Just to further clarify a point, yes I think what can be initially characterized as “stonewalling”, when the action is not understood, can ultimately be a fair treatment when the reasoning for such behavior is better understood, which would then most likely change the description of said behavior from “stonewalling” to something perhaps less inflammatory or accusatory. Or maybe “stonewalling” remains the accurate descriptor. Either way, i think its possible for that behavior to be justified.
Ambivald, if you used the words “how can we fix this” or “what should we do” then that might explain your friend’s response. (I don’t know what you said, because you haven’t really described your side of the conversation).
It could have been, from Mark’s perspective:
Here I am, venting about how the the problem is in white patriarchy.
Here comes my white friend inviting me to start solving the problems with white patriarchy.
Uh, yeah no dude, that’s on you as a white person.
It might also be as simple as, he just didn’t want to try and open your eyes. Maybe he doesn’t go to Facebook for the thrill of critical thinking like you do - no doubt, if he attempted to present a solution you would start picking it apart like MandaJO described. That’s literally what critical thinking means. You might be motivated by the possibility of finding a better way to address the black man’s plight, but from his perspective you would appear to take pleasure in shooting down his hopes for a better world.
It’s not clear to bystanders (who don’t know you) that you are asking in good faith. You can’t rely on inflection or body language to reinforce your sincere desire to understand.
You would be a buzzkill to a venting session. Perhaps this explains the responses.
~Max
Well actually Mark was posting no words of his own. So if this was in fact a tried and true venting session then it was expressed vicariously through the words and ideas of those people whose posts he chose to share. It was precisely because he only shared the words of others and contributed none of his own, in addition to the fact that while the shared posts discussed the what and why and how of this white supremacist patriarchy, they were notably silent on anything re the hows of combating this patriarchy, that i asked him what he thought about ways of combating the problem.
And ive talked about this rather extensively at this point, up until this latest interaction, Mark and I have shared substantial time on FB debating issues and having discussions in good faith. Ive had more substantial interactions with him than perhaps any other FB friend i have, with the possible exception of one or two others. He and I are pretty familiar with each other and he knows i always interact in good faith, and I, him.
As you acknowledged, people aren’t obliged to fight your ignorance. The only way you can find out why this particular friend of yours didn’t want to fight your ignorance on this particular occasion is by asking him. Even then, he is not obligated to give (much less debate) an answer.
Maybe that’s disappointing to you. It shouldn’t be - you shouldn’t be disappointed when you don’t receive a gift that was never promised to you.
~Max
Wow. Thanks for that gift. Jesus. I was never disappointed only confused and perplexed. And my god, how did the simple fact of not getting a response that i understood to a simple ask for a person’s opinion on a post they shared on social media turn into me “not receiving a gift that was never promised to me”? Fucking christ almighty. I asked a dude about his take on a post he shared on FB. Lets not lose sight of what this actually was, ok? I need to retire for the night from this thread. My composure is beginning to wear thin and that’s a sign i need to step away. Night all.
Double post
Possibly. They didn’t do anything except be abused. Better to talk to the abusers.
It sounds like the guy didn’t read your question as a sincere request to have ignorance fought, which would explain the rudeness of his response.
If it were me, I’d probably would’ve ignored you. And this is even with me assuming your question was in good faith. A white person cold calling you asking “what I can do about racism?” is like that annoying person who walks into the middle of a long, complicated movie and wants someone to clue them into the plot. That’s not a simple request. That’s an imposition.
There’s also this thing called emotional labor. The term is used a lot in reference to the invisible work women often assume because their male partners don’t take responsibility for it. Work like sending the thank you notes, planning the family vacations, remembering the birthdays, arranging the play dates, etc. But the frustration doesn’t just come from the endless toil and lack of appreciation for it. It’s the frustration of also having to deal with “well why didn’t you just tell me what to do?” when the woman finally confronts the man about the labor imbalance. Asking for help might seem to be the obvious answer to this problem, but it’s not as simple as that. Managing another person is labor too, and something ain’t right if a grown man has to be told to help when he sees his wife swamped with a basket of clothes to fold, a pot of water boiling over on the stove, and a crying baby. Her failure to utter the magic words “help” is not the problem. It’s him.
Yowzers, maybe I went over the line there. Confused and perplexed makes sense, but I think it’s unusually introspective of if I were to mull over it long enough to reach the question of “how can you fight that of which you are ignorant?”
Unusually introspective isn’t bad, and you aren’t here in front of me for my voice or body language to tell you this isn’t an insult. It’s not.
The answer is ironically to seek out the unknown, either directly or by asking other people. The irony is that you already knew that, and so did your friend when he told you to look elsewhere. It’s not a laughing kind of irony, just a sort of sigh.
~Max
Sorry, i really am getting ready for bed so im not going to reply to the rest of your post. But i really like and respect you so i wanted to address this one part. I bolded the sentence i wanted to ask you about in particular. Am i merely sleep-deprived and misreading this or are you actually trying to say that i just approached him without a pre-existing context that made it a very normal behavior?
I don’t know how you approached him. It’s possible I missed this detail in the OP (it’s rather lengthy and my eyes are tired) and it’s also possible I missed you explain this in a subsequent post. If there was some build up that I’ve overlooked, then what I said might not apply.
