I asked ‘AskWhy’ to do a guest post about the racism that she’s observed among her tribe: progressive white people. I did so because I recognized a level of truth in her voice far deeper than that of many of her kindred who have commented here previously. I’m calling out the ‘Rachel’s Taverns’, the ‘Sly Civilians’, the ‘Thinking Girls’ and any whites who take academic, pseudo-progressive stances devoid of self-reflective depth, who when confronted with their racism, intellectually ‘bob and weave’ to deflect attention away from IT and onto anything BUT them.

This is a very long post and it will be a two-three part affair. It is meant for the sincere person who, when discussing racism, include themselves as carriers of the dreaded disease. This is also meant for those people of color who get all of this on an intuitive level, yet haven’t seen an analysis like this in black and white…and from a white perspective. Read this and get beneath the binary, the superficiality and the disowning of complicity that so many wear like a gold pin.

Only the committed and the deep need apply!!! (And again, its long, but its worth it if you are seeking truth.)

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Maxjulian: These are edited (for this purpose) excerpts about progressive white supremacy from a couple of chapters from my dissertation; I did the research in 1997-98 and wrote it over the next couple of years. “PROG” is a pseudonym for a self-identified progressive organization that was part of a larger movement community on the east coast, all white-dominated. I took out a lot of the interview quotes (except near the end) and some details for the sake of length.

I’ve bolded some of the non-header text that I feel as particularly interesting from where my understanding is at this point in time, but I only did that up to the part about the racism/anti-racism committee.

And, also, just FYI: the other organization I worked with/researched, the white-dominated feminist org, had a culture based in feeling much more than thought than this one — and that white feminist organization had its own patterns of white supremacy. It was this thing about feeling warm and comfortable which also served to protect the white women from discomfort related to dealing with racism in the organization.
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In contrast to [the white-centered/white-dominated women’s organization I also worked with for the research], PROG’s culture revolved around thought rather than feeling, and was most visible in participants’ explicitly articulated ideas about power and social change.

The Center of PROG’s Culture: The PROG Worldview
When I arrived at PROG to begin my research, I was immediately swept into a flurry of urgent activity around a health care campaign. This campaign involved PROG taking part in a battle against a large for-profit health care company. Over time, I came to understand that the meanings participants associated with this type of fight — challenging corporate giants and/or the politicians they have bought; fighting the good fight against greed; working for the good of “ordinary people” — emerged out of PROG’s worldview. I also learned that this worldview was the central component of PROG’s organizational culture.
PROG’s worldview contained an explicit set of ideas about how power was distributed in larger society. It also contained both implicit and explicit assumptions about the organization’s own status and role within the larger struggle for social change. The foundational assumption of this worldview was a division of society into two oppositional groups: the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”

The Foundation of PROG’s Worldview: The Good Guys/Bad Guys Split
The most fundamental assumption in the PROG worldview was that the world was divided into two and only two groups. One side of the battle there were the “bad guys” — wealthy corporations, the greedy politicians they buy, and any other individuals who benefit from the status quo. Everyone else, including PROG, were the actual or potential “good guys.” There were no gray areas in this split: as another PROG board member put it, “Either you’re on the side that has power, or you’re not. Period.”
According to one staff member, the good guys/bad guys split was so fundamental that articulating it too explicitly in group settings was unnecessary. But although it may have been unnecessary to state the good guys/bad guys split in an explicit manner, other references to this binary were commonplace in PROG. Storytelling — specifically, spirited “us versus them” tales related at staff meetings and in public organizational spaces — comprised one of the most common ways in which participants articulated this theme in everyday interactions with one another. In addition to stories about past events, participants also used the good guys/bad guys split as a theoretical foundation to generate momentum for upcoming campaigns and actions. In describing upcoming campaigns, PROGers routinely cast several specific corporations, corporate lobbyists and conservative politicians as villains in the battle to come. As with the stories described above, this use of the good guys/bad guys dichotomy generated anger and excitement among both speakers and listeners, increasing the sense of commitment and camaraderie in the group.

PROG’s Worldview and The Power of “Regular People”
The PROG worldview assumed that power and resources were asymmetrically distributed in the world, with a few “bad guys” having too much and everyone else not having enough. Unlike a strictly Marxist view, PROG’s worldview did not define the working class alone as the group without power. Instead, the powerless group was composed of everyone not located in the bad guys’ camp. PROGers referred to the currently powerless group as “regular,” “normal,” “ordinary,” or “real” people, and in one case, “Joe and Jane Citizen.”
My use of the word “power” in the paragraph above is consistent with PROGers’ own language, but is nonetheless somewhat misleading. While wealth may be concentrated in the hands of the few, the PROG worldview included attention to a second type of power: people power. PROGers sought to develop people power, because they saw it as a crucial resource in the fight for social change. One staff member explained the two types of power to me by using an equation: “Money plus people equals power. If you have a lot of money, you probably don’t have a lot of people behind you, but if you don’t have a lot of money, you can make up for it in that equation by having a lot of people. The fact that people are part of the equation is too often forgotten in America. So that is really the bottom line, yes, that’s really it, money plus people equals power.”

PROG’s Role in The Struggle for Change, Part I: Ideological Labor
If ordinary people have access to the power of collective action, why haven’t these people banded together to dismantle the unfair distribution of resources once and for all? According to the PROG worldview, one answer to this question is that many potential movement participants don’t perceive the “big picture” and/or don’t understand that people power is a real resource for change. According to PROGers, this deficit of perception is not a coincidence. Instead, PROG’s worldview called for attention to an ideological battle taking place all around us. In this battle, the bad guys are deliberately promoting disempowering perspectives, and organizations such as PROG must counter those perspectives with an alternative view.
PROGers viewed themselves as ideological laborers whose job included the development and dissemination of alternative views of reality. This vision rests on a largely unstated but very important premise — it assumes that PROGers have a better understanding of how the world works than do most of the people they seek to organize. Although one of the organization’s goals was to increase the number of ordinary people who shared PROGers’ clearer perspective, PROG activists believed that at the present time, relatively few ordinary people shared their understanding of the world. According to PROG’s worldview, then, PROGers and other progressive activists remained necessary participants in the struggle for change.

PROG’s Role in The Struggle for Change, Part II: Information Source and Skills-Builder
As the above discussion suggests, however, the good guy/bad guy binary also contained an important subdivision within the “good guy” category. This category was divided into two parts: those who see the world clearly, and those who must be taught to do so. According to their worldview, PROGers and other progressive activists fell into the first category, while the majority of ordinary people fell into the second, at least for the moment.
In addition to a clearer view of the world, the knowledgeable segment of the good guys group also had access to other cognitive resources necessary to successful social change work. Information on specific issues was one of these resources. PROG’s worldview acknowledged that obfuscation was of the ways in which the bad guys often attempted to prevent change. Thus, progressive activists sought to provide ordinary people with an informational arsenal that would enable them to cut through such tactics.

The Work of Organizing: Foundational Assumptions
Together, political education, information provision and “nuts and bolts” skill training comprised the core tasks of community organizing as conceptualized by PROGers. This view of the community organizer’s role rested on three underlying assumptions within the PROG worldview. At the most basic level, as discussed earlier, PROG’s worldview assumed that PROGers possessed a very clear understanding of how society was structured and how people might make change. In addition, PROG and its organizers were assumed to be well-equipped to direct and teach others. Finally, the worldview emphasized commitment and action. If successful, PROG organizers would build and develop individuals who would actively display their commitment to PROG, the surrounding progressive community and the work of creating a more just society.
These assumptions provided the foundation for two sets of tasks that PROGers’ viewed as essential in the organizing process: building a base and developing leaders. By engaging in this work, PROGers believed that they could serve effectively in the role of essential catalysts for a movement that should eventually be led and sustained by “regular people.”

Building a Base
According to PROGers, base-building is one of the most important tasks of the organizer …[According to PROGers], a base is a is a group of people who commit to the organization’s broad mission of changing the balance of power in society, and who act on that commitment.
PROG base members also represented the organization’s ideological successes. In PROG’s worldview, members of the base were implicitly defined as those individuals with whom activists’ ideological labor had succeeded, at least in part. Specifically, base members were individuals who had accepted two of the fundamental assumptions found within the PROG worldview: the foundational good guys/bad guys split, and PROG’s role as good-guy educator and catalyst within that context. In the PROG worldview, members of the base should trust PROG implicitly because they know that as a good guy/catalyst, the organization has their best interests at heart. As one interviewee put it, “If we call for a boycott, [the base consists of the people who] will be motivated to do that because we say so, just because it’s coming from PROG and they know we have their best in mind.”
Because PROG was defined as one of the “good guys” and because it was also defined as a catalyst for change, the PROG worldview included the implicit assumption that resources mobilized for PROG (or any other core member of the progressive community) were, by definition, mobilized for the purpose of positive social change. In other words, within the PROG worldview, what was good for PROG was good for the fight against injustice, and success in that fight was good for the people.

Developing Leaders
As with base building, leadership development work required PROG activists to educate the people they wished to reach. Typically, leadership development required extended one-on-one contact between an organizer and a potential leader. The leadership development process also had a different goal than did base building efforts. Ideally, members of the base should do as activists requested. Leaders, on the other hand, should be able to take over the reins themselves. Further, while base-building was specifically intended to increase individuals’ connections with PROG itself, PROGers’ believed that leadership development had been successful if it had yielded increased commitment to any group that PROG accepted as part of the progressive community.
Although leadership development and base building were different processes, these two tasks were also closely linked — leaders generally emerged out of PROG’s existing base, and successful leaders should be able to develop their own bases.
Both the base building and leadership development concepts illustrate the role that PROG’s worldview set out for staff activists: their job was to facilitate the growth of a continually expanding mass movement of “ordinary people” whose collective efforts would be able to bring about positive social change.

