"Typical White Woman", "Angry Black Man", Obama, Wright, and US Racism.

Hi. I'm a typical white woman. No, really, I am. I walk confidently around some of the blackest parts of Kansas City, but it's not because I'm comfortable around black men I don't know. It's because I know enough of the men I encounter to feel safe. When Obama said that his grandmother was a "typical white woman" in that she had an acculturated fear of black men that sometimes expressed itself, I got it. You know why? Because I have the disease of acculturated fear of black men myself.

I was annoyed at Barack for reminding me of my "inborn" (not genetically, but culturally determined) prejudice. I was more annoyed at my husband who pointed out that I have objected much less to the group of young white men who moved in next door (and smoke a lot of weed) than I did to the young black man (who smoked a lot of weed) who used to live there. Yeah, I'm not free from prejudice, not nearly as much as I'd like to be.

So in what ways am I different from the average "typical white woman"? On the one hand, I am generally more aware of my prejudices than the average. I work hard to overcome or alleviate them. Also, I am an integral part of the inner city system in Kansas City. I'm the "nice white lady" (that's a whole nuther post, possibly a book) through whom many inner-city people access systemic services. I don't kid myself that I'm an integral part of the community. I'm not. I'm a functionary, a person whose job it is to bridge the gap between the inner city and the larger white community institutions. I offer access and power that frankly shouldn't be mine to offer -- I make the best of a bad situation, but I'm constantly aware that I'm not only a part of the solution, I'm a part of the problem as well.

Interestingly, I've noticed a lot of the older women in my field, (mostly, but not all white) expressing extreme distrust of Barack Obama based on (what they say is) a perceived similarity to some of the charming middle aged men who populate the homeless community. Yeah, there's a similarity. Obama is charming, and a little chauvinistic, verbally facile, and black. The similarity ends there. The charming middle aged men I know in the Kansas City homeless community have, to a man, been denied dozens, perhaps hundreds of opportunities, because of their skin color, culminating through institutional, community and individual failures in (often) addiction, (often) physical and mental disabilities, and (often) long term homelessness. Obama had a lot of privilege in his background, despite his modest beginnings, compared to my clients. While he made some of the same personal mistakes his contemporaries in inner city Kansas City made (using cocaine is one example) he had enough privilege, as do most white people, to overcome those personal mistakes.

If I were to say to my colleagues who say that Obama is an empty suit lacking substance that they are perpetuating racial myths that they work against in their daily work, I would deeply offend them. I have tried, gently, to do just that, and have found enormous resistance. They are clinging to every slight gaffe he has ever made, and seem actually relieved at the discovery of the out-of-context sound bites of Wright's sermons. Because, you know, if Barack Obama is actually an angry black man, and only pretending to be a uniter, then their expression of their "inborn" (and usually deeply buried) prejudices is justified.

Angry black man. What pictures does that phrase drum up for you? Do you think of Malcolm X absentmindedly pushing his glasses back up his nose as he orates to an attentive crowd? Do you think of Mohammad Ali refusing to go to Vietnam? Do you think of a poor black man trying to get service in a de facto segregated place (a high- end department store, say, or an area of town devoted to tourists) and led away in handcuffs because he refused to back down and just accept injustice? What do you think of when you see the phrase "angry black man"?

I'll tell you what the right wing noise machine, the mainstream media, and to some extent the Clinton campaign want you to think of. They want you to think of Jeremiah Wright saying "God Damn America!" at the top of his lungs. They want you to think of Pastor Wright (who was actually quoting a white US Ambassador) saying "America, your chickens have come home to roost". And when you think of Reverend Wright, they want you to believe that those phrases are representative examples of his ministry, that he is fomenting revolution, creating a "fifth column" of Angry Black Men to take over the country. And they want you to believe (though you would never say it or even think it openly) that Barack Obama is a "Manchurian Candidate" that will usher in a new world order of black supremacy. And they get all of that from distributing out-of-context clips of a well-respected and well-educated black Chicago pastor getting fed up with the white supremacy that keeps many in his congregation from reaching their full potential. (h/t to digby at Hullabaloo and Glenn Greenwald at Salon for incredibly insightful blog entries that brought this together for me).

Futurebird over at livejournal, in the debunkingwhite community, pointed me to the first of several videos that put Wright's sound bites in context. I'm going to embed all of the ones I have found here, so that people have a "contextual resource" they can return to. I'm also including the (audio only) file of Obama referring to his grandmother as a "typical white woman". Further commentary after the embeds.


"God Damn America"


Remarks about Hillary: More Context part 1


Remarks about Hillary: More Context part 2


Barack Radio Interview "typical white woman" (requires flash)
(The embedding process was being stubborn, so this is a link, instead)

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a bit irritated at the "typical white woman" comment. Yes, I believe it was a prejudicial statement. However, it did not have the weight of institutional racism behind it. To illustrate, let me tell you a personal story:

Sir Dragoneyes, my youngest son, will be 11 in a few weeks. The event I'm about to recount here happened just over a year ago, when he was about nine years old. Keep in mind that I'm as open about discussing racism, feminism, and other interlocking institutional -isms at home as I am on this blog. Also keep in mind that SD is blond and blue-eyed, but also knows that his great-great grandmother on his father's side was a black woman who "passed". It's difficult to discuss racism and privilege with a young boy, to teach him about racial injustice, and about his own racial heritage, but also to try to explain that he can't fully appreciate "being black" because he has white privilege due to his phenotype, regardless of his ancestry.

