Race, Class & Activism
Published July 24, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
I don't know about you, but I'm over Gates-gate. You? The more I listen to Professor Gates, the more I get concerned by his apparent recent realization of how f*cked up our incarceration rates of men of color are. Anyway, I'll leave you with this Radio Boston podcast on the case and wish you the best coming to your own conclusions about this fiasco.
One of the things I've found so frustrating about it as it drags on is how so many legitimate perspectives abound in our varied interpretations of this fairly murky case, and how difficult it is to reconcile those. If you're a person of color or a white ally and deeply familiar with experiences of racial profiling or police violence, it's really hard to remove that lens in looking at this case. If you're not as knowledgeable about this brutal history of ours, and believe that the police have a case-by-case right to act as they deem appropriate, you may think this professor got his just deserts. If you're familiar with Cambridge (and Boston) class politics, you may see it as an arrogant professor being taken down a notch. If you're a woman, you may think, why do men need to have these chest-bumping competitions in the first place? Our identities and lived experiences color how we interpret this event, and getting past those situated experiences to reach a common understanding is damn tricky.
There's a tangential and much more in-depth, interesting conversation happening now at Open Left on class and how it shapes "lifestyle activism" and "lifestyle politics." In a nutshell, middle-class folks turning their own individual behaviors (e.g., recycling) into a political issue can reap changes that don't actually improve social equity. (Apparently, recycling's a totally inefficient way to reduce waste. Who knew!) In the worst case, their behaviors cum activism cum a political project can actually make life worse for their low- and working-class targets, such as is evidenced in one of my favorite books, Black on the Block by Mary Pattillo, which is discussed in that second link above.
I've already gone on too long, but Pattillo's book analyzes the outcome of middle-class blacks "settling" a low-income community and trying to improve the lives of their working-class black neighbors by modeling behavior and policing (literally and figuratively) the actions of their poorer neighbors. This has real consequences for the latter, such as limiting their access to needed affordable housing. Pattillo is participating in the discussion and I highly recommend joining in.
I want to leave you with a key comment she makes, one with which I agree completely and humbly try to fulfill here as best I can based on my own limited personal experiences:
I think the most powerful way to change people's perspective is to remind them of the humanity of folks who struggle everyday against serious odds...talking to people face to face is the best. The more we can convey this humanity of poor and working class people (and that no matter how virtuous and hard-working they are they still hit up against societal barriers to making ends meet) the more I think people's minds can be changed.
And by "people's minds" she means middle- and upper-class taxpayers who think they have the sole right by virtue of their own unexamined class position to decide who gets what in terms of society's goodies (education, housing, jobs) and how much and when, where and why. She talks about us middle-class types getting uncomfortable - yep. I'd also recommend we quiet down, and listen, for a change. Hopefully this is what Gates plans with his aforementioned documentary idea.
Here, we've got loads of commenters who can teach many of us a thing or two!
(Photo of "North Beach Place HOPE VI, built 2004. anchor tenant is Trader Joe's" - by Payton Chung)
Share this Post
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
EmailRelated Posts
Comments (3)
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
-
Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.
Featured Poverty in America Actions
-
-
-
Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
88 People
-
Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
I'm generally steering clear of this whole thing - ultimately, I don't think we'll ever quite know what happened, or how things went so depressingly wrong (which is to say, race aside... one of my lingering general fears is not being able to prove to an aithority figure I live in my own home, drive my family's car etc). That said, I think what you point out is indeed an interesting conversation starter - what this turn of events reveals about the places where multiple factors (race, and class, and gender, etc) collide; we tend to see our various signifiers - being black or white, being well off or poor, being a man or a woman - as singular, and have trouble combining them. And worse, I think, now when combining them seems so improtant on some issues (black women vs. white women on feminist issues, say), we get a new set of monliths, just more narrowlky defined ones. Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing some interesting work on discussing the splintering of the black experience as seen in the Gates episode, that in many ways, he can understand the perspective of Obama and Gates seeing themselves as harassed, and yet somehow outside of the experience of black people generally with the police... but at the same time, not share it. I remember being dressed very casually one day, and having more than one taxi pass me as I tried to hail them in my Midtown Manhattan nabe... and suddenly realizing that, in this, I was also a person of color, sahring a similar experience, like the one Obama's mentioned too. And yet... I don't share the kind of unease or distrust of the police (or anger at taxis passing me) that the Gates incident has brought up for other people of color. But, as you say, and as I've seen, I think what deserves exploding is the notion that any one of us is, entirely, defined by any one piece of our identity, or by taking two or three obvious ones and crossing them together. We see things individually, our experiences and our interpretations differ... and knowing that, as you say... how do we ever find common ground?
Posted by NYC Weboy on 07/24/2009 @ 12:33PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
I think I might regret commenting on this, but... with still inadequate evidence, I suspect what We have here is two stubborn men Who should have slowed down a bit and exhibited a little more respect for each other. There are some pictures, testimonys and possibly some video from the neighbors that may shed some more light on this. We may get to see this evidence, as I hear that both men are considering civil court. Personally, I'd like to see a mutual simultaneous apology, and drop the whole thing!
Posted by Charlie Reed on 07/24/2009 @ 01:12PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
#leigh - I appreciate your approach to the subject matter. Racial profiling is a huge issue... but this case was clearly unclear. If only Obama had taken the same critical and cautious apporach you have here. Kudos to you.
Posted by I C on 07/24/2009 @ 03:04PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.