>Kelley:
yes, love me or leo?
>You and I have a rather different appraisal of the value and substance of
>McGee's intervention on this topic. I see little or nothing of substance in
>what he had to say;
well, gosh-a-golly, thank you for putting words in my mouth. it's nice to have that oral fixation gratified.
butt, seriously, i didn't appraise the merits of art's post in terms of what he said about reparations. instead, i got annoyed with ONE response. had he not responded, tho, i would have STILL posted gloria yamato's work here and i still would have pointed out this issue about just whose responsibility it is to educate.
i may well be wrong in my interpretation, but so be it. i don't mean to speak for art, he's quite capable. i see it as a larger issue -- the problem of speaking *for* (to/with/at/etc) what happened here is similar to what happened months ago over the mary daly hoohah (and what happened once when doug asked catherine to tell us about Australian politics). *women* on this list were asked to explain feminism to men -- after mary daly had been attacked, for her shoddy writing, but none of the attackers were capable of explaining in more than a rudimentary way, what daly was writing about or what her position was. (not a hard task since there are a slew of websites that will explain her to you. tX). frances bolton replied and told him to, basically, fuck off.
why? because there is a discussion among feminists--mostly feminist of color--who've argued that it's not OUR job to educate you. educate yourself. now, brett and eric asked me why i took that position. i don't always. but i did voice it b/c i was pissed off at a bunch of people sitting around pontificating about feminism without any real knowledge of what the issues were. why should i waste my time? why go through the heartache?
it's not Art's JOB to educate you. why should he waste his godamned time. it gets damn tiring after awhile. it saps the life out of you, if you let it. and if you are listening to white feminists, feminists of color and race theorists and so forth, you'll hear them writing about this issue -- how to emotionally survive.
and i guess i sympathize be/c sometimes i wonder why i waste my time. the last time i called someone on the carpet for a crass remark, that person tried to tell me i didn't have a sense of humor. and no one on this list bothered to point out what he'd said -- nor even to have noticed that it was the third time that a woman was mentioned in one of hist post by reference to what she lookd like. (except chip (thanks chip!).)
why do I or yoshie or other women on this list get the treat of educating people about feminism and "our issues"? what makes us the designated hitters -- and why do *I* have to listen to some punk tell me i don't have a sense of humor. why do women who speak up have to get treated to claims that we are angry? that all we talk about are "sex" issues as if that's somehow a topic that is not appropriate on this list?
now, put yourself in art's place. i did. i bet you can too. not perfectly -- but humanly.
it gets damn tiring after awhile. it sucks the life out of you if you care -- and how can one help but care about something you've lived your entire life with?
and now you're smearing his name. well i've been on lists with art for years too -- i lurk elsewhere -- and i can't say that i agree. so knock it off with the smearing. tX.
also, to joe, my sweet-- i love you -- the problem with the use of Adolph Reed is that it was a form of appropriation. that is, it was an attempt to legitimate the discussion by saying, "well, gee, this black guy said this and it back ups what i say, so therefore...."
that ain't okay. i don't think Michael meant it that way, but I think that a more appropriate way to have interjected Reed into this discussion would have been, actually, to have spoken at length about it, addressing questions such as, "were does adolph reed stand in relation to other black radicals' positions?"
there's a difference. it's an important one. it demonstrates an attentiveness to the issues and a cognizance of the problems with using a black voice to bolster your position.
yoshie was trying to call me on this earlier -- in a sense. except i hadn't really appropriated a black voice to legitimate what i'd said. charles suggested i go hang out with people locally - and i said, i could do that but people locally to me are black -- by which i meant that black people by and large aren't rejecting the claim that florida events were racists. (and i foregrounded complaints by saying, but that doesn't mean i'm engaging in essentialism by noting that of course not ALL blacks would agree per se. and, moreover, it was simply an indication of my own feeling of being worn down by trying to explain something that even my students of color sometimes find hard to understand or, rather, they revert to the trope of individualism too often. but hey, it's introductory level and what can i expect.)
a highly theoretical discussion of this:
Linda Alcoff, "The Problem of Speaking for Others." Cultural Critique (Wint 1991-92): 5-32
She also has an article in Hypatia on "What Should White Peole Do?"
i'll shut up now since i feel that i'm defending Art when he can do that himself. but, again, it's the larger issue: the problem of speaking *for* others that has been sidestepped. there's nothing wrong with talking about these issues. but you really have to do it by way of demonstrating some intimate knowledge with the debate and not write as if you're creating the wheel. we're NOT.
and while i'm often sensitive to framing the issues so that the wider society will "get it" and get on board the train, sometimes it's just too much to expect of a body. where does it get anybody? where does it get us? nowhere.
