← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 20224 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-09-15
2005-09-15 12:44 | User Profile
Remember!: racism is the worstest-ever thing you could do, or think, or feel. Worse than murder, worse than arson, worse than dope-dealing...just about worse than anything except gay-bashing and rape (unless it takes place in jail, in which case the 'victim' is always a white man anyhow, so who cares? [I]Give 'im one for me, Bubba![/I])
And why is racism the ultra-worst of all crimes? Because black people can't be guilty of it. Ask Tim Wise if you don't believe me.
[url]http://salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2005/09/14/racism/index_np.html[/url]
I was a victim of racial violence in junior high
I know that I am not a racist, but years later I still react automatically.
By Cary Tennis
Sept. 14, 2005 | Dear Cary,
When I was starting junior high, my family moved to a medium-sized city in the Midwest. My parents bought a house in the best school district in the city and sent me and my brother to the public school around the corner.
At my public school, there was something called voluntary desegregation, which entailed packing poor (black) kids from the decaying inner city onto buses and sending them to the rich (white) school districts so they could get a better education than what was offered in the inner-city schools. The program was well intentioned and, with better implementation, could have been excellent. However, the administration hadn't thought to give teachers extra resources or training to help these kids, who faced some different challenges than the teachers were used to, nor did they think to give teachers, parents or kids any sensitivity training. Therefore, the cultural climate at the school was at best tense and at worst a disaster. There were black tables and white tables in the lunchroom, black and white hallways, black and white corners of the gym. The black kids and the white kids sat separately in the classrooms. All of this was student imposed and unspoken. This was my first experience with diversity.
The abuse started about halfway through sixth grade. I had not been able to make friends with any of my black classmates -- I was friendly, albeit somewhat socially awkward, but my overtures were rejected -- and one day, a black girl decided she hated me, as 13-year-old girls are wont to do. She and her friends, both male and female, began to beat me up, kick me, punch me, rip up my homework and deny it all to the teacher. I was once thrown down a flight of stairs and narrowly escaped breaking my neck. I appealed to the school, as did my parents, but the administration refused to punish the perpetrators, claiming that it would be taken as racism. I, however, would be punished for defending myself in any way. The administration followed through on this; my parents enrolled me in self-defense classes, and when I blocked a punch at one point, I was given an in-school suspension. My abusers were never punished.
To this day, I don't know why I in particular was targeted; who knows why kids target one another? In any case, this went on for two years, until the ringleader of the girls left the school -- I never found out why -- and the others slowly stopped beating me up, preferring to ignore me. By the time high school rolled around, I was no longer abused, except for the occasional "****ing cracker" comment, but the racial climate was such that the black kids and the white kids almost never spoke to or socialized with one another. Even the classes were mostly segregated, with my honors and advanced-placement classes being almost exclusively white and the remedial classes being almost exclusively black.
Looking back now, as a grad student in my early 20s, I can understand, to a certain extent, the sources of these tensions. I've studied my American history and read my Fanon, and I feel mostly compassion for my long-ago attackers. But I am furious at my old school district, not only for denying me the protection I needed but for allowing a more insidious sort of segregation to persist inside its walls and for denying many of the kids from the inner city the educational support they were due. But when you're 13 and vulnerable, and you can't figure out why people hate you so much that they want to hurt you, and nothing you can do will get them to stop, and no one will help you, you don't think in terms of civil rights and class divisions and historic injustices. You just see a group of people who hate you for no reason that you can fathom, and you're terrified of them.
And that's the problem. Part of me remains that scared 13-year-old. To this day, when I see a group of young black people standing together in a group, my heart starts to race and I have to force myself not to avoid them. If I'm standing on a train platform with a group of black youths, I am irrationally scared that they're going to push me in front of a train. My earliest experience with black people was incredibly traumatic, and I'm still feeling the aftershocks from that trauma. The fear has faded somewhat over the years, but every so often it flares back into life, and it makes me sick and angry with myself and ashamed.
I hate feeling like a racist, because racism goes against my deepest-held beliefs and values. I truly believe that race is a constructed concept and that all men and women are created equal, and my group of close friends is now very diverse and includes a lovely black woman. I'm getting an M.A. in post-colonial literature and theory. Intellectually and in practice, I am as far from being racist as one can get. But my fight-or-flight response is stubborn in its memory and it reacts to dark skin like a phobia.
Can you help me?
White Mask
*[color=purple]Dear White Mask,
I do not think you are a racist. Rather, I think you are a victim of racial violence. And, not surprisingly, you seem to have a kind of phobia related to these racist attacks. You are not to blame for your phobia any more than you are to blame for getting infections or having accidents befall you. Such things arise out of the environment you live in and your body's attempts at survival. Simply put, a phobia does not make you a racist.
If this habitual reaction troubles you, and I understand that it does, I suggest you seek treatment. One treatment that might work is this relatively new thing called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), which was first used, I believe, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and is now used for a variety of troubling phenomena. I've heard from many people that it has been helpful.
