Godheval

I haven’t been blogging on a regular basis lately because just using the internet opens the floodgates to all sorts of infuriating things going on in the world.  So I’ve been playing video games, writing fiction, and watching various TV shows – to provide myself a temporary (always only temporary) respite from the burden of being “aware”.  Aware of what?  Well, the list below is of 20 things going on in the world that are pissing me off, making me sad, frustrated, or feeling hopeless.  A mere 20 reasons for escapism out of hundreds.  In no ranking order:

1. BP CEO saying that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is relatively tiny compared to the size of the ocean. By that logic, someone could argue that the over a million people killed in a war built on a false pretext is tiny compared to the 6 billion people in the world.  Oh, wait…
2. SB 1070 – more popularly known as the “Arizona Immigration bill”
3. Arizona banning ethnic studies
4. Texas conservatives working to revise history along Biblical/American exceptionalist/racist lines in textbooks
5. Corporations authorized to buy U.S. elections after the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission case
6. The surge of people “tweeting” and “microblogging” about nonsense while remaining dormant on things that matter
7. People wasting their time talking about Jay-Z is a devil-worshiping Freemason.  Even if he is, who cares? There are bigger things to worry about.
8. Republicans and Democrats both screwing the public through bankrupt policy, while continuing to trick people into thinking there’s any substantive difference between them.
9. The fact that legally, BP may only be obligated to pay no more than $75 million in damages, which doesn’t even begin to cover it, and that they’re fighting even that.  You want to know what’s “tiny”?  $75 million compared to the hundreds of billions^PDF that BP makes every year
10. Open racism coming back in style
11. The mainstream media continuing to report on sensationalist bullshit, rather than covering the stuff that really matters – the corporate version of #6
12. Omar al-Bashir “winning” the election in Sudan, in spite of being convicted of war crimes and genocide by the U.N.
13. People chasing conspiracy theories, while doing nothing about evil acts being committed every day out in the open
14. How perfectly the “divide and conquer” social strategy is continuing to work
15. All this talk of Iran having nuclear weapons, while no one says anything to Israel
16. The betrayed promise of “change” from President Obama
17. How the people around me don’t know and don’t seem to care about what’s going on in the world
18. Facebook’s new privacy policy violations
19. Obama authorizing the targeted killing of a U.S. Citizen, setting a dangerous precedent
20. How people are pawns of their respective political parties, rather than thinking critically as individuals

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Torchlight, as an alternative to shooting myself in the head…

The weight of knowledge, of “consciousness”, is heavy. I can neither look at nor listen to anything without a critical eye anymore, without it being immediately contextualized within my understanding of race, power, politics, and other such heavy subjects.

I was watching the 12th grade students at my internship put on their senior projects – videos that provided a snapshot into their lives – montages of baby pictures, friend testimonials, other things that they felt would put who they were into context for their viewers. And as I watched, there was the little spark of cynicism, the voice that said “must be nice”.  Must be nice, to be privileged to a life unburdened by any internal or external discussion about matters such as race or power, any personal struggle notwithstanding.  The last part of that statement acknowledges that people of all colors and creeds experience struggle, but white privilege liberates white people from the additional burden of race, and all the meaning that goes along with it.

But as I watched these videos I did not begrudge these children their experiences, their ability to live without certain burdens.  And I realized that I do not begrudge white people their privilege, either.  Like when I watch any of the countless “neutral” or “normative” movies featuring the conflicts of white protagonists, where race is simply not an issue, I am able to be right there with them through the highs and the lows, the struggles and the victories.  But those movies, like the insular world in which white people are able to live, are fiction.  At least they do not reflect my reality, or the reality for other people of color in the United States.

I would also say that they do not reflect white people’s own reality, that they choose to ignore.  And so it is not privilege itself that I begrudge white people, but the failure to acknowledge privilege as such.  It is true that sometimes I experience a bitterness towards white people’s ability to sit within their bubbles and be oblivious to a larger reality.  But nothing is more infuriating then when they extend themselves outside of the bubble – but still from within the bubble – to offer their commentary or engage in any sort of activism, including liberal advocacy for people of color on one end of the spectrum and overt demonstrations of racism on the other.