>at best, it was 9 parts invective for every 1 part
>substance. Perhaps it is because I have seen him engage in precisely this
>type of intervention on a number of different listservs that it seems like
>the same old "race baiting" to me.
>
>Truth were to be told, there have been no really substantive contributions on
>the topic of reparations in this exchange, but that is at least in part the
>effect [I would even go so far as to say the _desired_ effect] of McGee's
>intervention: we are not supposed to have a discussion on its efficacy as a
>political strategy -- the commissar has spoken, and that is all we need to
>know.
>
>But it is the efficacy of reparations as a political strategy to bring even a
>modicum of justice to the African-American [and native Americans and so on]
>that must be discussed. For if we are to be serious about anti-racist
>politics and struggle, if it is not to an arena we simply cede to the
>intellectual bullies and then ignore, then surely we must have some
>confidence that the strategies we support and pursue have some reasonable
>hope of success. Reparations has such a political efficacy in South Africa
>today, and it has had such an efficacy for Holocaust survivors, but it is/was
>the particular historical circumstances, with the widely acknowledged sense
>of governmental and national responsibility for the most vicious acts of
>racism, combined with what they saw as an indisputable connection between
>those acts and individuals who had directly suffered from them, which made it
>possible to undertake reparations on a mass scale in both instances. There is
>nothing remotely like that in the US today. As a political strategy with any
>reasonable hope of success in any near or middle term, reparations in the US
>will be very limited to specific historic acts, like Rosewood and the Tulsa
>riots, where state governments provide token monetary compensation to a small
>number of living survivors; this also follows from the situation of the
>rather limited compensation given to the remaining survivors of the
>Japanese-American internment camps during WWII.
>
>But if you want a political strategy with some hope of success, if you think
>that it might actually be important to remedy at least some of the injustices
>which African-Americans face because of the institutions, structures, and
>legacies of Racism, and do it some time "before the long run" and "the
>revolution," whenever those millenial moments will occur, reparations are not
>the means to that end. I am not about to take up the struggle for
>reparations, for example, as a means to providing African-American children
>with a quality public education; there are many far more promising strategies
>for achieving that very important end. For some "revolutionary" nationalist
>folk, this lack of political efficacy does not matter, however, because
>either (1) they don't believe that any remedy of racist injustice is possible
>in a multi-racial American society, or under capitalism, etc., or (2) what is
>more important is the way in which the demand reparations contributes to the
>production of a certain narrative of African 'nationhood' in the Americas. I
>think that, at the very least, they should be upfront about those
>presuppositions, and be prepared to debate and defend them.
>
>>i agree that art engaged in the old standby --action/practice is somehow
>>more important that discussion and theorizing. i've spoken often here
>>about how silly such comments are -- at a discussion list. i've also
>>spoken about how sexist i think they are -- generally when i rag on carrol
>>or mike yates for thinking we spend too much time in front of a computer
>>instead of organizing, etc. i thought about responding but thought
>>better of it b/c i think it happens a great deal and, indeed, leo, you've
>>made similar gestures yourself.
>>
>>art made an appropriate critique -- it is a comment grounded in a great
>>deal of theorizing on the part of people of color. i'm most familiar with
>>it in terms of feminists of color: bell hooks, gloria anzaldua, gloria
>>yamato, etc.
>>
>>i think brad's comment was useless. utterly useless, at best --
>>particularly from someone who generally manages to pump out some major k's
>>on other topics. doug at least had a theoretical critique! it was useless
>>because he seemed to make an equivalence. there wasn't one. white people
>>speaking about black nationalism and reparations is fine -- as is men
>>speaking about feminist theory and practice -- but do your fucking homework
>>and don't be surprised if someone steps out of the shadows and upbraids you
>>for not doing your homework. people who spend a lot of their time reading
>>and pontificating because that's their work or because that's what their
>>lives afford at the moment --like us --the us that bitches about dumb
>>conservatives -- owe one another that much.
>>
>>kelley
>
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>
>-- Frederick Douglass --