Confrontation during the second night of protests
over the Eric Garner case, in New York City.
Credit James Lawler Duggan/Reuters
This article adds credence to the understanding I've come to that it's long past the time, that people of African descent in America (hate to use ought, but) OUGHT to get out in the world and explore other places, faces and possibilities where we might live as our true identity, and realize our full potential as individuals.
I know the word futile. As a political scientist and a student of history, looking back over the efforts of people of African descent to live in harmony and enjoy wholesome lives in America, futile most definitely might describe that arduous praise-worthy effort.
Most white Americans still remain stuck in their deluded concepts about us, about themselves and their role/place in the world. The greatest tragedy however, and danger to all life on Earth, is their vicious tenacity to 'rule, that which cannot be ruled'.
Even sadder, is their deep arrogance and ignorance about how this whole world works as one functioning life force. The concepts and policies of white domination have wrecked havoc upon this beautiful planet and are responsible for the current state of our world.
I've been saying to friends for years, we need to be out in the world exploring, testing the waters, living a while in new places, to see how it feels. Surely there are places where our gifts, warmth, genius and friendship would be welcomed. Not everyone in the world thinks of others like the white supremacists of America.
As in any harmonious union, the chemistry between the parts involved is key. And here, the thinking and ignorant beliefs of white men has always tainted the possibilities.
Pay attention to how I stated that~ I don't believe that it is ethnic groups, cultures, religions and degree of melanin in the skin which separate the ONE Race of animal human beings. It is the ideas, beliefs, and the erroneous, egoic self-confirming thinking within these, that evolves and gets layered with more ignorance through time.
Concepts become accepted by all the mentally lazy who never question if these ideas, habits and 'ways of being' are intelligent or even make sense. This collective consciousness, which shifts and changes according to the whims of the dominant culture, hardens into accepted cultural values, and proceeds into being codified as laws. This is what causes the frictions and antagonisms that create the strife of this world. Ideas that are born out of ignorance.
The good part of all of this is that ideas, thoughts and beliefs CAN BE TRANSFORMED. They are not real, in and of themselves. They are just a thought, that because many gave energy to, developed credibility. We can dissolve and release them. It definitely takes constant effort, but I'm living proof of that. Everyday, I give thanks, that I'm paying attention to my thoughts and words and releasing more that has no validity today. I work to see through my old beliefs of the past, that hold me back from being all that I'm here to be today.
So my journey doesn't end with the word futile, because it's not based on what people believe, societies and political groups create, do or have done. My hope can ONLY be All that It Is. And that's ripe moment to moment with infinite possibilities for my good. And if they're not realized here in America~~~ well there's a big beautiful world out there for me to explore.
I know that I am love, freedom, beauty and intelligence. I'm grounded in Nature and made rich and prosperous by her awesome givingness; I'm respectful of all life, generously gifted with creativity and talents. I'm surrounded by and filled with unlimited Cosmic love. Most important, I'm aware of and thankful for this undying willingness in me to allow that same Intelligence which illuminates the stars, and lifts a tiny seed upward into a magnificent Sequoia, ....to move through and live as me, on this Earth. This is my focus and where I keep my attention, as I watch my unique path unfold.
lovu,
Kendke
New York Times OPINIONATOR
This is the third
in a series of interviews with philosophers on race that I am conducting
for The Stone. This week’s conversation is with Shannon Sullivan, a
professor in the department of philosophy at the University of North
Carolina, Charlotte. She is the author of “Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism.” — George Yancy
Shannon Sullivan
George Yancy: What motivated you to engage “whiteness” in your work as a philosopher?
Shannon Sullivan: It
was teaching feminist philosophy for the first time or two and trying
to figure out how to reach the handful of men in the class — white men,
now that I think of it. They tended to be skeptical at best and openly
hostile at worst to the feminist ideas we were discussing. They felt
attacked and put up a lot of defenses. I was trying to see things from
their perspective, not to endorse it (it was often quite sexist!), but
to be more effective as a teacher. And so I thought about my whiteness
and how I might feel and respond in a class that critically addressed
race in ways that implicated me personally. Not that race and gender are
the same or can be captured through analogies, but it was a first step
toward grappling with my whiteness and trying to use it.
Many white people never acknowledge the benefits that accrue silently throughout their lives.
What really strikes me
now, as I think about your question, is how old I was — around 30 —
before I ever engaged whiteness philosophically, or personally, for that
matter. Three decades where that question never came up and yet the
unjust advantages whiteness generally provides white people fully shaped
my life, including my philosophical training and work.
G.Y.: How
did whiteness shape your philosophical training? When I speak to my
white graduate philosophy students about this, they have no sense that
they are being shaped by the “whiteness” of philosophy. They are under
the impression that they are doing philosophy, pure and simple, which is
probably a function of the power of whiteness.
