![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearOf course, if that we're really true, I wouldn't have had this past weekend, which consisted mostly of sleeping. Or at least being horizontal while watching the Food Network. I never thought I'd be excited to see Marc Summers, former host of Double Dare and current host of one of my favorite new shows, Unwrapped. But he's so strangely and weirdly endearing these days. Almost to the point that I imagine what it would be like to be married to him -- not because I'm particularly attracted to him in a sexual way, but just because he's so damn...wholesome.
I'm also a big fan of Saturday morning's "Cooking School" segments, which is really a big lineup of Food Television personalities I REALLY have crushes on. Cathy Ballou, Martha Stewart, Alton Brown, Sara Moulten, and even Rachel Ray who sort of annoys me on her show, and yet I not only wouldn't kick her out of bed, but I'd probably invite her back.
What is it about food preparation and sex? I don't particularly associated food itself with sex -- only the preparation aspect. I'm sure this is exactly why that British series Nigella Bites is so popular. She's quite the looker, and often works in hot pants and wraparound tops which pretty much show off every curve. Plus she's got that sexy accent.
I think what I really love about television chefs is that they're much more closely related to everyday folks. I don't lust after them because they seem somehow above the general population genetic pool. Nor do I love them despite their everyday appearances -- I like them BECAUSE of it. And food preparation really probably is a metaphor for prowess in bed. Creativity, timing, patience, desire to create perfection, balance, willingness to try new things. These are all requirements for good meals and good sex. I should perhaps to a sociological study on correlation/causation between people who are good in the kitchen and good in bed.
This is the second livejournal entry in a row where I sat down to write about something completely different but got distracted. Oh well. In a complete change of subject,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
limenal posted earlier about something that reminded me of this article. So click below for a great related article written by another person I want to marry, Tim Wise. And then go back to researching this kid in Illinois being criminally prosecuted for HIV transmission. Ugh.
Exploring the Depths of Racist Socialization
By Tim Wise
Every now and then a lesson comes easy. Other times we learn things by
accident, if at all. And inevitably it seems, the lessons that matter
most, often come from the least likely sources, and at the most
inopportune moments. So much so, that if we aren't paying close
attention, we'll miss them altogether. Such was the case last August
when my paternal grandmother died, at the age of 78.
Although the passing of a relative may seem hardly appropriate as the
jumping off point for a political commentary, it is precisely the oddity
of it, which makes it all the more poignant and valuable. But first, a
slight preface to what I'm trying to explain.
In the past few years I have had the good fortune to speak before nearly
60,000 people, in 40 states, on over 150 college campuses, and to dozens
of community groups, labor unions, and government agencies about racism.
Some audiences respond favorably, others not so much. But the message I
deliver is always the same: those persons called "white" have a
particular obligation to fight racism because it is our problem, created
in its modern form by us, for the purpose of commanding power over
resources and opportunities at the expense of people of color.
Furthermore, all whites, irrespective of their liberal attitudes,
"tolerance" for others, and decent voting records, have to address the
internalized beliefs about white superiority from which we all suffer.
No one is innocent. No one is unaffected by the daily socialization to
which we are all subjected--specifically with regard to the way we are
taught to think about persons of color in this society: their behaviors,
lifestyles, intelligence, beauty, and so on.
Without question, convincing white folks--particularly those dear
liberals who insist every other friend they have is black--that they too
have internalized racist beliefs, even of a most vicious kind, proves
the most difficult in the work I do. You can't prove the point with
statistics, or poll numbers, or by pointing out the wide disparities in
life chances that form the backdrop of American institutionalized
racism. Convinced that they are free from the biases, stereotypes, and
behaviors that characterize "real" racists, such persons inevitably seem
the most resistant to the analysis offered here thus far.
It is with this in mind that I return to my grandmother. For her
death--and more to the point, her life, right up until she died--offers
more in the way of proof that racist socialization affects us all than
anything I have experienced.
You see my grandmother was one of those good liberals. In fact, in many
ways she was beyond liberal, particularly given the time and place in
which she spent most of her life. Born in the Detroit area, she and her
parents moved south in the 1920s. Her father was a member of the Ku Klux
Klan. A member that is, until the day in 1938 when his only daughter
informed him that she had fallen in love with a Jewish man, and that in
addition to that, his hatred of blacks was unconscionable to her. She
then handed him his robes, and with her mother's approval, asked whether
he was going to burn them, or if she was going to have to do it herself.
She challenged him despite what must have been the palpable fear of
standing up to a man who was none too gentle, and most certainly capable
of violence. As it turns out, he would never attend another Klan
meeting, and by all accounts changed his attitudes, changed his
behaviors, indeed, changed his life.
