From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Sooner Rather Than Later (was Re: WARNING)
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:39:50 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Oct13.130824.26421@wam.umd.edu>
lovegod@wam.umd.edu (Donald Andrew Agarrat) writes:

>In article <1bc9doINNrp4@seven-up.East.Sun.COM>
>his@the-temple.East.Sun.COM (Howard Solomon - SunExpress
>Support Engineer) writes:

>>HOWEVER, I am not evil by definition and CERTAINLY NOT by
>>the skin color I happened to have been born with.  I take
>>great offense to the general nature of his post and the
>>condescending tone about the perceived inability of white
>>people to care about other peoples and the believed
>>inability of white people to grow to anything beyond
>>tolerance.

I don't think you can get very far, Howard, by in effect
gainsaying the experience people report of their own lives.
You may be offended (which I think accomplishes little).
From what he says (not to mention that I agree with it),
Donald is saying, in essence: skip the fine-sounding
bullshit, my people are in a bad way, a real bad way, and
they have been in a bad way a real long time, and if white
people cared so damn much, why do I see before my eyes
exactly what I *do* see?  

I think anybody who takes even a casual glance around is
going to see the residues of 400 years of slavery in fact
and more recently slavery by some other name.  They've been
there a long time and in very basic ways, and (despite the
rise of a black middle class) they are not getting smaller.

I will also say that I take exception to Jeff Baron's
posting this morning about Donald being so full of hate.  I
don't agree that it is hate, or at least I'm not yet
persuaded it is, as I guess Jeff was.  I didn't disagree
with everything he said, however.

Is Donald's anger not fully justified?  Is not our anger
over homophobia fully justified?  I do not exactly love my
oppressors, so why should Donald?  And what's the big
difference between straight liberals who say to us: "you
should mute your anger, because *I*'m not your enemy," and
white liberals who say the analogous thing to Donald?

>Face the real problem.  Your people enforced slavery 200
>years ago and the effects of that deed are STILL killing
>Black people in this country.  What is being done about it?
>What are YOU doing about it?  Are you merely enjoy the
>comfort of being White?  How the HELL can you shout down
>something from your ivory tower and expect me to take it as
>some form of edict!  If White people on the whole "cared" so
>much, would we STILL be having this problem?

In my opinion, Donald is on very solid ground here.  I would
make only a rhetorical argument that "you people" and "your
people" obscure more truths than they clarify, both in
history and in the present.  Overgeneralizations of that
kind work against everybody's interests, I think.

Also not completely in passing, I strongly second the point
Melinda made about the benefits accruing to all white people
because of systemic racism/sexism/homophobia.  Those who are
white have no business saying to a black person (or a
Hispanic person or a Native American or an Asian or any
other person directly disadvantaged by racism), "It isn't
*my* fault." 

The plain fact is, it *is*.  Whose it it, otherwise?  We've
been around this mulberry bush more than once around here,
but being white, having an education, having a job, having a
decent place to live and enough material stuff to meet your
real or perceived needs, all these advantages white people
have, they add up to an *enormous* set of blinders, just as
Donald says.  "I can't fix it" and "I would if I could" and
all that *adds* to Donald's fury, I'm sure.

Why shouldn't it?  Look how furious we get when that
"special rights" crap gets pulled out by the homophobes.
It's perfectly true that the past cannot be changed; it must
be lived with, even though it's horrible.  It's perfectly
true that no individual can remedy what needs to be
remedied.  For one thing, if that were true, you can be sure
African-Americans would not have waited.

The fact is, there's a system here, a complex and
ubiquitous structure, whose whole purpose is to prevent
Donald from having anything even superficially approaching
white privilege.  I think it's the very *same* system as
prevents LGB people from having political and social
equality in the society, the very *same* system as enforces
and maintains social institutions that are *at base* sexist.

>>I suggest you get the enormous chip off your shoulder and
>>try to work with people instead of assuming they are against
>>you from the outset.

You mean, "Chill, dude?" Why should he?  You wouldn't, if
the topic were those morons in Portland (and don't let's kid
ourselves, they are everywhere) who want to kill queers and
Jews.  I think a person has to be slightly nuts *not* to have
a chip on their shoulder in the face of such monstrosities.
I sure as hell do, and I enjoy every privilege this society
can possibly confer on a person, at least all the ones I
need for me personally.  

And this is after all one of Donald's main points, I think.
Over 90% of us here have white privilege galore, and one
would think, being members of an oppressed minority
ourselves, but nevertheless thus advantaged, that we could
resonate a little better than we seem to be doing with the
anger of a person who has -- a deprivation built into the
system that confers our privileges upon us -- virtually
*none* of them.

The assumption, therefore, that people here are against him
from the outset is --according to the clear evidence of
Donald's senses -- not off-base, or not far off, at best.

>It's called survival.  I had that mentality at first, but I
>just ended up looking stupid.  I now EXPECT most Whites to
>disappoint me.  If they don't, it's a pleasant surprise.

Doesn't sound like a chip on the shoulder, to me.  I expect
most men to be sexist.  I expect most straight people to
be homophobic.  Expecting most white people to be racist
strikes me as common sense.  And I too am surprised when
my default assumptions turn out to be unwarranted, and am
glad to say this is not entirely rare.

To be sure, there are sexist women, homophobic queers, and
racist nonwhites.  Diversity in action in the real world.
But the *main* point is that, exceptions that prove it
notwithstanding, the rule remains, doesn't it?

>>Now, I don't expect this post to change your mind, but I
>>needed to write it.  [...]

>Change my mind from what?  It seems that you're so willing
>to flee from the real problem.  I can understand why.  What
>do Whites have to gain from realized Black equality either
>in soc.motss or elsewhere in this country?  Not a damn thing

Well, I'm sure you agree, Donald, that whites and blacks
both have a lot to gain, that all of us would be better off
if white privilege (and male privilege, too, btw) were
ended.  These are two things, of many in this world, that are
at the heart of massive human suffering.

The status quo is maintained by ignorance, by myth, by
illusion, by lying and hatred, by insanity on a worldwide
scale.  We are all inhabited by this virulent infection of
the spirit.  There really is no vaccine, no antidote to
the poison, except one: love and respect for all things
living and not-living.

>>I suspect you do not realize or do not care that you are
>>becoming part of the problem you seem to desperately want to
>>solve.

I see no evidence to support that claim, Howard.  It may be
that Donald doesn't see his complicity in this or that
aspect of the problem, but one could hardly indict that lack
of awareness in a world where much worse complicities are
commonplace.

>Educate yourself.  I will not put on blinders just because
>my anger may offend Whites who think the status quo is just
>fine and dandy, cozy and comfy, and want me just to tag
>along.

Nor should you.  We do not, for example, when the issue is
for us not to be uppity queers.  We do not stuff our anger
when bigots tell us not to "flaunt it" or when liberals
wring their hands in mock-despair because we're "so angry
all the time."

All of this said, I think it is a clear and demonstrable
fact that there is a lot of caring here and in other sectors
of the white community that concerns itself about and seeks
to bring about a society that has equality of all peoples as
its primary tenet.  In my view, the only practical solution
is coalitions at the community level.  

If we cannot make common cause *sufficiently* to keep moving
toward a fair and just world, the devolution of the past
will continue to spiral downward, and in a final paroxysm of
maladaptation, the species will pass into geologic history.
If I were any other species than homo spaiens myself, I
would ask of Mother Nature that she bring this about sooner,
rather than later.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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