S.S.: I think I’m
only just discovering this and probably am only aware of the tip of the
iceberg. Here is some of what I’ve learned, thanks to the work of Charles Mills,
Linda Martín Alcoff, Kathryn Gines, Tommy Curry and many other
philosophers of color: It’s not just that in grad school I didn’t read
many philosophers outside a white, Euro-centric canon (or maybe any
— wow, I’m thinking hard here, but the answer might be zero). It’s also
that as a result of that training, my philosophical habits of thinking,
of where to go in the literature and the history of philosophy for help
ruminating on a philosophical topic — even that of race — predisposed
me toward white philosophers. Rebuilding different philosophical habits
can be done, but it’s a slow and frustrating process. It would have been
better to develop different philosophical habits from the get-go.
My professional
identity and whether I count as a full person in the discipline is bound
up with my middle-class whiteness, even as my being a woman jeopardizes
that identity somewhat. Whiteness has colonized “doing philosophy, pure
and simple,” which has a significant bearing on what it means to be a
“real” philosopher. Graduate students tend to be deeply anxious about
whether they are or will eventually count as real philosophers, and
whiteness functions through that anxiety even as that anxiety can seem
to be totally unrelated to race (to white people anyway — I’m not sure
it seems that unrelated to graduate students of color).
The decision in the Eric Garner case is a blow to black hope. But that doesn’t have to mean despair.
G.Y.: For
many whites the question of their whiteness never comes up or only
comes up when they are much older, as it did in your case. And yet, as
you say, there is the accrual of unjust white advantages. What are some
reasons that white people fail to come to terms with the fact that they
benefit from whiteness?
S.S.:
That’s a tough one and there probably are lots of reasons, including
beliefs in boot-strap individualism, meritocracy and the like. Another
answer, I think, has to do with class differences among white people. A
lot of poor white people haven’t benefited as much from whiteness as
middle- and upper-class white people have. Poor white people’s “failure”
to come to terms with the benefits of their whiteness isn’t as
obvious, I guess I’d say. I’m not talking about a kind of utilitarian
calculus where we can add up and compare quantities of white advantage,
but there are differences.
I’m thinking here of
an article I just read in the Charlotte Observer that my new home state
of North Carolina is the first one to financially compensate victims of an aggressive program of forced sterilization,
one that ran from the Great Depression all the way through the Nixon
presidency. (A headline on an editorial in the Observer called the
state’s payouts “eugenics checks.”)
The so-called feeble-minded who were targeted included poor and other
vulnerable people of all races, even as sterilization rates apparently
increased in areas of North Carolina as those areas’ black populations
increased. My point is that eugenics programs in the United States often
patrolled the borders of proper whiteness by regulating the bodies and
lives of the white “failures” who were allegedly too poor, stupid and
uneducated to do whiteness right.
Even
though psychological wages of whiteness do exist for poor white people,
those wages pay pennies on the dollar compared to those
for financially comfortable white people. So coming to terms with
whiteness’s benefits can mean really different things, as can failing to
do so. I think focusing the target on middle-class white people’s
failure is important. Which might just bring me right back to your
question!
G.Y.:
And yet for so many poor people of color there is not only the fact
that the wages pay less than pennies, as it were, but that black life
continues to be valued as less. Is there a history of that racial
differential wage between poor whites and poor blacks or people of
color?
Poor white people’s lives aren’t valued for much either, but at least in their case it seems that something went wrong, that there was something of potential value that was lost.
S.S.:Yes,
definitely. Class and poverty are real factors here, but they don’t
erase the effects of race and racism, at least not in the United States
and not in a lot of other countries with histories (and presents) of
white domination. The challenge philosophically and personally is to
keep all the relevant factors in play in thinking about these issues. In
that complex tangle, you hit the nail on the head when you said that
black life continues to be valued as less. Poor white people’s lives
aren’t valued for much either, but at least in their case it seems that
something went wrong, that there was something of potential value that
was lost.
Let’s put it even more
bluntly: America is fundamentally shaped by white domination, and as
such it does not care about the lives of black people, period. It never
has, it doesn’t now, and it makes me wonder about whether it ever will.
Here is an important
question: What would it mean to face up to the fact that the United
States doesn’t really care much about black people? I think a lot about
Derrick Bell’s racial realism nowadays, especially after reading some
recent empirical work about the detrimental effects of hope in the lives
of black men — hope, that is, that progress against racial
discrimination and injustice is being made. How would strategies for
fighting white domination and ensuring the flourishing of people of
color change if black people gave up that hope? If strategies for living
and thriving were pegged to the hard truth that white-saturated
societies don’t and might not ever value black lives?
Except perhaps as instruments for white people’s financial, psychological and other advantages — we have a long history of that, of course.
Except perhaps as instruments for white people’s financial, psychological and other advantages — we have a long history of that, of course.
G.Y.:
We’re all aware of the recent non-indictments of the Ferguson police
officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown, and the New York City
police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island.
