February 4th, 2008
Confronting privilege: a reprise
I’ve been meaning to do a follow-up to this post, on confronting privilege where I have some. It’s stormy out there these days, though, so before I start, let me open my big ol’ umbrella.
What this post is:
- A page out of white antiracism 101.
- One example for the consideration of white women who are afraid to speak up, as I often am; a reminder that our worst fears about the consequences are often figments of our imagination.
What this post is NOT:
- A cookie request.
- An incredibly courageous act.
- A demonstration of my goodness and rightness, or conversely of my self-obsession, self-flagellation, and/or white guilt.
- A suggestion that I’m a “good” white person as opposed to the “bad” white people I’m criticizing.
- Intended or expected to be of any use to women of color OR to experienced antiracist white women.
- A report of the first time I spoke up. I’ve spontaneously challenged racist and bigoted comments among family and friends for years; I’ve also been silent at times when I should have spoken up.
- Indicative of a new commitment on my part to antiracism. The original post is over a year old, and the incidents reported below also took place more than a year ago. My values haven’t changed; my way of thinking about reality, however, has been under reconstruction lately.
- An attempt to dictate to anyone how they should or should not approach similar situations in their own lives.
- Indicative of real change–that is, no one is going to wake up freer tomorrow because of this post.
Okay. With that said, I’m going to revisit the previous post.
Here’s the scenario:
In my class the other day, a white woman was describing her project. She is designing and producing a self-promotional brochure for her business. She explains that she is designing icons to represent each of the services she offers. The inspiration for these icons comes from “symbols of ancient cultures–for example, a Celtic symbol, one from the Africans.”
I had some doubts and questions:
What I’m not sure of is what I can do, as a person of conscience, that will be useful and productive in these situations. What should I say to the woman in my class who believes she has the right to use “symbols of ancient cultures” to promote herself? How do I address her apparent lack of awareness that the continent of Africa is populated by numerous diverse societies with complex histories of colonization by Europeans, and religious and cultural traditions that have been appropriated by whites?
I had some worries:
This perceived need to save face is what I imagine I’d face if I brought up my concerns about cultural appropriation to my classmate. (I have difficulty even considering using the word “racism” because I imagine I’d then be facing not only her defensiveness but the defensiveness of the other white people in the class.)
What happened:
During the next class meeting, my classmate displayed her progress on her project; she was designing not simply icons, but a series of 8.5 x 11 full-color illustrations to go along with the various aspects of her business (part of which involves illustration).
I was really anxious as she displayed and talked about the first illustration in her project, which was partially completed–a painting of the head and face of an African woman gazing into the distance, wearing a headcloth, with a stone carving or a piece of pottery in the foreground, and a border of leopard skin pattern around the entire thing. While my white classmates and instructor were complimentary, making helpful suggestions, I couldn’t think of anything positive to say. While I churned in silence, a discussion ensued of appropriate ink colors for the text to accompany the illustration. I sat there in a rage, barely able to breathe, asking myself, “Am I going to say something? Am I not going to say something? Will I be able to live with myself if I don’t say something? I’m so mad, how can anything I say be constructive?”
After a while, the instructor turned to me and said something like, “Do you have any thoughts?” Astoundingly, my voice actually sounded mostly calm as I replied carefully, “I have heard women of color say that it is offensive to them when their images are used in conjunction with stereotypically ‘exotic’ symbols like animal skin. It can be seen as a reference to the fact that their sexuality is often portrayed as voracious and animalistic.”
That’s a paraphrase. And I know, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. There was so much wrong with the entire concept of her project, I didn’t know where to start. But I said something like that, and then I shut up.
The responses, though couched in polite whitely language, were fairly predictable:
The woman herself: I’m not a racist! I’m an artist! I can’t censor my artistic vision just because someone might get offended! I have friends who are women of color! They don’t think I’m a racist! This illustration isn’t about sexuality! If I was drawing her cleavage…but it’s just her head! Thank you for your feedback, I’ll think about it, but I’m not a racist! But I’ll think about it. I really appreciate your comments, but I’m an artist. I’ll ask my women of color friends. Because they don’t think I’m a racist! It’s art!
Classmates: We’re sure [classmate] isn’t a racist. It’s a good illustration.
When there was a lull in the circular, repetitive reactionism, I reiterated that this is what I’d heard women of color saying about illustrations similar to hers, and that I was sure she would not want to give offense with her promotional brochure, since her entire goal was to convince people to use her services.
The instructor then spoke up to say, “Well, Amy does have a point.” She followed that up with a brief discourse on the nature of commercial art versus fine art, emphasizing that in commercial art, because it is designed to influence people, it is actually important to care about whether something is offensive to someone. If a client is paying you to create material that portrays them in a positive way, and you go pissing off potential customers by using their images and sacred symbols to sell breakfast cereal (for example), the client may be oddly reluctant to cut you a check. (Frankly, I think caring about giving offense is pretty damned important in any kind of art, but I didn’t want to interrupt the instructor’s flow, particularly seeing as she was agreeing with me.)
The conversation eventually went on to other things, and I drove home with my hands shaking on the steering wheel but feeling really energized, and kind of burned clean inside. I realized I don’t care about the approval of people who are loyal to business as usual–if they don’t like me because I threaten them by speaking the truth I see as clearly yet kindly as I’m able, they’re free not to like me. If other women don’t like me because they believe the twisting of my words and motivations by the threatened, they’re also free not to like me. And by that recognition I’m free of worrying about whether they like me. It’s exhilarating to give up denial, to act in the face of fear, and suddenly all the energy that I was using to hold myself back from acknowledging and challenging things I know are wrong is available to me to work for what I know is right.
And a few months ago I had occasion to meet with the instructor of this class, who is also my advisor, and she just happened to mention that this classmate had “abandoned” this particular project and decided to “go in a different direction.”
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In that earlier post, I mentioned a second scenario as well:
Someone I know was discussing taking on some work for a local, family business. In the salary negotiation, one of her potential bosses offered her a lower figure than she had asked for. She refused, and the other potential boss made some comment to the effect that the first boss should not have attempted the lower offer. His response? “Oh, well, I was just trying to j– her down.”
And my proposed response:
In a jovial, informal way, with a smile and maybe an elbow nudge: “Hey, some of my best friends are Jewish!”
Someone who is Jewish wrote to me about that post, and said she thought my suggestion was a very bad idea; that that statement was way way too open to misinterpretation, seeing as how it is so often used as a serious attempt at defense by racists and anti-Semites [*coughcough* Mel Gibson]. She suggested that a better way to go is just to say, “That’s anti-Semitic, and I don’t appreciate comments like that,” with the recognition that the guy might get pissed off and my friend might not get the job. That’s an important correction, and I appreciated her writing to me about it, and I’m sorry I haven’t followed up on it sooner.
My friend ended up not getting that job anyway; her silent complicity did not protect her.
