Godheval

I posted this video without any lead-in, because I want the viewer to process it on their own, before I weigh in with my thoughts. However, I imagine that the mere title of this post prefaces the video and will make you see it in a different way. Just as the mere fact that it is Bristol Palin in the video – because of who her mother is – prefaced how I watched the video. Or how automatically any analysis of teen pregnancy in my brain necessarily intersects with my understanding of privilege.

Perspective is a funny thing.

Upon first watching the video, I felt all sorts of ill feelings. On the one hand, we have a woman talking about the importance of making good choices with regards to sex – to think before you act, more or less. There is no inherent fault in that argument, because thinking is always good.

On the other hand, the video is using class war to advocate celibacy. And class war automatically intersects with the discussion about race and privilege.  For example, when Bristol Palin’s pregnancy first became national news, there were many commentators who mentioned how there was a general demand for sensitivity towards Bristol’s pregnancy, but that the same demands would not have been made if she had been one of Obama’s daughters or any other teen mother of color.

When the mother is white, teen pregnancy becomes merely a regrettable mistake, one that must be handled with great sensitivity and care. But when the mother is a young woman of color, it becomes some sort of moral failure on her part, not only a bad decision but a symptom of the epidemic of poor decision-making by people of color in general.

Mind you, I am not saying that the video above is making any statement at all about race – at least not explicitly. But it does scream privilege loudly, if only the privilege of being wealthy over being poor. In that way it is waging class war, wherein being wealthy affords one a buffer  against the difficulties of raising a child in poverty, and suggesting that therefore only poor women need to think carefully before they risk pregnancy.

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.

The following video discusses how game design and game playing can contribute to making a better world.  It sounds like a lofty idea, but it is well-argued, as I hope you will see.

Jane McGonigal is not simply comparing games to real life, but is talking about tapping into those abstract qualities that gamers bring to bear against game challenges – applying that determination, hard work, and idealism to real world endeavors.

It can, has been, and will continue to be argued that games are simply games, that they are designed to be won, and that the real world has no such safeguards against failure.  But the game McGonigal most talks about – World of Warcraft – ultimately has no point.  It has no happy ending. It is game that never ends, which works well for the developers, who continue to make millions upon millions of dollars every year.

You can overcome the most epic of epic challenges, but soon thereafter the game resets to the way it was before that challenge was met, to enable others to do the same.  There are people who continue to play Warcraft even though they have achieved the maximum level, have defeated the ultimate boss, and have done almost everything there is to do in the game.

But they will go through it all again, with the same determination and idealism, to help another player have that experience.  In the real world that could translate into people helping those less fortunate – i.e. at a “lower level” – after they have solved their own challenges.  It is not about pity or guilt, but about mutual understanding of a problem, and collaboration to solve it.  It is this kind of idealistic, high-minded, cooperative determination that McGonigal is suggesting we need to employ to take on world challenges.

Something positive for a change. This is a spoof done by 2-cent entertainment of a Lil Wayne song that is too despicable to mention. With some pretty good production values and some really impressive imitations of Drake, Nicki Minaj, and of course “Weezy” himself, this video turns everything that’s wrong with modern rap into something positive.

Best of all, 2-cent managed to get Scholastic to donate nearly 1,000 books to an elementary school in New Orleans. Incidentally, I too wish I could read every book in the world. But in the meantime, I’d settle for Lil Wayne and Drake taking a break from their idiocy long enough to read one…

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit and observe an 11th grade AP English class. They were doing satire presentations, which included everything from posters to videos to poems. One such poem – a very good one in spite of its content – poked fun at people on welfare, and featured an African-American mother with 7 kids who has her kids steal from stores because they have no money. When confronted by security, she responds by saying “You can have my welfare check.”  A local crackhead enters the picture, at which point one of the children exclaims “That’s my daddy!” The mother confronts the crackhead, asking for money, who responds and ends the poem by repeating the punchline “You can have my welfare check!”

Hilarious, right?

When asked who her audience was for the poem, the student said “Minorities, because they’re the main ones on welfare…”

Now for some demographics. The vast majority of students in this classroom were Euro-American, the exception being two African-American girls. One of these two girls was the one reading the poem. In case the gravity of that escapes you, there were three things very wrong with this scenario. First was that the girl has been given a totally skewed view of the demographics of welfare. She has bought into the idea that African-Americans receive the lion’s share of welfare benefits, to the point of believing Reagan’s myth of the “welfare queen“.

Second, whatever little bit of privilege she’s experienced out here in the desert (more on that later), she apparently has no concept of the historical inequalities that created the need for socioeconomic support for minorities. Third, she felt comfortable enough in a room full of white peers to perpetuate this vicious stereotype. As if when lines of class and race are drawn, she would stand with them, and they’d all laugh together.