sigelphoenix

I was reading ahead for my English class (trying to stay afloat above the workload) and got to an article that my professor assigned for next week. It's by Shelby Steele, a conservative black writer on race relations in the U.S. The article is an examination on how efforts against racism have concurrently increased white guilt and decreased black individuality. It's not bad, really; I'm not going to condemn a piece of writing just because it's "conservative." However, it does fall into the common trap of overbalancing the criticism onto the side of the oppressed rather than the privileged - in essence, complaining about a bad reaction to a bad action, when the real problem is the original action itself.

Anyway. Steele's perspective is still worth discussing. But in my English class? In a course that wasn't positioned as a political or ethnic studies course, and therefore just has "normal" students (in the case of my school, they're probably "normal, liberal" students). I don't trust normal (even liberal) students to discuss issues of oppression, because normal liberals are trained to be "color-blind" or "gender-blind." They see political movements such as anti-racism and feminism to be "divisive," "biased," or based on "identity politics."

I foresee a lot of, "Well, this guy kind of has a point, I mean, I'm not racist or anything, but, you know, black people should probably take more responsibility, I mean, I don't see racism anymore" bullshit.

Why, yes, I'm being cynical! And yes, it's partially because this class is the one I was complaining about last time for being, in essence, "gender-blind." They failed to see structures of power instead of individual "issues." They failed to acknowledge how ideology pervades our popular images (and that's even one of the major points on the course syllabus). I don't hold out hope that their treatment of race will be much better - my class is majority female, and we failed miserably at discussing sexism. In contrast, I am one of about three people of color.

I don't even know if I can count on my professor. Even though I remember enjoying her class back in sophomore year because she examined the context that race relations provided for American literature, I don't know if I can trust her approach to race. See, in my sophomore year I was pretty fully entrenched in color-blind liberalism, so the fact that I was impressed by her take on race doesn't provide any guarantees.

*sigh* Will it be that bad? In the end, probably not. It will probably end up being one or two students spouting aversive racist crap, the rest of the students failing to participate at all, and me silently seething in my chair. And possibly speaking up. If I'm optimistic, I'd say that I might have a couple of people actually bring up the responsibility of white racism.

In stark contrast, there's my Women Studies class. It is a haven. I love it.

I go there every Monday and Wednesday, and I relax, resting easy in the knowledge that I am joining people whom I don't have to explain myself to, who don't need Feminism 101, who don't think that examining oppression is "dragging out the past" or "asking for special treatment" or "blaming [insert privileged group here]."

We analyze. We discuss. We share personal anecdotes. We digress to related issues in order to draw the connections among pieces of the sexist structure. No one has a shitfit over the use of the term "patriarchy."

Today we started talking about instances of questionable victimhood, where something happens but we don't respond in the expected way that a "victim" does - we don't scream, we don't get injured, we don't call the police, we may not even feel traumatized. To be specific, we brought up the example of sexual harassment by men through public masturbation. As you probably know, men will draw the attention of a woman to their masturbation in order to win the momentary power-trip of being able to shock her. It happens in public, in or around homes, to women and to girls.

But often, we don't know how to respond - I mean, it is shocking, and it's so unexpected it confuses us. At the same time, it isn't a direct physical attack - we don't know what to do, if we should respond, or if drawing attention to ourselves would be embarrassing, provoking, or - heaven forbid - rude. (I say that sarcastically, but that is actually something that prevents a lot of women from speaking up about sexual harassment of all forms. The unspoken societal commandment is that women don't assert themselves in a way that would be inconvenient to others, especially men; and this holds even/especially when men are doing something that violates us.)

We shared stories of various forms of harassment back and forth for a while, but we stuck to this one scenario for a bit. One classmate finally asked, "Okay, how many of us have actually had this happen to us?" Nearly everyone raised her hand, and another classmate said, half-jokingly, "Now I'm just waiting for this to happen to me. Like, okay, when's it my turn?"

At this point, when we'd spent an hour or so talking about victimization, victimization of women, victimization of us - well, you either get really depressed or really punchy. This classmate had just told us how she chooses to walk around downtown after dark, by herself, because she doesn't want to be scared into hiding by sexist assumptions. So when she made her comment, another classmate cracked, "Well, since you do walk around at night, you've really earned it!" It's like a rite of passage, we said. And one classmate interjected, "It's a special time in a woman's life ..."

I busted up laughing. I also wanted to cry. Most of all, I just felt really glad to have this space, where people understood - understood the way the world works for women, understood why it's a problem, and also understood why we need to laugh about it. It's so tragic, it's absurd. What else are you going to do?

But by god, am I grateful for this class.