Manifestations of PROG’s Worldview Inside the PROG Office
Whether attending to PROGers’ battle with the bad guys or to their base-building and leadership development efforts, PROG’s worldview focused most explicitly on interactions between professional PROG activists on one hand, and other types of people on the other. Despite this orientation, however, PROG’s worldview also strongly shaped dynamics within the organization itself. From staff development processes, to newcomers’ experiences with a progressive “in-language,” to the hurried pace of work within the office, the PROG worldview shaped the environment within which PROGers operated on a day to day basis.

Building and Developing Staff
During my time at PROG, I learned that PROG’s leadership development model was used in staff development processes as well. Senior staff members — especially supervisors — considered it part of their job to develop the political consciousness and skills of newer or “less-developed” staff members. In fact, during interviews with me, two senior staff members made explicit connections between leadership development and staff development
Within PROG, ideas about staff development were directly linked to the purpose set out for the organization by its worldview. According to this worldview, PROG’s efforts should sharpen individuals’ perceptions of power imbalances, and should increase their active commitment to social justice work. When successful, staff development efforts at PROG yielded just such outcomes.
[Successful] participants entered PROG with a willingness — even an eagerness — to learn from more experienced activists. Within the PROG worldview, all newcomers who enter the organization should position themselves as learners in this way, as the learner role facilitates their “development” into effective progressive activists. However, even those individuals who did not initially perceive themselves as learners soon found that this role was a necessary one for anyone seeking to join the progressive community. As newcomers (myself included) discovered, the PROG language was one of the first and most fundamental things that we were required to learn.

The PROG/Progressive “In-Language”
PROGers and other progressive community insiders routinely used complex political or legislative terms; told jokes that were incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t know the specific players in the progressive community’s universe, and made seemingly simple statements that were laden with significance that newcomers couldn’t understand
[Over time, I learned that] the in-language supported the PROG worldview. The PROG worldview implicitly set out a specific role for PROG in relationship to those individuals who might be “developed.” PROG insiders were teachers, while those who would be developed were learners. The in-language facilitated this dynamic. [And], newcomers who were unwilling to locate themselves in the learner role seldom stayed long in the progressive community.
The in-language was — at least theoretically — a permeable barrier, as long as newcomers were willing to learn it. However, those newcomers who were not willing to learn the language tended to continue feeling alienated, and eventually dropped out of the progressive community. In practice, then, the use of the in-language ensured that even individuals who did not initially cast themselves as learners were subtly forced to adopt that initial orientation if they wanted to be a part of the group.
In addition to facilitating the teacher-learner dynamic set out in PROG’s worldview, the in-language also supported the worldview in a more basic way.
In my early fieldnotes, I struggled to recall and record in-language information that I didn’t understand. I found it extraordinarily difficult to record such fieldnotes, because I had few if any reference points in my mind that would assist me in making sense of the data. I soon came to realize that one way to make sense of people’s in-language commentary was to figure out which names referred to PROG allies (the good guys) and which names referred to PROG’s enemies (the bad guys). Once I implemented it, this either/or sorting practice increased my ability to understand the basics of in-language conversations. Not only was this increased understanding useful in fieldnote writing, it also enabled me to respond appropriately to insiders’ comments. … The very first thing I learned in trying to understand the PROG in-language was that there was a binary split between good guys and bad guys.
It is important, of course, to keep in mind that the in-language was not the only mode of communication at PROG. I did understand quite a bit of what people said to me in informal conversations, explanations and other interactions without knowing this language. However, attention to the existence and function of the PROG in-language illuminates an otherwise rather elusive component of PROG’s culture: in the teacher/catalyst role, PROGers worked to set and control the terms of engagement with others in very basic ways, including but certainly not limited to language.

Setting the Agenda and the Teacher-Learner Dynamic
Progressive insiders’ efforts to set and control the terms of engagement were strongly supported by PROG’s worldview. In this worldview, the fight for social and economic justice required that PROGers seek to shape how people think about the world around them. In other words, PROG sought to redefine the very ideological landscape on which the battle for justice was fought.
According to PROG’s worldview, the organization was well-equipped to set an oppositional agenda, for two reasons. First. PROG was defined as an unquestioned “good guy” in the battle for positive change. Second, PROGers and other progressive insiders were assumed to have a very clear understanding of the world. Together, these two assumptions suggested that it was useful for PROG to exert control over others in certain very basic ways. Indeed, the PROG worldview defined such efforts to exert control as part of a necessary fight for justice.

The Good Guy/Bad Guy Split, Universal Versus Local, and Cultural White Supremacy
PROG’s culture assumed that white participants were not agents of racial domination. In PROG’s case, this assumption emerged out of the worldview’s good guy/bad guy split.

The Good Guys/Bad Guys Binary
Within the PROG worldview, every person who was not part of the small group of disproportionately powerful “bad guys” was shortchanged by an unfair distribution of power. This dichotomy provided the rationale for PROG’s efforts to organize a mass base of “ordinary,” “regular,” or “normal” people who would, though collective action, take back the power that was rightfully theirs. As with other binaries used by social movements, attention to power imbalances within the “good guy” group was not a part of PROG’s worldview. In fact, from the perspective of the PROG worldview, attention to such internal power imbalances might actually pose a threat to the very mass mobilization that would be necessary for power to be redistributed.
The PROG worldview melded a leftist approach with a populist one. Like explicitly Marxist formulations claiming that racialized power imbalances are merely capitalist tools that divide the working class, the PROG/progressive worldview implicitly supported the idea that sustained attention to racism within the target population would draw the focus away from this group’s shared interests. But although economics were at the heart of PROG’s worldview, the PROG binary split expanded the base of collective action beyond the Marxist focus on the working class. In PROG’s worldview, the oppressed group included anyone who was not part of the “most powerful” group. Theoretically, then, the “ordinary people” group included both white and non-white people from a variety of classes and from both genders. Given the heterogeneity of this group, what would be the basis for a sense of shared interest among its members?
On one level, the answer to the above question is simple — from the perspective of the PROG worldview, this group shared an interest in reclaiming power. As social movement theorists point out, however, connections between oppressed groups do not emerge automatically. Instead, movement participants create and sustain collective identities that highlight participants’ connections with one another.
PROG’s worldview supported the idea that ideological labor was necessary in order to draw participants together in the struggle for social and economic justice. As discussed in Chapter 4, this worldview included the assumption that many members of the oppressed “ordinary people” group needed to be “developed” in order to perceive the power imbalance and the need for collective action more clearly. Part of PROG’s task, then, was to provide development experiences that would emphasize concerns that members might share. More specifically, PROG focused on areas in which all members of the “good guys” group lacked power.
A focus on areas in which all members of the good guy group lacked power diverted attention away from racism. Since at least some members of this group — white participants — were not targeted by racism, this issue was implicitly cast as one that would not be of concern to the group as a whole. From this perspective, racism would not be an appropriate issue for an organization such as PROG to address - [it would be seen as artificially dividing a group that should be united].
A focus on whiteness as a privileged racial location reveals more about why the PROG worldview diverted attention away from racism. The quest for shared interests based on a shared lack of power disallowed attention to any structurally supported advantages that might accrue to some members of the “good guys” group. More specifically, the quest for “ordinary people’s” shared interests blocked sustained attention to whiteness as a dominant racial location occupied by some members of this group. The PROG worldview also diverted attention away from whiteness as a dominant racial location occupied by some PROG activists, as the worldview located these individuals in the “good guys” category along with the people they sought to organize.

The Invisible White Center of PROG’s Worldview
As noted above, PROG activists sought to unite an internally stratified group around shared oppression. King (198 terms this type of approach “monistic politics.” As King and many other feminist women of color have pointed out (e.g., Crenshaw 1989), attention only to shared oppression among an internally stratified group has all too often yielded theory and practice that places the most privileged members of that group at the center of analysis. Relatedly, a focus only on oppression in such a context renders these members’ privileges invisible. In practice, this monistic approach marginalizes or ignores the perspectives of a group’s less privileged members, and falsely universalizes the perspectives of those in the most privileged social location.
… PROG’s worldview was invisibly centered on the perspectives of white, middle to upper-middle-class families and communities. Within the PROG worldview, the needs and concerns of this segment of ordinary people were synonymous with everyone’s needs and concerns. Conversely, the needs and concerns of non-white and/or poor families and communities were implicitly cast as specific to those groups alone.
In PROG’s version of monistic politics, only those economic or other patterns that white, middle-class people might experience as oppressive (e.g., managed care, utility rate hikes) were defined as universally salient issues that were appropriate for an organization such as PROG to address. In contrast, patterns that white, middle-class people would not directly experience as oppressive (e.g., racism in the educational system, welfare reform) were implicitly cast as specific to the populations oppressed by them and thus not appropriate for PROG to address. Of course, managed care and utility hikes don’t only affect white and middle-class people. However, these are not necessarily the issues that other groups would identify as most in need of activists’ attention. PROG’s worldview erased the need for the organization to seek information on these groups’ perspectives because the organization’s monistic politics provided the implicit assurance that what was most important to white, middle-class people was most important to everyone else as well.
By using a monistic approach, PROG’s worldview drew on cultural white supremacy. As the unmarked norm, a white, middle-class social location appears to yield a universal perspective from which other, “narrower” perspectives deviate (Essed 1991; Grillo and Wildman 1997; Ani 1994). Interestingly enough, white middle class women had two possible locations within PROG’s universal versus specific split. On one hand, as part of white, middle class families and communities, these women were able to be members of the “universal perspective” group. However, if they were to call for a focus on sexism, these same women would become individuals whose presumably narrow concerns did not apply to all members of the “ordinary people” group.
Unlike white class-privileged women, people of color did not have a choice of location in PROG’s universal versus specific divide. Within PROG’s worldview, the experiences and concerns of people of color were firmly located in the “narrow perspective” side of the split. … The only way that people of color could hope to enter the universal group would be to adopt a white-centered perspective — and even in such a scenario, it was likely that they would remain suspect on the basis of their race.

