dusting off one dream at a time

I don’t really know what to say to you. Usually the reason why people “”””value”””” mixedness over monoracial, especially within the black community is because of antiblackness and fetishization. They pick and choose which parts of us mixed black people they like. Also not every black/white girl has light skin or light eyes or big loose curls. We don’t all look the same and some monoracial black folks have light skin. Don’t single the mixed ones out. The other problem is they see us as something exotic and different but not in a respectful way. It’s dehumanizing for us and it’s not something we typically enjoy. They make us feel outcasted from the black community and it’s really not fair. All I can say is that people make us out to be “special” for all the wrong reasons and it makes us feel gross and used and objectified.

I know because of colorism throughout society and the media, you have been made to feel like you’re not good enough and that isn’t true. Your existence is just as valid as anyone else. I wish I could change how you feel about yourself but I can’t. All I can do is explain what’s going on. I really suggest if you use tumblr, to follow some blogs that celebrate darker skin black people. 

(Off the top of my head i can only think of Naomi Campbell. She has dark skin but she is mixed race, and I have seen people bring that up. Even though she is largely identified as black, I have it brought up as points to proof her ~exoticness~, as a backdrop to her beauty and success.)

It’s not fair to reduce this matter to colorism because even though colorism plays a big part, it isn’t the only part. Because of the nature of antiblackness, being able to say “I am not JUST black” gives us an edge over monoracial black people that we have to talk about and accept.  Just like you cannot derail a conversation about colorism to protest that it’s all racism you cannot derail this one to protest it’s colorism and we all face racism. We do all face racism, but the nature and history of antiblackness, its creation and origin, makes it so that it is seen as “more than” to be mixed. 

It’s also not fair to say basically, “I know you feel bad about mixed people but it’s not OUR fault we’re fetishized and we don’t like it”.  LOTS of mixed people like and encourage this thinking - because it gives them advantages in a world where we are at a serious disadvantage!  Being able to have these connections to non-blackness that get people to put us in a different category - I would be willing to be that most mixed people at the very least allow this to happen when it is happening in a positive way, and I would also be willing to bet that the people the most likely to protest that they are black are the people who read the least as black - not just because of identity erasure, which we talk about a lot on WAAMU, but also because frankly, we can AFFORD to say we’re black and still not get the full force of people’s antiblackness.  I know for a damn fact that even people who have gotten the “I’m black, thanks” from me in the iciest tone of voice would still treat me more sensitively than they would treat some dark-skinned, monoracial girls i know if those girls were the nicest in the world to them.  They don’t have to fight to be seen as an historically oppressed group, they have to fight to not be TREATED like the one they are already categorized into.  Because yes these problems were started by white supremacy, but that’s the beauty of a history of violence and an instition: WE perpetuate it, just be benefitting, just by staying ignorant and silent.

And finally, there are tons of mixed people who bask in their exoticness and their more-than-blackness and what little fetishization they can get because to be fetishized is still better than to be demonized, and even though we would hope that they aren’t polluting this blog we know they’re out there and to deny them is, insidiously, a part of denying larger privilege.  (I do think it’s worthwhile to say that some mixed people’s motivations in seeing representation is because we feel ugly for being mixed and having “weird” faces and weird backgrounds and histories - not because you should prioritize us but because it might help to know that a lot of other people feel ugly duckling too.  But a lot of mixed people - I am so guilty of this myself and I’m only recently starting to really examine it - take up a load of space and refuse to see that they’re given more space than they realize to work out their problems.  That isn’t your problem though, and you’re allowed to just evade that shit when it comes up without feeling bad.)

Connection to anything not black is a privilege in an antiblack society.  Privilege, as a concept, is grossly overused to the point of being hard to define now so i know one of the reasons people reject the notion of “mixed privilege” is because it isn’t an absolute, it’s heavily contextual.  But privilege is by nature and definition contextual so that shouldn’t change anything a whole lot.  And just because you don’t personally engage in that privilege out of ethical reasons doesn’t mean you don’t have it, that isn’t how privilege works. 