Throughout her life she would stand up to racist bigotry on a number of
other occasions: threatening to commit vehicular homicide on a real
estate agent who sought to enforce restrictive covenants in her family's
chosen Nashville neighborhood; standing up to racist comments whenever
she heard them, from friends, family members, or total strangers. The
fear which often paralyzes whites and makes us unwilling to challenge
racism--described by James Baldwin as the fear of being "turned away
from the welcome table" of white society--was something that played no
part in her life. She was a woman of principle, and although not an
activist, in her own way she nonetheless instilled in her children and
grandchildren a sense of right and wrong which was unshakeable in this
regard. She is in no small part responsible for who I am and what I do
today.
But enough of the praise. Heaping accolades on the dead is not my
intention here. For there is another part of this story which is less
heartwarming, and yet more instructive and important than anything said
heretofore. It is the part about my grandmother's death.
A few years ago it became obvious that MawMaw, as we knew her, was
developing Alzheimer's disease at a fairly rapid pace. Anyone who has
watched a loved one suffer with this condition knows how difficult it is
to witness the deterioration that takes place. The forgotten memories
come first. Then the forgotten names. Then the unfamiliar faces. Then
the terror and anger of feeling abandoned. And finally, a regression
back to a virtual infant stage of development, complete with the sucking
in of one's lips so typical of newborns. It is a fascinating disease, in
that it renders otherwise healthy persons helpless, eventually causing
not only a mental meltdown, but a physiological one as well. It renders
its victims incapable of reason or comprehensible thought. It saps the
conscious mind of its energy, and therein lies the point of my story.
You see resisting the weight of one's socialization requires conscious
thought. It requires the existence of the ability to choose. And near
the end of my grandmother's life, as her body and mind began to shut
down at an ever-increasing pace, this consciousness--the soundness of
mind which had led her to fight the pressures to accept racism--began to
vanish. Her awareness of who she was and what she had stood for her
entire life disappeared. And as this process unfolded, culminating in
the dementia ward of a local nursing home, an amazing and disturbing
thing happened. She began to refer to her mostly black nurses by the
all-too common term, which forms the cornerstone of white America's
racial thinking. The one Malcolm X said was the first word newcomers
learned when they came to this country. Nigger. A word she would never
have uttered from conscious thought, but one that remained locked away
in her subconscious despite her best intentions and lifelong commitment
to standing strong against racism. A word that would have made her ill
even to think it. A word that would make her violent if she heard it
said. A word which, for her to utter it herself, would have made her,
well, another person altogether. But there it was, as ugly, and bitter,
and fluently expressed as it probably ever had been by her father.
Think carefully about what I'm saying. And why it matters. Here was a
woman who no longer could recognize her own children; a woman who had no
idea who her husband had been; no clue where she was, what her name was,
what year it was-and yet, knew what she had been taught at a very early
age to call black people. Once she was no longer capable of resisting
this demon, tucked away like a ticking time bomb in the far corners of
her mind, it reasserted itself and exploded with a vengeance. She could
not remember how to feed herself, for God's sake. She could not go to
the bathroom by herself. She could not recognize a glass of water for
what it was. But she could recognize a nigger. America had seen to
that--and no disease was going to strip her of that memory. Indeed, it
would be one of the last words she would say, before she finally stopped
talking at all.
Please understand my point: Given this woman's entire life, and the
circumstances surrounding her slow demise, her utterance of a word even
as vicious as nigger says absolutely nothing about her. But it speaks
volumes about her country. About the seeds of pure evil planted deep in
every one of us by our culture; seeds, which--so long as we are of sound
mind and commitment--we can, choose not to water. But also seeds that
left untended sprout of their own accord. It speaks volumes about the
work white folks must do, individually and collectively to overcome that
which is always beneath the surface; to overcome the tendency to cash in
the chips which represent the perquisites of whiteness; to traffic in
privileges--not the least of which is the privilege of feeling superior
to others--not because of what or who they are, but rather because of
what you're not: in this case, not a nigger.
In so many ways that's all whiteness ever meant, and all it needed to
mean for those of European descent. To be white meant at least you were
above them. If you had not a pot to piss in, at least you had that. To
call another man or woman a nigger and to treat them the way one is
instructed to treat such an untouchable is to assert nothing less than a
property right. It is to add value to what DuBois called the
"psychological wage" of whiteness. When my grandmother was strong and
vibrant she had no need to take advantage of these wages, and indeed,
often tried hard to resist them. But in weakness and confusion it became
all that her increasingly diseased mind had left. And she called in the
chips.
