Our goal is to revolutionize thought, communication and activism related to race and equality. Race-Talk has recruited more than 30 extraordinary authors, advocates, social justice leaders, journalists and researchers who graciously volunteered their expertise, their passion and time to deliberately discuss race, gender and equity issues in the US and globally.
We will post some of our author's articles here on DailyKos in addition to The Huffington Post, and OpEdNews.
January 11th marks the date where Race-Talk’s authors discuss important issues related to race and gender. We will have more than ten authors discussing a range of issues.
Visit Race-Talk.
Words of advice for White would-be writers on race by Mike Barber, Independent Filmmaker, Race-Talk contributor
Lisa Solod Warren’s December 16th, 2009 article (which has since been deleted) in The Huffington Post titled Two Black Role Models Done In By Hubris invoked a great deal of outrage. I caught wind of the article via Twitter where people were expressing emotions ranging from utter dismay to outright anger at - among other things - the racially patronizing tone in which the article was written. In a previous article I used Warren’s article as an example for the importance of white writers to check their privilege before embarking on writing about racial issues. However, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the aftermath.
If you ever find yourself in this kind of situation, the best thing you can do is set aside your ego and listen. The knee-jerk reaction is to go on the defensive, but the best thing is to ignore that impulse and take in what is being said to you. Even in the heat of disagreement, it is crucial to try to empathize. Unfortunately, that’s not what Warren chose to do.
Beware: The symptoms of Foot-in-Mouth Disease
First, Warren became dismissive, glibly stating:
"it seems I am being labeled by some a racist. No rationale for that but people like to call out names." Then—not content with having only one foot in her mouth—she became defensive, saying "seems anyone who speaks about race is a racist."
Let’s break this down one foot at a time.
If you write an article that results in a mass of people denouncing your article and possibly yourself as racist, it’s not going to be for some arbitrary reason. Though it won’t be comfortable, you need to accept the idea that you may have done what it is you are being accused. Calling the large group of people whom you offended irrational is not going to help. They’re angry for a reason, you have to acknowledge that.
No serious person is ever going to say it’s racist to talk about race. That’s nonsense. The whole it’s racist to acknowledge/see/talk about race thing desperately needs to go away. While the idea of colour-blindness may seem altruistic to some, it’s really a byproduct of white privilege. The ability to see race as a "card" to be "played" is also a byproduct of white privilege. The problem isn’t in acknowledging race but in letting race be a marker for determining a persons worth or quality as a human being. Since Western society confers unequal privilege to those who are white, white people and people of colour experience life differently. To ignore this reality, to refuse to acknowledge race, is to willfully promote this inequality.
If you find yourself in this kind of situation and decide to respond, a piece of advice: don’t ever try to back up what you said by citing the number of people of colour that are your friends/colleagues/acquaintances. Saying something like:
"you would be surprised at the number of black people I know"
will not bolster your credibility. What will also not help is stating your political ideology as evidence of your lack of racism, even if it is "liberal democrat." Just because you consider yourself "liberal" or "progressive" doesn’t mean you are automatically free of aversive racism. (Not to mention, the Democratic Party was known as "the white man’s party" for much of its early existence. Don’t forget, the KKK was comprised of mostly Democrats in its beginning.)
The last best hope for redemption
Even if you managed to fit not only both feet but your entire lower torso into your mouth, there is still an opportunity for redemption. You can make all the mistakes above and still manage to turn the situation around into a true learning experience. The way to allow such an experience help you grow as a person is by staying engaged.
Amongst the (justifiably) angry tweets, some including myself tried to reach out and engage Warren via Twitter in hopes of educating her on privilege. What could have transpired is a healthy dialogue on white privilege, aversive racism and how to identify and confront these within ourselves. The outcome of such a dialogue could have been Warren writing a new article about the whole experience and how she came to identify the racially condescending overtones of her previous article. She could have held herself accountable for her words. At the very least, she could have apologized.
Any or all of that could have happened, but it didn’t. Warren chose to ignore the opportunity. Her last public words on the matter (that I could find) was "I am the naive one. I never expected the post in HuffPo yesterday to go viral. I'm not a racist but it will be hard to convince otherwise." To forgo for now the logical quagmire of trying to prove a negative, it’s unfortunate that Warren tuned out. Perhaps the sting of irony was too great; after all, her offending article was based on the alleged hubris and supposed downfalls of President Obama and Tiger Woods. If ever there was a more profound example of irony or hubris than what happened with that article, I don’t know what it is.