So here is what I want to say to the OP: I know that it feels like blackness isn’t special and it’s not good enough, that we’re made to feel like we don’t have a culture or history worth being a part of, if we’re allowed to have it at all.  But mixed people really are just more people.  They aren’t more special than you.  They aren’t even more beautiful than you.  The only thing they have that you don’t is greater access to white supremacist approval.  I know that there’s a wide cavern between saying “I don’t want white supremacist approval” and genuinely, in your soul, not wanting it.  I don’t even know how to bridge that gap because I know I haven’t done it. 

If you can’t say good things about yourself, say them about somebody else.  I know there’s still a leap you have to make to saying them about yourself, and that it’s not easy to get there, but it still really helps.  Praise and uplift fellow black women for their blackness.  When you praise and uplift mixed women, praise their blackness, too. If they reject the praise because they feel reduced, even if that’s their prerogative (and it might be, but it’s still suspicious), don’t feel bad if you need to put some distance between yourself and them: they have baggage to unpack, it doesn’t need to be your baggage, it’s not your job.

If you have good relationships with your family, think about the positive things about your family that make you happy to be a part of them. If you don’t, think about the positive things in your life.  Even things that have nothing to do with race because you are the one experiencing them; center yourself, your wonder, your curiosity, your happiness, your self-education in the things that you experience.  You are experiencing those things not as a general person but as yourself.  I guess this is a more general journey to loving oneself but loving oneself for one’s race and loving oneself in general are not mutually exclusive categories.

or, I Read The Slavoj Zizek Piece So You Don’t Have To

the capitalists support letting trans people pee but exploit their workers, now watch me concern-troll

TRANSGENDERISM

the transgenders want POSTGENDERISM, the COMPLETE ABOLITION OF GENDER

the postgenderists seek to use new medical/scientific technology to abolish sexual reproduction

it’s gonna be ANARCHY

the Youths are rejecting the concept of belonging to strict categories, which is kind of like how fascists call on people to renounce their individual cultural identities

transgenders are choosing to be marginalized so they can assert their identities in the same way that reverse racism is real

*whines about multiculturalism and immigrants*

THE TRANSES ARE CHOOSING TO BE OPPRESSED

if you were REALLY rejecting the gender binary then it wouldn’t MATTER which toilet you use

a Cutting-Edge New Argument No One Has Ever Made: if we give the transgenders rights, what’s to stop people from demanding POLYAMOROUS MARRIAGE? or BESTIALITY??!!!1 has anyone ever thought of THAT before?

yuppppp letting trans people pee is the slippery slope to marrying your dog

lol next they’re gonna reject the bourgoisie-proletariat binary

[extended metaphor comparing each letter of the LGBTQA acronym to a position in capitalist class relations]

*whines about putting a + on the LGBT acronym*

metaphor about single-stream recycling

he’s literally just puking on the keyboard at this point and we’re only halfway through

Do High Fives Help Sports Teams Win?

Hugs. High fives. Fist bumps. Touch is an essential part of how people communicate with one another.

UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner examined NBA games to see  if there is a relationship between a team’s success and how often they touch.

“I’m intersex, I’m queer & I do a lot of work within LGBT communities. Increasingly, I see LGBT being extended to “LGBTI,” and every time I see that acronym, I’m filled with dread. That’s just the tip of the iceberg—increasingly, individuals, groups and organizations within the community are extending the acronym ad infinitum, to “LGBTQQIPA,” or even further.  Today, I want to write a little bit about why that feels so problematic, and ways of approaching identity inclusion in LGBT communities and movements.