In other words, if they – white people – are going to live within the bubble, then they should tuck in their arms and legs and detach themselves entirely from the greater reality, and not pretend to understand a single thing about the world outside.  They should not argue with people of color over their perceptions, they should not deny any grievances.  If they are going to stick their fingers in their ears, then they should also stick socks in their mouths. They should respectfully decline any investment in the conversation and retreat to the comfortable confines of the bubble.

The alternative, of course, is to come full-bodied outside the bubble and to embrace, however difficult, the full reality of race and power as it applies to them, and to their relationships with people of color.

Valentine’s Day is a day that, like all good cynics, I take issue with for all the usual reasons:

1. Why should we only pay special attention to our significant others on a certain day?
2. The holiday is just part of a consumerist scheme to support the “industrial complex”

Blah blah blah.  Whatever.  It’s all true, of course, but I wasn’t going to post anything about it until I came across this promotional offer from XBox Live.  It offers some free Microsoft Points if only you’ll watch one of the offered movies with your loved one on Valentine’s Day.  Sounds like a good deal, except for the wording of the advertisement.

It annoyed me right away on a subliminal level, although it took me a bit of time to rationalize why exactly I took issue with it.  At first it was the dichotomy between those who have “someones” and those who do not.  I must either a sentimental sap who likes frilly pink hearts simply for having a girlfriend, or I’m some chest-pounding “manly-man” type who “don’t need no stinkin’ girlfriend! Guys rule!”  Is that it?

I couldn’t possibly be a guy who is between relationships, or a guy who for the sake of career, livelihood, or personal choice, just doesn’t have a significant other?  I couldn’t be a girl who is single for any of the same reasons?  Or a girl who doesn’t like frilly pink hearts?  I couldn’t be a gay man or woman in a relationship where such cave-painted gender roles aren’t so clearly established?  I couldn’t be a person of any gender and sexual orientation who appreciates a romance movie, even watched in solitude?  Maybe I’m some basement-dweller with the social skills of an empty pizza box and movies are my escape from harsh reality, in which case, thanks for reminding me of that.

A Response to Fade to White by Ishmael Reed

In a New York Times Op-Ed, Ishmael Reed discusses the movie Precious, and how it was offensive to the African-American audiences to whom he spoke, while being more widely accepted by white audiences.

He writes:

Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father. The author Jill Nelson wrote: “I don’t eat at the table of self-hatred, inferiority or victimization. I haven’t bought into notions of rampant black pathology or embraced the overwrought, dishonest and black-people-hating pseudo-analysis too often passing as post-racial cold hard truths.” One black radio broadcaster said that he felt under psychological assault for two hours. So did I.¹

It seems to be Reed’s contention that the heart-wrenching portrayal of an African-American woman living in a terrible situation is palatable to white Americans because they already think very little of how African-Americans live.  On the other hand, African-Americans whose lives do not in any way resemble that of Precious should be offended for how that story misrepresents them.

And here is where Mr. Reed and – everyone else who feels this way – makes a critical mistake.  Like so many others, he treats the example of one individual who happens to be African-American necessarily as a representation of all African-Americans.  This kind of presumption is one that bubbles up from the cracks of institutionalized racism.  It is an irony and a travesty where African-Americans themselves – like Mr. Reed – are instilled with racist presumptions by way of this institution.

Whiteness is a virus – both physical and memetic.  Physical through the human medium, manifest in conquest, rape, plunder, mass murder, subjugation, and enslavement.

Memetic in that it has convinced people of diverse backgrounds and interests to shed their individuality, their cultures, their morals, for the promise of something better – a chance to be a member of the ruling class.

It spread to the Irish in America and manifested in the antagonistic relationship between the police and just about every non-white ethnic minority.  It spread to the Italians and made them forget how they were wop ginnies yesterday in exchange for a chance to be just white tomorrow – and to fight vigorously against other groups for the scraps from the ruling Anglos’ table.

The whiteness virus, contrary to popular belief, is not genetic, but it might as well be in how it infects children by way of their parents not much later than they have their first concept of a “self” and “other”.

The whiteness virus is made up of ideas. And all bad ones.

The primary symptoms of the virus are privilege, denial, fear, and willful ignorance.  Unlike other illnesses, for which we scramble to find cures, there is virtually zero incentive for those with the white virus to seek treatment.