Broad Versus Local Issues and Universal Versus Specific Concerns: The Devaluation of Non-White Perspectives
The PROG worldview’s invisible equation of whiteness with universal perspectives, and non-whiteness with specificity converged with a second PROG equation. In this second equation, geographically specific — that is, “local” — issues were synonymous with narrow and limited concerns I discussed this topic briefly in Chapter 3. As I pointed out, many of today’s community organizing groups have modified Saul Alinsky’s “local issues” approach to organizing. Specifically, organizations such as PROG and ACORN seek to move beyond this type of “stoplight organizing” by linking local concerns with a “broader” view of large-scale power imbalances. From the perspective of PROG’s worldview (and that of many other progressive organizations), this linkage is an essential step in building a mass-based movement for change.
In the PROG worldview, whiteness and middle-class-ness were linked to universality, and universality was linked to the desired broader vision of power imbalances. Conversely, non-whiteness and/or poorness were linked to specificity, and specificity was linked to the type of local, narrow view of the world that PROGers sought to expand. With the convergence of these two equations, white people’s concerns and perspectives were privileged, while non-white people’s concerns and perspectives were devalued within PROG’s worldview.

Whiteness, Superiority, and Legitimate Authority
By drawing on hegemonic notions of whiteness as the universal perspective, and by melding this “universal” with the broad vision that PROG sought to disseminate, PROG’s worldview implicitly supported the assumption that white, class-privileged people had a better — or to paraphrase Essed (1991), a more whole and less partial — understanding of the world than did people of color of any class background. In this formulation, whiteness remained invisible while white people’s perspectives were nonetheless cast as superior to the perspectives of people of color.
The “white perspective is superior” assumption had a particular — if invisible — meaning within the PROG worldview. As discussed in Chapter 4, one of the strands of the PROG worldview was the assumption that PROGers and other progressive insiders had a clearer view of the world than did “less developed” individuals. Since PROG’s worldview also invisibly supported the assumption that white people’s vision was superior to the vision of people of color, it legitimated white people’s authority over people of color. Specifically, PROG’s worldview suggested that white people were well suited to being teachers, and that people of color needed instruction from white people in order to break out of their narrow view of the world and adopt a broader perspective.
… [Challenging white supremacy] within PROG would require white progressive insiders to relinquish a very basic form of white privilege: the privilege to define reality at a broad level, and to insist that others adopt this definition (Essed 1991, 270-274). From within the PROG worldview itself, progressive insiders’ work to re-define reality was cast as part of the struggle for social justice. However, attention to the invisible white center of this worldview reveals that this ideological labor also reproduced racism by privileging the perspectives and concerns of white people and casting these perspectives and concerns as universal. As Grillo and Wildman point out:

White supremacy creates in whites the expectation that issues of concern to them will be central in every discourse. . . . The center stage problem occurs because dominant group members are already accustomed to being center stage. They have been treated that way by society; it feels natural, comfortable, and in the order of things . . . Because whiteness is the norm, it is easy to forget that it is not the only perspective. Thus, members of dominant groups assume that their perceptions are the pertinent ones, that their problems are the ones that need to be addressed, and that in discourse, they should be speaker rather than listener. Part of being a member of a privileged group is being the center and the subject of all inquiry in which people of color or other nonprivileged groups are the objects (1997, 46).

From this perspective, white people relinquishing the center means white people learning to relinquish control at a very basic level. In the case of PROG, the de-centering of whiteness would require a shift in the way in which white participants interacted with people of color in the organization. Rather than perceiving these individuals as objects to be developed, built and grown, white PROGers would need to perceive them as reality-definers — at the broadest possible level — in their own right. Such a shift would threaten white PROG insiders’ secure location as teachers in relationship to individuals in the organization who did not perceive reality as they did. In the absence of this role, white PROG insiders would need to adopt a more self-conscious, fluid and self-critical approach in their interactions with people of color. As I argue below, however, such an approach requires hard work.

Unquestioned “Good Guy” Status as White Privilege
In describing the first “racism committee” meeting to me, one of the people of color who had participated commented that critiques of racism were very painful and difficult for many white participants to hear because:

It’s hard for white people, to be put on the spot, to be targeted for being white. But it happens to people of color all the time. So it flips it over, white people are used to assuming they are good because they’re white, and then this is the opposite. It’s hard for [white] people . . . [but] people are going to have to let themselves be targets, and folks don’t want to be punching bags, to go to a meeting and feel like because they’re white, they will be targeted, but maybe that’s what has to happen for this process to work (emphasis mine).

As this participant’s comments suggest, when white PROGers were challenged on the basis of their location in a dominant racial category, this challenge threatened a hegemonic association between whiteness and goodness (hooks 1995). Instead of whiteness remaining invisible and white people’s goodness remaining unquestioned, the critic’s challenges to racism in PROG “flipped over” these hegemonic assumptions and white PROGers would be under intense scrutiny as potential or actual agents of domination.
In PROG, as in other self-defined liberal and progressive white environments, the hegemonic association between whiteness and goodness was not direct. Instead, ideologies within PROG and these other liberal or progressive contexts contain a seemingly non-racialized “good” category in which white people are definitively located. These categories both mediate and support the association between white people and goodness. For example, in the Netherlands, dominant ideology asserts that the Dutch are “tolerant people.” In this context, white people often respond to challenges to their racism with moral indignation because such challenges represent a threat to their self-definition as tolerant (Essed 1991). The “tolerant people” category both maintains and masks the hegemonic link between whiteness and goodness by casting white people as intrinsically good without making the overtly white supremacist argument that white people are this way specifically because they are white.
In PROG, the role that was analogous to the “tolerant people” category in the Netherlands was the “good guy/change agent” location set forth by the PROG worldview. PROGers took their own and other progressive activists’ location in this category very seriously. In interviews, for example, many PROG staff and board members defined themselves and other PROGers as people with an intrinsic concern for justice and a passionate desire to eradicate power imbalances. This understanding of PROG staff and board members as intrinsically just individuals had a particular significance in the context of efforts to address racism in the organization. Specifically, it provided white PROGers with the assurance that they were not — and indeed could not be — actual or potential recipients of white privilege or agents of racial domination.
Not surprisingly, quite a few of the white PROGers who spoke about race and racism in interviews made a point to tell me that they themselves were not racist, offering as evidence stories about befriending Black people and other people of color as youngsters, feeling empathy for people of color, and perceiving racism as injustice from an early age. Several of these white PROGers went on to make an explicit connection between PROG’s progressive and presumably non-racist worldview, and their own self-definition as natural opponents of racism. The connection between this assumed location and the good guy/change agent role was [particularly] apparent in this white interviewee’s comments about the difference between PROGers and other people:

We, the staff and board [of PROG], we, I think, in our lives operate under a different set of assumptions, we make our everyday decisions based on a different set of assumptions than most people live their lives by. [For example, unlike us], a lot of folks believe that racism is gone.

The above comments — and others like them — suggested that white PROGers saw themselves as located outside the ongoing processes, dynamics and structures that reproduce racism in the United States. While I imagine many white people in many contexts attempt to locate themselves in this way, it is important to keep in mind that PROG’s worldview strongly supported such an assumption. Specifically, PROG’s culture strongly supported white people’s “obliviousness” (McIntosh 1988, 4) about the possibility that they themselves might be privileged or act as agents of domination.
In a context such as PROG, it would seem that “oblivion” would be perceived as an undesirable state. However, obliviousness to white privilege and “self as oppressor” has its benefits, particularly for those who self-identify as agents for positive social change. When white individuals remain oblivious to our racial location, we avoid the hard work of self-conscious and critical attention to our own analyses and actions. According to Lugones (1990), a white person’s effective resistance to racism requires:

Engaged thinking that takes seriously her own participation in an ethnocentric culture in a racial state. Such thinking requires that she become and think as self-conscious practitioner of her culture, and a self-conscious and critical member of the racial state. Such thinking is possible because she is a participant in both (48).