First things first: in my experience, when someone bemoans the ever-lengthening “alphabet soup,” it’s usually someone who’s relatively privileged within the community, talking about how it’s “too difficult to keep up with all these letters,” and getting irritated with having to track who our communities and movements are claiming to represent.  This is often combined with a hint of fear that, as our communities and movements expand, their voice and needs will be diluted or deprioritized.  This isn’t that.  This is a way of looking critically at our history, our communities, and our missed opportunities and applying those lessons to our collective future.

the problems with inclusion

Inclusion is a lovely impulse.  Without taking a genuinely inclusive approach, we contribute to the erasure of communities we don’t represent.  And, frankly, when we don’t prioritize multifaceted inclusion, we don’t get to the root of the distorted ways that our society makes sense of sex, gender and sexuality.  Yes, let’s create a movement for any & all of us who exist outside of the sex/gender/sexuality norm!  Come one, come all for the gender justice revolution!  I’m in!

But here’s the thing: when we add a new letter to our collective acronym, we also make ourselves responsible for speaking for that identity/community.  But when we do so, we don’t make ourselves accountable to actually doing that work, much less doing it in a way that’s accountable to those communities.  Here are a few of the challenges of the inclusion approach:

We assume that, because our title is inclusive, our work is inclusive.  When we discuss the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), we almost always use “LGBT” as a way of describing the people it will impact.  Except it won’t actually remedy much for trans people in the military.  Many of us who aren’t trans-identified don’t understand that—and the routine use of the full LGBT acronym keeps us from thinking regularly about who our work impacts.  Better, I would argue, to be clear that policies like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell primarily impact cisgender gay and bi people.

We don’t restructure our priorities, as witnessed by the continued prioritization of primarily cisgender gay issues like repealing DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) over winning federal protections against employment discrimination, which deeply impact a much larger portion of the community, especially those of us who experience transphobia, classism, racism, and life in isolated/rural communities.

We don’t change our leadership structures.  Most boards require major fundraising.  That will likely be a problem for working class queer people, trans people (the majority of whom are un- or underemployed), and LGBT people of color (who are more likely to raise children, and therefore less likely to have disposable income).

We don’t make our work accountable to newly-included communities.  We don’t elevate intersex people into leadership positions.  We don’t set up advisory boards of same gender loving people.  And we don’t intentionally open ourselves up to critiques of our work and programming from the communities we represent.

I’m not saying that we should revert to being a primarily white, class-privileged, cisgender gay & lesbian movement—quite the opposite.  I’m saying that when we expand the movement, we should do so in a thoughtful, deep, reciprocal and accountable way.  And while some of us have figured out how to do that, most of us haven’t.

(Note: this is very much focused on a “we” that’s white cisgender gay people.  That’s not meant to be exclusive, it’s meant to be real about where power is centered in our movements and communities, and who’s elevated to positions to hold it.)

why it keeps happening

With all that, why do we keep seeing these pushes for inclusion?  Because, for those of us who are allies to those newly-included communities, we see the benefits.  Inclusion pacifies guilt.  It allows us to feel as if we’re on the cutting edge of progressive identity politics.  And frankly, it makes us sound like the most progressive person in the room, without requiring us to do anything substantive to represent those communities.  In other words, we can talk the talk without having to walk the walk. 

None of this is bad in and of itself—but it does present problems if we act strictly out of self-interest, and don’t actually listen to the communities we’re claiming to represent.  The point of being an ally isn’t to better yourself or your image—it’s to work to support communities that face a different type of oppression than you.  And that support must exist on those communities’ terms. 

action steps

When inclusion can be so problematic, what can you do?  Here are some options:

Speak for yourself.  Speak from your own experience—don’t try to speak for the needs of other communities if you haven’t been asked or invited to do so.

By: Gar Alperovitz

Everyone knows the United States faces enormous challenges: unemployment, poverty, global warming, environmental decay—to say nothing of whole cities that have essentially been thrown away. We know the economic system is dominated by powerful corporate institutions. And we know the political system is dominated by those same institutions. Elections occur and major fiscal debates ensue, but most of the problems are only marginally affected (and often in ways that increase the burdens).   The issue is not simply that our situation is worrisome. It is that the nation’s most pressing problems are built into the structure of the system. They are not unique to the current economic slump or the result of partisan bickering, something passing in the night that will go away when we elect forward-looking leaders and pressure them to move in a different direction.