Coalition Building Means Seeing Difference and Labeling Oppression
By: Jenny Justice
Tags: Sociology, Education, Social Justice, Feminism, Racism

Dear Manas Kala, and HiSocio friends.

I want you to watch a few video clips before we get into the discussion. I am going to do my best to engage with my fellow HiSocio editor, Manas, and his piece regarding not wanting to be called a person of color.

Let me start of by saying, I hear you. I see you. I value you. I respect you. I see what you are saying and I see the wishes of your heart.

Go see Manas, go hear him, go value him, go respect him:

This is what we all want. We all want to be seen as who we are, inside. I know the feeling. I know the feeling of just wanting to say I am a writer, I am a poet, I am a teacher. But no matter what I want to say, the system is going to treat me as a woman writer, a woman poet, a woman teacher. And it will treat me as a white woman writer, a white woman poet, a white woman teacher. And as a working class white woman writer, a working class white woman poet, a working class white woman teacher. See how things shift a bit with each new layer?

And this is where I have to sort of situate my response to your piece. I want to say so much more, to focus on so many other things, but we only have so many hours in the day! I will take requests? Within reason and degree of seriousness, that is.

But for now, this is what I have.

No matter what we individually may wish to be, the system is one that is entrenched, institutional, deep beyond our wildest imaginations, and will treat us as what it sees us to be, regardless of our own dreams and humanity. And we have to see this, label this, call this out, work from a place of utter deconstruction, and never give the system the chance to box us in in ways that erase our differences or silence our realities.

So, in a way, smashing the systems of oppression mean first, seeing them, labeling them, getting what they have done to us all and how they have done different things to different people, and then doing what you said to do — build movements, get collective, fight back.

I can only speak from my position as a white woman in America. To go into my positionality a bit more: I was born working class, I am working class. I am a woman. I have been both a lesbian and a heterosexual in my identity.

So, areas of privilege that I have include: white privilege, American privilege, heterosexual privilege.

Areas of oppression that I have include: being a woman in a misogynistic society/world and being working class in a world that is set up to value capital and wealth.

We all have these intersectionalities. Taking stock of them is not negative. Is not hard. Is not enough. I recommend anyone reading this try it out. See where the lines of privilege hit them, see where the bars of oppression come down, and really understand what these terms and realities mean in daily life.

For example, a classic paper on White Privilege might be of use to those who are angry at the mere mention of the term. I know many are angry that I use the word White at all. And that is telling. That is vitally telling. White is supposed to be default, unlabeled, humans, right?

Let me finish this section by saying, the things that I have to say, are not about me wanting to focus on the negative, or about me wanting to use labels, or about me being angry. I have heard so much this past week about how angry I am. From white men labeling me as angry. For talking about racism, about misogyny, about the state of the world.

For artists with oppressed identities and places in the social structure, let me tell you what it means to be called angry. It means we are doing it right. It means we have upset the comfortable. It means we have brought comfort to the upset.

Now, onto the video clips.

What it Means to be American, video clip from The Color of Fear

My friend Victor breaks it all the way down. When people of color, when oppressed people, share the realities of their oppression with people who are not oppressed, really crappy things sometimes happen. In the case of racism, many white folks seek to find ways to trivialize and put the problem onto the oppressed.

He uses the term people of color because this term has been somewhat agreed upon in terms of understanding collective oppression. It is not a perfect term. But it is way better than it’s origins and what I still sometimes see in college papers, aka, “colored people.”

Another main point Victor makes is that when white people say “let’s all just be human” — this is code for let’s all act white, be white, not complain, and pretend. Let’s ignore the differences and the oppression and “be positive.”

This video is powerful. The entire documentary is recommended. If you watch it and want someone to talk to about it, you know where to find me.