Monday, May 5, 2008

To Be an Ally

The Angry Black Woman called a carnival of bloggers to address being an ally against a form of oppression – racism as well as other –isms.

http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/allies-talking/

That’s reason enough to engage the question of what it means to be an ally, but the topic happens to run along with the last couple of posts, so there’s reason number two. But it’s reason number three that gets me off my duff and onto the keyboard: I want to sit back and read the responses. I don’t want to write, because I don’t want to expose my limited understanding; I don’t want to be imperfect. Perfectionism, of course, being one of the better ways whiteness has of paralyzing white people and keeping them out of the fray. (“If I talk about racism, my racism will show.” Does that fear ever go away?)

Back to ABW: she asks some good questions and wonders some good wonders. For instance, do white people listen less defensively to other white people talking about racism, compared to the defensiveness that crops up with people of color?

In my experience, the answer is there may be less defensiveness, but not much less. And there is often less listening. It’s almost like some white folks don’t want to listen to other white folks talk about racism, as if we can’t know what we’re talking about. The white person wants to hear about it from a person of color. Maybe sometimes there is more defensiveness, because the white person who wants information resents that there are white people who “get it.” And I’m well aware that my own response to another white person can shape the interchange; if I come across as “more anti-racist than thou,” I am not doing anyone any good.

Then ABW wondered, “Is it easier to understand oppression, to move past guilt and on to useful dialogue, etc., if the person explaining these things to you in-depth is a person like yourself? White or male or straight or Christian or whatever?”

I think the shapers of the quality of dialogue on such issues has more to do with the incoming attitude of those in dialogue, rather than the similarity of the persons in dialogue. If the person seeking information has an honest and humble seeking, and the person sharing information has an honest and humble sharing, with everyone understanding that the goal is the process of learning and growth. Otto Maduro describes knowledge as a "fragmentary, partisan, conjectural, and provisional reconstruction of reality." Our processes of learning are going to be equally fragmentary, partisan, conjectural, and provisional. We may as well accept that reality and stop trying to be whole-unto-ourselves, objective, certain for all time.

On the topic of guilt, I actually find guilt – like anger – useful, once you decide to engage its utility. Anger is a compass; it tells me when something is wrong. When I am mindful, it can point the way to what needs to be attended to. Guilt functions the same way. The feeling of guilt arises when I have done something that transgresses my value system. It tells me I have done something wrong. And, as with anger, when I am mindful, it can point the way to what needs to be attended to. The problem is we (white folks) often become paralyzed when we feel guilt; it is like we have stumbled into an emotional minefield. We are afraid to move, because we are afraid of doing something else wrong; every direction looks threatening. It is not uncommon for white people to live in relative isolation, without a community to help engage and examine the guilt; when this is the case, we have no one to learn with, and we do not learn, and we do not grow.

Another issue with guilt is that we white people can be afraid that if we admit to doing something wrong, we will have to change, either because we feel we must, or because whoever has perceived our guiltiness will tell us we have to. And our fear of the need to change means that, once again, our ability to learn and grow is stymied.

ABW asks us to engage “why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.”

The primary “wrong” for me is racism, in part because I am white, I live in a racist society, and I don’t want to be racist; and in part because racism broke my heart when I was a child growing up in South Texas. Accordingly, I understand myself to be a white ally against racism, and for me this stance of being a white anti-racist is commingled with my identity as a Christian. Racism warps the identities of white people and people of color, and – as do other forms of oppression – defaces the image of God we are each created to embody. I believe God’s intent for humanity is that we are each to be able to live into fullness of life; racism mars our ability to live into that fullness of life. It privileges white people, some more than others, and oppresses people of color. In Christian terms, this dehumanization is sin: to be unearthed, eradicated, resisted, and ended.

There are personal considerations, too: the people of color I know and love, who can perhaps feel my love as more than just talk, because I try to walk the walk, and because I listen when they call me on my stuff … the deep appreciation I have for what I learn from people of color, in real life and in the academy, and the way it feels to struggle to do justice to/with what I learn, as opposed to appropriating outside of ethical relationship … the way my life is grounded by knowing the history of my family and of white people in South Texas, and the specifics of the legacy I am trying to undo. There’s more to this, but it's enough for now to say it boils down to love, honesty, respect, for what is real.

ABW clarifies that when she says allies, she’s “talking about any and every type. PoC can be (and should be) allies to other PoC, or to LGBTQ people if they are straight, or any number of other combinations.”

This relates to an interesting point for me: some people have asked me why my primary focus is not feminism or homophobia, given that I’m a lesbian. For some reason, the calling on my heart is much more about understanding how I am complicit in the oppression of others, and my whiteness (along with my US location and citizenship) is the primary means by which I am continually tempted into or labeled as being the oppressor. So, my focus is on moving from racist to anti-racist, and trying to understand this notion of being liberated from oppressing.

I don’t want to be an oppressor, in reality or by association; some of the ways I've learned to get closer to being liberated from being an oppressor is to (1) claim a just stance – in this case, being anti-racist, (2) and understand how oppression is constructed – through history, economics, culture – so that I can (3) do my part to deconstruct and end it.

I figure whatever I learn about stopping oppression is going to stand me in good stand if some man or straight person says to me, “I want to be an ally to the process of your liberation, because my liberation is tied up with yours.” (With thanks to my friend and fellow white ally, Sue Eagle, who ends her emails with this signature: “If you have come here to help us, you are wasting your time ... But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” -- Lilla Watson, Indigenous Australian activist)

There’s more to say; but that’s enough for an imperfect, fragmented, partisan, conjectural, and provisional construction of thought about being an ally. ;)

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Liberation ... from Oppressing?