As Lugones’ comments suggest, engaged and self-conscious thinking about one’s location in the dominant racial category is hard work. A state of oblivion — or what Lugones aptly terms “dis-engagement” — supports white people in avoiding this work. The engaged, critical self-consciousness that Lugones describes represents a particularly difficult challenge for white activists who have grown used to thinking of themselves simply as agents of positive social change. For these activists, the approach that Lugones details threatens an unquestioned self-definition — self as intrinsically moral and just — and requires instead a more complex and fluid understanding of one’s location in the struggle.
But while many white PROGers accepted their own unquestioned goodness, some of the people of color in the organization weren’t so sure. For some of these activists, the tensions between the PROG worldview and their own concerns about racism in the organization were relatively easy to manage. These individuals tended to speak of PROG as full or partial outsiders to the organization who wanted PROG’s worldview to change. By maintaining a theoretical distance between themselves and the organization, they were able to minimize the potential damage that a more trusting stance would entail. But although this distance was useful, it was also constantly under attack, as white PROGers sought to “develop” these individuals in ways that would increase their trust in the organization.
I also spoke with people of color who felt more connected or committed to the organization. In some of these conversations, the issue of racism did not emerge or emerged only briefly, and I remain unsure about the individual’s perspective on possible tensions between the PROG worldview and racism in the organization. In one case, however, I both heard about and witnessed how painful and draining such tensions could be for people of color who sought both to enter the progressive community and to consistently challenge racism within it. I engaged in a series of formal and informal conversations with one such individual during the course of my research. In one of our first conversations about PROG’s efforts to address racism in the organization, this interviewee offered vivid commentary on the double vision s/he experienced in working with white PROGers on this issue:

I’ve worked in predominantly [non-white] organizations with some white people, but the white people there were always “bad white people” and here there are “good white people”. . . it is very different, to have this group of white people working on race, it’s just very different. . . . It’s just different, it’s like sitting at the family dinner table and looking around and saying, “This is my family? That’s my mom? Really?”

In a subsequent interview, I asked for further elaboration on this family metaphor, and s/he replied:

I’ve worked on race issues with [groups of people who share my racial location], so it’s easier because it’s clear cut, us/them, kind of deal. So it’s not clouded. Maybe I’m using the wrong thing, but it’s very clear cut. It’s like “Okay, everybody on this side of the table’s [a person of color], and we’re dealing with ‘them’ [white people].” So it’s very interesting being in this group because how I see it, we’re dealing with good white people (laughter). I hate to use that term, but, that’s the way, you know, [people] that are really working at dealing with their own — that have looked at themselves and examined themselves, and looked also at the world and have decided not to contribute to racism and all different kinds of issues. [People who] have really made a stand, and have worked hard to not perpetuate the madness.
So it’s really strange to me. Sometimes I want to be . . . almost cruel in some ways. When I said, “This is my family?” it’s like sitting at the table and everybody is so different and not what I’m used to, and I’m like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m sitting at the table with white people working on racism,” and that’s just (pause) it’s different. . . . I would even say it’s difficult. It’s difficult because when you say things, it’s about them (Question: When you say things about white people?) Right. It’s about those people. They cannot help but feel, often, I find [in PROG] . . . the defensiveness always pops up, like, “That’s not me, that’s not me.” Maybe it’s not you, but — maybe it is you (laugh), you know, maybe it is you.

What was the relationship between the “good” white PROGers and the speaker in the situation described above? On one hand, the PROG worldview suggested that white PROGers were, unquestionably, people who had “decided not to contribute to racism and all kinds of different issues.” From another angle of vision, however, these same people had been and/or could be agents of racial domination. In the first vision, white PROGers were indeed “family,” were on the same side of the table. In the second vision, however, the white members were dangerous. Given this double vision, it is not surprising that the speaker found the experience “strange.”
During our conversations about race issues in PROG, the individual quoted above negotiated the two visions described above. Over time, s/he began to move away from the vision of white PROGers as unquestionably “good.” For example, in some of our earlier conversations, this participant defined the “good white people” at PROG as in the quotation above — that is, as individuals who had engaged in self-examination and taken an active stand against racism. In a later conversation, however, this interviewee told me that s/he had since come to believe that “good” white PROGers “have turned out to be people you can say ‘white’ to and don’t flinch — but that’s about it.”

During our conversations, I was struck not only by the theoretical content of this negotiation between incompatible visions, but also by how tiring and draining it was for the participant engaged in it. The experience seemed to become more painful and draining over time, as this individual moved reluctantly toward the conclusion that white PROGers were in reality not the unquestioned “good guys” that the PROG worldview — and white individuals themselves — claimed they were.

Field Negro,

I don’t disagree with you about the origin of racism. Clearly, it was and still is learned. However, I’m interested in the idea of adaptation - the way in which certain traits in animals are selectively weeded out by the particular species, while others become more engrained. One of my heroes notes that ‘racism is in the air you breath.’ It seems to have progressed from a mere learned behavior to something close to heredity. It appears to be a collective form of insanity.

I saw this this video on ThatGirl’s blog of black children (in 2006) choosing white dolls over black, and saying that “the white doll is good and the black doll is bad.” These kids were really very young. Who’s teaching them: their parents? Society? School? Television?

Really the question is who’s NOT teaching them? Racism/white supremacy is omnipresent. I don’t think white folks have to be ‘actively’ taught racism/white supremacy from some parent motivated to churn out bigots from the dollar menu. Racism is taught by remote control. To everybody. Through every institution. It is that pervasive.

Do you think with your cranium or your gut? Or both?

One of my favorite quotes is by the trumpeter Lee Morgan, who said and I paraphrase: ‘you learn the technical devices of your instrument, live your life and then play yourself on the horn.’

That quote signifies an integration of mind, emotion, spirit in ones process of creating. Of being.

We live in a country that not only doesn’t allow that integration, it nurtures the development of fractured, crippled, half-people. This society/system of racism/white supremacy states,

“You are nothing until WE pour the approved knowledge into your empty vessel. What we give you is ‘accredited,’ according to US, ‘rubber stamped’ by an institution that has OUR mangy seal of approval. This information will NOT threaten in the least OUR status as God-incarnate, bien sur.

Signed,

DA LORD

What’s a muthafucka to do?

I was conversing with AskWhy about this; what came up for me was that I made a decision (not long ago) to ignore most of what I absorbed ‘out there’ and began to tentatively rely on my own finely tuned senses. In my twenties, I would buy the Washington Post everyday and read the front page like the Bible: I wasn’t a man unless I read the paper of record. I couldn’t help but strongly identify with the suppositions and assumptions of the authors/editors. They call that, ‘playing the music on the page.’

One of the reasons I rarely engage in factual or theoretical debate with people is precisely because they are arguing the theories of dead white folks and sometimes live ones (never, ever do the philosophies and opinions of black academics make the cut). Still, I’m more interested in the folks who can quote themselves, as opposed to making someone else’s learning their foundation.

When I got to the place where I began to sense that everything I read was bogus, colored by class and racial privilege, corporate suggestion and racism, I knew I had to look within. Improvise.

Lee Morgan is right: in order to play yourself on the horn for realz, you have to forget what you’ve been conditioned to think and feel and believe. You have to recognize that you have to Un-Think, particularly if you are white. (How difficult this is for white people) Then you have to float in that in-between space of ‘I don’t know what the fuck is my thinking/feeling and what is the implanted chip’. But float you must. Its like we have to allow ourselves to become unhinged from THEIR tether, their definitions, their words, the meaning of their words and find a homing signal/instinct/impulse within.

So many muthafuckas are bound and gagged by their brainstem, hollowed out and refilled with toxic waste; their attachment to the “knowledge” they’ve received at the white man’s trough - The Academy - is fundamentalist. These ‘academic jihadists’ are so prideful. Its like that saying, ‘you can tell a white person, but you can’t tell ‘em much! You can glean the ‘one-two-three-two-two-three’ mechanized, second-hand output in their speech, in their writing, in their behavior. They’re dead, living zombies. They have been ‘bodysnatched’, replaced by a numb, intellectual accountant, whose facts add up and has zero disc space for their brain’s other hemisphere.

If you are exclusively using that pasteurized domepiece they plugged into you…..no wonder you can’t get with this.

I ain’t tryin’ to be mean, but sometimes you need to holla when children run into traffic.

Racism exists…

Now what?!

It is perhaps comforting to document the insanity, the viciousness of Racism/White Supremacy. What do we do about it?

As a documentarian of sorts, I spend a lot of time looking at the enemy, trying to understand what the enemy is doing, how he operates, why, etc.

But what about us; what about the enemy within us? I pay attention to how WE operate and I see the enemy within us as perhaps a more formidable enemy than the externalized one.

Here in Portland, we don’t talk to each other and we don’t work with each other. There is an exhaustion about even trying to relate to each other. In a town this white, we need a “Black Caucus.” We need an unapologetically biased organization that gets together and discusses our issues, not white folks. OURS.

Whether its the use of the N-word, the “Willie Syndrome,” the way our issues are hijacked by professional media ho’s and perverted into narrow, meaningless constellations that do everything for them and nothing for us.

Should we even have a “WE-strategy?” Are we post-collectivism; should we simply pull our individual selves up by our own shoe laces? I’m old enough to remember when black folks spoke to each other when we saw each other; what happened to that?

Okay, here’s my new social movement: ‘SPEAK BROTHER, SPEAK!’ I’ve had this thought before - I’m going to speak to every black person I see, whether they want to speak or not, whether they are mean-mugging the world or doing chin-ups on their shoe tongues. Speak Brother, Speak! I walk by certain folks who turn their noses up and I just wan to shame them by loud talking them: ‘What’s up, BROTHA?’ ‘Wat up, SISTA?’

Okay, this is my new campaign, my personal rehab of the black race. We must begin to at minimum speak to each other. It will subtley nourish our craving for family, solidarity.

Like the flap of a butterfly’s wing, this movement will change the world!!!!

Are you with me?

“You must remember: the enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you break the enemy.”

From the film, ‘Enter The Dragon.’

