[ This is a final paper that I wrote for one of my classes this past semester. It was an intercultural communication class that asked us to research a racial/ethnic group and identify communication and identity problems. I chose white people. 1) they have the most problems apparently and 2) because the root of all racial/ethnic group problems stems from white people. Also participating in this project would label me as an exploitative colonizer inserting myself into communities and labeling "what's best" for them. I'm not about that fucking shit.
Here is the edited version. Have at it. Eat it up, UW-System ]
Universities across the
Midwest have recently implemented initiatives to increase diversity on
campuses, but have not thought about the consequences of having people of
colour in environments that have been historically and predominantly white. Nor
have institutions considered the violence that has and will occur in having
more POC bodies on campuses.
In institutions that
uphold white supremacy, when
conversations of race and racism arise, white individuals are unable to engage
in conversations or shut down conversations entirely due to their lack of
ability to conceptualize the reality that racism still exists in society today.
A little closer to home, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has made it a
goal for 20% diversity (student of colour makeup) by the time 2020 rolls
around. But with the recent racist incidents that have occurred on campus (and
around many other campuses across the United States), this goal seems to be
rather unattainable. If this goal is to be attained, there is much that the
system has to do in order to mitigate and eradicate the violence that will
occur to its growing students and faculty of colour.
In holding the university
accountable, UWEC has seen the appearance of sheets with words “UWEC is racist”
and “100+ years of white supremacy” (highlighted in my blogpost here) have emerged within the last
year, with a peak in racist incidents after the election of Donald Trump. With
an overwhelming acknowledgement of institutional racism from students of colour
and the publicity with these sheets, many white students are still confused as
to why UWEC is racist, or simply choose to deny that racism exists overall.
White individuals are quick to condemn individuals who talk about racism and
say that protesting, or calling out the problem is not enough (as if students
aren’t already doing enough to combat racism on their campuses). White people
are subject to defensiveness and denial of racism when conversation occurs and
are unable to move past their feelings of being uncomfortable to engage in
critical conversations of white identity and positionality in society. This
inability to move past one’s defensiveness is a direct contribution to the
perpetuation of white supremacy and the upholding of racist institutions and
implicit racism within individuals.
This analysis will explore
the deconstruction of the white identity and therefore the institutional and
individual actions/inactions that have come from examples of the emergence of
racist incidents across university campuses. (This paper generalizes the institution as
white. I understand that not all individuals in administration and faculty are
white; but my paper is addressing the white voices and white individuals within
these administrations and faculty in analyzing their communication patterns.
Internalization of racism rings very true with many individuals of colour who
work within the system. ) From there, it will
highlight the problems with these actions/inactions and ways to deconstruct
racist ideologies and attitudes of individuals and institutions from guidelines
and criteria of dialogue. The reason why this analysis of white identity and
confrontation with racism is important is because it is an area that white individuals
believe is separate from the institutions. While white people can afford
individuality, people of colour have always been categorized as groups without
any type of individuality. My analysis calls for an understanding of racism
within institutions as they impact individual white identity and the denial and
defensiveness that occurs when white individuals are confronted with
conversations of racism. The importance of white people acknowledging racism
and their own positionality within institutions of white supremacy is
important—white individuals in their ignorance are either upholding white
supremacy or are bystanders in its wake.
It is important to note
that these communication problems that I highlight are multifaceted and they
are confusing; they are intertwined and the solutions that I propose for each
problem come hand in hand with one another. My solution for communication
problem 1 comes directly hand in hand with my solution for communication
problem 2. They do not and cannot occur
in isolation. The problems and solutions seem to rely on individual
responsibilities, but overall relies on the commitment of institutions to
create spaces, provide resources, and competent facilitators to have these
conversations. An understanding of institutions being made up by policies also
calls for individuals within
institutions to prioritize the safety and the needs of those of marginalized
identities without tailoring to the comfort of the majority privileged group.
