegemony and imperialism.

In my mind, self-critique is a broad spectrum that includes positive analysis of strength at one end, neutral analysis in the middle and self-hating at the far other end. From what I’ve read of Chomsky he’s not self-hating at all.

I think true self-hating white people (who hate their whiteness) are rare, but they are extremely unbalanced and possibly dangerous to themselves and others. They’re like Wapanese to the nth degree… people who hate whiteness so much they want to erase themselves and be some other race, and of course they can’t. The healthier way is to be critical of whiteness but not denigrate yourself over it, and have a positive identity overall.

I think there are a fair amount of white people who take this healthy approach and talk about it and communicate it. But like my example of Tim Wise, I wish they would get a lot more mainstream mass media attention than they currently do.

NYTimes Loves the ICS

This is the school where my husband and my mother volunteer as tutors. I know some of the kids mentioned in the article. The school is also the home of the Fugees soccer team.

NY Times

By WARREN ST. JOHN
Published: December 24, 2007

DECATUR, Ga. — Parents at an elementary school here gathered last Thursday afternoon with a holiday mission: to prepare boxes of food for needy families fleeing some of the world’s most horrific civil wars.

The community effort to help refugees resembled countless others at this time of year, with an exception: the recipients were not many thousands of miles away. They were students in the school and their families.

More than half the 380 students at this unusual school outside Atlanta are refugees from some 40 countries, many torn by war. The other students come from low-income families in the community, and from middle- and upper-middle-class families in the surrounding area who want to expose their children to other cultures. Together they form an eclectic community of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, well-off and poor, of established local families and new arrivals who collectively speak about 50 languages.

[...]

Check out the slideshow. The saddest part was seeing the refugee camp family photo, and hearing that the parents thought of their lives as absolutely finished... now, they're just living for their children.

Overall the article is very optimistic, though.

Short Post on Sexism

This month I read two great, thoughtful posts about sexism, feminism and Asian-Americans.

Both were by Asian-Americans, one by Kai at Zuky (Sexism and Confucianism) and the other by Jenn at Reappropriate (Helen Zia: Be the Change).

If you are interested in the topic, follow the links and read the comments. You will notice a startling difference in the quality of the dialog in the comments section.

This makes me so mad, I can't make this post much longer, but I wanted to get it off my chest and get back to enjoying my vacation.

Comments off.

Short Hawaii post

Well, I'm in Hawaii on my non-vacation vacation. A day of cultural exhibits and sightseeing wonders of nature is about to begin.

This is my second time visiting. I was here about five years ago, also visiting my dad.

I've been raving to my husband about the spicy octopus poke (seafood salad). He loves it too!

I'll see if I can post some pictures later. I've been taking videos. Most of the video is just showing what we're eating every night for dinner. We went to a farmer's market as soon as we got here and bought a lot of fresh vegetables.

SPLC Intelligence Report Winter Highlights

(Cross-posted at Rachel's Tavern. Rachel gave me a semi-permanent guest posting gig! I'll be posting race relations stories and analysis over there several times a month).

For great investigative journalism into organized racist groups, it's hard to beat the SPLC Intelligence Report.

Here are my highlights of this quarter's issue:

1) The Teflon Nativists: FAIR Marked by Ties to White Supremacy. Finally, someone put together all the evidence showing the racist scum at "FAIR" for what they truly are. FAIR are now officially listed as a hate group. Their good buddy Lou Dobbs is fuming, of course.

I have a lot of faith in the impartiality of the SPLC publications. While the vast majority of their coverage is dedicated to white supremacists, they cover other groups in quite generous proportion to their numbers and influence. Some examples are Nation of Yahweh, JDL, La Voz de Aztlan.

Groups like FAIR serve as the normalizing conduit between explicit and implicit white supremacist ideology. Dragging them out of their shadowy gray zone forces people to examine their hatred and take a stand one way or the other.

2) Bad Blood: Attack Illuminates Skinhead Underworld. A custody battle turns ugly and a woman has her throat cut. There's not a lot of social or legal implication here, just a gripping true crime story.

