Yesterday I was in church and there was an Asian couple in the back who I assumed were tourists. They were sitting through mass and videotaping it and the church on their phones. I hope they go back home and report about how authentic the white people* were and how we'd never even seen a biwa before.
* Probably about 90% white people there.
I think there are two (related but distinct) pieces: one is understanding whiteness as a race and a construct, and the other is a more sophisticated (and, paradoxically, more basic) understanding of the black experience. The latter is obviously a social media thing - both exposure to these fairly shocking examples of how fucked up black life in America is and dissemination of black voices talking about them. We no longer see anti-black violence mediated through professional journalism and discussed by established (mostly white) commentators, and that makes a difference.
But the former I think has a bit more to do with time passing and generational change. There's simply a bigger mass of white Americans who are open to/embracing of the notion that white isn't a neutral category because the idea's been floating around long enough and because (I suspect) the whole gay rights/equal marriage fight has given non-olds a different perspective on social justice issues.
I don't imagine that this is the dawning of a new era, but I think that we might be getting to the point where more well-meaning whites have enough of a clue to be productive. In a sense, I think that 20-30 years ago clueless white [semi-]liberals actually would have embraced #AllLivesMatter because it seems like the color-blind, ecumenical thing to say, and not enough black voices would have been heard to shut it down.
In a sense, I think that 20-30 years ago clueless white [semi-]liberals actually would have embraced #AllLivesMatter because it seems like the color-blind, ecumenical thing to say, and not enough black voices would have been heard to shut it down.
Agreed, and I also think that social media offers a good platform for people to hone their presentation, in the absence of having a specific group doing message coordination. For example, the best short description of what's wrong with #AllLivesMatter that I've seen was in a blog comment (I didn't keep the URL, but it was in response to the Kevin Drum post about the netroots nation dust-up)
"Black Lives Matter" means "Black Lives should Matter, but in our current system they do not." It's a demand for equality, and since we're a long way from that point, it's a heavy, but entirely just, demand.
"White Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" on the surface seems innocent enough, which is why politicans can blunder into it. But the subtext is "You're already equal. Quit yer bitchin'."
"Black Lives Matter" is a challenge to the status quo. "All Lives Matter" is a defense of the status quo.
That's remarkably concise, and you don't get that clarity without having a bunch of arguments about it first.
heebie, are you free from having to do that first-year seminar conversation thing for good now? I wonder whether there will be progress in the level of discourse this year compared to last.
I liked this NYT interview about the "white racial frame," with one of the authors of The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism, which is the book I recommend to all my white friends with white kids.
I think this is all a repeat of white reaction to the civil rights movement in the 60s. Then, thanks to activists, the media was willing to draw attention to lynching and Jim Crow. Lynching and Jim Crow were able to persist because white people who weren't directly involved either didn't know how bad it was, or didn't think about it, but activism and the media made it unavoidable. The police in some areas have been discriminatory for years, but they were able to get away with it because most white people weren't paying attention. Now social media has again made the reality hard to avoid. I suspect this has made the previous standard of police behavior untenable, and we'll start to see things change in that narrow area.
I don't think that this has led to a permanent shift in how white people view themselves as "white people" rather than "people", and I'm not sure a permanent shift along those lines would even be a good thing. Are there any examples of a society where a dominant ethnic group with a keen awareness of itself as an ethnic group that led to intergroup harmony?
heebie, are you free from having to do that first-year seminar conversation thing for good now?
YES!!!!!