FS: But my commitment is to getting at truth - relationships be damned. I love people, but I love truth, honesty and clarity more. When people get to lyin’, I get to steppin’. By steppin’ - what I mean is, I lay folks out with truth.

AW: I’ve started to understand, for myself, that the one place that I personally have footing outside of the insanity is how I feel things related to truth, honesty and clarity. For me, the system loses any hope of my deep inner loyalty right at that spot, and since this system is based on hypocrisy/lies/illusions, that is a space with some wiggle room for me (the system still gets to me in terms of threat and fear of what it will do to me if I don’t play by its rules, but not on this other side).

So, what you say right here about truth, honesty, clarity — yes. I see and feel that that is the space you’re working in and that is the space that those white people arguing with you are disrespecting.

FS: I wasn’t desperately attached to the idea of ‘racism as a mental illness’ until this conversation. Now, I’m convinced. And my brother Asa’s assertion that “the MOST racist white person is the so-called liberal/progressive” was proven by this conversation.

AW: I never thought about it like that before but my experience is that this method of figuring out the situation does work in situations like this.

In my experience, there is a point where the truth is so disorienting/uncomfortable to people inside the space of white supremacy thinking/action that there is a reaction — and in my experience it’s not just any old critical reaction, it’s not like I would say “if you argue with me on anything you are just reacting.” No … there is an energy, tone quality (again that phrase), something that comes up as backlash to scary truth — an underlying desperation to hold on, to re-hide what is coming out through an exploration of the situation. It gets pretty frantic.

It uses various tactics but the purpose is the same: trying to re-hide what is emerging.

FS: If the primary tool that white people use to comprehend their environment (the brain), is compromised by racist termites, and white culture doesn’t encourage, support or allow one to use their other God given attributes (feelings, intuition) then folks are up shit’s creek.

AW: Seems to me that at least part of what people are arguing with you about is control and superiority. You saying stuff like this shows that you know that we white people are not the superior beings we claim to be in the cultural system.

You are decentering white people perceptions, using a way of finding truth that we don’t culturally have access to, and calling out a truth that threatens the core of the white self: we are not superior, we are not “in control” based on superiority. Why then are we in control in the arenas where we do have so much ugly power — control of land, of systems of decision-making etc? Illegitimate, the power is illegitimate. Wrong.

PS And it’s interesting to me that Sly Civilian is reacting to you, here and elsewhere, as if you are invoking the power of these white institutions he has been hurt by.

But it’s obvious you are coming from a very different space, as well as a very different location in the power structure/dynamic. He is speaking as if the truth-based threat you pose to white illusions is the same thing as institutionalized exercise of power-over inside the white cultural/structural system. But these are entirely different types of threat, one being positive and the other harmful.

His words/actions in the discussion are about regaining the white authority you are threatening by positioning himself as your victim — a position which, if accepted as accurate, carries some moral weight where you would need to listen to him, center on his perception of what is actually going on, and allow him to return to the white role of definer of what is going on.

And finally — thank you again. I feel like all this stuff that comes from centering in commitment to truth and clarity is so so valuable inside this horror. So so valuable for resistance and real change.

______

AskWhy, your words are the proof that beneath the denial and beneath - YES - the insanity, there beats a human heart, there lives a human being who can be reborn in authenticity, in humanity. Heavy is the head that wears the crown of “white superiority.” Take it off, and rejoin the human race muthafuckas!

As my good friend LA hints, much intellectual and spiritual rehab and deconstruction is required to assist our brothers and sisters of every hue. Including our own bleached out selves.

That’s what we’re here for ain’t it?

From AskWhy:

I’ve read some of the discussion and this is just bits and pieces but wanted to say hello and thank you:

- I so appreciate the way you’re going about getting at truth here, and I totally feel like you are onto something huge and crucial and true.

- It’s also interesting to me to see the reaction of many (all?) of the white people who commented on this idea here in your blog. It makes sense to me that this reaction means there’s something seriously important/true in what you are trying to get at. (Also, it was just — I don’t have the word, just argh! — to see how even in the place where you asked specifically for comments from black people, most of the comments were from white people arguing with you!)

- Your identification of “White Women’s Syndrome” type dynamic coming into play crystallized something I felt last week when I came across this discussion somewhere, can’t remember if it was your previous blog or where, but I had this icky feeling about the dynamic and you just pinned it right down here!

- I feel that there is so totally a vivid intense “tone quality” of insanity/mental illness to white supremacy thinking and action, to the whole Euro-white cultural system and the behaviors that flow from it. I feel there is a visceral truth in what you’re working out and seeing here.

- I’m white.

- Did I say thank you? Thank you.

Thank you, AskWhy. Thank you very much.

You know, I almost hate it sometimes when I have to cut the cord with folks in conversation. But my commitment is to getting at truth - relationships be damned. I love people, but I love truth, honesty and clarity more. When people get to lyin’, I get to steppin’.  By steppin’ - what I mean is, I lay folks out with truth.

One of the people in the conversation, Thinking Girl, dangled our fledgling friendship and our previous agreement on certain matters, over the chasm of our disagreement - and my stating that racism played a part in her inability to get what I was saying. And threatened to X-out our friendship - which she did. That’s not the kind of ‘friendship’ I’m after, or would mourn.

To quote a blue-eyed statesmen, “I have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.” In growth, in understanding, in truth.

There was an intellectual dishonesty in the entire conversation: “I’m right because I’m mentally ill” “I’m right because I hate how mentally ill people are stigmatized” “I’m right because you stepped into my identity politics.” “I’m right because I say so.”

“I’m right because I’m White,” didn’t make the cut (openly); but why else was there no give, no humility, no openness to the possibility that they might not know every fucking thing, particularly about racism. Thinking Girl talked about how she preferred the term brainwashing; well if that works for her, how is she so sure she’s not still under the sway of her ‘controller?’

When I refused to capitulate to their whitewash, they took their jacks and scooted home. I’ve spoken with truly honest people. But not in that conversation.

I wasn’t desperately attached to the idea of ‘racism as a mental illness’ until this conversation. Now, I’m convinced. And my brother Asa’s assertion that “the MOST racist white person is the so-called liberal/progressive” was proven by this conversation.

Yes, I agreed quite often with these people but the Red Sea parted and I found myself on the opposite shore - in a profoundly enlightening way. The way they interacted on the blog, the unanimity, the cotton stuffed tightly in their ears, the unwillingness for a second to consider that their opinions, their precious intellectual constructions were rooted in the very insanity that they were insisting didn’t apply. Didn’t exist.

They were the people who are always white and right; they strut around with their leftwing epaulets front and center as if they took a vaccine innoculating them from Racism/White Supremacy. I don’t care how much Foucalt or Chomsky you read: the disease is bigger than you, it’s bigger than the pet theories you’ve plagiarized from your racism encoded school books.

But they are too white to see it.

Glad you’re not so white, Ask, that you can’t see it. Peace.

Inside The Mind Of A Killer

By Virgil Butler

An issue not even thought about
by most people, even many of those
in the fight for animal rights, is the
effects on the minds of those people
who do the actual slaughter of the
chickens. You see, the killing machine
can never slit the throat of every bird
that goes by, especially those that the
stunner does not stun properly. So,
you have what is known as a “killer”
whose job it is to catch those birds
so that they are not scalded alive in the
tank. (Of course he can’t catch all of
them, but we’ll get to that.)

(Keep in mind while you read this that
the plant I worked at was the smallest
Tyson had. They have some that are
much bigger that run hundreds of
thousands of birds a shift. Of course,
they have more than one killer, but only
one per line. They just run more than
one line.)

Picture this: You are told by your supervisor
that it is your night in the kill room. You
think, “Sh*t, it’s gonna be a rough night
tonight.” No matter what the weather is
like outside, this room is hot, between
90-100F. The scalders also keep the
humidity at about 100%. You can see
the steam in the air as a kind of haze.
You put on your plastic apron to cover
your whole body from the sprays of blood
and the hot water that keeps the killing
machine’s blade clean and washes the floor.
You put on the steel glove and pick up the
knife. It’s very sharp. It has to be.

You can hear the squawking from the
chickens being hung in the next room
as well as the metal shackles rattling.
You can hear the motors that drive the
chickens down the line. It is so loud you
could scream and not hear yourself. (I’ve
done it just to see.) You have to
communicate with hand signals to anyone
who might come in. Although, no one
wants to. They only come in if they have
to. And they certainly donj’t want to startle
you.Not with a sharp knife in your hand.
If you whirled around……

Here come the birds through the stunner
into the killing machine. It’s time to get
busy. You can expect to have to catch
every 5th one or so, many that are not
stunned. Remember, they come at you
182-186 per minute. There is blood
everywhere, in the 3′x3′x20′ trough
beneath the machine, on your face, your
neck, your arms, all down your apron.
You are covered in it. Sometimes you
have to wash off the clots of blood,
without taking your eyes off the line
lest one slip by, which they will….

You can’t catch them all, but you try.
Every time you miss one you “hear” the
awful squawk it’s making when you see
it flopping around in the scalder, beating
itself against the sides. Damn, another
“redibird.” You know that for every one
you see suffer like this, there have been
as many as 10 you didn’t see. You just
know it happens. You hope the machine
doesn’t break down or falter. You just
want to get through the night and go home.
But, it will be a long 2 1/2 hours until break
time. More than two hours of killing nonstop.
At least a couple dozen chickens a minute
at best. At worst, a whole lot more.