I’ve had white people ask me what they can do to fight racism, and I never know what to say. I mean, I’m not some radical militant person. I’m not a psychologist, a sociologist, or a preacher woman. “Just be kind to people” is what I’m always tempted to say, but racism is much deeper than people just being rude or stingy. And we all know racists have a best friend who’s black, so just being kind isn’t enough.
I also kinda feel like the person asking me that question is looking for absolution rather than solution. Like they are looking for me to assure them they are good whitefolks doing their very best. Well, I don’t wanna play that game.
“Google is your friend” is a glib answer and I totally get why it is frustrating to hear, but it actually makes a lot of sense. The internet is full of racism. Racist commentary, racist videos, articles about racism, etc. Racism isn’t some hidden thing that only black people are privy to. Maybe pre-internet that was the case, but not now. So if you really want to fight racism, you’ve got a battleground right in your living room. You don’t have to march in the street to be an activist. Shouting down racists edgelords and supporters of edgelords isn’t going to change the world, but it is doing something. And it isn’t that hard to do. You just have to care enough.
Then don’t expect anything to change.
It’s not going to bother them much.
To be fair, a lot of white people are starting to complain about racism too so maybe it’s working.
Bottom line that I think most here can agree on - there may be a venue and a time to have that conversation with this person who you have real world and virtual world relationships but his FB feed sharing that post wasn’t it. Minimally it was perceived as hijacking from what it was, which was not for you and your needs, to being about you. His honest answer may very well be: “fuck if I know what you as an individual white dude can do, but this post isn’t about that, so what you can do now is just be quiet and let us emote without thinking about you at all.”
I still do believe that there is, in general, too much posturing and too little mutual listening but there is a place for venting that should be respected and not intruded upon.
No particular good reason why he should be a great source for solutions, any less ignorant about that than you. He is great source for what his experiences are and how they differ from those experiences of we who have had intersectional privileges.
The crime victim analogy is not a horrible one. The victim is expert on their experiences but is no expert on how to reduce crime. They are expert on how different response to crime might feel to them, about their reaction to the need to punish the criminal versus restorative justice, and such. When they are expressing anger about being the victim of a crime may not be the best time and place to ask what you do to help reduce the crime that you may be ignorantly complicit in.
Somewhat separate subject - as a white dude I think that reassuring any of us that we are one of the “good whitefolks” is dumb. It is the simplistic good guy bad guy cartoon view of issues that are not so simple. Those of us of good intentions, white, Black, LatinX, Asian, whatever, all have internalized stereotypes that impact our behaviors that we need to work to make ourselves more consciously aware of, are ignorant cogs in institutional machines that perpetuate inequities intergenerationally. My personal role in racism is not of a malintent but that does not absolve me. Once we categorize ourselves simplistically as one of the good guys we let ourselves off the hook of looking at our own behaviors with the critical eyes they deserve. (Of course this applies to everyone of all skin tones and identities.)
Well, also in fairness, after a certain number of traffic stop videos you kinda gotta figure enough wounds have been bared already.
This assumes PoCs hurting is the only way to affect change.
Believe me, I know from experience that is not the case.
The “hurting” is largely metaphorical here. We were talking about “baring wounds” which another way of saying that you have to educate white people because without your efforts there are very few white people who will actually educate themselves. And without educated white people, you don’t have the political or societal support necessary for the necessary changes.
Too many of the white people who think they are “woke” are only woke at a “meme” level of understanding. They understand racism in bumper sticker slogans and with about as much depth and complexity of a teenager.
So if you want to tell white people that racism is their problem so they should go and figure it out themselves, they will almost assuredly figure out the wrong things or just say “fuck it, I guess it’s not much of a problem after all”
The problem that a lot of black people have is that the racism is kind of hard to explain without making it sound somewhat trivial compared to their own feelings. Some of that is due to over-sensitivity developed over centuries of racism and some of it is due the fact that racism is in fact much reduced over the last 60 years so that the racism that remains is more difficult to identify and articulate.
I was thinking this too. The type of person who is going to go through a lot of effort to figure this out is likely the kind of person who already is enlightened on the matter. If someone who is ignorant on the matter tries to work through it on their own, I would think they would be making a lot of incorrect assumptions about the nature of the problem and likely come to incorrect conclusions. And not just with racism. This seems like it would be a common pattern with any type of similar situation. If the person with the problem expects the person without the problem to figure things out on their own, there’s a good chance the problem won’t be fixed.
Meh.
It takes a certain level of willful ignorance to be unaware of significant racism that continues to exist in our society. Most Americans, inclusive of just white Americans, are not that willfully ignorant. 68% of whites recognize “that racial discrimination against blacks is a serious problem in this country.” That’s the issue that baring your hurts informs others about. And maybe that shouting down edgelords can have some small impact on.
The disconnect is at the level of understanding what privilege means. While 47% of white Americans understand that “white people benefit from advantages in society that black people do not have”, half do not. The people in the best position to make an impact on the half that do not get that, to explain how the intersection of race and economics is more than additive, are the near half of whites who do. And the sell is hardest to those whites who do not experience themselves as having privilege at all, who experience themselves as dropping down the SES ladder, most often those whites without college education, or those who even while doing well on the ladder feel they (or theirs) are discriminated against.
Making that sale is just the first, albeit very necessary, task. Doubt Ambi’s friend has any special insight on how to do that. I don’t either. The next task, that is a job for all of us, is then what to do at a policy level to impact that fairly and effectively, IOW, better than we have, and selling those actions politically.