3) Execution Video Surfaces in Russia. Whoah. A different and very nasty flavor of racist anti-immigration extremism.

4) Behind the Noose. A short editorial about the rising tide of white resentment. The ending left me a bit cold, though. How do we move forward? Ignoring the issue and playing nice are obviously wrong tactics, but what are some of the right ones?

5) Odin Shows Up at Nebraska Beer Bash. On a lighter note.

If you donate to the SPLC, you should receive a paper copy of this publication every quarter.

Whipsaw

Things have not been going well on the adoption front.

This Monday I called my caseworker just to check in on some inquiries and wish her happy holidays. It sounded like she couldn't wait to get off the phone with me. No, nothing happening, never heard back, nope, no feedback on your homestudy, your homestudy is great, don't know what's going on, ok, bye. I call her every other week for a few minutes, it's not as if I hound her.

This sent me into a tailspin. I felt very hurt and disrespected. My husband and I had decided a while back that if nothing happened by the end of 2007 we would look into switching agencies or moving to some other kind of adoption. They've broken promises all over the place and don't bother apologizing. Some of it I blame on the people at the agency, but I know other people signed with other similar Atlanta-area agencies, and I don't know if it's much better somewhere else.

Our wait is just wrong. I've made almost 200 inquiries, mostly on boys ages five to ten, often two siblings, mild to moderate special needs, with little regard for race or ethnicity. We've applied for girls too, but there are more boys in the listings. We're not looking for a perfectly healthy baby girl. Why do these states list children for years? There are waiting parents out there as well as waiting children, but I guess the resources to match them are just not there. I've blamed a lot of things. Sometimes I've wondered if my race is a factor. Several other people say it almost certainly isn't, but it could be something in the background, as subtle as the workers looking at a picture of my husband and I and a child and having a passing thought that there are just one or two too many colors all together there in that picture, and then moving on to the next family.

The dominant reason is probably that this interstate matching system is chaotic and sucks, combined with my agency losing workers and being understaffed after the dual exodus a few months ago.

A lot of my mental energy this week has gone into trying not to feel sorry for myself and break out crying. This holiday season is very hard. Thank goodness I have a vacation lined up. We can't afford a real one but I worked out a great substitute. We got a last-minute frequent flyer mile ticket because we were willing to take a red-eye on Christmas Day. We'll be staying at my dad's retirement studio apartment in Hawaii. It's in a cheap, very non-touristy location and there won't be much to do except for relaxing and eating incredible seafood. My dad will be away in Japan. We've had an open invitation to stay there for years, but tickets to Hawaii are so expensive we haven't been able to take advantage of the offer until now.

Anyway, I thought we would be a family with children by now, facing a whole new set of joys and challenges. Instead, I feel like a year of my life has been sucked into a vortex. Last December I was happy and excited about the future. I had a huge amount of trust and respect for everyone at our agency. Now, I just feel sad and tired... so tired.

This week I've started calling up other agencies and contemplating a switch to foster-to-adopt. This would involve massive amounts of paperwork and be a huge emotional and mental change. With the route we're on right now -- "straight" adoption -- once a post-TPR child is placed, there is very little chance that they would be removed. All other avenues have already been explored and exhausted. The process is fairly smooth: placement, extended supervision, adoption finalization. Changing to the foster-to-adopt route, we would be expected to foster until we adopt. Perhaps our first child would be the one we adopted. Perhaps the first child would be reunified after one month. Perhaps an aunt or uncle would come forward after six months. We wouldn't know. There are many more children through this route and a great need for homes.

My husband and I feel the same way. We don't know if we can do it but we'd be willing to try. In theory, being part of a child's life while their family goes through a rough patch and then helping them reunite is something I support 100%. But in practice, how would it affect me? I don't know. Maybe I could do it, maybe it would kill me.

Here's a great resource: a transcript from a chat session called "Foster Care to Adoption: What Is It Like?". This part struck me.