The communication problem
that exists with white individuals within university institutions is the lack
of understanding of a white racial identity in the context of institutions and
the lack of knowledge of how to talk about racism. White people get defensive
and deny that racism and race privilege exists when conversations of race,
privilege, and racism arise. This is due to the lack of knowledge of their own identity
and their consciousness of whiteness and how it operates systematically and
societally. Without this knowledge of their identity, they are unable to
communicate effectively the ways in which they exist as privileged members in
society and how their whiteness benefits them. Whiteness is defined as having
institutional advantages, and is a standpoint where (white) people look at
themselves in comparison to others in how they look at society, referring to
the set of cultural practices that are linked to domination and power
(DiAngelo, 2011, pp. 55). The denial, defensiveness, and guilt of racism all
comes back to the white racial identity that white people hold about themselves
in relation to the world. The refusal to
and the lack of acknowledgement of their identity perpetuates and upholds
racism and white supremacy.
Denying racism is a
defense mechanism that white individuals have when confronted with racism talks.
The denial of racism is primarily defended with ideas of colorblindness, the
ideology that regardless of skin colour that everyone is treated the same and
equal. Colorblindness operates as an ally to white supremacy though, because
the systems of oppression are upheld by turning the other cheek. It cannot be
denied that institutions of oppression are at play when we look at the makeup
of powerful leaders in the nation and when we look at the proportion of black
and white individuals who are pulled over and/or killed by police officers each
year.
White individuals deny
that racism plays a part in their lives because they do not have to live the
other end of it, therefore believing that everyone is able to move beyond the
racism of the past by simply ‘getting over it.’ Colorblindness protects white
people’s beliefs, assumptions, and understandings of the world, disabling
conversation or any type of belief that would challenge the dominant ideologies
of colorblindness. Doing so minimizes the possibility for critical dialogue
(Simpson, 2008, pp. 143). It gets in the way of dialogue because dialogue can
only be meaningful if the individuals involved in the exchange are engaging in
types of communication that create something new in the interaction between
them. When individuals deny that racism exists by adopting a colorblind
approach, it creates a wall of communication. It ignores and delegitimizes the
real experiences that people of colour face as a consequence of group
differences while painting this image of equality. It tells people of colour
that their experiences are not real and that they are made up. It tells people
of colour that white people do not care about people of colour because they
choose to turn the other cheek in the wake of institutional violence.
The avoidance of an analysis
of power structures that white people have also stems from guilt. Guilt shifts
the conversation from the oppression of people of colour to focus on the white
individuals and how they are feeling when they resent having privilege. This
comes from the inability to accept or acknowledge the possession of privilege. Statements
such as “I’m a victim too” “I didn’t ask for it” “It’s not fair” “I’m a good
white” “I didn’t/don’t own slaves” therefore distances individuals from
whiteness as a social construction and how it operates institutionally
(Johnson, et al., 2008, pp. 119). The aspect of guilt also distances
individuals from history because it marks them as different because they are in
the present (i.e., “I didn’t own slaves”). Such analysis does not include the
historical repercussions of racism still exist today. In white individuals’
eyes, historical atrocities of racism are only the explicit acts of racism, and
not the current (both explicit and) implicit acts. This diminishes the
responsibility that white people have for upholding racism, distancing themselves
away from talks of privilege (Johnson, et al., 2008, pp. 119), and being
constant bystanders of oppression by choosing the side of neutrality. White
people—in that they have never been forced to look at racism, nor experience
it—are in this constant bubble of racial comfort. Racial comfort is something
that white people feel entitled to as a result of conditioning, resulting in
the blaming people of colour for bringing up racism (as if it is a form of
violence—which it is NOT) and disrupting the comfort that they are entitled to
and protected by. This comfort guarantees that white people do not have to
think about their position in a racist society. When people bring up racism, it
challenges white peoples’ identities as morally good people and their
defensiveness comes from attempts to protect that moral character (Robin
DiAngelo coined the term for this, called ‘white fragility’)—the good/bad
racist dichotomy is shattered because racists are seen in society as ‘mean
people.’ This does not take into consideration the ways in which implicit
racism still upholds racism. When white people think of racism as explicit and
individually based, they lack an understanding of institutional and socialized
implicit racism (DiAngelo, 2015).