How do we critically engage people who see this as another blow to
black humanity, another blow to hope?
S.S.:
It is another blow to black humanity. I don’t see any way around that.
And also another blow to hope. But that doesn’t mean that despair is the
only alternative. I admit it’s hard to see beyond that dichotomy — hope
or despair — and I struggle to see beyond it. But maybe it’s a false
dichotomy, pegged to hopes that the legal system, including civil rights
struggles, can get us out of this mess. What if we operated instead
from the hypothesis that the legal system cannot do this, at least not
at this moment in history? One thing that both Ferguson and the failure
to indict in the Eric Garner case tell us is that “we” must come up with
other alternatives or else “we” (I have to underscore the question of
who the “we” is here) risk driving people to violence. Even when “they”
don’t necessarily wish to resort to violence, I think that also is
important to underscore. I don’t think that anyone particularly wants
violence in its own right, but what happens when there aren’t other
options to ensure that black people are considered full persons?
G.Y.:The
critique of hope, as you suggest above, appears to be based on the
assumption that the system of white supremacy and the devaluation of
black life will not fundamentally change. In this case, black hope
is just spinning its wheels. And yet, President Obama speaks of the
audacity of hope. In what way do you square his hope with the pervasive
feeling of a lack of hope among black people when it comes to the end of
racial injustice?
S.S.:
When you talk of black hope as spinning its wheels, I can’t help but
think of South Africa, which has just celebrated the 20th anniversary of
the end of apartheid and mourned the death of its first post-apartheid
president, Nelson Mandela. Its government is predominantly black, including its current president, Jacob Zuma. It’s a remarkable
transformation, one that seems to provide the world with hope. But
living conditions for most black South Africans have not changed, and
brutal patterns of racial segregation are still firmly in place. In
fact, black poverty and racial inequalities in income have actually
increased since the end of legal segregation.
The answer of course is not
to return to apartheid. I feel like I have to say that, especially as a
white person skeptical of black hope for equality! But liberal hope in
racial progress isn’t going to cut it. Again, there have to be other
options, and then the question becomes whether violent revolution is the
only other option.
The potential for racial conflagration is very real, I think, even beyond what we recently have seen in Ferguson.
As for the audacity of
hope promoted by Obama, I worry that in the end it has backfired. I,
too, felt the buoyancy of hope in 2008. But electing the first black
president did not shift the scales of racial justice in the United
States very much, if at all. This is not an argument against Obama’s
election, but one that many of us were naïve in thinking that black
exceptionalism wouldn’t rear its ugly head if the “exception” in
question was the president himself.
G.Y.: If
it is true that we live in a white-saturated society, how do you
conceptualize your role, especially as a white person who grapples with
whiteness philosophically and existentially?
S.S.:
I think that white people have a small but important role to play in
combating white domination. Small, because the idea isn’t that white
people are going to lead that work; they need to be following the work
and leadership of people of color. But important because, given de facto
racial segregation, there still are many pockets of whiteness — in
neighborhoods, businesses, classrooms, philosophy departments – where
you need white people who are going to challenge racism when it pops up.
Which it often does.
But I think I have to
add that this role is absurd. I mean absurd in the technical
existentialist sense that, for example, Kierkegaard and Camus gave it.
I don’t have a lot of hope that our white-saturated society is ever
going to change, and at the same time it is crucial that one struggles
for that change. Those two things don’t rationally fit
together, I realize. It’s absurd to struggle for something that you
don’t think can happen, and yet we (people of all races) should.
It’s like Camus’ main
character in “The Plague,” the doctor who realizes that the plague will
never completely go away. It — death, the atrocities of Nazi Germany —
always wins in the end, even if one achieves some minor victories
against it. We could add white supremacy to Camus’ list. It’s crucial to
fight it even if total victory is impossible, to care for those who
suffer because of it. And we all suffer because of it. The plague spares
no one even as it hits different groups and individuals in different
ways.
G.Y.:
You know, many white readers will respond to this interview and argue
that you desire white people to feel guilt or shame. I would argue that
this is not your aim at all. Yet, is it an easy tactic for denying the legitimacy of what you’ve argued?
S.S.: You’re
right that I’m not trying to cultivate white guilt or shame. This will
get me in hot water, but I don’t think those are emotions that will help
white people effectively struggle for racial justice in the long haul.
I’m not saying that white people should never feel guilty or ashamed
because of their race, and I don’t think that not feeling guilty or
ashamed is a way to let white people off the hook. But guilt and shame
are toxic just as hatred and greed are, and we sure don’t need to
increase the toxicity of white people. James Baldwin said it best when
he argued that white people will have to learn how to love themselves
and each other before they can let go of their need for black
inferiority.
This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series can be found here.
George Yancy is a
professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. He has written, edited
and co-edited numerous books, including “Black Bodies, White Gazes,”
“Look, a White!” and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” co-edited with Janine
Jones.
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
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