Brea [foster care adoption social worker]: I would advise parents who are considering adoption to explore all of their options, with fostering-to-adopt being one among them. I don't think that fostering-to-adopt is for those who are going to be first-time parents. I would encourage someone in the position of not having any children and wanting to adopt to choose a route that will entail less risk.

If we did foster-to-adopt, I like to think I could send back a child with grace and compassion. What if I went crazy and acted badly? I can see why experienced parents who already have a child would be much better at this. Also, the idea of "testing the waters" before jumping into adoption is difficult for me to comprehend emotionally. I would feel terrible for not fully committing from the beginning. I know people who have done this and I understand the risks and rewards. I'm not ruling it out yet. But contemplating a switch is difficult.

I've been calling some local agencies and our county DFCS. Of course it's almost impossible to get to anyone on the phone. I keep getting put on endless hold, given the wrong number, sent to the wrong voicemail. Why does this have to suck so hard? It's clear what's wrong and how to fix it.

Then this morning I got a short email from my caseworker. We've made it to round two on a little boy from out of state we applied for back in July. There'll be a meeting next week where she'll present our case. This is the most progress we've made anywhere, on any inquiry.

I emailed her back thanking her. I dug up the profile again and looked at the picture of the boy, and then put my head on my desk and started crying.

I don't know what to do anymore. I feel slightly hopeful but mostly lost and weak. I guess we'll wait some more.

Local roundup

Georgia is still drought-stricken. Last month our doughy-faced overlord, Sonny Perdue, led a state prayer for rain. It rained a quarter of an inch a few days later. I'm impressed he can successfully read a weather forecast, but I don't think his prayer was overall any effective. We might get more rain if he volunteers to hang from an oak tree like the pagan kings of old! I should write him a letter. On the bright side it was very balmy this week and we even saw a man riding a bicycle with no shirt on.

In big local news, Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for dogfighting. I wrote about this briefly last year. Personally, I'm glad he got such a stiff sentence. I know many commentators have remarked that it looks very bad in comparison with light sentences for domestic violence. I can't subscribe to the "it shows a dog's life is worth more than a woman's" view, however. I can sympathize with it but there are so many links between both types of violence. A lot of people who work in animal control have noticed this. Here is a local example:

Have you ever seen a dogfight?
Yes, evidence of dogfights. They disperse when they know we’re coming. I look for scarring, scratching, their demeanor and animal behavior. … [There is] a lot of dogfighting in Atlanta. In northwest and southeast Atlanta [especially], mostly [in] the city, because of the income and they can hide them.

What type of animal behavior do you see?
They cower, [do] not look at you. One’s been doing it a lot will charge — no warning.

Why do they cower?
They aren’t aggressive. [The owners] can’t use them for fighting [so] they beat them, and throw them in the street if they don’t kill them. [The dogs] live in deplorable conditions, low-income housing. They can’t pay their rent, can’t feed their families, but are taking care of the dogs. If the dogs are abused, there is abuse in the home; beating their wives or their children.

It's also common that abusive men threaten women through their pets. According to this local pet-friendly domestic violence shelter...

Abusers hit, kick, throw, torture, and kill the family pets in an effort to terrorize the family and keep them silent about the abuse in their home. Concern for a beloved companion animal's welfare prevents or delays more than 50% of battered individuals from escaping domestic abuse, continuing to endanger themselves, their children, and their pets. Their concerns are legitimate: it is estimated that 88% of animals in households where mental and physical abuse takes place, the family pet is injured or killed when the victim tries to leave.

I think these are both compelling arguments to treat violence against pets seriously. It doesn't exist in isolation. As human beings we have a selfish interest to stigmatize it and stop it.

I have a frightening anecdote about a local guy known as a multiple cat-skinner... but on second thought, let's not go there.

There are some major changes going on with our adoption plans but I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Soon.

We are Your Overlords!

Micro-post here. Generally, I hate classic rock, but I happen to love "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin. It really fires up the blood on my Teutonic side. Here's an amusing version with rampaging kittens.

I'm working up a longer post again, maybe it will be ready this weekend.