"Having lived in a society in which church, school, and home problems have been handled in a violent way, the majority at this point are unable to conceive of a solution by reconciliation and nonviolence. I have seen schoolboys in Arkansas laying away rusty guns for the "Time when." I have heard many young men in the armed forces hope for a machine-gun assignment "so I can turn it on the white folks."
-Bayard Rustin
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Sit in the Back
"You ride in back."
I said, "My friend, I believe that is an unjust law. If I were to sit in back I would be condoning injustice."
"Get up, you...!!!"
I said quietly, "If I sit in the back of the bus I am depriving that child -" I pointed to a little white child of five or six- "of the knowledge that there is injustice here, which I believe it is his right to know. It is my sincere conviction that the power of love in the world is the greatest power existing. If you have greater power, my friend, you may move me."
-Rustin Bayard
I said, "My friend, I believe that is an unjust law. If I were to sit in back I would be condoning injustice."
"Get up, you...!!!"
I said quietly, "If I sit in the back of the bus I am depriving that child -" I pointed to a little white child of five or six- "of the knowledge that there is injustice here, which I believe it is his right to know. It is my sincere conviction that the power of love in the world is the greatest power existing. If you have greater power, my friend, you may move me."
-Rustin Bayard
Sexism in Civil Rights Movement
"Baker did encounter sexism in SCLC that mirrored Rustin's political tribulations as a gay man. SCLC ministers resisted her authority, while King disregarded Baker's input on substantive matters. According to Baker, SCLC was fast becoming a "cult of personality" devoted solely to the upkeep of King's celebrity status. When she rased this concern with King, he replied, "Well, I can't help what people do."
Another woman on SCLC executive committee, Septima Clarck, affirmed Baker's point of view: "Those men didn't have any faith in women, none whatsoever. They just thought that women were sex symbols and had no contribution to make."
-The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
Another woman on SCLC executive committee, Septima Clarck, affirmed Baker's point of view: "Those men didn't have any faith in women, none whatsoever. They just thought that women were sex symbols and had no contribution to make."
-The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
Monday, January 21, 2013
Aversive racism, subtle racism
Research on aversive racism, subtle sexism, and heterosexism has shown that socialization and cultural conditioning fosters unconscious biases and misinformation about various marginalized groups in our society; some research even suggests that cultural conditioning can actually connect prejudices to emotions in a neurological manner. Thus, it is highly possible and even probable that most people have unconsciously inherited the cultural biases of their forebears and that of society.
The concept of aversive racism is central to our understanding of microaggressions (Dovidio, Gaertner, Penner, Pearson, & Norton, 2009; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005). Simply defined, aversive racism is a contemporary form of bias: It is an insidious and less conspicuous form of racism that hides in the assumptions/beliefs/values of well-intentioned people and is difficult to identify in its motivational manifestations. This is especially true when such biases are invisible to perpetrators and are unintentional in nature.
According to Dovidio and colleagues, aversive racists truly believe they are nonprejudiced, consciously hold egalitarian values, and would never deliberately discriminate; yet, they are likely to harbor unconscious biases that may result in discriminatory actions. Studies reveal that training and education may be successful in confronting and lessening conscious biases, stereotypes, and preconceived notions but that implicit biases generally remain untouched and unaffected.
Because most people experience themselves as good, moral, and decent human beings, they find it difficult to entertain the notion that they may have acted in a racist, sexist, or heterosexist manner. Thus, in addition to holding hidden biases, getting them to confront their prejudices and discriminatory actions threatens their self-image as someone who stands for equality, justice, and respect for everyone.
Two layers of resistance are present: (1) the unawareness and unintentionality of their prejudices and discriminatory actions and (2) the need to preserve their self-image as an unbiased and good person. If one’s prejudices are unconscious, if one’s discriminatory actions are unintentional, and if one’s self-image is locked into a belief of one’s inherent goodness, the challenges and questions become: How do we make the invisible visible? How do we reach people so that they can become aware of their biases? How do we make people see the harm perpetrated against socially devalued groups in our society?
POC Organize! tumblr
The concept of aversive racism is central to our understanding of microaggressions (Dovidio, Gaertner, Penner, Pearson, & Norton, 2009; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005). Simply defined, aversive racism is a contemporary form of bias: It is an insidious and less conspicuous form of racism that hides in the assumptions/beliefs/values of well-intentioned people and is difficult to identify in its motivational manifestations. This is especially true when such biases are invisible to perpetrators and are unintentional in nature.
