A community member and I had a dialog in the ‘All In’ thread today. You can read it there, but I am also including it below, because it is a good introduction on the relational work we are going to be doing going forward, as well as contributing in setting norms and expectations, which, along with relational ethics, will be the focus this month. The conversation has been lightly condensed, and I have used a generic name here because I broke out the subthread.
I really want commentary and your thoughts on the exchange. How we relate and engage with the material and with each other is such an important part of why we are all here. I am pinning this post. Please comment ‘done’ when you have read it, along with the additional commentary I hope each of you will have.
Again, no hearts or likes, only responses please.
And in service to our new practices, I am including the paypal link, which I will do with all subsequent pieces. Please follow the link and contribute to this beloved community
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Jane: safe-ish space to me means being able to learn and converse without being called out of my name. i have not considered what my expectations of being here might be, so i am going to save this post, settle my mind, and ponder that question.
Lace: i have been thinking about your response. What do you mean by ‘being called out of your name’?
J: just what i said. we can have respectful conversations w. out being called names.
L: welp. I must ask, have you been here long, and seen how we try to live out our ethos of kind candor?
J: welp all you like. be dismissive of a sincere comment if you must. about six months, and yes… i have spent most of that time quietly observing. the question was how do ‘I’ define safe-ish space. which i did. that answer did not imply this page is not. other pages do not conduct dialogue as well.
L: no dismissiveness. genuine query. I am concerned that you felt it was.
J: then why the whelp? i have only replied a couple of times on this page. both have earned a ‘whelp’, which i understand to be kind of a ‘whomp whomp’, meaning my responses are less than what you respect/desire. if i am wrong in that presumption, i apologize.
L: it isn’t. it’s what i say all the time, particularly to people i care about, and that includes everyone in this space. It’s something of a signature at this point. it’s important here that people get the real and full me, and not a sanitized version of me, and also this, since we are basically having a conversation about tone: you have been here a while you know that another saying is ‘thick skin; soft heart’. The fact is, that if you are going to do this work well, that will mean perhaps doing some internal work about what ‘being called out of [your] name’ means, and how insisting on a particular style or tone can be less than conducive to the work.
This is a real thing. And what I was trying to tease out of you, when I asked what you meant. Another thing I have said is that white people have been used to deference for so long that plain speech can feel like insubordination. Insisting on it is a form, however subtle, of white supremacy.
This is a laboratory, and there are elements that need to be recognized as important in this lab–that folks, including me, will get it wrong, that there will be grace required by all, and that candor is encouraged, and that kindness (not niceness) is a value.
I am also going to break this out into a separate post. The points and principles we will be detailing here are valuable for the entire community, and this weekend as we set norms and expectations, and this will be a good start to what I hope will be a robust conversation.
You may have left, Jane…but I am glad you got the ball rolling on an important issue.
For all else breaking a generalized version of this in a separate post.
J: i am still here. i was away from a signal. i would never walk out on a conversation, particularly w. a black from whom i am learning.
i appreciate your explanation. i have only personally seen ‘welp’ used as a kind of ‘whatever’ to someone’s response.
not being called out of my name, i mean specifically being called a bitch and whatnot. i have not seen that or experienced that here. i have seen black women stand their ground when attacked and called names by other women, and i agree it is an appropriate and necessary boundary to set, which is why i stated that explicitly. that is boundary setting, not tone policing.
i absolutely kindness is paramount whilst niceness is not.
perhaps i misunderstood the purpose of your initial inquiry: THIS space i have observed to be an important model for community building. other spaces are handled differently. i apologize if it seemed i was calling out this space for not fostering respectful communication. i did not and do not think that.
i appreciate your continued engagement w. me in order for clarification, especially when i realize how important the work is for building the community!
i am going to disagree that not allowing people to call me a bitch or whatever (again, never happened here) is white supremacy at work. that is setting a boundary, and every person has the right to set that boundary for themselves… just yesterday my own siblings crossed that boundary and were firmly but gently reminded such abusive language is not ok.
as your cover page image states, mindful and responsible engagement is crucial! it’s a wonderful expectation which i presume goes both ways. and i think it’s great you put your expectations front and center so that there is no question.
L: I am glad you responded. I have been thinking about our exchange, and, because I have some more thoughts, will surely be breaking this out into a separate post.
We are also going to be moving through a discussion about emotional self regulation, about being able to tolerate feelings of discomfort, deep discomfort sometimes, without either blowing up, shutting down, or running away.
It is a hallmark of interpersonal maturity, and something that will profit us all to learn, and to learn well, as we navigate this space and relate to each other within it.
I preface with that, because I am going to ask you explicitly to be mindful of those three things in what i am going to say next.
I am speaking to you, but not only to you; this has value for us all. To be able to ‘hold onto oneself’ means that you can keep a sense of durable identity, sense of self worth, and moderation regardless of what anyone throws at you with values and conviction intact.