Final piece of advice: Start here
Peggy McIntosh’s paper White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1988) is widely considered the primer on the topic of white privilege. Despite being written over 20 years ago, much of what McIntosh says still applies to our contemporary Western society. It truly is required reading for white writers and activists who wish to seriously engage in discussions on race. Lisa Warren may have brushed off the suggestion to read it, but I hope those of you reading this article that are white will take the few minutes it requires and read it now.
###
Mike Barber is an independent filmmaker with a particular interest in issues surrounding social justice. He is currently directing "A Past, Denied: The Invisible History of Slavery in Canada," a feature documentary exploring how a false sense of history—both taught in the classroom and repeated throughout the national historical narrative—impinges on the present. It examines how 200 years of institutional slavery during Canada’s formation has been kept out of Canadian classrooms, textbooks and social consciousness. He is currently based in Montreal, Quebec. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/... (@apastdenied)
A train ride with a token Indian by Gyasi Ross, Race-Talk contributor
We learn to be aware of the things of which you all are probably aware. While we can not be certain that you ARE thinking a certain thing, still based upon past experience, we’re pretty sure that you are.
We check you out at as you’re checking us out. Thing is, we’ve seen your "tells" before (we’ve been seeing them all of our lives)—but you haven’t seen ours. We learn to read the eyes, when your eyes move down toward the ground and then a pregnant pause. That means that you want to ask you a question but you just don’t have the balls to ask.
"Look. Just ask."
"No. It’s not a big deal." Silence. He looks down to the subway floor like a little kid when he’s in trouble. "You’re just the first Indian that I met." Silence again, still looking down. "I just didn’t picture Indians with facial hair. Do Indians have facial hair?"
I knew it. I’m laughing inside. "Well, I’m Native. I have facial hair." I’m talking slow to him, like he’s a little kid and I’m instructing him.
Still, I didn’t want to be too much of a jerk—they seemed like nice people. Plus, I think his girlfriend liked me—she kept giving me the eye. Plus, Quizzo sounded fun. No need to burn this bridge, I guess. Instead, a bit of sarcastic education. "Ergo, one might conclude that Natives can, indeed, grow facial hair."
The funny thing is, in my Double Consciousness, I do not picture myself with facial hair either. I don’t think most Natives do. We picture ourselves as tall, dark and virile men—as extras from Dances With Wolves. We are acutely aware of the pop culture image of Natives that lingers in peoples’ psyches. In fact, we subscribe to it just as much—if not moreso—than your average white liberal New Yorker who never met a Native before.
See, we started talking at Canal Street where his girlfriend asked about my earrings. "They’re abalone shell." I barely made this train. I just purchased some fake Louis Vuitton purses for Christmas presents and was happy to be on the warm train. Initially, I thought that his girlfriend was checking me out, but then she grabbed her boyfriend’s hand and looked at me in the eye.
"Honey, I love his earrings."
"Thank you."
Her boyfriend chimed in, "You’re a bigger man than I am. I could never get away with wearing those. They look good on you though."
I was not unused to people starting conversations with me. There aren’t a lot of Natives in the City. We had an interesting conversation. They were native New Yorkers, born and raised in Manhattan. Lawyers. Silver spoons. They were fascinated to meet a Native New Yorker, raised a million miles from the City. Interested in what would bring someone from reservation/rural landscapes to, according to them, "the ugliest city in the world."
"Have you ever been to a reservation?" Neither of them had.
They invited me to Quizzo with them at a local pub. "Great drink specials!" This, of course, led me to look at them with a suspicious eye. Once again, you learn to anticipate what people are thinking being the "only" Native that most people know. There’s a certain pattern to the questions. A trajectory, a direction. I thought that they were making reference to Natives’ perceived predisposition to an alcohol addiction.
But I realized that I was just being overly sensitive, and that they were being nice. What can I say? I’m a freakin’ liberal—look for stupid stuff at which to get offended.
Anyway, as my stop neared, that’s when—I can pinpoint the exact moment—that the boyfriend noticed my slight beard.
Then the infamous "facial hair" discussion happened.