In the last couple of weeks I've gotten feedback from my committee on the first couple of chapters. They've pointed out that the history chapter goes on too long (which I knew) and that there's not enough on the construction of whiteness and how power and privilege gets attached to it (I sort of knew that, too).

But probably the most critical piece of feedback came -- not too surprisingly -- from my "external reader," i.e., the person on my committee who is not on the faculty of my program at SMU. I am honored to have Ada María Isasi-Díaz on my committee; I say "honored" because she is a very well-known Latina scholar, and also because my work is founded in significant part on a seminal essay she wrote on solidarity, which is now almost 25 years old.

In scholarly terms, that can be considered ancient history; and I'd probably get more traction in the academy with something more recent and cutting edge, but the simple fact of the matter is this essay is still relevant, for two reasons: it is one of the few pieces of liberation theology where someone who knows herself to be part of an oppressor class can find guidance, and 25 years after it was written, it still has not been taken seriously enough to have been responded to effectively, in the academy or in Christian churches.

More than ten years ago, now, when I was just beginning to find language and opportunity for an anti-racist commitment, identity and practice, I read this essay and it went straight into my heart. In it, Isasi-Díaz describes solidarity as a practice of mutuality based on common commitments, rather than commonalities. She speaks of the solidarity that forms among people experiencing oppression, and also of the solidarity that can form between the people experiencing oppression and those who participate in the oppressing, but who want to move out of that complicity. (The interested reader can find this essay in Isasi-Díaz's Mujerista Theology.)

Over the last ten years, as I learned about dismantling racism from the Damascus Road program's trainings, and from work in local churches and organizations, I found more and more connections between these bodies of knowledge and Isasi-Díaz's work on solidarity. I also found key learnings in Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he speaks of appropriate ways for people considered to be part of "oppressor classes" to work alongside those experiencing oppression.

Isasi-Díaz spoke of liberation as a process that begins with the cry of the oppressed. Freire spoke of trusting the agency of those experiencing oppression, trusting them to know what their liberation required. Damascus Road spoke of following the lead of people of color (which seemed to me a key expression of the trust Freire was talking about), and of always asking the question "who benefits?" and realizing that when there was not a clear benefit for people of color, then the status quo of benefit for white people was being maintained.

These tenets have shaped the structure of my dissertation, which begins with an orientation to the history of South Texas, and how white privilege was constructed alongside the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of Latina/o peoples. Next (in the chapter I am working on now), I follow Isasi-Díaz's dictum to begin with the cry of the oppressed, and I "hear" Latina/o voices expressing their reality today, which unfortunately is still clearly shaped by that history of oppression. My intent is to construct a theology that provides the rationale for and means of working with people of color -- particularly Latino/a people groups, in my project, based on my own experience and setting -- with the clear intent that that work benefit people of color.

And then in the feedback from Isasi-Díaz came a criticism of this basic orientation. In the email dialogue that followed, she wrote "I think it is not theoretically valid from the perspective of liberation theology/philosophy to construct your argument mainly around what you can do for the oppressed. The moral agency of the oppressed in the process of our liberation is very key. For me, if you work at dismantling white racism because it is important for your own liberation ... wow! That would be an enormous contribution ... we are always struggling to find ways of convincing those in power to understand that oppressing others is not in their (the oppressors') best interest ..."

As I reflect on these comments, I know she is right, and yet, following this lead is tricky, and white women's history in this regard is particularly troubling. To give history very short shrift, white women's energy for the abolitionist movement shifted to the suffragist movement when white women shifted their focus from justice for enslaved/formerly enslaved African Americans to justice for (white) women. Similarly, white women took their learnings from and energy for civil rights activism into a women's liberation movement, limited by the a false assumption that women had universal needs focused on gender oppression, to the exclusion of oppressions based on race, class or sexual orientation. In both cases, when white women got in touch with their own experiences of oppression, they moved into ways of thinking and acting that left the concerns of people of color out.

As a white woman, I'm nervous about a commitment to white liberation, even liberation from oppressing. I have been helped by and shaped by and -- I humbly believe -- transformed by a commitment to seeking that my actions materially benefit people of color, even as I am aware of my many failures in that regard. I believe that deliberately shifting one's allegiance to work that benefits people of color is a key means for undoing unconscious white superiority, and dismantling racist structures.

And yet, I know there is a truth, too, in what Isasi-Díaz is telling me. Truths don't always play nicely together; sometimes paradox is created because of the seeming conflict between truths.

True: White people can't liberate people of color; that is their work.

True: Racism is white people's problem, which has a negative impact on both people of color and white people. Because it is white people's problem, we have a responsibility for ending it. And yet, because we benefit from it, our thinking is often faulty, and we need the leadership and insight of people of color, and to be accountable to them for our work.

True: White people's work includes liberating ourselves from oppressing, and from believing in the inherent superiority of white people.

True: Seeking the benefit of people of color helps white people who want to work with people of color at dismantling institutional and systemic racism.

Somewhere among these truths lies a path. I am tempted to say "the path," but my instinct says I will simply find one among many. This is a good time to ask other white people what they know about these paths. And a good time to pray for insight and clarity.

Spirit, illumine this path.
 
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