In this series of blog posts, I want to address the issue of danger from white allies. This week we'll talk about trust and what Brene Brown calls, the Cheap Seats.
1. I’m just Sharing my
Point of View
2. Anvil Screaming for
a Good Whacking
3. This is the Cheap
Seats Scenario
4. You Probably Just
have an Outlier Experience
5. Social Location
6. Omitting
7. Hallelujah We Know
the Way
8. Subtle Mistrust
11. Who Spends Himself on a Worthy Cause
12. If you’re Not
Interested in Getting your Ass Kicked, I’m
not Interested in your Feedback
13. Colosseum of War
14. Shake a Finger
15. Your Most Significant Bias
I’M
JUST SHARING MY POINT OF VIEW!?
One of the most problematic manifestations of privilege
and whiteness that I encounter online is the implied innocence of saying ‘I’m
just sharing my point of view’ on a post that speaks to someone else’s need for
acknowledgment for a less dominant experience.
Here’s an example from my experience with the online
plant –loving community:
I find a plant in my yard to be invasive; it’s
multiplying really quickly, it’s hard to get rid of, and it’s taking up too
much space in my yard despite my repeated attempts to remove it. I call that behavior “invasive” because for the
last 5 years, I have had trouble getting rid of a plant that acts like an
invader.
You, a reader on a plant lovers fb page, LOVE this plant
that has been giving me trouble. On our
common fb group feed, I publicly ask for ways to deal with invasive plants
because this plant is giving me trouble, but you tell me I’m calling a not
categorized non-native plant by the nomer, “invasive,” incorrectly. Technically, you say, I am wrong, it’s not
invasive. But you don’t talk about how
to get rid of said plant.
“But I’m just sharing my point of view!?” is a common
retort. You did share, but didn’t you miss the point of the thread?
I asked for help, and you told me I don’t need help
because I have an incorrect identification.
What’s more, you tell me it’s my fault that you responded
this way because of my use of grammar, and my poor choice of keeping the word
“invasive” so close to the name of that plant.
And then, for the rest of the thread, the one where I was
asking for help after having 5 years of experience, 100 white people also use
this time to tell me that this plant is not invasive and point out my wrongness.
ANVIL
SCREAMING FOR A GOOD WHACKING
Was I just making this shit up to be entertaining then?
Was I trolling the interwebs looking for abuse, like the anvil just screaming
for a good whacking?
And, did you notice how no one addressed the actual issue,
instead they chose to focus on NOT changing their minds about something they
already believed for a peripheral excuse, (in this example, my poor or
misleading grammar?)
THIS
IS THE CHEAP SEATS SCENARIO
This is the cheap seats scenario: I’m asking for help, I’m bringing attention
to something because I a) am telling the truth it really actually matters to
me, an b) I thought that you were the ones who might be able to help me.
But if my scenario or questions throws in to question
your pre-existing knowledge or experience or even assumption of that beloved
idea/thought/place/person/plant, watch out.
Now I am subject to your criticism for nothing other than your lack of
trust in the source, (me.)
YOU PROBABLY JUST HAVE AN OUTLIER EXPERIENCE
Here’s a question to hold as you engage with problematic
people such as myself: Do less dominant
experiences *actually* matter? When
you’re online, do you act like it? Or, do you use the moments at your computer
to be a righteous English-word wielding expert, happy to ignore the question
and the questioner in favor of espousing the tiny slice of your world that you
have had affirmed to you again and again?
Is this a question of human humility?
And doesn’t this speak to what Black, Indigenous and
brown folks have been saying for a long time about being heard, but not
listened to?
As an ally, it seems to me that the phrase, “That’s not
my experience,” SHOULD be code for, “…SO I’m gonna sit right down, shut up and
listen because clearly there’s more I should understand.” This is in direct opposition to what I find
happens most often, which sounds like, “Well, that wasn’t what I experienced,
so probably you just have an outlier experience.”
Written. Off.
I HAVE THE
OUTLIER EXPERIENCE ALL THE FUCKING TIME… WHHAAAATTTT????
SOCIAL
LOCATION
I have many privileges that are wrapped up in
my social location. I have to look at these every day and understand the way
that my ‘not challenges’ exist in positions of power that I hold. And I mean by “positions” my existence in a
space at all. The gardening group I
mentioned is a great example. I have no
power there, but I can wield the power of my mere membership by speaking up
when something feels unjust. That’s what
I mean by power. I’m not being *kept from* making those observations, until the
moderator closes the commenting on the thread after calling me, “entitled,”
(which has happened. He said I act as
though I am entitled to “special treatment” as if asking for an explanation of
the rules was special treatment. Ha.)
OMITTING
In the training I got through ArtEquity, there is a
rudimentary frame offered to use as a lens for having an ongoing analysis of
the systems of power that affect our lives.
Having a lens means letting my mind be changed, letting the lens change
when I get new information. I have to
criticially look at why I sometimes don’t
want to use my analysis…
Every time I find myself comfortable to ‘skip over’ the
importance of another voice in the spectrum of marginalized voices, I need to
ask myself: Am I benefitting from
*omitting* an analysis that this person offers?
What
do I GET if I ignore their point of view?
I use this analysis every day. It helps me to acknowledge 1) that I HAVE
POWER THAT OTHERS IN THAT CATEGORY DO NOT HAVE.
And with that realization, 2) that I am therefore responsible for USING
my power to acknowledge and support the less-represented voices in that slice
of identity.
