I thought I was done.

[kuangning]

I truly did. I said my piece and I sat back to think some more, and read some more, and in the course of reading I wound up over at Scalzi's blog, and then I went to the Yelling Class post, and that's where I melted down again.

Here's the problem my problem with "We should totes have these talks face to face because it doesn't mean anything if it's just on the Interwebs!" Are you ready?

I. should. not. have. to fucking. cry. in. front. of. you. before. it. clicks. with. you. that. I. hurt. when. I told. you. I. hurt.

Really.

If you tell me you hurt, my melanin-deficient friend, I believe you. I'm expected to believe you. Indeed, if I dare to let on that I disbelieve you, well, we both know that that's just heinous, and how heartless and inhumane can I be, anyway? Yet, in the face of a steady stream of voices going: "You know what? This hurts, this thing you do, the way you just put this? That hurt", there is an equally steady and twice as insistent stream of voices from people I like, people who mean well, people who are, I fervently believe--I have to believe--genuinely trying, going: "That's not good enough. Just your word for it doesn't make a difference. Come out in the open and cry for me where I can see you. Nothing else will do."

So okay. You had your Yelling Class. You saw people cry and it clicked, and now you understand better. I'm happy for you, really I am, because a little bit of cluefulness gained is a gain. But if people my color are the Other, and the foreign, and the inscrutable, and the failing-to-understand-the-hearts-and-minds-of-the-melanin-deficient, let me ask you: what else are you deficient in, that it took that level of display to bring you to even that little bit of empathy and understanding? What does it say for you, when the best of your ranks requires another person's utter loss of dignity before you really cede the point that maybe, just maybe, you can start to see where he's coming from? Who and what does that make you?

I don't have these conversations face to face. If it takes my tears to enlighten you, you can stay in the dark until they nail the lid on your coffin. I mean it. There are too many other things in this world designed to strip every ragged shred of dignity this brown person has, without that I should cry for you, too.

Comments

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

I... I think it may be hard to understand how incredibly, incredibly stupid white people are about race.

If nothing else, this whole imbroglio is driving that home for me. How stupid I've been, how stupid other people are... how much severe deprogramming that we have to go through in order to empathize with other people, to trust their words and their experiences. It's like brainwashing, being soaked in white privilege. It really is. I think that one really has to approach white people's privilege like deprogramming a cult member. Logic and reason won't do it. It really takes several hammers. I only hope that with more allies we can do that without causing more and more pain to PoC, because shit, this sucks.

[kuangning]

Thank you so much for this. You guys keep me from going homicidal on a regular basis. This is just another one of those times.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

agreed

[kuangning]

*hugs.*

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

If it takes my tears to enlighten you, you can stay in the dark until they nail the lid on your coffin. I mean it. There are too many other things in this world designed to strip every ragged shred of dignity this brown person has, without that I should cry for you, too.


I've more and more come around to this stance. I used to share my personal pain. Then I realized that it was basically becoming a pornographic display. And that I was still getting argued with, disbelieved, etc. etc. It all memorably came together with me sharing some really honest, painful life stuff with W*ll Sh*tterly and him being a jerk right back at me (because I'm an upperclass meanie). And fuck that.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

For some folks? The pain is porn.

[kuangning]

That makes entirely too much sense right now.

[bossymarmalade.livejournal.com]

It's no-win; if you discuss logically your actual suffering is called into question, and if you reveal your suffering then you're just playing this mythical magical race card I hear so much about.

Thank you for this post; it made me realize that I am very much at this point as well.

[kuangning]

It's no-win; if you discuss logically your actual suffering is called into question, and if you reveal your suffering then you're just playing this mythical magical race card I hear so much about.

Yes, exactly. It doesn't stop until somebody cries enough that there's no way to not believe it -- and then that gets glossed over in the wave of "well, I learned something so obviously it's all okay now."

[kuangning]

It's interesting. My first response is: "Oh, well. Sh*tt*rly." That really does say it all, doesn't it? He gets easier to handle and closer to likeable if you regard him as a mostly-friendly but overgrown large-breed puppy with a couple of bad habits. He's been chewing that same slipper so long he'd be lost without it and you haven't quite got the heart to take it away except when company's expected.

[kmarkhoover.livejournal.com]

Excellent post, thank you.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

*hug*

[kuangning]

*hugs back.* Thank you so much. I'm watching your own posts, and wishing I had something useful to contribute.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

If it takes my tears to enlighten you, you can stay in the dark until they nail the lid on your coffin.

That seems a true and brave statement to the clueless white woman called me.

I've learned a lot in this whole discussion, including from your wise comments, but holy crap I would rather have remained pig-ignorant than have acquired such riches of knowledge at such a cost.

People of color shouldn't have to go into the fire to explain this stuff to me, ever. I'm a grown woman. I can read a book. I shouldn't have to need my friends and friends-of-friends and extended community to break their backs and their hearts on my and my fellow white people's stupidity.

[kuangning]

Thank you for this. I'm floundering a little; I do still believe that we can't blame people for not understanding if we're never, ever, anywhere, willing to explain. There's a difference, though, between wanting the butterfly to stay still for having its picture taken and pulling its wings off just so you can study how they're attached. Both methods teach you something, but only one of them has even a chance of being worth it for the butterfly.

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

Beautifully put (both the metaphor and the post)!

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Here via rydra_wong (with apologies for being a week late):

Where I'm at with this is that, while the whole explanation process is a necessary thing, it shouldn't be necessary or expected, treated as an entitlement of the clueless white person asking, for any given non-white person to display or prove their pain, to elaborate on the ways these things hurt.

The statement that it does should be enough for a hell of a starting point, and for the rest? There's all those people who, brave and dedicated as they are, choose to take part in the education of fools.

