Some thoughts on who can and who can't be racist.

I'd like to talk about racism and colorism a little.

When I was young- Jr. High & early high school, I, a mixed race, light-skinned, nerdy-ass queerlet on the edge of self discovery, was also totally racist as fuck.

I believed the self-serving narrative that my mother wasn't as smart as my dad, due in part to her background. I believed that my cousins and siblings on welfare were there because their parents were lazy and irresponsible and their poverty was their fault- if they would just Do Work, they'd be all right (Oh my god, I knew jack shit about people's lives at this point). I mocked my younger black cousin for not knowing how to read. I thought that my much more black looking brothers got into fights because they were just violent, and that they could do something to stop being such targets, without having any clue what that could be (taking off their skin, maybe).

And my best friends? A big, lovely black girl who was also a geek, and constantly shunned by our white peers for not fitting their standards of beauty, and another, asian geek girl who had very similar issues. And I? I hung with them, but I looked down on them. Secretly, I was incredibly relieved that I was skinny and light, unlike my big, dark friend, because I was "pretty" and she was- I thought at the time objectively- not. It was much easier for me to gain acceptance into wider groups, and when we started high school, I completely ditched them for about a week to hang with a much "cooler" (all white) crowd.

Sure, I did bring them into that group after that, and they were accepted, but still- our friendship was much, much cooler after that. And I'd be lying if I said that I didn't do it, in part, to assuage some guilt over something I couldn't name, but knew was wrong.

What I am saying is that I, a person of color, had best friends of color, and family of color, and I still behaved like a fucking racist, alienating people I claimed to care about because I could, because I look white.

If they had called me on it at the time, THIS WOULD NOT BE RACISM. And this is the thing that drives me nuts about people saying that blacks and other PoC are racist when they point out their oppression. Talking about and identifying racial injustices and biases is not racist. Leaving them to fester is. Talking about them is the only way to dismantle them, because do you understand how fucked up it is that there's a so-called objective standard of beauty in this country that is focused around paleness, except for a few fetishists of dark skin- like, for example, my own father? How fucked up is it that everything black women do, wear, and say in this country is subject to a level of scrutiny and judgement that white women can glimpse, but don't experience? But if you want to say, "I can't be racist, my [Person you know or are related to] is a person of color, you are completely fucking wrong, and you need to examine your internal attitudes and your actions. You need to understand that just because you didn't mean to be racist doesn't mean you weren't. Maybe your offhand comment about someone looking like a drug dealer got them nailed by the authorities and frisked when they didn't do anything. Maybe you screwed somebody seriously over because you convinced other people not to take them seriously based on their color. Maybe you dismissed the people who shouted and spit at them because you didn't see it, and you don't want to make snap judgements that someone else you know is racist.

Maybe you didn't mean it. But you fucking did it, just like I did, and you need to own it, and fix it.

Your favorite pet theory.

The trouble, as my friend said, is that this election isn't a referendum on neo-liberalism or neo-conservativism or whatever else we wanted it to be about. No, this election is about who does and doesn't get to be an American.

And the Know-Nothings won it.

I am incredibly angry and disgusted, and all of the think-pieces in the world can't buy me love.

The Soul of How We Got Here.

The Teal Deer has been silent over the past... nearly forever, for a number of reasons. But silence, as I have said numerous times, is the enemy. Silence and fear = Problemz. So...

So Ferguson. So Baltimore. So Sal's Pizzeria.

And on the other hand-- so Charleston. So the Confederate Battle Flag. So this fucking election.

So to understand these things, and more specifically, the reactions of most of the black people in this country to what is happening with them, it might help to understand Reconstruction, and what happened after the slaves were emancipated, and the civil war was won by the North. Also, there's a thing we haven't really talked about, because it has a bit of middle child syndrome-- poor white people.

There's some homework to do here: I suggest Black Reconstruction in America and the Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois in particular, but you're not going to go read those right now, so let's get into it.

White and Poor is a distinct racial identity, and it's time to admit it. White and Poor is an identity that is functionally powerless, but which possess the possibility-- the hope-- of becoming powerful one day, if they work hard enough and do all the right things. White and Poor couldn't vote before the civil war, because the planters had property requirements at the polling place. White and Poor in the south were stuck in an untenable position:  the employer class had slaves, so they were only hiring whites to do things like help keep the slaves docile-- overseers, police, bounty hunters. If you could get a bit of land, you could do some sustenance farming, but competition was a laugh. You might be able to get lucky and move into the planter class, but that was a long shot, like the jackpot on the slot machine.

Let's be clear-- I'm not saying that the situation of the poor white is the same as, or comparable to, chattel slavery. But this doesn't mean that we should never talk about the situation of the poor white. And right now, we have to, because it is the reality that informs Dylan Roof, and informs white folks in the South who think that the confederate battle flag is their heritage, and informs white folks who don't get why we can't just move on.

The problem is that white culture, particularly southern, white, poor culture, has been for too long linked and bound with racism, with ignorance, with a certain down home wholesomeness that looks nice on the surface but really equates ignorance with honesty by demonizing intellectualism. "Black Culture"(tm, because seriously, there isn't just one) has something similar, in point of fact; the difference is that you can't really buy your way out of it as a black person, because to be black, regardless of personal wealth, is to be associated with the poor and criminal.

The problem of the poor white has a lot on common with the problem of the mulatto: but it is not the ability to pass for "a white person," it is the ability to pass for rich, or at least, the ability to past for someone who could, legitimately, have wealth.

Now, I can already hear people saying, "but Rabbit, you're making it about class, not race, and that's simplistic." My argument is that the two cannot be separated in America (I can't speak for other nations), and that race fundamentally defines an economic class. The construction of the white race in America was an economic function, but it was also a lie: for the White Property Owner was not about to share anything but a thin label with the white person who didn't own property. Not even the vote, for a very long time.

Anyway, here is a white person, who does a really excellent job of illustrating this here.

What do I think this all means? I think it means that we need to stop shutting down white people, especially poor white people, when they want to talk about race and class, and about themselves in relation to it. I think we need to point out that white people need to talk amongst themselves about it, and also to people of color constructively. But we really, really have to stop treating marginalized white people as if they are invisible, and as if they don't exist. The great trick of reconstruction was playing on the fear of the poor white that black people would be raised above them, and they would be at the very bottom of the pile, and we can see this in the results of this election. One of the first and immediate consequences is that like it or not, white people are now a group for which the actions of one reflect on the whole. The rest of us can relate, and understand exactly how shitty and insulting it is. But it is the new reality, and it's a bad one.

Now, what I am NOT saying here is that black people need to be patient and complacent when we are being actively and physically assaulted and attacked by white people, poor or not, doing the dirty work of this kind of enforcement of white supremacy. Fuck no. What I am saying is that a culture in which, to a white person, being called a racist is the worst, most unthinkable insult, while actually being racist in effect and result is not even noticed is the opposite of useful. And further, we're seeing, in effect, that if white people with no positive identity to adhere to are continually denied one, they'll stop seeing the bad things associated with the negative identity as bad. So I'd expect the white supremacy to get worse, going forward- and people of color, people who aren't white in general- we are not going to be the ones who are going to be able to stop it.