The sheer amount of killing and blood
can really get to you after awhile, especially
if you can’t just shut down all emotion
completely and turn into a robot zombie
of death. You feel like part of a big death
machine. Pretty much treated that way as
well. Sometimes weird thoughts will enter
your head. It’s just you and the dying
chickens. The surreal feelings grow into
such a horror of the barbaric nature of
your behavior.

You are murdering helpless birds by
the thousands (75,000 to 90,000 a night).
You are a killer.

You can’t really talk to anyone about
this. The guys at work will think you are
soft. Family and friends don’t want to
know about this. It makes them
uncomfortable and unsure of what
to say or how to act. They can even
look at you a little weird. Some don’t
want much else to do with you when they
know what you do for a living.
You are a killer.

Out of desperation you send your
mind elsewhere so that you don’t end
up like those guys that lose it. Like the
guy that fell on his knees praying to God
for forgiveness. Or the guy they hauled
off to the mental hospital that kept having
nightmares that chickens were after him.
I’ve had those, too. (shudder) Very creepy.
You find something else to dwell on to try
to remove yourself from the situation.
To keep your mind from drowning in all
those hundreds of gallons of blood you
see. Most people who work this room and
work in the hanging cage use some sort
of stimulant to keep up the pace and some
sort of mellowing substance to escape reality.

You become more prone to violence.
When you get angry you become much
more likely to physically attack whatever
or whoever you are mad at. You are a lot
more likely to use a weapon than you were.
Especially a knife. A sharp one.
You are a killer.

You begin to feel a sense of disgust
at yoursef at what you have done and
continue to do. You are ashamed to
tell others what you do at night while
they are asleep in their beds.
You are a killer.

People tend to avoid you, even others
at the plant, whether from instinct or
because they know what you do and
can’t understand how you can do it
night after night. There must be
something wrong with you. You have
the smell of death on you.
You are a killer. A mass murderer.

You shut down all emotions eventually.
You just can’t care about anything.
Because if you care about something,
it opens the gate to all those bad feelings
that you can’t afford to feel and still
do your job. You have bills to pay.
You have to eat. But, you don’t want
chicken. You have to be really hungry
to eat that. You know what goes into e
very bite. All the horror and negativity.
All the brutality.

Concentrated into every bite.

Many people who do this commit violent
acts. They commit crimes. People who
already are criminals tend to gravitate
towards this job. You can’t have a strong
conscience and kill living creatures night
after night.

You feel isolated from society, not a
part of it. Alone. You know you are
different from most people. They don’t
have visions of horrible death in their heads.
They have not seen what you have seen.
And they don’t want to. They don’t even
want to hear about it.

If they did, how could they eat that next
piece of chicken?

Welcome to the nightmare I escaped.
I’m better now. I play well with others,
at least most of the time……

“We don’t have education, we have inspiration. If I’d been educated I’d be a damn fool.”

Bob Marley

This is one of the best,  most meaningful posts I have yet read.  If you don’t know, ya just don’t know.  But I hope that you who can’t believe or understand, try to recognize that which prevents you from knowing is exactly what is being discussed here;  try, try very hard to opt into the concepts, as opposed to condemning the speaker or maintaining an engraved, reflexive stance.

From my brother, Asabagna…

“Scientific and technological advances used against the greater good of humanity, reflects a society who`s technology has surpassed it`s spirituality…”

This is an axiom I meditate on frequently as I observe the so-called “clash of civilizations” between the Euro-Western world and the rest of humanity. As I read this post Lubangakene, it once again came to my mind. It reflects what I see as the relationship between “white supremacy thinking” and those of African descent in this Diaspora.

Long ago, when I had much more animosity against white people, (mellowing with age and thanks to Jesus, this hate has turned mainly to indifference), I was given a cassette with Dr. Edwin Nichols, a Black clinical psychologist, called “White Supremacy-A Paradigm”. It was based on a lecture he gave entitled: “Philosophical Aspects of Cultural Difference”, and it literally changed how I saw white people (this and my pilgrimage to the Motherland). Briefly, Dr. Nichols explained concepts and ideas about cultural differences in an axiological, epistemological and logical framework. He also utilized various historical references to highlight his points. It blew my mind! What he clarified for me simply, is how and why those of European descent, as a culture, think in a particular way. Rationality and logic is paramount in how they interact with each other, as well as other cultures, AND their logic is based on the concept of “counting” and “measuring”. Basically, if they can’t count it or measure it themselves, then it holds no value for them. They use this brand of rationality and logic to define terms for their own benefit (and take note of this), and they also will continually change definitions and/or their meanings to suit their own needs, especially when dealing with Black folks to deny us any degree of empowerment! (Isn’t it ironic that it took a clinical psychologist to explain the madness of “white supremacy thinking” for me!?)

As I read your post it re-enforced what I had learnt from Dr. Nichols. How “white people can use words, use knowledge, as a noose, as a pine box, as an electric chair to dispose of ideas that don’t agree with their precious, right-eous views!” I love your use of the difference between classical and improvisational musicians to describe white cultural perception. They certainly are not improvisational thinkers, especially since they cannot “CONTROL” it through “counting and measuring”. Rationality and logic based on counting and measuring is finite. According to Dr. Nichols, in contrast to Eurocentric culture, what is paramount to those of African descent, is not rationality and logic, but the dynamics of our relationship with others…. a relationship based somewhat on emotions, i.e. “feelings”. This is not to say that rational and logical thought is unimportant to us, on the contrary. HOWEVER it is not the primary basis of our culture. I believe that is why we rely so much on our “gut” instinct…. why we are “soul” people. That is why we know by that look, or tone of voice, or that indefinable stench in the air, when we are being disrespected, especially by white people! (As an aside, that is why the issue of using the term “nigga/nigger” for me is not an intellectual exercise. I have read your posts on the subject and on an intellectual level, I see the strength of your arguments. BUT my Black soul screams to me that it is wrong…. so it is wrong).

So Lubangakene, you and I have been blessed with the appropriate enlightenment to see what racism, aka “white supremacy thinking” truly is, and have maintained enough intellectual fortitude to fearlessly define it as: a form of mental illness. We did not deduce this solely through a process of Eurocentric intellectual analysis and definition creation, but by what we know from experience through our relationships with those so-called “white” progressive, liberals, conservatives, racists and all those in between. We know it is mental illness because we have to daily improvise through the madness so as not to become mentally ill ourselves. We know it is mental illness because we see other Blacks, our family, friends and even those in distant lands improvise against this madness for their very survival…. some successfully, most not. We know it is mental illness for history itself attests to the improvisation of our ancestors, as they continuously improvised through the madness of the slave trade, the madness of plantation life, the madness of Jim Crow, the madness of the civil rights movement, the madness of cultural genocide, the madness of the War on Drugs, the madness of the War on Poverty, the madness of the War on Crime, the madness of the War on Rap Music and the continual madness of the War for our very lives!

Finally my brother, we’ll improvise in our battle against their mental illness. You hit them high and I’ll hit them low. You hit them in the mind, with the truth of your intellect, and I’ll hit them in the soul, with the truth of my spirit. I think we’ll call it….. “therapy”.

Walk good and watch your back!

Pattrice is one of the most important voices I’ve heard on issues as varied as animal liberation to the cement slippers worn by the progressive movement “The Show.”

She contacted me tonight. Here’s what she had to say…

I remember when you posted an article I wrote under the heading “a
white woman who deserves to be read.” Often, those who want a more
multicultural reading list for college courses balk at reading so many
“dead white men.” I’m writing today about a dead white man who deserves
to be read: Virgil Butler.

Virgil Butler grew up in rural poverty and started working for the
poultry industry while still in his teens. Not long after, he was
working in the bloodiest and most dangerous location in that industry:
The kill room.

He was sickened by the violence and gore but couldn’t see a way out,
since he was uneducated and the only jobs in the region were in the
poultry industry. But then he fell in love with the woman who would
become his soul mate, Laura Alexander, and found himself ashamed to
tell her about his work. With her help he got out and began to speak
out, telling tales of what he had seen to organizations like PETA
(www.peta.org) and United Poultry Concerns (www.upc-online.org).

He quit eating meat and started a blog, the CyberActivist
(http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com), in which he wrote eloquently of
the human and non-human victims of the poultry industry. He became what Antonio Gramsci called an organic intellectual, thinking and writing
about social problems from within his life experience, in words that
regular people could understand. His meditations on the links between
domestic violence and animal abuse and on the perils of masculinity
were profound and meaningful.

I began corresponding with Virgil shortly after he went public and
later met him a couple of times at conferences at which we were both
speaking. He was courageous as well as compassionate, enduring threats
and insults from the people in his region who supported the poultry
industry. He was also generous, taking in stray chickens and other
animals even when he was having a hard time buying groceries for
himself. in 1995, he stayed up all night to participate in a
blog-a-thon to raise money for my organization, the Eastern Shore
Sanctuary (www.bravebirds.org). I’ll never forget our
conversations that night or the posts he wrote in the early morning
hours about the ways that child abuse and pressures to be “macho” had
harmed his heart and soul.

Virgil worked hard to expiate the guilt he felt about the abuses that
he had helped to perpetrate on animals, even though he himself had been
only a pawn in the poultry industry. He also worked hard to recognize
and rid himself of the unjust power that he held as a white man, even
though he himself had so little power due to poverty.

