His words rang out with an unmistakable certitude. “This is the most racist place I’ve ever lived,” said the man sitting across from me, a black writer and poet whose acquaintance I had only made earlier that day. His expression made it clear that this was no mere hyperbole spat out so as to get a reaction. He meant every word and proceeded in about twenty minutes to lay out the case for why indeed this place where we were talking — San Francisco — was far more racist, in his estimation than any of several places he had lived in the South. Worse than Birmingham. Worse than Jackson, Mississippi. Worse than Dallas. San Francisco. Yes, that San Francisco. From police harassment to profiling to housing discrimination to a persistent invisibility he’d felt since first arriving, there was no doubt that the ostensibly liberal enclave was head and shoulders above the rest. And it wasn’t his opinion alone. I have heard similar feelings expressed about the Bay Area by peoples of color many times since, as well as about Seattle, Portland, and any number of other supposedly progressive paradises where various “alternative” types (of white folks at least) seem to feel at home. Even those who wouldn’t rank a place like San Francisco as the most racist city in which they’d lived, are often quick to insist that its racism is comparable to what they’ve experienced elsewhere, which is to say, no less a problem. When I’ve recounted these discussions with folks of color living in “progressive” cities to my white liberal friends, they have usually recoiled in shock, followed by a kind of white leftie defensiveness that was, sadly, unsurprising. Their responses to the news that black and brown folks don’t find the history of the Haight-Ashbury district, or the Summer of Love all that inspiring — after all, when Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead were entertaining white hippies in the Fillmore, black folks were fighting for their lives across the way in Oakland — often suggest a desire on their part to believe that the people to whom I’d spoken were seeing things. Unfortunately the pattern is all too common. If people of color complain about racism and discrimination in rural Georgia, no one is surprised. In fact, to many the image is comforting as it fulfills every stereotype, regional and political, that so many folks continue to carry around regarding who the bad guys are. But suggest that racism and discrimination are also significant problems in more “progressive spaces,” even among self-proclaimed liberals and leftists themselves — and that it might be unearthed in our political movements — and prepare to be met with icy stares, or worse, a self-righteous vitriol that seeks to separate “real racism” (the right-wing kind) from not-so-real racism (the kind we on the left sometimes foster). And know that before long, someone will admonish you to focus on the “real enemy,” rather than fighting amongst ourselves. “What we need is unity,” these voices say, “and all that talk about racism on the left just divides us further.” But such arguments, in addition to being terribly convenient for the white folks who typically spout them — since it relieves us of having to examine our own practices and rhetoric — are also horribly shortsighted. Only by addressing our own racism (however inadvertent it may be at times) can we grow movements for social justice. By giving short shrift to the subject, internally or in the larger society, we virtually guarantee the defeat of whatever movements for social transformation we claim to support. It’s worth recalling that at the height of the civil rights movement it was not merely conservatives and reactionaries who were the targets of the freedom struggle. Indeed, some of the harshest criticism was reserved for moderates and even liberals, whether the white clergy whom Dr. King was chastising in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” or Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. In the case of the latter two, neither their relative liberalism (when compared to their political opponents) or party affiliation insulated them from the legitimate ire of peoples of color and their white antiracist allies. Going back further we should recall that it was perhaps the nation’s most progressive president, Franklin Roosevelt, who not only OKd the internment of Japanese Americans, but who was also willing to cut out virtually all African Americans from the key programs of the New Deal so as to placate southern segregationists in his own party (1). Capitulating to racism, and even practicing it, has a sad pedigree on the left of the spectrum as with the right. And it is time we faced this fact honestly. Distinguishing Racism on the Left from Racism on the Right That said, and before detailing what liberal and progressive racism often looks like, let me be clear: racism on the left is not exactly the same as its counterpart on the right. Whereas conservative theory lends itself almost intrinsically to racist conclusions, for reasons I explained in the first essay, liberal theory is generally egalitarian and intuitively antiracist. Liberal and left-leaning folks typically endorse notions of equality in both the political and economic realms. Likewise, most all on the left outwardly reject the attribution of biological or cultural superiority to racial groups. And those on the left are quick to acknowledge and decry the systemic injustices that have been central to the creation of racial disparities in the United States. So too, virtually all the activists in the civil rights struggle, contrary to the revisionism of folks like Glenn Beck, were decidedly to the left. Liberals and left-radicals populated the movement and provided its energy, while leading conservatives like William F. Buckley and his colleagues at The National Review published paeans to white supremacy in which they advised that integration should wait until blacks had progressed enough, in civilizational terms, to be mingled with their betters. Dr. King — even as conservatives like Beck have tried to co-opt his message and his legacy — put forth a consistently progressive and even leftist politics, in terms of his views on race, as well as economics and militarism. But despite the overwhelming role of liberals and leftists in the struggle for racial equity, and despite the antiracist narrative that dovetails with left philosophy, liberal and left individuals and groups in practice have manifested racism in a number of ways. Racism 2.0: White Liberals and the Problem of “Enlightened Exceptionalism” For years, the insistence by whites that “some of (their) best friends” were black was perhaps the most obvious if unintentional way for these whites to expose their broader racial views as anything but enlightened. Whenever we as white folks have felt the need to mention our close personal relationships with African Americans, it has usually been after having just inserted our feet into our mouths by saying something racially intemperate or even racist in the presence of someone of color. Nowadays, the assurance that “some of my best friends are black” as a way to demonstrate one’s open-minded bona fides has been supplanted by a more tangible and ostensibly political statement: namely, that “I voted for Barack Obama.” Thus, imply the persons stating it (often quite liberal in terms of their overall political sensibilities), don’t accuse me of racism. … full article at link added by: animalia_libero