Generally speaking, you might also look into the many things that have been written about emotional intelligence; the term "emotional hijacking" comes to mind -- those situations in which, regardless of what we know to be true, our nervous systems react in a certain way. Such reactions are of course very troubling, because they do not accord with what we believe to be true. I think the message we should take away from such things is that no matter how much progress we make intellectually, we still respond to each other as animals; we remember slights and attacks as animals remember them.
Remember this: Those children had no right to beat you up. You did not deserve that. It is healthy to want to regain the power that was stripped from you. You describe very eloquently the evil of such attacks; they strip you of personhood; they strip you of value and consequence; they strip you of humanity. It is a deeply traumatic and humiliating experience; if you were not traumatized by it one might wonder whether you were in some sense in denial.
So why is it troubling to feel anger toward our attackers in such situations? In what way can one's attackers not be responsible for what they are doing? Is it because they themselves are perceived to also be victims?
What other awful dilemma does this resemble?
Is it like the dilemma of being abused by one's parents, in which one cannot destroy one's attacker because the attacker is also responsible for one's survival? Or, in this case, one cannot destroy one's attacker because one believes that one's attacker is in some sense righteous and that one is, in some sense, deserving of attack? That is also the abused child's dilemma, no? -- that one must be bad because one is being attacked and one's attacker is tautologically good?
Is that it? Or is it also that resisting one's attacker, who is infinitely stronger, invites more devastating attacks, so that passive acquiescence seems to offer survival? That is the tragic calculation a slave makes when he refuses to attempt escape, and it is the lifelong habit of passivity that victims of violence sometimes adopt.
And what of the situation in which one's attacker is in some sense a symbol of oneself, who also feels powerless and like a victim? That is, if one feels powerless, and is attacked by someone whom one also characterizes as powerless, then one may be paralyzed by empathy and identification. But this characterization is patently false. How can one's attacker possibly be powerless? It is a contradiction. If one's attacker were literally powerless, he could not be attacking. One's attacker may be powerless in certain abstract ways, but in the moment of the attack there is only one thing going on: You are getting attacked. You can either fight back or run. It is very simple in an animal sort of way. And yet we complicate it. We complicate it because of course it is rife with contradiction. And it may be this complication that makes the abuse more difficult to get over.
So the solution seems to be to try to separate the two phenomena, one intellectual and one physical. That is not easy for humans or animals.
I had a conversation the other day with a woman at the dog park who was walking a mongrel who had been tortured. She described some of the horrific treatment that the dog had received before being rescued. It was physically revolting just to hear it; I will not repeat it here. The dog was actually doing quite well now, but one of its few remaining problems was that it was terrified of white vans. Every time it saw a white van, it trembled. It didn't matter who was in the white van. It might have been the dog's owner, its rescuer, driving the white van. Still it trembled.
Now, if the dog wanted to overcome the terror of white vans, it's possible it could. It could show itself pictures of white vans and try to lessen the autonomic response. Humans can do this. We can attenuate our responses to stimuli through repetition, if we are sufficiently determined.
Regardless of what you believe in your heart and know to be true intellectually, your body will occasionally respond in unwanted ways to stimuli that recall past trauma. Luckily, there are treatments for such things.[/color] *
2005-09-15 13:11 | User Profile
IR,
I don't know who the bigger idiot is in this sad tale, the woman beaten or the nitwit who offerred the advice. This should go to MootFront. [QUOTE]The program was well intentioned and, with better implementation, could have been excellent. [U]However, the administration hadn't thought to give teachers extra resources or training to help these kids, who faced some different challenges than the teachers were used to,[/U] nor did they think to give teachers, parents or kids any sensitivity training.[/QUOTE] Yes, I have to agree with this, the teachers did need more training in such techniques as use of a riot baton, mace, hand to hand combat, etc. Not equiping them with such knowlege is akin to throwing them to the wolves. The "sensitivity training" is a load of psychobabble. What in the hell are they going to teach them? That all Whites possess an inner "Blue Eyed White Devil" waiting to get out and therefore it is up to them to bend over backwards to "prove" they aren't "racists"? The [I]advice giver[/I] writes about animals. Well, here is a case where that is true. An animal can sense fear in another creature and the White teacher being disarmed by "sensitivity training" is put in a position that these preditors can sense and see as a person unsure of him/herself and attack accordingly. [QUOTE]Or is it also that resisting one's attacker, who is infinitely stronger, invites more devastating attacks, so that passive acquiescence seems to offer survival?[/QUOTE] This is crap. Failure to respond to Negro violence will only guarantee you will receive more of it. Responding with the utmost violence stands an excellent chance of convincing them to leave you the hell alone if they see you are willing to fight even if you come off for the worse. If you aren't killed outright, the chances are you will be left alone for the mindset of most Blacks is that of a bully. They don't want to take a chance of getting roughed up themselves. I can attest to this from first hand experience.