Now, riding on this Number 2 Train going uptown, I know I just killed this man’s romance about Natives. The first Native that he met SHOULD NOT be wearing Adidas and a New York Yankees hat. He’s blown away by the fact that I have an underdeveloped goatee and wavy hair. He’s disappointed that I left my breechcloth and warclub at home that day.
I guess in a way, I am disappointed too. I mean, yeah, he’s developed a simplistic image of Natives since he was a little kid; he probably championed the "Indian Club" at his expensive Manhattan private school based upon that image. Still, the image that he cultivated really isn’t that far off from many other peoples’ images—they either see the casino-rich Indian who gets a fat monthly check, or the broke-down, drunk Indian guzzling Nighttrain.
Comparatively speaking, I guess, his Noble Savage fantasy is pretty innocuous.
As I got ready to exit the train, I put both his email address, as well as his girlfriend’s in my Blackberry. I also asked if they were on Facebook.
Innocuous or not, at some point little kid fantasies must end.
###
Gyasi "Fancy Skin" Ross is a member of the Amskapipikuni (Blackfeet Nation) and his family also comes from the Suquamish Tribe. His Pikuni (Blackfoot) name is "Oonikoomsika." He is co-founder of Native Speaks LLC, a progressive company owned by young Native professionals which provides consultation and instruction for professionals and companies. Gyasi is currently booking dates for his newest presentation, "Mother Lovers: Poetic (and Musical) Justice."
Blackface, Eh?: Canada’s Racialist Vernacular by Adebe DeRango-Adem, Race-Talk culture editor
"Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada was the North Star."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., CBC Massey Lectures, 1967
It is disturbing to see the tradition of blackface, which I, for one, was hoping had died off, make an alarming comeback. Even more disturbing is that the revival is taking place in Canada, a nation seen by many as the beacon of freedom for U.S. slaves.
Five University of Toronto students came under fire earlier this year for dressing up as the Hollywood version of the Jamaican bobsled team from the film Cool Runnings for a university-hosted Halloween party. The students went to the party in blackface, and won the award for best costume. When later confronted about their costume choice, the students claimed that it was all in good fun: "Throughout our childhood, Cool Runnings was something we reflected on with fond memories."
For many living in Canada and America, blackface is not something we reflect fondly upon. Whether we’re talking about Cool Runnings or haute couture, Tyra Banks or even video games, these modern forms of minstrelsy are blatantly racist.
As University of Toronto Professor Rinaldo Walcott, who wrote Black Like Who? (1997), explains,
"For black people who understand [blackface]... Cool Runnings was never a funny film [...]. We know that in North America there is a deep resonance around producing images of black people that make black people look disgusting. Cool Runnings is a milder version of that. So we should ask... why do they remember Cool Runnings so fondly?"
White people painting themselves "Black" for entertainment or shock value actively erases its minstrel roots. Canada’s racist history has been buried by making blackface revivals possible.
The racist legacy in Canada is not old news, and discourses of equality and multiculturalism continue to hide the nation’s history of enslavement – an act that makes blackface seem acceptable as an aesthetic or social experiment.
People think of Canada as the land where slaves fled oppression, enough so that even MLK saw it as a nation founded upon freedom. Contrary to popular belief, the nation was largely built on the institution of slavery. In 1628, Olivier Le Jeune became the first recorded slave sold in Canada. Canada granted a special license to American loyalists, exempting taxes on the slaves brought in. A number of U.S. States (Delaware, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) banned slavery before Canada did.
While North American legacies of black-to-white racial passing were once tinged with the question of survival, the blackface tradition is plainly exploitative. Blackface is an investment in the authenticity of whites, and the disposability of Blacks, most often masked in arguments that race is a fluid construct – arguments which have further thrown slavery and blackface outside the lexicon of Canadian history.
Though the University of Toronto students apologized, it was clear that they did not fully understand why their actions were offensive, which heightened the sting. Moreover, the University’s administration has yet to provide a formal public apology, sending the message that it does not value the concerns of Black students. In response, concerned students and community members have created a petition to condemn the university’s actions and inappropriate response.
To study the country’s true legacy in relation to race, we have to listen for silences and look for gaps... and then speak up. We can start by foiling the University of Toronto’s attempt to bury this incident with the age-old tactic of waiting out its critics.