Virgil Butler died on 15 December, 2006. He was only 42. Because he was
so big on blogging, I’m going to start one of my own and dedicate it to
his memory. Meanwhile, I’d like to direct readers of your blog to a
couple of his most important posts:

My First Night on Back Dock
http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com/2003/11/my-first-night-on-back-
dock.html

Inside the Mind of a Killer
http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com/2003/08/inside-mind-of-killer.html

For his blog-a-thon meditations on masculinity, go to the archive for
August 2005 and scroll down to the series of posts entitled “My Story”
http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_cyberactivist_archive.html

I’m sure that his grieving partner, Laura, will be having a hard time
supporting everybody at their informal sanctuary. I hope that readers
of this blog will join me in helping out. Instructions for donations
can be found on his blog (http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com).

One thing I’ve learned (again) in the last 48 hours is how white people can use words, use knowledge, as a noose, as a pine box, as an electric chair to dispose of ideas that don’t agree with their precious, right-eous views!

We supposedly agree on the ‘what’ of racism, but not the ‘why’? My man Asa made the point that who feels it knows it; we know that racism certainly quacks like a mentally ill duck. OUR experience makes it plain. But white knowledge, in spite of its blindspots and limitations, always trumps black. In white minds anyway.

I was thinking of the difference between classical and improvisational musicians. Classical musicians play what’s on the page, the notes that someone else wrote; the jazz musician, while working from musical notation (usually, but not always), prides him or herself on their ability to create ‘off’ the page. Jazz heads create using the available tools within and without. Through the interaction of what is written and what is within, these artists create a third thing, a new thing.

Their creations don’t always work, of course; but if they laid down their horn because of some tin-eared detractor, what kind of artists would they be?

White culture is not improvisational culture. Its more like impulse culture; the culture knows, regardless of political persuasion, how to band together to exploit or snuff out that which threatens their core values. White culture loves definitions and defining you; they are obsessed, slavishly with ‘Expertism,’ and they venerate all kind of degenerate white men just cuz.

White culture doesn’t appreciate improvisation - unless it can be boxed and shrink wrapped. Controlled. That goes double for intellectual concepts. White culture is a corpse and brooks no creativity that does not support the status quo and the ways in which they’ve agreed meaning can be made.

Repurposing and composting words, ideas, concepts - which black especially do masterfully - is verboten; its like asking Herman Munster to freestyle. Mentally. It happens - about as often as Haley’s comet. (But, there ARE exceptions!)

None of the participants in the ‘Racism As Mental Illness’ conversation could allow the concept to germinate for a moment. The agenda’s were varied, but there was an agenda/obstruction that they put ahead of seeing it my way. ‘Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.’ (Actually being mentally ill, not wishing to ‘harm’ the mentally ill, were some of the excuses used to not give any time to the idea.) Examining an idea that several of my (real) friends laughed off because of its ludicrousness, its utter obvious-ness. As way over-stood!

One of my inquisitors said, ‘white’s would use the Racism as Mental Illness idea as an excuse to NOT take responsibility’ for their behavior. (‘First there was the ‘twinkie defense - now THIS!?‘ ) Uh huh, as if there’s a line of white folks taking personal responsibility for racism right now!

So, maybe there’s more creativity in white folks than I thought. But still, its creativity designed to limit the discussion, terminate the consideration. They are responsible for producing knowledge/definitions, policing the use of words and enforcing transgressions against Merriam Webster. I have stepped out of the gutter and back onto the sidewalk, how dare I?!

My friend, LA, who happens to be white, in response to the brouhaha noted that: ‘White people have to keep things orderly and safe, which is very Euro; everything in a box and every word with its Latin-root. They are throwing their building blocks at you. These are the building blocks of white culture.’

LA went on to quote Robert Jensen:

"Break through the willed ignorance, the purposeful
not-knowing about the racialized consequences of our
social, political and economic structures—the not
knowing that makes possible the comfortable lives we
of that race and class lead.  The task is to give
people who otherwise need not care about justice a
reason to care."

 And if it takes using metaphors that "offend" the sensibilities of white people so be it.

Racism: A Mental Illness?

Some psychiatrists have advocated making racism a psychiatric disorder, whereas others have maintained that doing so is inappropriate because it would “medicalize” a social problem. It is amazing that neither side is willing to let scientific
inquiry answer the question.

Most would agree that racism—the practice of racial discrimination, segregation, persecution, and domination on the basis of feelings and ideas of racial superiority —is mainly a product of learned behavior. After all, research informs us that a majority of explicitly racist persons do not have any psychopathology.

However, isn’t it possible for racism to also be a symptom of a psychiatric disorder? For example, we know that patients with a paranoid disorder project their unacceptable feelings and ideas onto other people and groups. So isn’t it possible
for these patients to project their unacceptable feelings and ideas onto different racial or ethnic groups? Additionally, is it possible that an individual exposed to trauma that was inflicted on him or her by a person from a different racial or ethic group might harbor racist attitudes toward that group?

Furthermore, is it possible that persons with certain personality disorders—for example, paranoid or narcissistic personality disorder—might be more predisposed to racism than those who do not? These are all legitimate scientific questions that we as psychiatrists should be willing to test and answer.

Finally, isn’t it possible for a European American who does not have any psychopathology but who was taught negative stereotypes of African Americans to find himself or herself in a dysfunctional employee-employer relationship with
an African American who, although not anti-white, is pro-black. Wouldn’t this situation be best characterized as two persons who have a relational disorder? Because behavior is multidetermined, racism most likely has biological, psychological,
and sociological origins.

However, the psychiatric community has been reluctant to consider whether or not some forms of racism are manifestations of psychiatric disorders or constitute a psychiatric disorder. Maybe the question of racism as a mental illness is so contentious that it precludes consideration of the issue at all. We should let science, not our personal opinions, answer these questions.

Maybe we should go a step further, and if some types of racism are found to be a mental illness or a symptom of a mental illness, developers of the next DSM should consider including other extreme prejudices, such as sexism, ageism, and heterosexism. Accordingly, some have proposed to examine “pathological bias” in a clinical context, because such an approach may lead to effective intervention with and treatment of individuals who manifest such problems.

CARL BELL, M.D., Community Mental Health Council, Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago

Inspired Dr. Brian Johns:

Are pedophiles mentally ill? Are their victims who become pedophiles mentally ill?

Did you see the film “The Corporation?” The premise was that the corporation, as a legal person under US law, could be subject to a psychological workup; it was determined that the corporation fit all of the criteria of a psychopath. Well, here’s one reflection on the psychopath:

What is a Psychopath?

“Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret. Their bewildered victims desperately ask, ‘Who are these people?’”

We often think of psychopaths as the disturbed criminals who capture headlines and crowd the nation’s prisons. But not all psychopaths are killers. They are more likely to be men and women you know who move through life with supreme self-confidence — but without a conscience.

“What makes them the way they are? How can we protect ourselves?”
– Robert D Hare, “Without Conscience”

As Dr. Johns posited yesterday, the Corporation is an extension of who? The White Man. (A lot of sanctimonious white liberals applauded the ingenuity of that metaphor!)

What does the corporation do? Gobble up as much of everything as it can on behalf of who? The shareholder. Who are the shareholders in the White Supremacist Corporation? White people. And they are able to accept the order of the world, the inequality, the poisoning of the planet, the murder of millions of innocents - in their name, with their guns, by their military - with nary a sleepless night.

I’ve simply made an assertion about the nature of racism and white folks have put up more opposition to that, than the racist system itself.  If white folks in general were as relentless fighting racism as they’ve been trying to prove me wrong, there’d be no racism.

Yes, if we point it out, white folks know what to say to appear supportive…but what do they DO? There ain’t no John Browns running ’round to do the right thing.

White people’s behavior appears psychopathic - particularly through their actions toward the non-white world. But here are white people disowning even the possibility that they may be afflicted with a mental illness.

Disowning even the possibility - they claim - out of a desire not to harm “legitimately” mentally ill people. Whites feel they are the only ones who get to determine what and who is legitimate and what and who is not.

I just don’t get it - but I do get it. Its the disease talking.

PS Cheryl, what is crazy? What does that mean? If you look around us, the Xmas season is occurring. Does that appear crazy to you? It might appear crazy to people from other countries who know that we are the number one polluter, resource stealer, decider, etc. For someone to question the sanity of any American - ain’t no big thing to me. Perfectly legit. So don’t think that saying racism boils down to white folks and their victims being somehow crazy is saying something that billions of other people aren’t saying about this country. We’re destroying the planet for God’s sake to stuff the pockets of…..

Hey Lubangakene! I have been away for a few days, just hit your spot and read your discourses on racism as mental illness. As a male of African descent, I agree with you wholeheartedly, that it is a form of mental illness. This whole notion (primarily from so-called white progressives/liberals etc. - and you know my general feelings about this group), that racist behaviour is a “choice”, misses the real “live” truth of the issue. The real “live” truth that we, as Black peoples’ live and breath. For white people it “may” be seen as a “choice”, as an intellectual/rational exercise, however for most white people I come in contact with (in the “oh so tolerant Canada”) it is so ingrained within them that they “act out” their racist behaviour even without realizing it, some even while they attempt to “control” it. AND what do we say to ourselves and each other: “dem white peoples dey crazy!” We see the craziness! We see the disfunction! AND WE ARE THE PRIMARY VICTIMS OF THEIR MENTAL ILLNESS! And as my granny used to say:” those who feels it, knows it”. Lubangakene they are incapable of seeing and/or accepting their disfunction, especially those who consider themselves “good white peoples”.