To talk about racism but
leave out whiteness and the value that it has institutionally with racism
leaves out a lot about what it means to be white in society. Not understanding
whiteness, white privilege, and white identity means that individuals do not
know how their positionality and identity in society affects others because
understandings of whiteness in racism will always be in relation to others.
Whereas discussions that surround whiteness are primarily discussed and
understood as a social structure, it lacks an understanding of white as an
identity that shapes social
interaction (Jackson, 1999, pp. 48). Identity does not simply include
self-identification, but to look at one’s identity must be analyzed in the
context of power structures. The ways in which individuals in society create
their identity depends on the power that they have in society. To understand
identity, one must acknowledge that identities are constantly changing in
relation to how they are being analyzed in the context of society, and are
being negotiated through communication. When this communication does not occur,
identities are unable to be challenged, or change.
While people may identify
themselves as white, many are unable to communicate what it means as a cultural
identity (Jackson, 1999, pp. 48). The white cultural identity is hard to
understand as a racial identity because it is socially constructed whose value
is placed over other types of racial identities in society. When white
individuals are unable to communicate about racism, it may be because they are
undergoing an identity crisis which they have never questioned before. Without
an understanding of one’s racial identity and positionality in society when it
comes to racism, the problem that arises is that white people are unable to
engage in these conversations productively due to denial, defensiveness, or
their understanding of whiteness and white identity. What white people do not
understand in identifying with a “white cultural identity” is that such
identity operates in comparison to other identities and cannot be talked about
as separate from society. The reason why individuals must get to the bottom of
their identity and understand their white racial identity as operating within a
bigger picture is because it will enable to see them in position to how society
values the white racial identity over other types of racial identity.
The solution to the
identity and communication problems that white individuals have in
conceptualizing racism, their privilege, denial, and white identity is much more
complicated than my solution suggests, but is the first step to creating a
greater consciousness of how whiteness operates in society. My solution is to
have consistent dialogues about what whiteness means to white people and how
that meaning is reinforced in society and institutions, and therefore
perpetuated and internalized within themselves. Dialogue will allow white
individuals to dissect their ways of understanding, starting from the very root
of their prejudices, where they learn their prejudices, and begin to dismantle
it and challenge their own ideas and identities in an institutional context.
Having these new, difficult conversations will require white individuals to
listen to one another and listen to themselves and be aware of what type of space
they are taking up.
While this may seem like
an easy enough task, what is absolutely necessary in these dialogues is a
shared understanding of what dialogue is, and a commitment to continue with
dialogues beyond the space provided. The motivation that white people have to
having dialogues and teaching outside of these spaces is indicative of how
committed they are to racial justice and equity.
Dialogue, while a term
loosely used, should be valued and understood as one of the most powerful tools
to challenge one’s beliefs, and should be seen as a collective struggle to
create meaning and language that shapes and defines how to understand the world
(Simpson, 2008, pp. 141). With this, dialogue has certain criteria that must be
met in order to make it as impactful and powerful as possible. Individuals who
engage in dialogue must understand that dialogue is: historically situated,
engaging, empowering, transformative, about exploring different perspectives,
and politically responsive (Simpson, 2008, pp. 154) Dialogue is not: hypothetical, passive, demeaning,
upholding of the status quo, nor is it about being right or politically correct. With this understanding of dialogue,
it therefore undermines the colorblind perspective.
The reason as to why
colorblindness is not dialogue is because it completely denies the existence of
race as a social hierarchy, replacing it with neutrality, remains uncritical of
the status quo and does not challenge it, devalues the experiences of people of
colour while calling it irrelevant or overreacting and therefore avoids the
difficult experiences or the exploration of the concept of race and what it
means beyond individuals.
Dialogue is important
because it encourages challenging and disagreement, but also opens up space for
white individuals to talk about their experiences and dismantle their own
prejudices with people who are like them, or have gone through the same painful
experience in coming to terms with their identity. Dialogue directly allows
individuals involved to think about and challenge their ideas of what social
justice means. Social justice is understanding that people are individuals, but
products of socially constructed groups. It is understanding that social groups
are valued unequally and that those who are seen as more valuable have greater
access to resources that are reinforced in institutions and cultural norms.