###
Race-Talk Cultural Editor Adebe D.A. is a Toronto-born writer currently living in New York as a research intern at the Applied Research Center, home of ColorLines magazine. A recent MA graduate in English/Cultural Studies, she writes on issues related to race, social justice, migration, and the phenomena of culture. She currently holds the honour of Toronto’s Junior Poet Laureate and is the author of a chapbook entitled Sea Change (Burning Effigy Press, 2007). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, will be published by Frontenac House in early 2010. Visit her blog at http://www.adebe.wordpress.com.
Help make US Gov. own up to its racial disparities and eliminate them by Caitlin Watt, Race-Talk contributor
Implementing CERD: A Call for Immediate Activist Input
In 1994 the United States ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination(CERD), an international treaty which commits nations to promote racial understanding and eliminate racism in all its manifestations. Originally approved by the U.N. in 1965, the CERD has now been ratified by 173 countries. The CERD treaty is notable for its scope and breadth.
The treaty not only condemns intentional discrimination, but it also requires states to review and amend practices or policies which may inadvertently promote racial exclusion or racial segregation. In addition, it requires states to take affirmative steps to promote racial understanding, including the use of race-conscious measures when appropriate. As part of the monitoring process, states are required to submit period reports to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. After receiving the official state report, the Committee then reviews shadow reports submitted by domestic advocacy groups responding to the official state report.
After a four year delay, the Bush Administration submitted its second official state report in April 2007. In preparation for the Committee’s review of compliance by the U.S. with the Convention, the Kirwan Institute joined a coalition of more than 250 civic groups and scholars coordinated by the U.S. Human Rights Network, which submitted a joint shadow report detailing the persistence of racial inequality and racial discrimination in the U.S.
On February 22nd and 23rd of 2008, the CERD Committee examined the U.S. delegation based upon the information in the Kirwan report and other shadow reports. Of particular importance to the CERD committee was the way in which the U.S. had not only failed to implement the CERD, but also how it demonstrated outright rejection of affirmative, race-conscious measures to help remedy unjustifiable racial disparities. The Committee called on the U.S. specifically to explain its hostility to school integration in the recent Supreme Court Parents Involved decision.
The Committee noted that compliance with CERD requires efforts like school integration in order to achieve the goal of eliminating racial discrimination and that Parents Involved amounted to defiance of the treaty. Thus, the shadow reports gave Kirwan and other activist organizations a forum and an audience to express what the U.S. did not wish to admit; racism exists beyond the intentional act and within the interactions of private and public institutions, and the U.S. government has an obligation to address racism in all of its forms. The U.S. is required by CERD to eliminate racial discrimination in all forms and we must continue to hold the government to this international obligation.
However, there is a gap between the ideal and inspirational and the cold hard reality of the situation. Even with the election of a Democratic executive and legislative branch, this nation is woefully behind on issues of race and racism. The economic recession has hurt racial minorities more than whites, as does lack of heath care, economic and racial isolation in schools, and ignoring race in favor of color blind policies. Under the CERD, the United States would have to own up to these disparities and eliminate them. Under current U.S. law, there is no obligation to do so.
Recently, Senator Dick Durbin and the subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law announced that they will be holding a hearing on U.S. treaty implementation on December 16th. It will be the first oversight hearing on human rights treaty implementation since 1992 when the Senate ratified the ICCPR. Durban’s committee will be accepting written statements on the U.S.'s record on implementation and recommendations to aid in creating a Congressional record on implementation practices.
This could be a great opportunity to open Congress’ eyes to 21st Century discrimination, to the state’s responsibility for creating policies and practices that entrench and reproduce old forms of discrimination, and creating so-called "race blind" policies that have disparate impact on minority populations.
Advocates and activists should take this opportunity to make their voices heard on the pressing need to implement CERD’s mandate to eliminate all forms of discrimination at this crucial turning point in American history.
###
Caitlin is a Legal Research Associate who joined the staff at Kirwan as an intern during her second year of law school in 2008. Before working at Kirwan, Caitlin worked as a political organizer for the Michigan Democratic Party in the 2004 election, as an assistant to the State and Local policy director at the AFL-CIO, and assisted with the United Auto Worker's organization of the Foxwood Casino dealers. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her J.D. from Ohio State's Moritz College of Law, focusing her studies on civil rights, criminal defense, and employment law.