“I see no reason to bog things down here like that”

Once again, Macon D censored my comment on his blog. Luckily, I saved my comment to a text file:

Macon D,

Of course, sometimes you appear to learn, and sometimes you incorporate what you’ve learned in other blogs and improved the recent quality of your posts. Maybe it’s even far more common than I realize, and the white assumption that you are the race expert isn’t pervasive throughout your blog at all.

But then, it may be worth noting here how, you one gave advice to another white person on how to travel toward what you called the “palace of racial wisdom”; you gave a suggestion about how to safely appropriate from indigenous people; you believe that it is your duty as a white person to generalize the racial experiences of people of colour; you once believed that it was your duty to be a spokesperson for black people; and later on you wrote, “Many posts on my blog effectively summarize black observation and opinion and black reportage of personal experience”. I also just realized that you “apologized” to Okanagan with “my apologies if the post offended you”, which is a variation of “I’m sorry if you were offended.” And your “apology” also included “I’m sorry to hear that you sense a “prideful” presence in me” (emphasis mine).

I hope that you, a white antiracist, are not reproducing the white views and white power relations that your antiracist blog is supposed to be criticizing. But at this point, in my continual effort to come to terms with your writings on race, I think you might be.

Perhaps it was too subtle, but this is a satire of his post laugh at deadpan comedians starting from “Of course, some”, and it is a response to his insistence that the “Of course, some” disclaimer paragraph in his “laugh at deadpan” post nullifies what comes after.

In the end, he published the last paragraph, decontextualizing it as a satire, so that it looks like I was bringing up something that was off topic to the conversation.

“At least you are trying”

There is this phrase, “at least you are trying”, where I just don’t get the thinking behind it.

Somebody wrote this comment on Macon’s blog:

We have to allow people the freedom to find their way. Especially if what they’re asking/saying isn’t racist, just perceived to be so by people who, if I may, are seemingly determined to show Macon in a bad light.

Yes, I can agree that people must have the freedom to find their way.
I even can respect that getting rid of the stereotypes and racism whites have learned seems to be quite a struggle for some or many whites. Because I think, racism is not just about learned behavior/thoughts but a much deeper psychological disease and a general way to look at life and to relate to people.
Just a few days ago I got to understand once again that whites can make the choice to ignore the reality of other people but to make a drama out of their own issues as if the world broke apart. Their own world. The world they watch with a certain naivity sometimes.
But what I don’t agree with is that whites give themselves labels like “anti-racists” and then all mistakes should be overlooked.

I don’t want to comment on the rest of the above comment I linked to, but it raised a question for me, and this question I sent as a comment to Stuffwhitepeopledo. The first time was some days ago, he didn’t publish it, ok, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and sent it a second time, again he didn’t publish it.
The comment is:

“There is a question I want to ask to everybody who feels addressed or wants to answer: Would you accept somebody as a teacher who doesn’t truly understand the concept of what s/he is teaching?
Is the “trying” to understand enough to be willing to learn from somebody?
There is something I can watch as a typical white tendency, the “code word” “at least s/he is trying” lets accept many wrongs. Why? This “at least they are trying not to be racist” nonetheless kills people on a daily basis, the victims of white supremacy. And how long do white people believe that “just trying” is good enough? Why the low standard for the white self-declared teachers about racism?
We write the year 2009. We whites consider ourself as ‘progressive’ and ‘civilized’ and praise each other, when we think that one of us somehow “gets it”, at least a little bit.
But somebody is either racist or anti-racist, there is no in between, even if whites do have the privilege to invent the in between, the “trying” and “unmaking” “

I don’t truly understand his reason, besides my thought that I probably struck a nerve, why he was so scared about the post that he refused to publish it, like he also refused sometimes to publish comments by Restructure and Nquest. If somebody white is honest with his anti-racism there is no reason to be afraid of criticism.
Macon D probably considers it as a success, because he discourages some members to post any longer on his blog or like Restructure wrote, he influences the way, she comments. But he is probably unable to see his own white supremacy in action doing this.

[Stuff non-white people do]

Macon D on assume that birds of a darker feather naturally stick together, and that birds of a white feather don’t:

The issue here is not so much whether Powell and other black people, or other non-white people, or white people for that matter, do stick together and watch each other’s backs.

