Group Event

I wanted to wait to write my blog this week so I could use it to reflect on the group project I did for this Philosophy of Race course. Tonight, my group hosted an open mic night named Silenced Voices which aimed to give students a platform to openly talk about race. We had a handful of poets go up and perform and then followed with a discussion.

I was really impressed with the turn out. There were a lot of different people who showed up and although the numbers weren't huge, getting 25+ students to come to an event the day before Thanksgiving break when  assignments are piling high is great. But I'm not writing this to go over the facts and figures of the event. And I'm not writing it to talk about the poems themselves. Although they were all amazing and touched on topics including welfare, the war on drugs, education systems, racial profiling, and racism as a whole, it was what the discussion concluded with that I thought was particularly powerful.

Ursinus is segregated. We may boast mildly impressive diversity statistics for a small, suburban liberal arts school, but what does that really mean? Is it really diverse if the blacks sit with the blacks and the whites with the whites and the Asians with the Asians? Diversity isn't a statistic, it's a word with broad meaning and should suggest an understanding and appreciation for different types of people. Unfortunately, as we came to decide in our discussion, that type of diversity is absent from this school for the most part.

So why do people group by race? Arguably, it's not that people group by skin color necessarily but rather by a shared common life experience and whether many realize it or not, life experience is often heavily affected by race from the day we are born. As a group, we began to question how we are to overcome such an obstacle and how we are to start forging an understanding between different types of people.

Statistics and events don't make people really get it. You can tell someone the facts and figures of racial injustice but does that make people understand? No. In this society of white supremacy someone's race affects not only their chances to get an education or a job, but also their internal understanding of what it means to live in this world. If we really want to overcome the obstacle of misunderstanding, we have to encourage understanding and empathy. But how do we do this?

At least in our discussion group tonight, we realized that the arts and especially something like poetry can do a lot to forge common bonds among different people. The emotion and true experience that something like art can convey goes much farther to solving the issue of racial misunderstanding than pure statistical data and historical events can. While I still think it's extremely important to be aware of structural and institutional racism as a means to remedying the segregated society we live in, we need to get to the core of things. Art perpetuates the experience of being human, which everyone can relate to regardless of the color of your skin or where you grew up or how society has affected you. Race is such a taboo topic, but it shouldn't be. And art provides people with a safe outlet to talk about the way they feel about race and also affect other people's views on race.

Where's the line?

Something I'm finding myself struggling with is when and where it is proper to analyze situations based on race. Now I'm a chronic over analyzer, taking the things in my every day life and often twisting them in all sorts of ways in my head. Usually just for the hell of it, just to think new thoughts. So perhaps I'm not the best person to be considering where the line is between not considering race enough and considering race too much. But anyways, here's my beef:

When someone tells me I'm "overreacting" because I'll vocalize my discomfort when something blatantly racist is said, I'm automatically pissed. When you're sensitive to an issue like race, you'll pick up on it in everyday life much more often and you're more prone to possibly "overreact" when the issue is not treated as you would like to see it treated. So I don't want to say anyone is "overreacting". But I'm going to.

When you look at the outpouring of articles regarding musicians like Lorde, Lily Allen, and Miley Cyrus, criticizing them for participating in racist dialogue, I think people are overreacting. Don't get me wrong, I think it's still important that there is discourse on the issue and it should 100% be something that people consider when listening to the music or observing the actions of these artists. However, I think a lot of the criticism (at least what I've read) is not to perpetuate knowledge or understanding, but rather violently criticizes in a way that is not the least bit constructive. These artists are a part of the pop culture machine, and I think that attacking an artist's integrity or personal views is not what needs to be done as it does not confront the real issue. The real issue seems to be that the appropriation of certain themes and ideas does not resonate as inappropriate to a majority of people. When you're looking at a Lily Allen music video or a Lorde song, you're looking at a collaborative artistic product that went through rounds of review and refining before it was ever released to the masses. The issue is not artists using racial themes to prove a point, but rather that the whole system was too ignorant to even realize that certain ideas or allusions could conjure racist notions for certain individuals.