According to Dovidio and colleagues, aversive racists truly believe they are nonprejudiced, consciously hold egalitarian values, and would never deliberately discriminate; yet, they are likely to harbor unconscious biases that may result in discriminatory actions. Studies reveal that training and education may be successful in confronting and lessening conscious biases, stereotypes, and preconceived notions but that implicit biases generally remain untouched and unaffected.
Because most people experience themselves as good, moral, and decent human beings, they find it difficult to entertain the notion that they may have acted in a racist, sexist, or heterosexist manner. Thus, in addition to holding hidden biases, getting them to confront their prejudices and discriminatory actions threatens their self-image as someone who stands for equality, justice, and respect for everyone.
Two layers of resistance are present: (1) the unawareness and unintentionality of their prejudices and discriminatory actions and (2) the need to preserve their self-image as an unbiased and good person. If one’s prejudices are unconscious, if one’s discriminatory actions are unintentional, and if one’s self-image is locked into a belief of one’s inherent goodness, the challenges and questions become: How do we make the invisible visible? How do we reach people so that they can become aware of their biases? How do we make people see the harm perpetrated against socially devalued groups in our society?
POC Organize! tumblr
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Terrified dialogues white Americans sometimes entertain...
Baldwin does not seem to be trying to make whites feel bad or guilt trip them. In fact, he seems empathetic toward whites who are caught up in a history based on violence and lies and, seemingly, their evident desire to rationalize or justify it, but yet refuse to examine that history more closely, a refusal that makes them appear pathetically "incoherent:"
"This is the place in which, it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence. This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues white Americans sometimes entertain with that black conscience, the black man in America. The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea: Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with Europe or the slave trade. Anyway, it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not present on the middle passage. I am not responsible for the textile mills of Manchester, or the cotton fields of Mississippi. Besides, consider how the English, too, suffered in those mills and in those awful cities! I, also, despise the governors of Southern states and the sheriffs of Southern counties; and I also want your child to have a decent education and rise as high as his capabilities will permit. I have nothing against you, nothing/ What have you got against me? What do you want? But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, he, the white man, remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much."-James Baldwin
"This is the place in which, it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence. This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues white Americans sometimes entertain with that black conscience, the black man in America. The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea: Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with Europe or the slave trade. Anyway, it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not present on the middle passage. I am not responsible for the textile mills of Manchester, or the cotton fields of Mississippi. Besides, consider how the English, too, suffered in those mills and in those awful cities! I, also, despise the governors of Southern states and the sheriffs of Southern counties; and I also want your child to have a decent education and rise as high as his capabilities will permit. I have nothing against you, nothing/ What have you got against me? What do you want? But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart always, he, the white man, remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much."-James Baldwin
White Americans have not yet been able to do this...
"According to Baldwin, it is this guilt that keeps white America from looking honestly at itself, from addressing its history, and from seeing in that history the lingering racism of today. He states:
"The fact that Americans, white Americans, have not yet been able to do this- to face their history, to change their lives-hideously menaces this country. Indeed, it menaces the entire world. For history, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On- the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously con- trolled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be other- wise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations...And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror, one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one's point of view. In great pain and terror, because, thereafter, one enters into battle with that historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating; one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history."-James Baldwin
"The fact that Americans, white Americans, have not yet been able to do this- to face their history, to change their lives-hideously menaces this country. Indeed, it menaces the entire world. For history, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On- the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously con- trolled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be other- wise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations...And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror, one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one's point of view. In great pain and terror, because, thereafter, one enters into battle with that historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating; one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history."-James Baldwin
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Poem by an African American Woman
"Looking well in these books I see
Nothing in them rings a bell
Oh how I wish they’d speak to me
And my grandmother with the stories she’d tell
My family has refrained you see
From causing up a stir
They have been trained not to mention all the rape and the death
Making my history just a blur
Perhaps that s why you feel no shame
Just giving me one page
Erasing the source of my Family’s real name
To prevent me from tracing their rage
And you ask me why
There’s hopelessness and blindness
In the young ghetto children’s eyes
Well any strong tree uplifted and stripped of roots
Eventually will wither and die
And looking within these books I see
Nothing in them rings a bell
Oh how I wish they’d speak to me"
-Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequalty (Movie)
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