Social justice understands that relations of injustice are perpetuated at
individual and institutional levels and that we are all conditioned to perpetuate
with these (DiAngelo, 2014, pp. 2). Dialogue’s last criteria is to be
politically responsive, and that is what social justice calls for as well—it
calls for the commitment and the ongoing and lifelong process. Such revelations
within dialogue will not only prompt white individuals to have more meaningful
relationships with people of colour, but also enable them to understand their
privilege, their place in society, and how to dismantle racism within
themselves and how to work towards it institutionally.
An important thing to
remember about dialogue is that dialogue only goes as far as the receiver takes
it, hence why the second solution to this communication problem is immediately
intertwined with my suggested first solution. Resistance to acknowledging
racism must be worked through and the root of one’s hostility, fear, guilt, and
denial must be deconstructed to understand and acknowledge the reality of
racism and privilege that whiteness plays as a direct part in its perpetuation
of dismantling. Dialogues will not be successful if individuals cannot see past
their white fragility and refuse to acknowledge privilege. This is a solution
that must be worked out internally and one that facilitators cannot force upon
their audiences. Acknowledging privilege is ultimately sacrificing the
privilege that enables white people not to think about their privilege. It is
understanding the social responsibility of either perpetuating or transforming
the system of racism.
The flaw with institutions
is that they are absolutely ineffective at hosting and facilitating dialogues
that surround racism and white privilege because they are unable to admit to
themselves that they perpetuate white supremacy. Institutions wrongfully
exploit their students and faculty of colour by tokenizing them and using them
to shock white people into believing that racism exists and use the trauma of
racism that individuals have experienced for the benefit of white people,
rather than the disruption of the comfort of white fragility.
The most important thing
that white people must remember is that by having these conversations about
race, they will therefore come to terms with their own identity and how it
operates in society. These dialogues are not meant to be comfortable; they are
not meant to affirm feelings of white fragility. White individuals must make a
conscious effort to rebuild their identity to do less harm and work towards
social justice. (And be less of pieces of shit). If more people do this, they
will therefore be accountable to themselves and pave the way to create
institutional change because ultimately, institutions are run by people.
Institutions are sometimes
seen as run by robots on auto-pilot though; they seem more automatic than human
sometimes. Universities pride themselves in their initiatives towards diversity
and inclusivity, but rarely do they ever come through with what it means to be
a diverse campus, other than the tokenization of POC bodies. Not only this but when racist incidents
happen on campus, Predominantly White Institutions are incompetent in their
responses to racist incidents. PWIs do more harm than good when addressing
incidents because they do it vaguely, rarely calling it as it is, but rather
incidents of “bullying” “intolerance” or “bias.” The assumption that an email
of apology and calling for acknowledging of individual “bias” is enough to fix
the racism on campuses is a failure on the individuals who endorse it while
simultaneously plan for no further institutional action or policy. Labeling racism
as ‘bullying’ and ‘bias’ therefore distances institutions from the real issue
and frames it as a highly unusual experience, rather than something that
happens in everyday life. This shows the social delicacy (institutional white
fragility) of institutions to call it as it is. (Augoustinos & Every, 2010,
pp. 254) Not only does it mitigate the situation, but it also does a disservice
to the people who are targets of racism. It does students of colour an
injustice by diminishing the impact of racism, but also does white students
injustice by failing to address the real reality of current racism.
What institutions
inherently do by not calling it as it is, is uphold the status quo and tailor
to the comfort of their white students and institutions at the cost of students
of colour. It therefore enables all of the problems addressed in the first
communication problem—defensiveness, reinforcing colourblindness and
diminishing racism, denial, and a lack of positionality of what it means to be
white in a racist society. These problems are intertwined, as are their
solutions and they cannot be separated from one another because institutional
incompetency is therefore responsible for individual incompetency.