Doing this work cannot, repeat, cannot depend upon your transient feeling states. Leaving the work, or choosing to not align yourself with marginalized peoples because you don’t like the how of what they say or do begs the question of commitment. Put another way, if your convictions are shaken by a tone or a word choice, it is time to think long and hard about your commitment to any given value, especially in the arena of social justice, most especially in the area of racial justice.
So I am asking you, all of you, but yes, Jane, particularly you, to stay with me here.
First, on the issue of being ‘called out of your name’. I thought your word choice was interesting, since it comes from historically Black vernacular. It’s been used for years, and the Urban Dictionary defines it as using a pejorative in place of a name; for instance, calling me ‘Bitch’ instead of Lace.
That’s true, but it does not go far enough. While these days that is what it means, it has deep historical roots. White people were the first to ‘call out of name’, and they didn’t use ‘bitch’ or ‘heifer’ or even ‘mother#$%er’.
Usually the word they went to first and foremost was ‘Nigger’–when they were feeling more gracious they used ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ to adults, or ‘Uncle’ or ‘Auntie’, as in Uncle Remus or Aunt Jemima.
This is a big deal. It was to dehumanize, to enforce social strata, and to take away agency and the respect and dignity accorded to adults. Being ‘called out of name’ was a way to enforce white supremacy, and for white people to use it is, ahem, activating.
Activating, and also demanding of a brutally enforced moderation and regulation only expected of black people, never to their white counterparts. I refer you to the movie ‘The Color Purple’ when an insistence on the dignity of a name resulted in a brutal beating for the Oprah Winfrey character.
And this dynamic has continued to this day, in that black people are expected to remain calm, deferential and moderated when insults, both in word and deed are hurled at us, while, and this is so important, while white people can do with us whatever they want. Most white people know better than to use the word Nigger, but they have exchanged it for other words: ‘urban’, ‘thug’, and the like.
This brings me to my second point, that white people, even when they say they are ‘down’, have explicit, or even more problematic, implied terms by which they expect to be able to engage, and if those terms are perceived to be breached or broken, can then, and all too often do, allow themselves to disengage from both the given conversation and crucially, from the struggle itself.
This is white supremacy. What I said above about plain speech feeling like insubordination holds here. Again, this is important, because one of the important parts of liberation is to look each other in the eye, both actually and metaphorically, neither looking up in supplication, nor down in contempt and derision.
This is a skill white people manage to do with each other, but because part of white supremacy rests in allowing, even encouraging, the degradation, dehumanization of and contempt for black people, it’s a skill that has never been durably learned by white people towards black people. Insisting on strong standards for others while carving out space for the aforementioned is something white people do on the daily, not just in their words, but in their nonverbal interactions with black people.
This is especially problematic with white women towards black women. Considering their own oppression by white men, one would think they would be more empathetic, more willing to cede, given the prevailing dynamic, and less apt to insist on this toxic double standard. As a group though, they are not. This has infected the entire work of racial justice.
And it must be acknowledged, confronted, and dismantled. This is why we are going to be looking as much at internal processes, and how the interpersonal is the political, as we are going to be looking at what most people think of as the work itself.
A story: a few years ago, in 2016, I was asked by the Peace Resource Center in my city to do a multi part seminar on racial justice, with a focus on relational ethics. Fully the first two sessions were spent on creating an airtight ‘safe space’ for the white people attending, with no thought given to what ‘safe space’ might mean to people of color. Not one of them thought they were displaying white supremacy; they just thought they were creating ‘respectful norms’. It was a dismal failure, and one of the reasons I created this space.
Centering and giving primacy to white people’s feelings and making sure that they feel good about this work cannot be the driving force; cannot be the axis on which the work turns. That it so often does is detrimental.
White people are absolutely catered to in this work. This is a function of power dynamic, of seeing this work as elective, of the tendency to find the nearest off ramp at any sign of rough road.
Finally for now, and I will say this mindfully, if you look carefully at your own writing, you will see an instance of your doing what you do not want done to you.
You said: ‘ i would never walk out on a conversation, particularly w. a black from whom i am learning.’
I paid attention to your word choices, and your use of ‘whilst’ suggests you use a different form of English than American, but using ‘a black’, rather than ‘a black woman’ or ‘a black person’ is in itself an insult; an instance of ‘calling out of name’.
I gently suggest that this is a (only seemingly) minor, but real example of exactly what we have been talking about here. If I were fixating only about the tone, I could very well have allowed that very triggering phrase to make me check out of the conversation entirely. But I did what black people so often do (because we have to), and white people so often don’t do– which is to consider the context, give benefit of the doubt, and not allow my activation to keep me from the larger point.
Enough for now. This is a good dialog.
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So community, I solicit your thoughts, on any or all of the above, and I know a lot was covered. Again, no hearts or likes; just commentary and ‘done’.