Maybe all this is why I'm so tired of other white folks trying to sell
me bullshit like: "I don't have a racist bone in my body," or "I never
notice color." See, MawMaw would have said that too. And she would have
meant well. And she would have been wrong.
Fact is nigger is still the first word on most white people's mind when
they see a black man being taken off to jail on the evening news. The
first thing we think when we see Mike Tyson, Louis Farrakhan, or O.J.
Simpson (as in "that murdering nigger"). Think I'm exaggerating? Then
come with me to America's airports and have a drink with me at the bar
the next time an African American other than Oprah, Michael Jordan, or
Colin Powell makes the news. Take a cab ride with me anywhere in this
country, and if the driver is white (or really anything but black), and
the trip more than 15 minutes, see how long it takes for the word or its
modern-day coded equivalents to spew forth from their mouth, once they
find out what I do. Ask me what white folks yelled at black students who
occupied the basketball court during a Rutgers/U. Mass game a few years
back to protest racist comments by Rutgers' President. Fans who mere
seconds before had been wildly cheering black basketball players, and
yet could and did turn on a dime as soon as they were reminded of the
racial battle lines which trump NCAA-inspired brotherhood every time.
And then after that, tell me the one again about being colorblind. Let's
go to Roxbury tonight, or East LA, or to the Desire housing projects in
New Orleans, or to any MLK Boulevard in any city in America and then
let's see how hard it is to spot melanin. Colorblind my ass.
Then once we're all through feeling bad for having been sucker-punched
by racist conditioning just like everyone else, then please, for the
love of God, let's learn to forgive ourselves. Our guilt is worthless,
although, it should be said, far from meaningless. It has plenty of
meaning: it means we aren't likely to do a damned thing constructive to
end the system which took us in, conned us, and stole part of our
humanity. And what those women at my grandmother's nursing home need and
deserve--much more than a sniveling apology from embarrassed family
members--is for me to say what I'm saying right now, and to encourage
everyone to be brave enough to say the same thing. To put an end to this
vicious system of racial caste. To spend every day resisting the
temptations of advantage, which ultimately weaken the communities on
which we all depend.
Those nurses knew and so do I why my grandmother could no longer fight.
For the rest of us, there is no similar excuse available
I'm also a big fan of Saturday morning's "Cooking School" segments, which is really a big lineup of Food Television personalities I REALLY have crushes on. Cathy Ballou, Martha Stewart, Alton Brown, Sara Moulten, and even Rachel Ray who sort of annoys me on her show, and yet I not only wouldn't kick her out of bed, but I'd probably invite her back.
What is it about food preparation and sex? I don't particularly associated food itself with sex -- only the preparation aspect. I'm sure this is exactly why that British series Nigella Bites is so popular. She's quite the looker, and often works in hot pants and wraparound tops which pretty much show off every curve. Plus she's got that sexy accent.
I think what I really love about television chefs is that they're much more closely related to everyday folks. I don't lust after them because they seem somehow above the general population genetic pool. Nor do I love them despite their everyday appearances -- I like them BECAUSE of it. And food preparation really probably is a metaphor for prowess in bed. Creativity, timing, patience, desire to create perfection, balance, willingness to try new things. These are all requirements for good meals and good sex. I should perhaps to a sociological study on correlation/causation between people who are good in the kitchen and good in bed.
This is the second livejournal entry in a row where I sat down to write about something completely different but got distracted. Oh well. In a complete change of subject,
limenal posted earlier about something that reminded me of this article. So click below for a great related article written by another person I want to marry, Tim Wise. And then go back to researching this kid in Illinois being criminally prosecuted for HIV transmission. Ugh.Exploring the Depths of Racist Socialization
By Tim Wise
Every now and then a lesson comes easy. Other times we learn things by
accident, if at all. And inevitably it seems, the lessons that matter
most, often come from the least likely sources, and at the most
inopportune moments. So much so, that if we aren't paying close
attention, we'll miss them altogether. Such was the case last August
when my paternal grandmother died, at the age of 78.
Although the passing of a relative may seem hardly appropriate as the
jumping off point for a political commentary, it is precisely the oddity
of it, which makes it all the more poignant and valuable. But first, a
slight preface to what I'm trying to explain.
In the past few years I have had the good fortune to speak before nearly
60,000 people, in 40 states, on over 150 college campuses, and to dozens
of community groups, labor unions, and government agencies about racism.