Examples from the past
semester are indicative of how university institutions are unable to and
incompetent in responding to racist incidents. There has been a significant
peak in racist incidents occurring across the country, leading up to and after
the presidential election. (I have chosen to stay away from discussing
explicitly what has been occurring across the nation. More information can be
found at: http://fusion.net/story/369091/donald-trump-racist-incidents-since-election/) My focus has been and will continue to be on
university campuses and the administration that responds to these incidents,
rather than the individuals who perpetrate these acts of violence and hate. The
reason for this is because individual behaviors go unpunished and therefore
enabled by institutions by their inactions. I hold institutions accountable for
the perpetuation of these actions.
The appearance of the
words “UWEC is racist” on the free speech boards at the beginning of the
semester and the quick removal of its evidence was indicative of the message
that administration sent: the conversation of racism on the UWEC campus is not
worthy enough to be had, but rather, to be brushed under the rug. The
university missed an opportunity to have a conversation about the statement
that was made in regards to institutional racism. Many other incidents have
occurred on the UWEC campus, to include the harassment of individuals who
attended the Trump rally and the institution’s lack of notification to the
campus of Donald Trump’s arrival to the campus. Such complacency and
inconsideration of the environment of hostility that Trump’s presence
creates/created for this campus was an institutional failure on UWEC’s part. It took the initiative of students to come together to flood the
Chancellor’s email with a message, therefore
provoking a response and a campus-wide message from the Chancellor.
The response sent in in an email and posted on the Chancellor’s blog, titled
‘Reflections on this week’ spoke about Trump’s presence and how free speech (to
include hate speech) is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be
regulated.
But excusing speech that invokes psychological trauma and racism
therefore calls for the enabling of injury and trauma for marginalized groups
and the upholding of domination of the majority. Not only this but “to engage
in a debate about the first amendment and racist speech without a full
understanding of the nature and extent of the harm of racist speech risks making
the First amendment an instrument of domination rather than a vehicle of
liberation.” (Lawrence, 1990). This quote undermines the argument that the
Chancellor was trying to make, protecting free speech for the sake of
legality—and the upholding of the dominant. The focus of the Chancellor’s words
was on the individual rights of those who verbalized the hate speech, rather
than the responsibility of the universities to actually create a campus that
does not empower hate speech (Lawrence, 1990). The lack of analysis of and
accountability for individual vs institutional racism is where the university
failed on its part.
Institutions fail when
they believe that that an email or a blog post is enough to undo or address and
fix the harm that has been done. The most recent incident of this type is the
hosting of white supremacist, neo-nazi, Milo Yiannopoulos at UW-Milwaukee,
wherein he deliberately called out a transgender individual, displaying their
picture and making dehumanizing and misgendering comments about them. The
Chancellor sent an email he deemed adequate for the situation and called upon
social media to stand together with the hashtag, #UWMstandstogether but did not
allude to any institutional change nor furthering of conversation. Not only
this, but the administration did not make an attempt to reach out to the
student who was a target of Yiannopoulos’ comments. The response that the
Chancellor received was from the student who had been targeted by Yiannopoulos,
calling out the university for allowing this speech while knowing in advance
what type of speech would occur because of Yiannopoulos’ reputation. The
student says “Your words: ‘I also will not stand silently by when a member of
our campus community is personally and wrongly attacked.’ That is probably the
biggest piece of goddamn fucking bullshit I’ve ever read. What exactly do you
plan to do? OH YEAH, NOTHING, BECAUSE YOU’RE A COWARDLY PIECE OF SHIT. Your
‘not standing silently’ apparently consists of a single email mass-sent to the
university. That’s it. You don’t get a fucking cookie for that.” (Daroszewski,
et al., 2016). #Preach.
