Racism and Katrina

[pegkerr]

In all my compulsive reading of the Katrina coverage, I've been mulling over the ugly questions that have been raised about how racism has made this whole story play out. I was withholding judgment for awhile. But then I read this, and this and saw this, among other things (there was one other link that I can't find right now). And I've decided that, yeah, chalk me up as one of the minority of whites who think that race does have something to do with the abysmal response. Along with class, I'll add.

I'm thinking about some advice I gave to two friends of mine recently who have been struggling with a troubled marriage: if one of you says, "I see a problem here" and the other says "you're imagining things, there is no problem here" then the proper response is: guess what, you both have a problem here, whether the second sees it or not. Because if it's a problem for the first one, it's a problem for the relationship.

So . . . what can a liberal but often clueless honkey woman like me do about it?

Comments

[perigee.livejournal.com]

This question is, aside from other things I'm sure you intended well, a rhetorical trap. There is no way I can answer this question without preserving any of my points' original intents. I will leave it as an exercise to you to determine why.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Providing my own answers to a question I asked you hardly seems fair, and certainly doesn't make any progress toward understanding, for either of us.

It wasn't intended to be a rhetorical trap. It was a straightforward question, the answer to which might reveal where some of our differences lie. When one cannot answer a question--any question except a nonsense one--while preserving their points' original intent, one might do well to examine those original intents. I have had to change my mind more than once in my life because I was asked a question I could not answer without changing something in my thinking. I value those questions highly.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

No, I think you misunderstand me.

The question you asked strikes me as a rhetorical trap in the same way a question like, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is a rhetorical trap. I do not, as a rule, answer questions like that. In general, I ignore them, but in your case, I thought a more thorough response about why I would not answer was appropriate. But I see I'm wrong, because you're just using the opportunity to suggest that I am not thinking straight. :>

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Telling me that a question I ask is a rhetorical trap without telling me why doesn't help communication very much. (Now you've told me why, but your previous response didn't.)

The only way that "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is a rhetorical trap is if the questioner demands a yes-or-no response. Otherwise, the response "I have never beaten my wife" answers the question. I did not ask for a yes-or-no response.

I am not a subtle person. What you see is what you get. If I ask a question, it means what it says and nothing more. If it is unanswerable for some reason, telling me the reason is helpful (though of course one has no obligation to do so).

You are not the first person to see subtlety and machinations and hidden meanings and traps in my words. They aren't there. I am hopelessly literal-minded.

(One of the reasons I am so taken with misia's writing is that she can do things I am totally incapable of. I could never write, for example, one of her "letters" to passersby or email correspondents. It is completely beyond my ability.)

[perigee.livejournal.com]

Okay. I'll bite (against my better judgement, because you always strike me as an intelligent if not totally supportive conversant - please note that I am feeling like it's quite likely that someone's going to debate my answer with me. If not you, then someone else will, and I think it's quite likely that the person who does so is pink).

My answer to your question (which implies a binary choice for potential answer) is that my answer does not exist among the obvious and implied answer to your question.

In my ideal world, where racism was something we took on head on, and didn't shy from addressing, I could still be me, with my life, my skin, my eyes, my house, my dog, my neighborhood, my cat, my misia and racism would not be a perceivable factor. The answer is not that I simply think that it would be better or worse to be someone else (where presumably the system would make racism less of a concern than economic factors) but that both racism and economic factors and all the other isms we're talking about happened very infrequently, and that if they happened, the systemic response was not "Oh, well we can't help that", but "Oh, that's awful, I'm sorry that happened to you. How can we avoid it in the future".

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Well, hell, what are we arguing about, then?

The only difference I can see is that you think that we can best avoid it in the future by addressing racism while not ignoring classism and other isms, and I think we can best avoid it in the future by addressing classism while not ignoring racism and others isms.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

Yes, except when I post a comment (not in reply to yours) about how I think racism has become disconnected in typical American thinking from addressing injustice in response to a question explicitly about how racism can be addressed/improved, you jump in and tell me how classism is at least as important as racism, which has a bit of a silencing effect on me and my opinions about racism.

I think that my frustration arose more from the dynamic than the topic or the opinions, if that makes sense.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

which has a bit of a silencing effect on me and my opinions about racism.

Well, gee, if I have the power to silence people by simply--not even disagreeing with them, but stating an opinion that goes in another direction, I'd best get busy using that power for good. I can think of many better targets for it than you!

However, I don't see you as so easily intimidated, so either I have a totally mistaken image of you or something else is involved here.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

Well, there are the other commenters here, and elsewhere, who have been less respectful than you, and it becomes increasingly uncomfortable, frustrating and onerous for me to feel like I'm arguing with more and more people. There is the overhead involved in trying to keep things reasonable and keep myself from flying off the handle as well as keeping my language even and predictable enough so that people read that I'm not flying off the handle and so that people (hopefully) also notice what effort I'm putting into the language to keep things even and respectful.

There's fighting the same fight over and over and being tired of it (and frankly feeling like maybe I should just stop being the token non-pink person in the discussion for a while, because it's obviously frustrating me a lot these days). There's the feeling I Get from others not involved in this direct conversation or this direct thread that I'm not qualified to make my own testimonies without having them (or the quality [prose or rhetorical] of my narrative) be up for debate.

But you know what? I think you should be using the power your words have and that you have to encourage the good kind of debate that builds things rather than using that energy on me, who you've already noted, is arguing the same point from a different perspective, and who has already directly remarked to you that this discussion is wearing me out and I'd rather not have it with you again.

And we've come full circle.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd be happy to use the power of my words to encourage the good kind of debate if I knew how to do that to some useful effect. The best I seem able to do is to engage people in disucssions that I can use to challenge my own thinking, so I can be pretty sure that I at least have had my reality check and am not living a mistake, if you will.

Preaching to the choir seems a pointless use of time and energy, yet I've never had any--or seen others have much--success at preaching to the, um, nonconverted. It gets discouraging when you've been at it for 50 years or so (yes, I started as a kid). Maybe you'll have better fortune. I certainly hope so.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

As you have dared me to continue to argue with you well after I was done, I can only turn the tables on you and dare you to keep going and keep trying with people are not the choir, as you have the energy and the time. While you and I are singing in ostensibly the same choir, I often don't have the faith or impression that you really are because of your argumentativeness and the work it takes to resolve things with you. When it comes to race discussions with you, the energy demand on my part feels less like preaching to the choir and more like doing that harder kind of work at which both you and I have so little results to show for it.

But if you're going to dare me to continue with me, I'm going to dare you to continue with people who are not in your choir, despite the 5 decades you've put into it. I've got people in my corner egging me on, and I will be in your corner egging you on.

You come at me and tell me you're argumentative and then cop out by saying it never works, but you still seem to expect me to rise to your challenge? I don't think so. If you want me to fight with you, and with others, then you get to as well.