The Privileges of Foot-Stompers

Earlier today I read a post on an author blog (passionate, full of truth bombs strategically dropped) that used the example of someone stepping on a person's foot as an analogy to explain what it's like for a person of color to deal with the problematic and privileged things people say, even when the foot-stompers in question are friends.

"It's like someone stepping on your foot and getting angry with you for saying 'um, ow, could you get off?'"

It got me thinking about the different ways white people react to being called out for saying or doing something racist. [It can apply to various types of privilege, of race, gender, sexuality, or socioeconomic status, but in this case, we're focusing just on race.]

Disclaimer: I am white, so while this is me trying to understand and frame the issue in a way that makes sense to me, it is also through my observations as someone with white privilege. Hopefully, I get it right, or at least, don't get it wrong in a way that hurts people of color.

Types of Privileged Foot-Stompers:

1. If you're lucky, you meet someone/are friends with someone who, even if they have privilege, walk carefully, so as to avoid stepping on someone's foot altogether. This strikes me as the Informed Ally. They might still step on your foot, but it tends to be a rare occurrence.

2. Then, you have the Newbie Ally. They know they should step carefully, but they don't know the way just yet, so they stumble a lot. They will step on feet, but they tend to apologize, and use the experience to try and avoid doing it again.

3. The Ignorant Ally/Neutral Privileged is someone who thinks they know where they are going and is walking pretty confidently to their destination. They may not be looking for feet to step on, but they also are not watching out for people's feet. They may apologize because they know they should, but they don't tend to look at their behavior, reflect, and change route.

4. The Arrogant "Ally" is exactly that. They think they know everything, they think they are an ally, but they don't really listen. They step on people's feet and say they didn't, or that it isn't their fault your foot was there. Apologies are begrudging, often insincere, and it becomes more about them feeling attacked for being called on the foot-stomping rather than the fact that they stomped on someone's foot.

5. The False Ally claims to care about the daily micro- and macroaggressions POC have to deal with/suffer from/try to survive, but they blatantly say and do things that show they either do not know or do not care. They stomp on feet and not only claim your foot shouldn't have been there, but that you must have put your foot there on purpose, in order to get it stomped. Why, you were probably trying to trip them. How could you do that to them? They've tried so hard to be a good person, and you know, people have stomped on their feet, too.

6. I don't have a good name for this last category. They're bigots. They're deliberate foot-stompers, out to hurt people because…who knows. Maybe they like hurting other people, maybe they were raised to stomp feet and don't want to think about changing, don't want to see that it hurts others, or maybe they are just so afraid of being called wrong that they double-down on their feet-stomping, because if they're louder and stomp more feet than anyone else, that means they're right.

Here's the take-away: Stepping and stomping on other people's feet is wrong, hurtful, and you should not do it. And if you do, apologize sincerely. If you have a moment of thinking, "It's not my fault! I didn't mean to!" keep it to yourself. It happens, stepping on others' feet. But even if it's unintended, you still hurt someone else. It doesn't matter if it was an accident or done out of ignorance. Apologize to them, then take a step back, look at the interaction. Was there something that precipitated the foot-stomping? Something you said or did that changed the interaction from friendly to foot-stompy? Think on it and try to change. But don't put the onus of your change on the person whose foot has been stepped on, they are already in pain, and they have probably had their foot stepped on multiple times that same day.

Words may not break bones the way sticks and stones will, but words still hurt like a thousand papercuts, or a million foot-stomps. Worse, words can sometimes inspire others to become foot-stompers. Think about what you say and what you do, educate yourselves. It's an ongoing process, but why harm when we can try to make the lives of others just a little less painful?

White Privilege

The past handful of days, the concept--and reality--of white privilege has been bouncing around my small corner of the internet. It's been even more prevalent for my friend and fellow writer, Xen.

As a response, he posted this reference guide for dealing with white privilege when you encounter it. He says it so well, I got his permission to post it here, so I hope and encourage everyone to read it and to think about their own behaviors and the privilege they might be benefiting from without even realizing it.

Xen Sanders on 'white privilege':

A handy-dandy reference guide on what to do when offering advice regarding white privilege and how to deal with it in society:

1. Look in the mirror. Are you white?***

2. If the answer is yes, please sit down, observe a respectful silence, listen to what people of color are trying to tell you, and remember that you are not in any way, shape, or form qualified to advise on this subject. If you think you are, please see step three.

3. Google "white privilege." Educate yourself about what it is. Do not get defensive; do not automatically assume it cannot be you because you just don't like the idea. You are not being attacked right now. You are not an awful person. No one thinks you're horrible. No one hates you. And no one is calling you a racist for enjoying white privilege, so don't worry about that, either; let's get past that right now and work past that defensive knee-jerk reaction. If you see signs of white privilege in your life, it doesn't mean you're a racist at all. It just means society subconsciously favors you, and you've never even been aware of it. That can change, but please don't expect sympathy or congratulations for realizing your privilege.