Macon D has heard one of our criticisms, knows that Stuff White People Do should be about stuff white people do and not stuff black/non-white people do, but he couldn’t resist talking about what black/non-white people really do later on in the same post:

On the other hand, as Chris Matthews pointed out above, the general issue of racial solidarity is “tricky.” For a variety of reasons, various groups of non-white people sometimes do stick together, and they sometimes do watch each other’s backs. But when they do so, there are good reasons, and they usually do so in very different ways from the unacknowledged forms of white solidarity.

“American” culture and society–which are actually “white” or “white-framed,” instead of just “American”–have encouraged a bleaching away of non-white traditions and ways of being that a lot of people would just as soon hang onto. So, non-white people often get together or stay together so they can do just that. At the same time, whitened American society has also pushed non-white people together in many ways, and it continues to oppress and exploit them, making it a good, realistic idea for them to watch each other’s backs.

All of which is not to say, however, that all African Americans, for instance, naturally or irrationally stick together. And it’s especially not to say that if a lot of them support a black politician, they’re doing so thoughtlessly and impulsively, merely because they’re black too.

(emphasis mine)

White people like engaging in armchair anthropology.

“You’re trying to make me out to be a racist…”

(under construction)

Making a statement that was completely off the topic and completely contrary to the facts, let alone a statement that was “Mighty White” of him, Macon made the following claim not unlike the countless number of times I’ve heard similar claims, claims that were thrown around indiscriminately:

“In contrast to R, Nq consistently comes across as clearly out to prove “me” wrong, to characterize “me” as a racist…”

This is hilarious, actually.  Anybody who knows me knows I don’t mince words and have no problem calling somebody racist (been there, done that) or calling something somebody said racist.  If that’s what I want to say, I say it.  Period.   I don’t have to try to “characterize” or make somebody out to be a racist.  I’ll just say you’re racist or this is racist the same way I have no problem calling someone a liar or calling what they say a lie when it’s not true.  Neither of the terms are taboo to me.

“White people have no culture.”

White people are pretty effed up sometimes. White people often think say things like, “White people have no culture,” and think that there is nothing racist about that statement. Macon D posted another messed up post at Stuff White People Do, quoting a White American named Shelly Tochluk who feels a “sense of loss” because she is white. Tolchuk writes:

However, many of us find ourselves looking at other groups and longing for the connection we imagine they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture. Many white folks can be heard saying, “We don’t have culture. They have culture.”

Tolchuk is careful enough to write, “the connection we imagine they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture,” instead of “the connection they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture.” She also attributes in quotation marks, “We don’t have culture. They have culture,” as the sentiment of white folks, instead of making it her own claim about reality. However, the rest of the excerpt goes on to assume that these white folks’ assumptions about the cultures of people of colour are accurate.

“We don’t intend to be racist”

Talking about the way Whites try to dismiss or deny allegations that certain racialized behavior or practices are racist, Macon D said:

“…they don’t intend to be racist, and therefore, they’re not.

Never mind any actual effects of their actions.”

Funny how that works.

“There is no Whiteness without Blackness”

“Whiteness exists in a relational context with other races…” – Macon D

Such is his argument or, rather, his rationale for his curious approach to Whiteness.  It’s a rationale because Macon refers to that theor-riod notion (theory behaving and employed like a mindless factoid) to justify his problematic attempts to use things about Black people (e.g. racial complaints, real or imagined-by-Macon) “in the hopes that some white people would wake the hell up and stop” doing things that offend Black people.

That’s all well and good but such a project-aim becomes problematic when:

1. Macon fails completely fabricates, exaggerates or overhypes the racial complaints of Black people or
2. the racial complaints Black make either aren’t necessary to make the “wake up and stop” case to Whites and happen to be used as a guilt-trip bludgeon against Whites to highlight behaviors that are, perhaps, subconscious which merely require exposure to show the problems with the behaviors.

Of course, the theories which examine race as a social construct suggest that the concept of the White race here in America for example — where various White ethnic groups from Europe eventually forged an identity they never had — was established based on what or, more precisely, who they were not.  That’s the “relational context” Macon spoke of but the question is: how is that factoid relevant to how you approach Whiteness?

Frankly, I don’t think that it is.