Some audiences respond favorably, others not so much. But the message I
deliver is always the same: those persons called "white" have a
particular obligation to fight racism because it is our problem, created
in its modern form by us, for the purpose of commanding power over
resources and opportunities at the expense of people of color.
Furthermore, all whites, irrespective of their liberal attitudes,
"tolerance" for others, and decent voting records, have to address the
internalized beliefs about white superiority from which we all suffer.
No one is innocent. No one is unaffected by the daily socialization to
which we are all subjected--specifically with regard to the way we are
taught to think about persons of color in this society: their behaviors,
lifestyles, intelligence, beauty, and so on.
Without question, convincing white folks--particularly those dear
liberals who insist every other friend they have is black--that they too
have internalized racist beliefs, even of a most vicious kind, proves
the most difficult in the work I do. You can't prove the point with
statistics, or poll numbers, or by pointing out the wide disparities in
life chances that form the backdrop of American institutionalized
racism. Convinced that they are free from the biases, stereotypes, and
behaviors that characterize "real" racists, such persons inevitably seem
the most resistant to the analysis offered here thus far.
It is with this in mind that I return to my grandmother. For her
death--and more to the point, her life, right up until she died--offers
more in the way of proof that racist socialization affects us all than
anything I have experienced.
You see my grandmother was one of those good liberals. In fact, in many
ways she was beyond liberal, particularly given the time and place in
which she spent most of her life. Born in the Detroit area, she and her
parents moved south in the 1920s. Her father was a member of the Ku Klux
Klan. A member that is, until the day in 1938 when his only daughter
informed him that she had fallen in love with a Jewish man, and that in
addition to that, his hatred of blacks was unconscionable to her. She
then handed him his robes, and with her mother's approval, asked whether
he was going to burn them, or if she was going to have to do it herself.
She challenged him despite what must have been the palpable fear of
standing up to a man who was none too gentle, and most certainly capable
of violence. As it turns out, he would never attend another Klan
meeting, and by all accounts changed his attitudes, changed his
behaviors, indeed, changed his life.
Throughout her life she would stand up to racist bigotry on a number of
other occasions: threatening to commit vehicular homicide on a real
estate agent who sought to enforce restrictive covenants in her family's
chosen Nashville neighborhood; standing up to racist comments whenever
she heard them, from friends, family members, or total strangers. The
fear which often paralyzes whites and makes us unwilling to challenge
racism--described by James Baldwin as the fear of being "turned away
from the welcome table" of white society--was something that played no
part in her life. She was a woman of principle, and although not an
activist, in her own way she nonetheless instilled in her children and
grandchildren a sense of right and wrong which was unshakeable in this
regard. She is in no small part responsible for who I am and what I do
today.
But enough of the praise. Heaping accolades on the dead is not my
intention here. For there is another part of this story which is less
heartwarming, and yet more instructive and important than anything said
heretofore. It is the part about my grandmother's death.
A few years ago it became obvious that MawMaw, as we knew her, was
developing Alzheimer's disease at a fairly rapid pace. Anyone who has
watched a loved one suffer with this condition knows how difficult it is
to witness the deterioration that takes place. The forgotten memories
come first. Then the forgotten names. Then the unfamiliar faces. Then
the terror and anger of feeling abandoned. And finally, a regression
back to a virtual infant stage of development, complete with the sucking
in of one's lips so typical of newborns. It is a fascinating disease, in
that it renders otherwise healthy persons helpless, eventually causing
not only a mental meltdown, but a physiological one as well. It renders
its victims incapable of reason or comprehensible thought. It saps the
conscious mind of its energy, and therein lies the point of my story.
You see resisting the weight of one's socialization requires conscious
thought. It requires the existence of the ability to choose. And near
the end of my grandmother's life, as her body and mind began to shut
down at an ever-increasing pace, this consciousness--the soundness of
mind which had led her to fight the pressures to accept racism--began to
vanish. Her awareness of who she was and what she had stood for her
entire life disappeared. And as this process unfolded, culminating in
the dementia ward of a local nursing home, an amazing and disturbing
thing happened. She began to refer to her mostly black nurses by the
all-too common term, which forms the cornerstone of white America's
racial thinking. The one Malcolm X said was the first word newcomers
learned when they came to this country. Nigger. A word she would never
have uttered from conscious thought, but one that remained locked away
in her subconscious despite her best intentions and lifelong commitment
to standing strong against racism. A word that would have made her ill
even to think it. A word that would make her violent if she heard it
said. A word which, for her to utter it herself, would have made her,
well, another person altogether. But there it was, as ugly, and bitter,
and fluently expressed as it probably ever had been by her father.
