Degrees of Separation and a Privilege Inventory
I have spoken before about degrees of separation and using a privilege inventory. Being aware of ones own privileges is a good way to monitor our own behavior. Briefly, when presented with a situation where you are unsure whether you or someone else is executing privilege, I suggest you do a privilege inventory and determine who has the operating privilege. If the privilege is yours shut up, listen, and apologize. If it someone else go for it, call it for what it is. Often we are in institutions where we share privileges and oppressions across various levels and sometimes we are not sure whether an act was racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic or heterosexist for example. I use the privilege inventory to gauge my behavior.
Dealing with Your Behavior
If it is your behavior which is manifesting racism, the hardest part will be seeing it. If you are lucky, someone will bring it too your attention. I say lucky because it is an opportunity to change if you know about it. If one day it dawns on you, that your behavior is racist, the first step is to stop the behavior. You can spend time analyzing it later. The first step is to stop.
A loved one's behavior
How do you tell some one you love that their behavior is racist. I know from telling loved ones that their behavior is sexist or homophobic that it is not easy. I am reminded of my mother admonishing us as children to cease being cruel to another child. She said it softly and directly, she did not smile. She said "I think what you are doing is wrong, and I want it to stop." It was that soft spoken admonishment that stopped me in my tracks. I have used a similar tack with my family and close friends, "Now you know I do not approve of that". I repeat it at each infraction, never raising my voice. Over time, the behavior usually changes.
The behavior of a colleague or casual acquaintance
The behavior of colleagues and casual acquaintances is different. In these cases, I sometime have to raise my voice. I have ended or curtailed friendships with people because of their behavior. I often lecture, challenge and make fun of them to turn the table. If I bother at all to challenge them, most often after a while they start coming to me triumphantly when they began to see the ism in others. I have been very successful in this area.
Authority figure
Authority figures are another area altogether. I have had mixed success in challenging the racism of people in positions of authority over me. This is an area where allies are crucial. I as a woman of color am often in a precarious position. I have learned first hand the forces that can be let loose against an uppity black women. Support networks are key. As an ally, you can help me and others like me by supporting my challenges, challenging the person your self or at the very lest confirming my perspective.
Organizational
Challenging organizational or institutional racism, like racism by an authority figure requires a support network for people of color and allies that are prepared to act. In fact no matter whether the racism is regional, governmental, in business, cultural, community based or around the world requires the same actions. Only the scope changes.
©Katrina C. Hopkins1998
Katrina Hopkins is a singer/songwriter poet, magical/political activist, Reclaiming teacher and super geek, who lives in Washington DC.
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".