A prominent trend across
the nation continues to be the initiative of students to step up and demand
institutional accountability for its marginalized students. The student
initiatives behind institutional success/diversity initiatives go unnoticed,
nor are they rewarded. Rarely are they acknowledged by institutions as being
the backbone of activism or movements on campuses. Rather, during their time at
the university, their labor becomes exploited; they are asked to be panelists
for discussions that end up talking in circles, or tokenizing certain
experiences to prove to white people that racism exists. The lack of competency
that institutions have in these conversations or talks are unproductive and
rarely do they address institutional responsibility, but rather individual
‘tolerance.’ Putting the responsibility of students of colour telling their
traumatizing experiences to ‘teach’ or prove that racism exists is indicative
of a university’s incompetence with responding to issues of racism. Not only
this, but they employ incompetent individuals in order to facilitate and lead
discussions; facilitators who have no background knowledge of social justice or
critical race theory that would lend them the context to productively move
conversation along and challenge ideologies that are racist. The common trend
with these discussions is having a bulk of students and faculty of colour
present, but the extreme lack of white
presences. People of colour know that racism is real, and they do not need
proof that racism exists, nor do they need circular talks about how horrible
racism is. White people need these talks.
At the VERY minimal,
institutions must admit incompetency. They must admit their connections to
institutional racism and how it is upheld in their policies and the people that
they hire and who they serve. An institution must admit that they do not have
the competent individuals to have these “difficult conversations” that
chancellors across the nation preach so heavily. They must admit how they have
played a part in white supremacy in the deliberate hiring of individuals who
uphold the status quo for the sake of ease. Institutions must create spaces to
have these conversations to begin to undo the damage they’ve done. Not only
should spaces be created to have these dialogues, but the dialogues must be
facilitated by competent individuals in Critical Race Theory. The individuals
who do attend these dialogues should be
vast and should (optimistically) encompass anyone and everyone who plays a role
or exists within the institution, no matter how little or how big a role they
play. The presence of people of colour
in these spaces should not be indicative of its success. People of
colour should not be expected to relive their racial trauma for white people to
realize that racism exists, nor should institutions promote and tokenize them
for the sake of ‘looking good.’ I will say this again. PEOPLE OF COLOUR DO NOT
HAVE TO RIP OUT THEIR FUCKING HEART AND SOULS AND TRAUMA IN ORDER FOR WHITE
PEOPLE TO FIGURE OUT THAT RACISM EXISTS.
In having these dialogues,
the same criteria of dialogue highlighted from the first Communication Problem
Solution still apply (dialogue must be historically situated, engaging,
empowering, transformative, about exploring different perspectives, and
politically responsive). The only difference now is that institutions must
therefore create an environment where these are possible by providing individuals
who are competent enough to facilitate conversations that will meet the
criteria for dialogue. The role of a facilitator is to foster an environment
that develops social justice that requires deep self-reflection and a critical
consciousness from both the audience and the facilitator. Dialogues need to be
sites of knowledge and a consciousness of privilege and oppression.
Facilitators must make space for open dialogue for people to unpack their
prejudices—the response to and the construction of these conversations must be deliberate. With such understandings, it
must also be noted that in these spaces, the fear of offending people silences
individuals from talking at all and it must be the job of the facilitator to
create a space where individuals are comfortable enough to voice their
problematic prejudices and a space for them to deconstruct these prejudices
(this is NOT the same thing as protecting people’s fragility). The facilitator
and the dialogue participants must work to deconstruct and delegitimize the
authority that dominant ideologies have about race and racism; effective
facilitators will understand that NOT EVERYONE’S OPINIONS MATTER if they stand
in the way of social justice and must be addressed and deconstructed.
While many facilitation sessions
that I’ve taken part in call for neutrality and impartiality of facilitators,
it is important that facilitators understand that neutrality stands in the way
of social justice. Facilitators of social justice dialogue must remain the
figure in the room that guides conversation, but does not take up unnecessary
space in dialogue—the role of the facilitator is to have the critical context
to counter the hostility created in the room and the knowledge to push people
past their comfort zones. (DiAngelo, 2014, 7-8).