This sounds bad. But I don't mean it that way. What I'm trying to say is I don't think a lot of what is criticized today as "racist" in mainstream media really had the intention to perpetuate those viewpoints. Often, these songs or videos are inspired by the byproducts of inherently racist systems or are a result of ignorance. To react negatively to what one perceives to be "racist" is not an issue, but it does seem to be overreacting when one's criticism doesn't consider the other side of the argument. For the sake of progress and knowledge, it's important that people point out when certain works seem racist but at the same time, such an observation is really only productive if it considers how it came to be racist. Especially in mainstream media, there is usually no intention for racism as quite bluntly, it's not marketable in today's day and age. Thus the issue isn't purposeful perpetuation of racist notions but rather the ignorance that plagues the masses. How can we get more people to be aware when they are making allusions to racist concepts? How do we go about erasing that ignorance and informing people? I mean, I guess these critical articles are a start, but they aren't really a solution, are they?

So where is this line? Where is it okay to be blatantly pissed without having to explain yourself because the racism should be apparent and where is it better to accompany your outrage with constructive suggestions in order to make people better understand? Not sure. Great question.

The New Jim Crow Thus Far...

While I have yet to finish The New Jim Crow, I am thoroughly impressed thus far. Michelle Alexander maintains a strong and persuasive yet very honest voice. She mentions in her preface that she has a specific audience in mind for the book, and I feel as though I fit into that audience.  Alexander says she writes for those who have tried to convince the people around them that "... something is eerily familiar about the way our criminal justice system operates, something that looks and feels a lot like an era we supposedly left behind, but who have lacked the facts and data to back up their claims." She hopes to empower her audience, and I could use that empowerment. It's difficult to make unpopular arguments like the ones surrounding race unless you are equipped with the proper information to back up your argument. The argument that racial discrimination still exists in America is not one many want to hear, and in order to convey it effectively, facts and figures and analogies are needed. I hope that as I work my way through the book, I will become knowledgeable about this new racial caste system that has been perpetuated by the current prison system and war on drugs.

Something that has particularly struck me in the introduction is that the U.S. incarcerates more of its racial or ethnic minorities than any other country in the world. I'm always weary of the way that statistics can be skewed or manipulated to prove a certain point. But regardless of however this statistic could be argued, it's horrifying. No matter what other reasons could be attributed to this phenomenon, this is a blatantly race based problem. I had no idea that the U.S. held this position in the world. It's startling and disturbing and more disgusting than I thought. I'm excited to complete this book because I can only imagine that I will stumble across more facts that will completely shake my existing sense of societal realities.

Cadillacs

I was recently watching a documentary entitled "Whitewashed, Unmasking the World of Whiteness" about the privileged experience of being white. I feel like throughout these blog posts I've done a lot of reflecting on what it means for me to be white so although that aspect of the documentary was enlightening, it's not what I want to talk about. One of the people interviewed in the film referenced a quote by Malcolm X that hit me hard. It was, "Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year."

This. This is it. These words make sense of everything in my head. They give logic to all the times I've stumbled around attempting to explain to people how today's society is still racist. Just because we don't see the high school history textbook definition of racism in everyday life does not mean that racism is not around. It is fundamentally embedded in our society's systems and structures, it just takes on different forms and methods as time goes on.

Now I know this isn't necessarily insightful. Nor is it exceptionally revolutionary. But it seems as though once you hit a certain point in studying a subject, the light bulb just doesn't illuminate for you anymore. You don't have those instant revelations anymore. And for awhile I've felt that way about studying racial matters. I am by no means an expert or a scholar or even a mildly experienced researcher. I've taken a few classes, read a few books, but I still always feel stuck when I talk about race. Maybe it's because the vocabulary in place is rarely all encompassing of the major social issues they try to describe. Maybe it's because since I'm white and have never really had to think about race on a "real life" level until now, I'm working from an exceptionally low point of understanding so a simple analogy like Malcolm X's really enlightens things for me.

Well I guess all of my entries do end up about me being white. My whiteness never made me have to truly consider race. My understanding of race began as so elementary that such a simple quote (even after about three years of being finally fully conscious of race issues) could suddenly help things make more sense. It's like I'm learning a new language after already having had a language ingrained in me for quite literally decades. I'm learning a new understanding of race after years of being ignorantly under the impression that there was really no greater understanding to have. It's sad. And I think my experience is something a lot of other white people can relate to.