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oyceter(I do mean to answer comments, particularly in the intl. race post, but I am a bit behind on things now, and I have to type this up so I can return the book and not be fined.)
I went and ILLed this after seeing Tatum quote from it in Can We Talk About Race?. I'm very glad I did.
It's hard to talk about this book without talking about where I personally am because my reaction to the book is so very visceral. I suspect Tatum's chapter on interracial friendships kicked off my thoughts on this, though it's been in the back of my head for a while. I've been looking at my own friendships -- online and in real life, past and present -- and also looking at my flist and noticing (not for the first time) that it's very white. And I've been trying to work out how to reconcile that with my attempts (successful or not) to be more actively anti-racist. For those of you reading in a panic, no, I'm not cutting anyone off because they're white, nor am I planning to. I've also been thinking because I actively try to keep my flist small so I can comment more and be more interactive. And yet, because of how my flist is mostly white, I am not sure how to reconcile the small flist policy with an attempt to read more POC, to be more involved with communities.
I don't have a good answer for anything yet; I am sure some people are reading and thinking, "OMG, you are only reading me because I am a POC" or others are thinking, "OMG, you are going to stop reading me just because I am white." And I say to both of these: no, and no. It is, of course, far more complicated. But part of what I am trying to do is find more people who are also actively anti-racist because I have found that I personally need that, just like how I try to seek out people who love the same books and manga I do, how I try to seek out people who are actively feminist.
So when I read this book, I was looking for advice, I was looking for models, I was looking for people struggling with similar questions and for people further down the path than I am. And I found that.
The book covers a variety of experiences: Emily Bernard's assertion that sometimes she needs compassion more than awareness about Racism 101, David Mura detailing his evolution from someone who wanted to be white to an anti-racist and how that broke old friendships and formed new ones, Darryl Pinckney's experience of being black and having Jewish friends and attempting to navigate that space, Somini Sengupta talking about race and nationality and how it came up between her and her black lover.
I was a little put off at first because the first few essays in the book deal more with POC-white interracial friendships, from both POC and white points of view. But later essays explore POC-POC interracial friendships, and on a whole, the essays dealt with a huge range. I particularly liked that individual essays looked at intersections of class and nationality and ethnicity as well as intersections of race and how all those factors complicate readings of race. Alas, there weren't any that covered differences of sexuality, gender, age, or abledness, and I think all of the friendships are American ones. I also liked that the essays covered a wide range of reactions, from people who valued friends who weren't necessarily anti-racist to those who had to deal with hate and anger directed toward themselves to those who were dealing with their anger and hate of white people to those who had largely decided not to have white friends at all. I like that there are no judgments.
Here are the ones that I found most useful personally:
I loved Somini Sengupta's essay on being Indian (and an Indian citizen living in the US) and how issues of nationality complicated her relationship with a black man. She talks about her ambivalent relationship with the US and how she reluctantly became a US citizen even as she felt like she didn't quite belong, particularly in post-9/11 America. I liked her look at her own experience with visiting the South for the first time and confronting her own prejudices, her experience of going to a place in which she and Joe were the only two POC and POC solidarity, having to deal with her family's reactions to Joe, the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi after 9/11 because he was mistaken for a Muslim. "Black people get to be American at times like these," she comments, also noting that it must be a relief to not be the bugaboo for once. She talks about "flying while brown" and one woman noting, "Now we know what it feels like to be black."
"Really? Where were we, I wonder, when it was 'driving while black'?" she notes.
She hits on nearly all of my own ambivalences about holding an American passport even as I grew up in Taiwan and how that complicates things, on the various complications in inter-POC alliances, how it's never that simple, even when your race is the current demon of choice in the media.
But the one that affected me most, the one that I keep going back to, is David Mura's "Secret Colors," the same essay that Tatum quotes from in her book. I don't even know where to begin; if I could quote the entire essay back here, I would. I've read it three or four times by now, and I keep tearing up, because he's been where I am right now, and he found a path from it that works for him. Everything he says keeps resonating with me: his childhood as someone who mostly had white heroes in fiction and believing that "I don't see you as Asian" or "I see you as white" was a compliment, his growing awareness of race and racism and how it ended up alienating many of his old friends, how he had to make decisions -- "She [a white friend] chose to look at herself as the victim of racial politics. She chose not to examine what her resentment and envy might mean; she chose not to see the ways her views continued to support the racial status quo."
He talks about his pain and confusion and guilt at alienating his white friends, his fear that it was him, his later conviction that they chose, however consciously, to be alienated. He talks about being seen more and more as "an angry Asian guy." And then he goes into his growing friendship with Alexs Pate, a black man, how they begin to trust each other, how Mura discovers his own anger and expresses it more, how all this is intertwined with the growth of a friendship that he draws enormous strength from and with his own growing dedication to anti-racism. And oh, it goes so much into things that I'm trying to deal with: building trust interracially, trying to play catch-up, fearing stereotypes even as I confront more and more of my own racist beliefs.