The thing is, it's important that they/you be able to choose whether they engage with this stuff - and, if they choose to do so, when to engage and when to take a break.

Yeah, white people need some help towards understanding. But they don't have a right to demand it at any time or from any person, and no non-white person should be made to feel obligated to do it.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Yes, this, thank you (both, everyone).

I'm now at the point where I am struggling with talking to my "I'm not involved" white LJ friends and I can't understand why they can't see the pain, why they don't believe the pain, and why their own suffering at having to be in the proximity of the word "racist" automatically cancels everything else out, and means somehow the pain isn't real.

[mizchalmers.livejournal.com]

I am so, so sorry.

[kuangning]

The good news is, it's getting better, right? :(

[synecdochic]

Out of every post I've read in this past 24 hours, following links from rydra_wong, this is the one that has hit me the hardest. Thank you for sharing your truth. I think it's appalling that more people can't see it without needing to have it come at such cost; I wish to hell that we could just upgrade the empathy module in so many damn people.

[kuangning]

I wish to hell that we could just upgrade the empathy module in so many damn people.

That would be very very nice, yes.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

::hears you::

[kuangning]

Thank you for this. It was exactly the right thing to say, and the right moment to say it in.

[color-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes, this, everything you said.

[maevele.livejournal.com]

Well said. May i add you?

[kuangning]

Thank you. I don't mind being added, though I have to warn you that you're very likely to be bored unless a semi-constant flow of fractal artwork amuses you. That's what I post more than almost anything else these days.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

This made me cry too.

[kuangning]

I'm sorry about that. :(

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

No, it's all right.

There was this other thing someone was talking about, a Living Library, where people instead of books get checked out, to talk about topics not usually discussed. Race and gender and disability and religion were a few of them. And I thought- hunh, I could be a book! Then I thought, or maybe I just have too much faith in people. Which you know, is weird for me, bc usually I am a cynical bitch.

(I'm not a POC; I'm Jewish, and I work to be an ally.)

If stuff like this makes me cry, I just can't even imagine it from inside your perspective. I'm sorry people suck so fucking much? Meh.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

I've read about those "living books" things and... I do that, sometimes, about being Jewish. But... I know how a lot of people treat library books.

And I do not want to be the one that's got turned corners, underlines, marginal notes, highlighter scars, a broken spine, and post-it notes sticking out of me.

The only thing that made the Yelling Class seem reasonable to me was the idea that, if those white teachers didn't do it there, they were going to take that shit out on children. And some of them still did, I'm sure.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

I felt the same way about that post, and I went and told her about it. I think a lot of people claim it requires that sort of display to build empathy; at this point, i'm wondering if it indicates the lack thereof.

[kuangning]

Thank you for tackling her on it. Looking at her response, I see exactly what I expected to see, which is a bit of a shame -- but I was genuinely too angry to go over there and comment without calling her names, and I didn't think she deserved quite that level of vitriol.

[winterfox.livejournal.com]

Come out in the open and cry for me where I can see you. Nothing else will do."

I think very many people can't see past their privilege to realize that This Is Not All About Them.

[kuangning]

I wish I thought it was that simple. She realises it's not all about her, she just ... handwaves off the cost as being acceptable.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.

This drives me crazy because it's predicated on two horrible ideas--one, that racism is ok as long as nobody's feelings are being hurt, and two, that people of color don't feel pain the same way that white people do.

[kuangning]

Three, actually. Because even when the fact of "Oh. Hrm. Well, I guess he did hurt" comes through, there's this blithe assumption that her gain makes his diminishment justified and acceptable. You've got to break eggs to make an omelette, right? Except look whose eggs are being broken and who gets to eat the omelette, over and over again.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely. That's a good analogy.

[littlebutfierce]

Thank you for this post.

It's so fucked up when white people get off on POC pain (also, hey, POCs get yelled at for being emotional/angry/etc. when talking about racism, & yet people don't believe us until we start crying????).

[kuangning]

Exactly, yes.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I had a class somewhat like that yelling class ("Race, class, and gender"), only with a friggin' professor who /actually knew how to facilitate/ and did not allow the white people in the class to force things to the point where it became pain porn. (Or the men, or the straight folks, but different issues.)

If you're gonna have that kind of a class, you have /got to/ do that, because no kidding, you're opening up a lot of things you need to treat with respect and create the right environment for.

And yeah. Failures of empathy are... it does not speak well of my country.

[kuangning]

I'm trying to remember that a lot of this is that the last several generations in this country have grown up under regimes that did their best to stifle empathy for people outside the deserving few.

We've fostered the concepts of the deserving poor, the welfare queen, the enemy combatant, the gay agenda, the feminazi, the job-stealing immigrant horde, and reverse racism. Of course empathy's hard to come by, after that. But it still took me more than a day to cool down from seethingly angry, this time. I'm not fool enough to expect it to click with everyone right away, but the wave after wave of the same fundamentally broken idiocy is discouraging.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Well, hell, you talk about that, the Puritan Ethic was laced all through with ideas about how, if you didn't make money/make a success of yourself, you were therefore Not Elect and Doomed. Calvinism is deep rooted in a lot of how the US got started, and Calvinism is not a kind religion.

And then, later on, you've got the social Darwinists, and... Well, anyway, my point is, the last 30-40 years of scapegoating have built on a foundation already started.

None of which excuses a lack of empathy; it just throws it into higher relief.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

Yes, this, exactly this. Thank you.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

thank you for this post.

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

If it takes my tears to enlighten you, you can stay in the dark until they nail the lid on your coffin. I mean it. There are too many other things in this world designed to strip every ragged shred of dignity this brown person has, without that I should cry for you, too.

So, so true. I've been there. Thank you for posting this.