Anyhow, SD goes to an elementary school in a working class town that was, as of the last school census, 84% white, with the remainder mostly Black and Hispanic, and where 57% of the students qualify for free- or reduced-cost lunches. He has attended there since kindergarten, and the school has gotten more diverse in those six years. However, most of the children of color he has in his class have been friends of his since kindergarten. One in particular, a truly beautiful little girl (inside and out) is part of his "inner circle" of friends. We'll call her "E". SD is a very bright child (okay, he's gifted, but don't tell him I said so. His ego is big enough already), and like many gifted children, when he gets bored he tends to stir things up just for something to do.

This particular day, he was eating lunch with E and a couple of his other friends. While he never actually admitted it, I suspect he was annoyed at E for something, and in retaliation, he lashed out at her, telling her that she was "just his slave". Yeah. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, he said that. One of the teachers heard him, and immediately went into damage-control mode. I got a call from the school telling me he was having a bad day, and why. He continued to be sullen and argumentative, and ended up in in-school suspension that day. When I got the call, I was in shock. Surely he understood that what he had said was worse than a playground taunt. Surely.

One of the odd things about privilege is that unless you make a conscious effort, you're often not aware of it. SD really didn't understand why it was so bad to refer to his African American friend as "his slave". Or so he says. Personally, I was fighting down an urge to disown him.

Apparently E was hurt and shocked, but she didn't want her parents involved, which, I'm sure, relieved the school no end. This is the same school that on "Founders Day" had the second grade class sing a remarkably racist song about Natives (the principal and I had a long talk about that). Yeah, working class, white neighborhood. You'd think it would be one of the "redneck" kids that would come up with something like that.

So SD and I sat down, and I stumbled around trying to find a way to tell him just how bad what he had said to his friend was. I started asking him about various playground epithets, and how bad (on a relative scale) they made him feel. Cracker. Wuss. Pansy. Redneck. Jerk. Stupid-o. Retard. After we rated them, I showed him that the ones related to his white race (cracker and redneck) were simply not as painful for him as those that essentially called him a girl or gay (misogyny or homophobia) or stupid (ableist). I asked if he could think of bad things that someone might call E. Yes, he knew the N word. No, he wouldn't say it. He understood that (somehow) it was far worse than Cracker or Redneck, but he wasn't sure how.

My inner teacher went into overdrive. I gave him a (very abridged and simplified) history of race in the US, starting with slavery. I discussed what being a slave meant, in extremely graphic terms. We searched for photos of slaves on the internet, and looked through the slave narratives collected by the WPA during the depression (online link here: don't click unless you have lots of time, it's fascinating). Finally, I helped him boil it down. By the time we were done, he understood that absolutely nothing E could ever say to him would be half so hurtful as him calling her a slave. SD calling E a slave had the weight of 400 years of institutional oppression behind it. "Cracker" had, um, the pride of working class whites from the south of Scots-Irish extraction?

SD formally apologized to E the next day at school, and they are still close friends. SD also learned a little about privilege that day.

I bet you're wondering where the hell I'm going with this. Only here. Obama called his grandmother a "typical white woman" and through extension of my "white woman-ness" called me the same. Other than in the context of those of us who strive not to be typical, in what way was that a pejorative? How did that hurt me? What institutional muscle is pushing against my self-concept here? Is it a misogynist label? If you want to stretch the definition of misogynist to calling a woman a woman, sure. Usually misogynists can find plenty of pejoratives that mean the same, though. Nothing Barack Obama can say about white people can be nearly as hurtful as epithets I'm sure he's had directed at him nearly daily since he became a politician, and regularly before that. (Sure, there are things he could say that are as hurtful to women, but I'm not in the mood for Oppression Olympics today). And the (shh, whisper it) charge of Angry Black Man can achieve what calling Obama a nigger could not: It allows racists to inject race into the political process while keeping their hands clean of the charge of racism themselves. Pat Buchanan already laid it out there plain as day:

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks - with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Note to readers: If you need to have the multiple fallacies and racist assumptions in the quoted text explained to you, this is too difficult a discussion for you. Go back to Instapundit.

Reverend Wright's speeches, contextualized, are well written, well delivered social justice sermons, very typical of his branch of Christianity and of the Black church. The right wing noise machine only have a weapon that they can effectively use against Obama so long as it remains on the level of sound bites. The good news is that the information is out there, so that the sound bites can be contextualized. The bad news is, many white people, whether consciously racist or simply "typical white people" in having been acculturated to fear black anger, will not seek past the sound bites as a way to justify their resistance to Obama in the context of a socially acceptable variant of racism. It's not okay to talk against black people per se, but it's perfectly acceptable, even in polite company, to draw up the specter of the angry black man and use him to demonize "some" black people.

Several prominent liberal writers and bloggers have already suggested that the best way to counter the sound bite attacks is to hold the spiritual advisers and supporters of Senator McCain to the same level, to hold McCain to the same level of competency about foreign affairs (which he has not met despite decades of experience), to hold McCain to the same level of competency regarding economics, etc.

Hang on, folks. This is going to be a hell of a ride.

(this was edited because I wrote it too quickly and it needed reworking. Deal.)