And this is exactly why I picked up this book. I need a road map, I need reassurances from people who have been through the same thing, because some days, I feel like I'm trying to find my way out of a pitch-black room, obstacles scattered everywhere. It's not as bad as it sounds: I have people finding their way with me, and I can see the door. I'm just not quite sure how to get from here to the door, and that's what Mura has given me.
I read his words and I think, "Yes, this is what I want to do, this is where I want to go," and I can only hope that I do it with as much grace and composure as Mura does.
I am guessing that not everyone will be as moved by the essays I am moved by: different essays will speak to different people, depending on where they are and who they are. Still, there is such a range here that I think most people will be able to find something, and I found almost all of them to be illuminating even if my reaction was less personal and more intellectual.
In case you couldn't tell, this is highly, highly recommended.
I went and ILLed this after seeing Tatum quote from it in Can We Talk About Race?. I'm very glad I did.
It's hard to talk about this book without talking about where I personally am because my reaction to the book is so very visceral. I suspect Tatum's chapter on interracial friendships kicked off my thoughts on this, though it's been in the back of my head for a while. I've been looking at my own friendships -- online and in real life, past and present -- and also looking at my flist and noticing (not for the first time) that it's very white. And I've been trying to work out how to reconcile that with my attempts (successful or not) to be more actively anti-racist. For those of you reading in a panic, no, I'm not cutting anyone off because they're white, nor am I planning to. I've also been thinking because I actively try to keep my flist small so I can comment more and be more interactive. And yet, because of how my flist is mostly white, I am not sure how to reconcile the small flist policy with an attempt to read more POC, to be more involved with communities.
I don't have a good answer for anything yet; I am sure some people are reading and thinking, "OMG, you are only reading me because I am a POC" or others are thinking, "OMG, you are going to stop reading me just because I am white." And I say to both of these: no, and no. It is, of course, far more complicated. But part of what I am trying to do is find more people who are also actively anti-racist because I have found that I personally need that, just like how I try to seek out people who love the same books and manga I do, how I try to seek out people who are actively feminist.
So when I read this book, I was looking for advice, I was looking for models, I was looking for people struggling with similar questions and for people further down the path than I am. And I found that.
The book covers a variety of experiences: Emily Bernard's assertion that sometimes she needs compassion more than awareness about Racism 101, David Mura detailing his evolution from someone who wanted to be white to an anti-racist and how that broke old friendships and formed new ones, Darryl Pinckney's experience of being black and having Jewish friends and attempting to navigate that space, Somini Sengupta talking about race and nationality and how it came up between her and her black lover.
I was a little put off at first because the first few essays in the book deal more with POC-white interracial friendships, from both POC and white points of view. But later essays explore POC-POC interracial friendships, and on a whole, the essays dealt with a huge range. I particularly liked that individual essays looked at intersections of class and nationality and ethnicity as well as intersections of race and how all those factors complicate readings of race. Alas, there weren't any that covered differences of sexuality, gender, age, or abledness, and I think all of the friendships are American ones. I also liked that the essays covered a wide range of reactions, from people who valued friends who weren't necessarily anti-racist to those who had to deal with hate and anger directed toward themselves to those who were dealing with their anger and hate of white people to those who had largely decided not to have white friends at all. I like that there are no judgments.
Here are the ones that I found most useful personally:
I loved Somini Sengupta's essay on being Indian (and an Indian citizen living in the US) and how issues of nationality complicated her relationship with a black man. She talks about her ambivalent relationship with the US and how she reluctantly became a US citizen even as she felt like she didn't quite belong, particularly in post-9/11 America. I liked her look at her own experience with visiting the South for the first time and confronting her own prejudices, her experience of going to a place in which she and Joe were the only two POC and POC solidarity, having to deal with her family's reactions to Joe, the killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi after 9/11 because he was mistaken for a Muslim. "Black people get to be American at times like these," she comments, also noting that it must be a relief to not be the bugaboo for once. She talks about "flying while brown" and one woman noting, "Now we know what it feels like to be black."
"Really? Where were we, I wonder, when it was 'driving while black'?" she notes.
She hits on nearly all of my own ambivalences about holding an American passport even as I grew up in Taiwan and how that complicates things, on the various complications in inter-POC alliances, how it's never that simple, even when your race is the current demon of choice in the media.