Your point is right on when you state how Africans slaves were seen as no better than “beasts”. YET the female species of these so-called beasts, our women, were constantly raped by the superior white humans. What kind of mentality could justify this type of behaviour? What kind of mind would create a document which stated that “all men were created equal”, yet consider men of a different colour, 3/4 human? What type of mind could lynch another human being, remove their genitals and force it down their throats, while having a picnic? What type of mind would create and continue a society based on these principles and atrocities, and is yet able to sleep at night without tossing and turning, because their illusion of reality is normal in their own minds. I’ll say it loud: “THEY ARE CRAZY! THEY ARE MENTALLY ILL!”

Racism, although for me the more appropriate term is “White Supremacy Thinking”, has made many of our people crazy, mentally ill… literally! You ask a very pertinent question: If it makes us crazy, causes mental illness in and among us, why do white people think that they are immune from the disease themselves? Is it because they consciously (or unconsciously) consider themselves mentally superior? Is it because as the primary carriers of the disease, as the ones who infected “us”, they cannot see that over generations, they have infected themselves!? Do they hide behind and/or reassure themselves through their “clinical definitions” that although they suffer may suffer from depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, anorexia, etc…. racism is not something they “suffer” from, it is a “choice”, within their control… and we know how white people hate NOT being in control!

The bottom line is this mah Bruh, if racism is a mental illness, something which is NOT within their control: THEN THEY ALL HAVE IT…. EVEN OUR SO-CALLED WHITE PROGRESSIVE/LIBERAL FRIENDS…. AND HEAVEN FORBID THAT! All the self-actualizing work they have done, all the anti-racist workshops they have engaged in and led, all the time and effort they have spent proving that they are “different” from the rest of their “kind”, especially the most vile racist of the past and present, all the choices made in an effort to be a more understanding and tolerant human being, ALL OF THAT WAS AND IS FOR NOUGHT! ZERO! WHICH ALSO LEADS ONE TO CONCLUDE THAT THERE IS A LITTLE MICHAEL RICHARDS IN ALL WHITE PEOPLE JUST WAITING TO SPRING OUT! That is why they are so surprised when their illness comes to the surface in it’s most clearest and obvious forms! They sincerely state “I don’t know where that came from ’cause really…. I’m not a racist”. They know for sure that they didn’t go through a process to “choose” to say those words and/or make that racist statement. It just came out! They had no control over it. BUT there is no way that it stemmed from being mentally ill. They will NEVER accept that.

Walk good my brother. Once again you speak power to truth.

Asabagna.

And if you don’t know that its wrong to be racist? Cheryl?

I think its fascinating that folks believe that white people have “control” of racism and “choose” it, when they are swaddled in it from birth. Somehow they maintain their grip and can choose to be racist or not, like choosing silverware.

Who are these white folks? The ones I see seem incredibly compromised by their racist upbringing, even my ‘friends.’ Hangin’ by a thread, barely seeing the contours of the racism in them.

Again, when a baby sleeps in its mother’s womb and absorbs what its mother is taking in - nutrients, medicine, crack, alcohol - that child is subject to what is forcibly pumped into their system. How is that fetus to counter ALL of the myriad messages coming at them - from the womb to the tomb?!

I like the concept of the nine areas of people activity that’s put out by Neely Fuller - education, labor, law, entertainment, etc. Racism permeates every area of people activity. If that is so, its impossible for white people to sidestep their inculcation; even those of you who think that you have somehow ‘opted’ to not be racist’ or ‘escaped,’ are deeply compromised - and evidently don’t know it.

Tim Wise the anti-racist activist, tells the story of his grandmother and role model, who taught him to be a person who supports justice with action. When she was dying of Alzheimers, she began to abuse the black caregivers in her hospice. She called them twenty four different kinds of nigger. This was behaviour that she would have found unconscionable. Wise’s point was that racism is far deeper and insidious than most (white) people like to think. That white folk might think they’ve ‘overcome’ is understandable, as ‘feeling bulletproof is the white man’s perogative; however, the disease itself has more to say about it than the intellectually tap dancing white person. Racism has mad staying power.

Question: How does one come to know that they need to exercise agency to counter racism, when they are convinced that racism was something that took place during slavery? Studies show that when a person holds certain thoughts for too long, that ‘turd in the toilet bowl’ will funk up the works - mental and spiritual.

The few whites that I’ve made become friends with and who’ve made a beginning on the road to racial sanity, usually are outcasts: gay, lesbian, freaks of one variety or another; people who have been rejected by, and in response, tend to reject the larger community. This schism allows an opening; it opens their eyes to other outcasts in their midst. It can open their eyes to the processes that “other” some and make bedfellows with others. But this rejection/distance, does not mean the racism in them is cured or even arrested. That can occur - one day and one racist thought at a time. Racism may in fact be driven further underground; it may become more sophisticated, more convoluted and powerfully deceptive. I’ve seen enough leftwing racists to last a lifetime. They thought they’d found the cure, too. Their progressivism did not allay their racism at all.
How is it NOT ‘beyond the control of the individual’ who is white, to sniff this shit out? When they are ‘brainwashed’ to think, feel, believe and do racist things, how do they counter what has become their nature? And what is the legacy of that brainwashing in their craniums?

I’m sure we can agree that many of the behaviors of black people - who are the victims of racism, people living in ghettos, people victimizing each other and destroying themselves; people confronting with the bleakest educational and financial circumstances, people taught to hate themselves - have become pathological. If racism can drive people of color crazy - and if you all try to debate me on that one Heaven help us - then how is it not possible for white people to suffer a pathology based on their immersion in racism?

It almost sounds like a white supremacist argument, like somehow whites could survive their brainwashing with their ability to “choose” intact. I smell a racist rat. I say again, I’ve seen black folks driven literally insane by this culture; you mean to tell me its impossible for white people to be driven insane by an their own insane culture?

Take a good, hard look around you.

One last thing about folks’ problem with equating mental illness with racism: I’m not so attached to any term - for ANY reason - that I would fail to consider the humanity of a person, IN SPITE of their behavior. The tenor of these arguments is that somehow white racists are subhuman scumbags who don’t deserve compassion. I ain’t got no love for racism or racists, but they are human beings and deserve to be understood as such. When folks like John Walsh describe criminals as “scum” and “monsters,” how is that any different from calling other people “niggas,” “gooks” and “japs” to dehumanize them?

I can’t go along with that, despite having done so in previous incarnations.

I wanna know what my black friends especially think on this cuz honestly this debate is between me and white folks has me downright furrrrrious.

PSPeople: That said, I do believe that people can overcome their affliction.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Mental illness is a concept in psychiatry and other mental health professions referring to mental abnormality associated with distress and/or dysfunction. This can involve cognitive, emotional or behavioural impairments. The term ‘illness’ implies the existence of a medical condition with a specific pathology that causes symptoms, something that is the subject of much research and debate. Similar but sometimes alternative concepts include: mental disorder, psychological or psychiatric disorder, emotional problems, emotional or psychosocial disability. The term insanity, sometimes used colloquially as a synonym for mental illness or irrationality, is used technically as a legal term.

Specific disorders often described as mental illnesses include major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, to name a few. Mental illnesses have been linked to both biological (e.g. genetics, neurochemistry, brain structure) and psychosocial (e.g. cognitive biases, emotional problems, trauma, socioeconomic disadvantage) causes. Different schools of thought offer different explanations, although current research employing the term ‘mental illness’ would most probably originate in a biopsychiatry point of view. Mental illnesses have been associated with impaired functioning, for example ability to work or manage socially, and sometimes also to high function, for example creativity. Cross-cultural studies suggest that what is seen as (the symptoms of) a mental illness in one culture may be accepted or valued in another, may manifest differently, or may not appear at all.”

Now, I don’t look at any definition as definitive, however…for those who disagree with my belief that racism is a mental illness - would you disagree that racism comfortably falls within the parameters of the above definition?

“Racism is a mental illness”

I can’t read past that. Just can’t. I really freaking wish you hadn’t said it that way.

Sly, tell me more, tell me more.

…but I went off on a tangent…

Cheryl, I’m a recovering alcoholic. Due to factors in my biological, emotional or spiritual constitution (I don’t really know which), I CAN’T DRINK!

Alcohol exists, yet that is not the cause of my alcoholism. The cause is something in me in combination with alcohol entering my body. I have found that not using any alcohol is the remedy for my alcoholism.

The word nigger is not alcohol; is is not, in an of itself, a trigger for people to drive through red lights, miss work, fight or do other heinous things. The word nigga might be used in those and other contexts, but was that a symptom or the cause? Some believe that the mere uttering of the word creates turmoil, bad feeling, hate/hatefulness. In some instances, maybe, in others maybe not.

Maybe the word nigger and the contention over it is similar to the alcohol problem: some people cannot drink, others can. Prohibition cannot and could not ever succeed. Its been tried. However, used in moderation and by the right people, perhaps the word could be educational, enlightening, empowering, managed, a teaching tool. Or even funny. Depending on the context.

Context is everything.

Who are the right people who can use this word carte blanche? They don’t exist. And no one can regulate the word. But maybe by adding more love and light and depth (oh, how we need more depth in this conversation) to one’s own person, that would be example enough to change other folks’ hearts. About using a word.

I mean, if somebody uses nigga like a mantra, that’s their choice. I don’t have to and its really none of my business if they do. I don’t use the word nigga as a mantra for me, but as a tool to illuminate. Most of the time. When I choose to use it.

The REAL issue is the disease of racism. Turning the Michael Richards fiasco into a moratorium on black folks using the “N-wordR