In the end, with the
commitment to the creation of constant spaces for these dialogues, the proper
individuals to facilitate, and the audience that needs these dialogues the most
as participants—these dialogues should guide people to engage with alternate
perspectives, think critically, deconstruct their own/others’ perspectives,
raise questions, understand humility, and recognize power relations (and be
less of pieces of shit). Individuals must understand ambiguity—that there is no
one answer on how to ‘fix’ things or make things better. If there was an answer
for the end of racism, it would have already been implemented. The frustration
that arises with ambiguity is valid though because there are multiple ways to
dismantle racism in ways that are intersectional with other movements. Leaving
things ambiguous allows institutions and individuals within the institution the
freedom to put social justice into their practices as long as they abide by the
guidelines and mission of social justice. There are no absolute answers, no
absolute solutions, and each institution must learn how to navigate their own
social justice. But worst thing that an institution can do is not talk about
racism—such actions/inactions therefore contribute to racial dominance and
white institutional ignorance on racism.
Institutions must ALSO
acknowledge student activism as the absolute epitome of social change. Student activism is the absolute epitome of
social change. As universities preach that they are the sites of knowledge
and worldly understandings, they must also acknowledge the students and the
labor that is exploited by the university and that goes unnoticed. If anything,
student voices and student activism become the very core of radical change. An
editorial from the Leader Telegram from a student at UWEC noted that protests
and the statement “UWEC is racist” weren’t enough to open conversations of race
and that students should do more (McAlister, 2016). The lack of understanding
and acknowledgement of what student (of colour) activism does for universities
and that they go unnoticed directly contributes to this type of behavior and
lack of understanding on white individuals’ parts. The article is flawed in
many ways, but very affirming to white people—it speaks of “evolutionary”
racism and criticizes the ways in which people “should” protest and how they “should”
be protesting. If you are telling people how to protest, maybe you should be
doing something about it. The article is fucking flawed because it tells
students of colour that “UWEC is racist” is not enough, because there needs to
be more done—this fucking assumption that students of colour on this fucking
campus aren’t being fucking exploited for their fucking efforts to make this
place less shitty—or just to fucking survive here. When a fucking white male is
telling me how to fucking protest, they are telling me to make it less visible
so they don’t have to be inconvenienced by it, or to have their privilege checked
by it. If everyone protested like white people did, we wouldn’t get shit done.
Maybe that’s why equity is so fucking radical and such a threat to white men. The reason why this person’s analysis of
protesting is flawed and racist as fuck, is because it lacks the context and
the background and the pain that exists behind these protests.
On the contrary, President
Michael Young of Texas A&M admitted after a racist incident that they had
no control over what individuals do; but that they do control their reaction to
it and how such acts are condemned in institutions. Young then made a
commitment to meet with student leaders at his own institution and has worked
to publicize the efforts of students and administration across the university
(Gardner, 2016). Such actions that Young took were indicative of his commitment
to their initiatives of diversity and inclusion and their students. Take note.
The call to action that
students have been demanding across the UW system and across the nation
(Mizzou, Penn State, UW-La Crosse’s die-in, UW-Madison with #TheRealUW…and many
more) have grown over the past two years and have only gained more traction as
the election has concluded and more racist incidents continue to occur. The demands that students have are varying in
nature, but they all demand for transparency of administration and
accountability to university actions and inactions. At the University of Pennsylvania,
days after the election, Black first-year students were added to a group named
“N----- Lynching.” While the origins of the group is still under investigation,
a student at the university made this call to action on their blogpost titled
‘Letter to Administrators, Faculty, and Staff.’ This letter shows the
real reality that students of marginalized identities that they face as they
exist on campuses with a knack for silence on issues of any type of isms. The
author says that there is no more time for coddling of white feelings because
of the state of the nation that we are in right now and that there is no more
time for gentle education of privileged folks. The author calls for the forcing
of administration, faculty, and staff to confront their own privileges,
prejudices, and how they contribute to oppression by silence and compliance, by
not holding accountable racist colleagues, and the silencing of student voices
and emotions. (Flowers, 2016) The author concludes that if even that is too much for people to handle, then the very least
they can do is be present when
students and colleagues challenge institutional oppression. Making time, creating space, and shutting up and listening.