But the one that affected me most, the one that I keep going back to, is David Mura's "Secret Colors," the same essay that Tatum quotes from in her book. I don't even know where to begin; if I could quote the entire essay back here, I would. I've read it three or four times by now, and I keep tearing up, because he's been where I am right now, and he found a path from it that works for him. Everything he says keeps resonating with me: his childhood as someone who mostly had white heroes in fiction and believing that "I don't see you as Asian" or "I see you as white" was a compliment, his growing awareness of race and racism and how it ended up alienating many of his old friends, how he had to make decisions -- "She [a white friend] chose to look at herself as the victim of racial politics. She chose not to examine what her resentment and envy might mean; she chose not to see the ways her views continued to support the racial status quo."
He talks about his pain and confusion and guilt at alienating his white friends, his fear that it was him, his later conviction that they chose, however consciously, to be alienated. He talks about being seen more and more as "an angry Asian guy." And then he goes into his growing friendship with Alexs Pate, a black man, how they begin to trust each other, how Mura discovers his own anger and expresses it more, how all this is intertwined with the growth of a friendship that he draws enormous strength from and with his own growing dedication to anti-racism. And oh, it goes so much into things that I'm trying to deal with: building trust interracially, trying to play catch-up, fearing stereotypes even as I confront more and more of my own racist beliefs.
And this is exactly why I picked up this book. I need a road map, I need reassurances from people who have been through the same thing, because some days, I feel like I'm trying to find my way out of a pitch-black room, obstacles scattered everywhere. It's not as bad as it sounds: I have people finding their way with me, and I can see the door. I'm just not quite sure how to get from here to the door, and that's what Mura has given me.
I read his words and I think, "Yes, this is what I want to do, this is where I want to go," and I can only hope that I do it with as much grace and composure as Mura does.
I am guessing that not everyone will be as moved by the essays I am moved by: different essays will speak to different people, depending on where they are and who they are. Still, there is such a range here that I think most people will be able to find something, and I found almost all of them to be illuminating even if my reaction was less personal and more intellectual.
In case you couldn't tell, this is highly, highly recommended.
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Mon, Jul. 30th, 2007 06:19 pm (UTC)I found his memoir to be incredibly self-consciously literary and pompous. Also, I felt like he was constantly writing about how this or that experience allowed him to tap into some primal Japanese-ness. (I don't want to prejudice you against it, though. It's been a few years since I read it, and while the bad taste lingers, the memories of specifics have faded.)
And it's good to hear your thoughts on the friendships. It was brought home to me pretty hard this weekend, when I invited a person I hadn't seen in about a year to a fundraising party for INCITE, the group that I organize with. It's someone that I love, that I have history with, but we are just not on the same page anymore, and some of the shit that he was saying...Damn!
It's sad to see friendships not functioning at the same level, but at the same time, I do feel good to be certain about my convictions. As hard as it is to kind of out myself as finding something offensive, I find that it feels better to have said it and not stew over it later. And I feel good about having many friends now that I can have hard conversations with, who don't tell me I'm overreacting or crazy if I call out racism/name-your-awful-dynamic-of-oppression that I see.
(And then again...) I think I just don't want to be at a place where I can't relate to people, can't enjoy people, unless we share the same political convictions. I want to be able to get along with all kinds of people, you know? And maybe being faced with the possibility of not having that is hard, even if I didn't have it before... It also makes me scared of being another kind of minority, which is fucked up.
Wow - something about this line of thinking has tapped into my confessional vein. Sorry to dump all that on you!
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Wed, Aug. 1st, 2007 08:46 am (UTC)It's sad to see friendships not functioning at the same level, but at the same time, I do feel good to be certain about my convictions. As hard as it is to kind of out myself as finding something offensive, I find that it feels better to have said it and not stew over it later. And I feel good about having many friends now that I can have hard conversations with, who don't tell me I'm overreacting or crazy if I call out racism/name-your-awful-dynamic-of-oppression that I see.
So agreed! I'm really glad that most people who read my LJ and comment know that here, at least, it is not ok to pull stupid things and be offensive about oppression. Or I hope so! And my personal life has started to feel more and more different as I try to not be silent about these things any more, and while it's more stressful at times, it also has helped a lot too.
I'm still trying to figure out where I stand with people of different political convictions; I generally am not going to not talk to someone because they support abortion. On the other hand, if they're sexist or racist or homophobic, I just don't know. I can be acquaintances, yes, but I don't think the friendship will ever go very deep.
And hey, no worries about long comments! Witness my response ;).
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Wed, Aug. 8th, 2007 07:13 pm (UTC)I have to take back what I said about him (though I did really hate his memoir).
Hope you're doing well -
K
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Wed, Aug. 8th, 2007 10:10 pm (UTC)(I just started reading his memoir, and I'm having many of the same problems you were.)
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Thu, Aug. 9th, 2007 01:09 pm (UTC)Re: read this in a single sitting...
Mon, Aug. 13th, 2007 02:14 pm (UTC)K
Re: read this in a single sitting...
Mon, Aug. 13th, 2007 09:08 pm (UTC)