If I acknowledge that someone else’s view is being
ignored, am I responsible for trying to understand their point of view? Or is omitting the acknowledgement much much
easier than searching for truth?
HALLELUJAH
WE KNOW THE WAY
But you know what shuts ALL of that ability to make
responsible choices down?
If I decide, in a moment of defensiveness, to NOT BELIEVE
that person’s position of less cultural agency.
Then all bets are off. Then their
point of view doesn’t matter anyway.
Then I can chime in with the dominant culture chorus and sing Leonard
Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, “…we know the way.”
Folks
who just don’t see how your marginalized experience could be possible, and then
assume innocence for “just saying what I think”, this is the same thing as
flinging insults at someone fighting a battle. This is cheap seats behavior-
they didn’t do much to get here, and now that they are, they are lustful for
blood rather than here to hold witness.
What
did you do that gave you the privilege to disqualify someone’s lived reality?
SUBTLE
MISTRUST
I was talking with my kids the other day about how I
experience racism specifically in the world.
I talked about being chased by neo Nazis at swimming holes, neo nazi’s
kids who chased me on their bikes throwing shoes at me, being threatened with a
raised hand by some guy in a sandwich shop, and many many experiences of sexual
assault while traveling in Europe. But
of all of that experience with abuse, (and I know I’ve not had nearly as much
mistreatment as many many others,) the most insidious, and harmful experiences
with bias were the quiet moments of subtle mistrust.
Racism isn’t all neo nazi’s and slander. It’s more often driving by a kids ball game
and being stared down by 3 menacing white men for no apparent reason. It’s knowing that I am more than qualified
for a position and seeing it again and again go to someone with less
experience. It’s being told I’m good for THIS category but not THAT category
even though I’ve articulated that THAT category is where I belong.
It’s subtle, persistent mistrust that puts me where the
dominant culture puts marginalized experiences:
off to the side. And when I enter the colosseum to do battle for
something that matters to me, it’s the quiet mistrust of the audience that say
that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I PROBABLY DESERVED TO BE
SKEWERED by the dominant force.
No one says it, OF COURSE. But in refusing to stay in communication with
me, by refusing to stay interested in my experience, by refusing to hold their
friends accountable for bad behavior, by refusing to stay interested in WHY,
the audience settles on a quiet, unspoken mistrust.
And I know what that shit smells like.
WHO
SPENDS HIMSELF IN A WORTHY CAUSE
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Roosevelt
“IF YOU’RE NOT IN THE ARENA GETTING YOUR ASS
KICKED, I’M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR FEEDBACK.”
Here’s what we SHOULD be doing:
We should shift to BELIEVING people rather than rejecting their different perception of the same thing/moment/circumstances/individual out of laziness….
The reference to Cheap Seats is sourced from Theodore
Roosevelt’s , “The man in the arena” quotation/story, but I heard it only
because it was used by Brene Brown in her book, RISING STRONG and to be honest,
her analysis of Cheap Seaters is much more on point than Roosevelt’s for me. She writes,
“A
lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto
the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe
distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop
feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined
by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need
to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not
in the arena getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”
A
COLOSSEUM OF WAR
“Cheap seats” is Brene Brown’s language, a kind of
classicist designation of worthiness by how much someone paid for their right
to be there in the arena… In this metaphor, Brown describes the act of stepping
into your marginalized experience in a colosseum of war. But we BIPOC folk, who have brought our
truest selves to the fore, in inhospitable environs, understand that we didn’t
build the colosseum of war… whiteness did.
I’m here in YOUR way of doing things. I’m fighting
because YOU choose to deal with a challenge in ideas as a struggle for
superiority rather than an opportunity to grow.
Us marginalized folks brought a couch with chips and low
key drinks with an earnest urge that our relationships stay relationships, and
not turn into political theatricality.
Us marginalized folks brought a lifetime of untimely ends
to relationships as motivation. I WANT
to make things personal, and keep them personal. We bought all the imbibes and
the mixers, because we want a different kind of conversation.
And to be honest, after coming with all the best of
ourselves ready to communicate, sometimes it feels like our white allies just
bought fucking tickets to be entertained.
SHAKE
A FINGER
A person once wrote me that I was in the wrong, as I
fought for my dignity in an arena of war.
I was in the wrong because I was “hurting their friends” by insisting
that a whole slew of their friends had acted irresponsibly as a
collective.
That person didn’t bother to question their own behavior
first, or ask me how I was doing in the middle of a very difficult moment in
the colosseum that I didn’t choose. They
simply wanted to get a word in and shake a finger at me because it’s because
that’s all they had to offer. Maybe they had never been in the colosseum
before, and didn’t know how expensive it is for the one on the arena floor. Or,
perhaps, maybe they had been in the colosseum and convinced that the dominant
force was “just the way it is.” Either way, this person came with the dominant
force energy of shaming, and I wasn’t having it.
I know that worthiness is not associated to whether or
not you paid a big fee to get into the arena, and so that is where Brown and I
depart in this metaphor.
But honestly, using the idea of the arena, I’d say that the
image of spectators being in the “seats” at all is inappropriate inappropriate
for the metaphor. We’re all in this
arena, and there is no designated seating. If you choose to sit and watch, why
don’t we try facing one another instead of watching provoked spectacles? Why
not speak from your own vulnerable place first rather than letting the outcome
of warriors tell us what to do or whom to believe?
Why not listen to our own hearts?
YOUR
MOST SIGNIFICANT BIAS
Please listen better, white allies, and remember that
when dealing with marginalized folks, your trust, above all else, betrays
your most significant biases.
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