Overall, the bulk of where
racism comes from today is from institutions who assume they are doing enough
to address racism as isolated incidents in society. They lack the critical
analysis of how institutions perpetuate racism by protecting white fragility
and not providing spaces for dialogue. But it is necessary for institutions
must create spaces to facilitate and continue dialogue. This is important
because dialogue is the space for change and where the most productive means of
cultivation of knowledge will be had. It is the culmination of both problems I have highlighted and the
start to instilling solutions on the
micro and macro levels. We must learn to start at the micro level of analysis,
move to the macro. Doing so allows people to move from the individual to the
societal, then to the institutional lens (DiAngelo, 2011, pp 68). The success
of communication in the space of dialogue is based on whether or not the
individual problems of denial and identity are understood, and the
institutional problems are acknowledged and initiatives are put into place to
commit and deliberately make change.
What my paper and my
solutions fail to address is the urgency of the situation. My analysis and the
solutions that I have suggested focus on the pacing of white feelings and white
comfort, which is what Flowers directly rejects. The urgency of the situation
may cause white individuals to shut down and deny further engagement on talks
of racism because of the overwhelming nature of the emotions that racism
encompasses. In the current nation that we exist in right now, the feelings of
the majority don’t fucking matter to me. Get over it, like the way you tell us
to forget about slavery. While my paper preaches the facilitation of dialogues
and acknowledging of privilege for WHITE PEOPLE, I fail to mention people of
colour because for me, there are times I cannot afford to tailor my activism to
pace or educate white people. I’m tired of that shit.
And while I will always
commend student activism, it is the responsibility of institutions to make and
instill actual institutional change in their policies and/or their practices.
Post-Secondary education has always been known as educating the future leaders,
and universities must hold themselves to that standard that they say they
uphold. The survival of marginalized individuals in society relies on the
institution to take accountability for their actions and inactions, and hold
true to their commitments toward diversity.
Institutions need to
fucking stop hiding behind their emails, they need to stop hiding behind their preaching
of “tolerance” and “diversity.” They need to stop hiding behind their student
activists when they do something that they deem “wrong” and too radical and they need to stop fucking
taking credit for when student activists make moves towards equity. They need
to stop fucking protecting their white students, their white faculty, their
white administration and their own internalized white supremacy. Stop relying
on students to do your work for you. Stop exploiting students. If you’re going
to use them, you might as well fucking compensate them or hire them
(compensation in “food” doesn’t fucking count anymore. I don’t want your
fucking shitty Sodexo shit). If you’re going to exploit students, you might as
well be fucking creative about it. At this point institutions just sound desperate
to sound non-racist, but will not make the effort to be anti-racist (see the
difference here). It’s about time institutions start fucking acknowledge their
actions and inactions. It’s about time for institutions to fucking do
something.
Works Cited:
Augoustinos,
M. & Every, D. (2010). Accusations and denials of racism: managing moral
accountability in public discourse. Discourse
& Society, 21(3), 251-256.
DiAngelo,
R. (2011). White Fragility. International
Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3),
54-70.
Diggles,
K. (2014). Addressing racial awareness and color-blindness in higher education.
New Directions for Teaching & Higher
Learning, 2014(140), 31-34.
Flowers,
J. (2016). Letter to administrators, faculty, and staff. Black, Brown, and Queer Reflections Monthly.
Gardner,
L. (2016). What’s the best way to lead when racism shows up on campus? Chronicle of Higher Education, 62(25).
Jackson II, R. L. (1999). White space, white privilege:
Mapping discursive inquiry into the self. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 85,
38-54.
Johnson, J. R., Rich, M., & Cargile, A. C. (2008).
Why are you shoving this stuff down our throats?: Preparing intercultural
educators to challenge performances of white racism. Journal of International
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Lawrence,
C. R. (1990). If he hollers let him go: regulating racist speech on campus. Duke Law Journal.
Sensoy
O. & DiAngelo, R. (2014). Challenging common guidelines in social justice
education. Democracy and Education, 22(2), 1-11.
Simpson, J. L. (2008). The color-blind double bind: Whiteness
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