2005-09-15 14:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Failure to respond to Negro violence will only guarantee you will receive more of it. Responding with the utmost violence stands an excellent chance of convincing them to leave you the hell alone if they see you are willing to fight even if you come off for the worse.[/QUOTE]
The remarks above are accurate and wise. There will always be some White guy who won't fight back*, and that's the one they want to prey upon, just as hyenas instinctively seek out the weak, the elderly, and the chronically ill when on hunting excursions.
*Whatever you do, please do not be that guy.
2005-09-15 21:47 | User Profile
The funny thing is I don't think this is a woman. I find it hard to believe a 13-year-old girl would be abused by male nogs without sexual abuse, rape or the constant threat of rape being a [I]big [/I] part of the daily picture. "She" never mentions any such behavior amid the litany of mudshark harassment detailed in the letter.
I'm getting an M.A. in post-colonial literature and theory...
Better to have majored in just-plain-colonial literature and theory. At least "she'd" understand the nature of the enemy a lot better.
2005-09-16 00:40 | User Profile
I doubt she/he exists at all outside of this Cary Tennis's My Documents folder...
2005-09-16 01:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]I doubt she/he exists at all outside of this Cary Tennis's My Documents folder...[/QUOTE] I'll second that notion.
AE
2005-09-16 02:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]I doubt she/he exists at all outside of this Cary Tennis's My Documents folder...[/QUOTE]I hope not. That has to be one of the most pathetic things I have ever read.
[QUOTE] But I am furious at my old school district, not only for denying me the protection I needed but for allowing a more insidious sort of segregation to persist inside its walls and for denying many of the kids from the inner city the educational support they were due. [/QUOTE]Do people like this even bother to do something called "think', even for a second? Didn't he/she say this was "self-segregation?" what is he/she suggesting the school should have done about this force the black and white students to sit together,etc completely taking away their choice to be around who they wanted to? maybe then the niggers wouldn't be kicking his/her ass everyday. And if there were some more inner city niggers given the "opportunity",to attend his/her school, everything would have been just peachy.lol! If this isn't the perfect example of 100% brainwashed moron "think" I don't know what the hell is!
[QUOTE]Even the classes were mostly segregated, with my honors and advanced-placement classes being almost exclusively white and the remedial classes being almost exclusively black.[/QUOTE]I suppose this is because of racism too. Oh, that's right, the niggers were not given the "educational support" they deserved.:crybaby:
[QUOTE] The fear has faded somewhat over the years, but every so often it flares back into life, and it makes me sick and angry with myself and ashamed.
[/QUOTE] this is the kind of retarded thinking that could get someone killed.
2005-09-16 11:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]I doubt she/he exists at all outside of this Cary Tennis's My Documents folder...[/QUOTE] Weisbrot,
I would like to think you're correct here, but after listening to "Liberal" talk radio concerning Katrina, I'm afraid such creatures do exist. Too bad these folks don't realize how pathetic they sound with their self hatred and their attempts to out do one another in who can trash Whites, particularly Southerners, the most.
2005-09-16 13:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Weisbrot,
I would like to think you're correct here, but after listening to "Liberal" talk radio concerning Katrina, I'm afraid such creatures do exist. Too bad these folks don't realize how pathetic they sound with their self hatred and their attempts to out do one another in who can trash Whites, particularly Southerners, the most.[/QUOTE]
Good points, but this "letter" just doesn't pass any smell tests. It sounds more like Tennis's version, kosher or not, of tikkun olam. These guys comfort themselves with the self-assurance that they're educating the genetically racist white liberal world about how their natural reactions to predators are profoundly wrong; there's no reason to bother with little distractions such as plagiarism or an objective approach. While most journalists get by with techniques like selective omission or heavy-handed emphasis, some of these crusaders like Scoop Tennis here:
[IMG]http://blogs.salon.com/0001118/images/2003/03/07/tennis.gif[/IMG]
Tennis's invention is necessary to get us all along to the crucial, Adornoified truth he needs to strap onto us:
[QUOTE]Regardless of what you believe in your heart and know to be true intellectually, your body will occasionally respond in unwanted ways to stimuli that recall past trauma. [B]Luckily, there are treatments for such things[/B].[/QUOTE]
We are all in need of treatment from the enlightened. Anyone who watched news coverage from the first 48 hours after the levee broke or who read the numerous eyewitness blogs and accounts from ground-zero NOLA would be, in Tennis's (or any other of the growing breed of crusader journalists) ideal world, a candidate for Relearning.
I hereby put up a year of Walter Yannis's salary against Cary Tennis providing proof that this letter isn't a product of his poofster imagination. And I might throw in a bone for those "liberals" who could prove those call-ins aren't for the most part setups, just like I think this White Mask seems to be.
2005-09-16 13:08 | User Profile
Weisbrot,
You may be right. I don't doubt for a minute that alot of this stuff is made up.