4. Look in the mirror again. Still white? Yeah, that's not going to change. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with being white, just as there's nothing wrong with any other color. What can change is you, and how you respond to the people of color--if any--in your life. It is never okay to tell people of color how they should feel about race issues. I'm sorry, it's just not. It's never okay to presume to speak for us, either. We are intelligent, well-educated people. We can speak for ourselves; the harder matter is actually getting people to listen when it doesn't impact your life if people who aren't like you don't enjoy the same privileges you do, and when sometimes listening involves an uncomfortable and embarrassing level of self-analysis. Also? You don't have to shout louder than we do to be an ally. Sometimes the best you can do is listen, ask questions, and try to empathize, even though you can never understand because it's not a life you've lived. We wouldn't expect you to. But we do expect you to realize that--that you do *not* understand what it means to live life in the role of a person of color, and no amount of advocacy will change that, and any claims that you "get it" are false and offensive.

Check your privilege. Check yourself.

Show a little respect, and we'll be happy to give it back to you.

***If the answer to #1 is "no," disregard #2-4, and just do your best to educate, advocate, and not bite the heads off your white friends if they need to be told over and over and over again because they're just not getting it.

Here's the link for his post: Xen Sanders' facebook status on white privilege 

And here's his website: Xenarchy

A Post of Linkage: Book Covers and Race in Fiction

~raises an eyebrow~ Oh sure, that doesn't sound daunting at all.

But this is a serious issue, and it seems that the reasoning by the production side of things revolves around excuses like "it won't sell" or "people don't want that."

Justine Larbalestier, author of the Magic or Madness trilogy and most recently, Liar, has written a couple of posts lately about the issue of race. One is about the liveaction movie of Avatar, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The newest post is about the cover for "Liar."

LIAR

In regards to Liar, the U.S. cover consists of a face, clearly female, clearly white, with straight hair covering her mouth. Theoretically, this is the main character, who is actually dark-skinned with short curly hair. Out of context, it's a nice cover, interesting, makes me curious about the story within. Taking in the context of the protagonist's ethnicity and appearance, the cover speaks to an old trend of "white washing." Larbalestier speaks eloquently about the issue, mentioning her own disgruntlement after various reviewers asked about the discontinuity.

Judging from the comments, it seems many "white" readers aren't hindered in their enjoyment of a book if the protagonist is a PoC. But there are some cases (I pause here to emphasize this is based on the comments I read and a general impression I've garnered over various blogs about race in literature--in no way do I believe my statements are gospel or founded in concrete numbers), where a PoC may not pick up a book with a character of color in it because there's a white person on the cover.

One of the points, as agent Kate Shafer Testerman expounds on, is that authors have little to no say about the covers of their books, i.e. whether there's a person on it or not, and if that person matches the description in the book. I, personally, enjoy seeing characters on the cover,but I'd like to assume those are accurate, that the artist is given at least a brief description. Jim Hines is lucky in that respect with the DAW covers for his fairy tale princess books, The Stepsister Scheme and Mermaid's Madness. But I think this is an especially important issue when the characters are PoC. It isn't something that should be frowned upon by publishers or prospective agents. If white readers aren't deterred by ethnic characters on the cover, but readers of color are deterred when the covers only project white characters, it seems all the more important to have characters of color portrayed.

AVATAR: The Last Airbender

Shifting to the Avatar film: I loved the television show. It was on Nickelodeon, and sometimes I had to hunt for it because they changed the days and/or times, but it was worth it. Lovely animation and an interesting story, centering around four kingdoms, each bearing strong Asian influences. The creators had consultants so those influences (especially in the fighting styles, but also, I imagine, on the clothing and archtecture) so it would be true to the various Asian cultures they're based on.

So why, oh why, is the liveaction film dunked in white characters? Where the only non-white actors are those playing villains? Here, Larbalestier quotes someone about why this may be, but the gist of the statement is that, for people who haven't been exposed to Asian culture, even the setting is a fantasy, not just the characters' magical control over the elements.

I find it incredibly unlikely that viewers will have had no experience whatsoever to Asian. Not a single Jackie Chan movie? Not a glimpse of anime on the Scifi channel (suffy channel now--yes, that's how I pronouce Syfy, but that's another rant), or a walk through the manga section of a bookstore?

I wonder if that is an assumption on my part, living in Hawaii, where these things are commonplace, but I'd like to think even the smallest small town in the most isolated area without a single Asian person living there, would have some sort of interaction with the culture. And I hope that the Asian influence on architecture, fighting styles, food and clothing are all still there, so why would the shape of a face or a tint of one's skin somehow throw a viewer out of the story or turn them off from watching the film?

~deep breath~

Ultimately, it seems like the issue is not with the people consuming the product, but with the people in control of how the product is viewed. Those people seem to be getting it wrong, adhering to older assumptions about consumers' reactions to people of color. I was wonderfully excited to hear about an Avatar movie. Now, even if the trailer looks intriguing, I don't know if I'm going to go. I don't want to encourage filmmakers to continue this. And I don't want to encourage booksellers, either.