“The White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron”

Here is my follow up to my previous bjournal entry.  When last we met, I had just been explaining Ms. Smiley’s views on getting rid of Huck Finn.  From other recent information I’ve gleaned, this position is not all that uncommon.  Apparently, the NAACP has called for a ban on Huck because “tax dollars should not be used to perpetuate a stereotype that has psychologically damaging effects on the self-esteem of African American children.” You can read more about it on this article at the Jewish World Review.

Ahem.  But enough on Huck proper.  I will now continue narrating the event from my last article.  What happened when I saw these acccusation’s of Twain’s racism, I thought of the old slander on Alexander Pope not being a poet, and Dr. Johnson’s reply “If Pope is not poetry, where shall poetry be found.”  This lead me to think “If Twain is a racist, where shall non-racism be found”, at least among white people.  I thought about it a bit, and I came up with John Brown.  Who, I thought, could consider John Brown a racist?  Then I recalled the axiom I started off with from my last post, that every white person before the baby boom is probably going to be called a racist at some point it history has bothered to remember them, regardless of what they said to the contrary.  So I typed in “John Brown was a racist” into Google in quote, and came up with this article, wherein I found a comment that the author of the article apparently thought John Brown was indeed a racist.  So I typed in the author’s name “Tamara K. Noppers” and “John Brown”, and I came to this article, which in many ways spurred this whole entry.  Ms. Noppers states:

I recently finished the biography of John Brown by DuBois. The biography was less of a biography and more of an interpretation by DuBois about the now-legendary white abolitionist. Now while John Brown’s practice was problematic in many ways–he still had to be in control and he had fucked-up views that Blacks were still enslaved because they were too “servile” (a white supremacist sentiment)–what I took from Brown’s life was that he realized that moral persuasion alone would not solve racial problems. That is, whites cannot talk or just think through whiteness and structures of white supremacy. They must be committed to either picking up arms for other people (and only firing when the people tell them so), dying for other people, or just getting out of the way. In short, they must be willing to do what the people most affected and marginalized by a situation tell them to do.

I don’t really know much about John Brown, but…I mean, the guy killed some white people and himself died because he thought race-based slavery was wrong.  Noppers answers this with:

Additionally, white activism, especially white anti-racism, is predicated on an economy of gratitude. We are supposed to be grateful that a white person is willing to work with non-white people. We are supposed to be grateful that you actually want to work with us and that you give us your resources. I would like to know why you have those resources and others do not? And don’t assume that just because I have to ask you for resources that it does not hurt me, pain me even. Don’t assume that when you come into the space, that doesn’t bother me. Don’t assume that when you talk first, talk the most, and talk the most often, that this doesn’t hurt me. Don’t assume that when I see you get the attention and accolades and the book deals and the speaking engagements that this does not hurt me (because you profit off of pain). And don’t assume that when I see how grateful non-white people are to you for being there, for being a “good white” person that this doesn’t hurt me. And don’t assume that when I get chastised by non-white people because I think your presence is unnecessary that it does not hurt me. Because all of these things remind me of how powerless non-white people are (albeit differently) in relation to white people. All of these gestures that you do reminds me of how grateful I am supposed to be towards you because you actually (or supposedly) care about what is happening to me. I am a bit resentful of economies of gratitude.

I guess you can make up your own minds about this.  When I reread this article, my position began to soften a bit.  I think there are probably some valid points—I’ve been told my many professors and text books that the African-American community is still marginalized as hell.  And white people do have a lot of advantages that other races don’t.  But still, the rhetoric of this piece is a bit unsettling.  Look at this paragraph, for instance:

Further, it is also rooted in the idea that white people are not racist or do not benefit from racism. Rather, white people at meetings will often discuss how they feel “silenced” by non-whites, or that they are being “put in their place.” Let me make one thing clear: it is impossible for a non-white person to put a white person in her place. This is not to say that non-white people cannot have a sexist or homophobic attitude towards a white person. But to say, or even hint at that as a “WHITE” person someone is being put in their place–whoever says this just needs to shut the fuck up because that is some bull. It is impossible for whiteness to be put in one’s place, because that is a part of whiteness, the ability to take up space and feel a prerogative to do so.

It’s not the swearing or the all-caps “WHITE”, that bugs me.  I always get the feeling when I’m reading something like this (and yes, that is a generalization, I admit) that there is a only barely supressed “I rather dislike all white people” in there.  Then again, this could be just my own ignorance, but still—”Further, it is also rooted in the idea that white people are not racist or do not benefit from racism.”  While I’ll concede the second, I can’t agree with the first.  Not all white people are racists.  As for myself, I’ve been told, again by profs and textbooks, that I (or at least people like me) am pretty much programmed by society to be a racist (among other things), but I at least try not to be a racist insofar as I, as a white male, am capable of doing.  But I am sure that there are cases of white people who have completely purged themselves of all racism.  Nancy Pelosi, for example.  Also, I think all of our white profs here at GVSU (er…at least in the English department) have managed to remove the effects of the great brainwashing machine of society from their uncorrupted brains.  So, again, I think Noppers goes just a bit to far.  Not much, just a bit.