Think carefully about what I'm saying. And why it matters. Here was a
woman who no longer could recognize her own children; a woman who had no
idea who her husband had been; no clue where she was, what her name was,
what year it was-and yet, knew what she had been taught at a very early
age to call black people. Once she was no longer capable of resisting
this demon, tucked away like a ticking time bomb in the far corners of
her mind, it reasserted itself and exploded with a vengeance. She could
not remember how to feed herself, for God's sake. She could not go to
the bathroom by herself. She could not recognize a glass of water for
what it was. But she could recognize a nigger. America had seen to
that--and no disease was going to strip her of that memory. Indeed, it
would be one of the last words she would say, before she finally stopped
talking at all.
Please understand my point: Given this woman's entire life, and the
circumstances surrounding her slow demise, her utterance of a word even
as vicious as nigger says absolutely nothing about her. But it speaks
volumes about her country. About the seeds of pure evil planted deep in
every one of us by our culture; seeds, which--so long as we are of sound
mind and commitment--we can, choose not to water. But also seeds that
left untended sprout of their own accord. It speaks volumes about the
work white folks must do, individually and collectively to overcome that
which is always beneath the surface; to overcome the tendency to cash in
the chips which represent the perquisites of whiteness; to traffic in
privileges--not the least of which is the privilege of feeling superior
to others--not because of what or who they are, but rather because of
what you're not: in this case, not a nigger.
In so many ways that's all whiteness ever meant, and all it needed to
mean for those of European descent. To be white meant at least you were
above them. If you had not a pot to piss in, at least you had that. To
call another man or woman a nigger and to treat them the way one is
instructed to treat such an untouchable is to assert nothing less than a
property right. It is to add value to what DuBois called the
"psychological wage" of whiteness. When my grandmother was strong and
vibrant she had no need to take advantage of these wages, and indeed,
often tried hard to resist them. But in weakness and confusion it became
all that her increasingly diseased mind had left. And she called in the
chips.
Maybe all this is why I'm so tired of other white folks trying to sell
me bullshit like: "I don't have a racist bone in my body," or "I never
notice color." See, MawMaw would have said that too. And she would have
meant well. And she would have been wrong.
Fact is nigger is still the first word on most white people's mind when
they see a black man being taken off to jail on the evening news. The
first thing we think when we see Mike Tyson, Louis Farrakhan, or O.J.
Simpson (as in "that murdering nigger"). Think I'm exaggerating? Then
come with me to America's airports and have a drink with me at the bar
the next time an African American other than Oprah, Michael Jordan, or
Colin Powell makes the news. Take a cab ride with me anywhere in this
country, and if the driver is white (or really anything but black), and
the trip more than 15 minutes, see how long it takes for the word or its
modern-day coded equivalents to spew forth from their mouth, once they
find out what I do. Ask me what white folks yelled at black students who
occupied the basketball court during a Rutgers/U. Mass game a few years
back to protest racist comments by Rutgers' President. Fans who mere
seconds before had been wildly cheering black basketball players, and
yet could and did turn on a dime as soon as they were reminded of the
racial battle lines which trump NCAA-inspired brotherhood every time.
And then after that, tell me the one again about being colorblind. Let's
go to Roxbury tonight, or East LA, or to the Desire housing projects in
New Orleans, or to any MLK Boulevard in any city in America and then
let's see how hard it is to spot melanin. Colorblind my ass.
Then once we're all through feeling bad for having been sucker-punched
by racist conditioning just like everyone else, then please, for the
love of God, let's learn to forgive ourselves. Our guilt is worthless,
although, it should be said, far from meaningless. It has plenty of
meaning: it means we aren't likely to do a damned thing constructive to
end the system which took us in, conned us, and stole part of our
humanity. And what those women at my grandmother's nursing home need and
deserve--much more than a sniveling apology from embarrassed family
members--is for me to say what I'm saying right now, and to encourage
everyone to be brave enough to say the same thing. To put an end to this
vicious system of racial caste. To spend every day resisting the
temptations of advantage, which ultimately weaken the communities on
which we all depend.
Those nurses knew and so do I why my grandmother could no longer fight.
For the rest of us, there is no similar excuse available
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-04-30 08:38 am (UTC)By the way,
no subject
Date: 2002-05-02 05:44 am (UTC)***
You would need excellent eyesight to spot me even in this year's parade.. in the telly coverage here, you could see our banner for about half a second if you knew just where to look. I suspect we will need synchronised dance moves and spangly costumes to have a hope of cracking the cameras next year.