African American writer Rich Benjamin spent two years living in — and writing about — America’s whitest neighborhoods. The response to his book (and TED Talk) was honest, raw — and sometimes misunderstood his purpose. Here, he responds to the response.
Some quotes to think about:
“From Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Jonathan Kozol, there’s a wealth of literature by white experts trying to explain “the ghetto” to America. I had simply done the reverse. As a black thinker and writer, I interpret and explain mainstream white America back to itself.”
“I saw a culture driven by conscious and unconscious bias; I learned that a country can have racism without racists”.
“Many Americans dismiss racial integration as a form of “social engineering,” the opposite also holds true: Segregation is a form of social engineering”.
Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie asks American writers why, “Your soldiers will come to our lands, but your novelists won’t.”
I grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s, aware that thinking about my country’s history and politics meant thinking about America’s history and politics. This is not an unusual position. Many countries of the world from Asia to South America exist, or have existed, as American client states, have seen U.S.-backed coups, faced American missiles or sanctions, seen their government’s policies on various matters dictated in Washington. America may not be an empire in the nineteenth century way which involved direct colonization. But the neo-imperialism of America was evident to me by the time I was an adolescent and able to understand these things.
So in an America where fiction writers are so caught up in the Idea of America in a way that perhaps has no parallel with any other national fiction, where the term Great American Novel weighs heavily on writers, why is it that the fiction writers of my generation are so little concerned with the history of their own nation once that history exits the fifty states. It’s not because of a lack of dramatic potential in those stories of America in the World; that much is clear.
In part, I’m inclined to blame the trouble caused by that pernicious word “appropriation.” I first encountered it within a writing context within weeks, perhaps days, of arriving at Hamilton College in 1991. Right away, I knew there was something deeply damaging in the idea that writers couldn’t take on stories about the Other. As a South Asian who has encountered more than her fair share of awful stereotypes about South Asians in the British empire novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I’m certainly not about to disagree with the charge that writers who are implicated in certain power structures have been guilty of writing fiction which supports, justifies and props up those power structures. I understand the concerns of people who feel that for too long stories have been told about them rather than by them. But it should be clear that the response to this is for writers to write differently, to write better, to critique the power structures rather than propping them up, to move beyond stereotype—which you need to do for purely technical reasons, because the novel doesn’t much like stereotypes. They come across as bad writing.
The moment you say, a male American writer can’t write about a female Pakistani, you are saying, Don’t tell those stories. Worse, you’re saying, as an American male you can’t understand a Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, unknowable. She’s other. Leave her and her nation to its Otherness. Write them out of your history.
What do you think of her response to the use of the word “appropriation”, and her recommendation for writers that may be accused of it?
Do you think it’s helpful or harmful if, say, a white American man wrote a story about a South Asian woman/an indigenous community/a black family? Is there anything inherently problematic about it?
Is it possible to capture the spirit of the subjects and properly relay the experiences of a group you don’t belong to?
Can you draw parallels between Brian Fay’s argument in “Do You Have to be One to Know One?” and Shamsie’s essay?
In March 2015 Ariana Miyamoto became the first half-black Japanese woman to be named Miss Japan. This video feature by Al Jazeera America explores the varied reactions to a mixed-race woman, or what the Japanese refer to as a “hafu”, being crowned Miss Japan.
“I don’t think the equivalent word for ‘hafu’ exists overseas; but in Japan, you need that word to explain who you are.” — Ariana Miyamoto
Furthermore, the video communicates to viewers the often misused and mislead power of assigning meaning to bodies and outward appearances as opposed to acknowledging individuals’ ethnicities or nationalities .
“My appearance isn’t Asian, but I believe I’m very much Japanese on the inside.” — Ariana Miyamoto
This piece connects well with our discussion of what it means to talk about race, how we use or misuse the term ‘race’ to assign meaning, and the significance of the language we use in race-talk.
I don’t wake up every morning with the intention of pissing you off, I swear, and whether or not you believe it, I’m here to help you. I want you to recognize that on a daily basis, you hold a set of advantages and immunities that are a direct result of the oppression of people of color. That doesn’t sound nice, does it? Makes you squirm in your chair a bit and maybe feel a little uncomfortable, right?
But here’s the thing – I’m not here to make you feel comfortable, that’s not my job. I’m here to erase the invisibility of the privileges you have that continue to help maintain white supremacy. I’m here to show you what your White Privilege is.
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1. White Privilege is being able to move into a new neighborhood and being fairly sure that your neighbors will be pleasant to you and treat you with respect.
2. White Privilege is being able to watch a movie, read a book and open the front page of a newspaper and see yourself and your race widely represented and spoken for.
3. White Privilege is being able to seek legal, financial and medical help without having your race work against you.
4. White Privilege is living in a world where you are taught that people with your skin tone hold the standard for beauty.
5. White Privilege is never being told to, “get over slavery”.
6. White Privilege is having the prevalence and importance of the English language and finding amusement in ridiculing people of colour/immigrants for their accents and their difficulty in speaking a language that is not their native tongue.
7. White Privilege is arrogantly believing that reverse racism actually exists.
8. White Privilege is being able to stay ignorant to the fact that racial slurs are part of a systematic dehumanization of entire groups of people who are and have historically been subjugated and hated just for being alive.
9. White Privilege is not having your name turned into an easier-to-say Anglo-Saxon name.
10. White Privilege is being able to fight racism one day, then ignore it the next.
11. White privilege is having your words and actions attributed to you as an individual, rather than have them reflect members of your race.
12. White Privilege is being able to talk about racism without appearing self-serving.
13. White Privilege is being able to be articulate and well-spoken without people being surprised.
14. White Privilege is being pulled over or taken aside and knowing that you are not being singled out because of your race/colour.
15. White Privilege is not having to teach your children to be aware of systematic racism for their own protection.
16. White Privilege is not having to acknowledge the fact that we live in a system that treat people of colour unfairly politically, socially and economically and choosing, instead, to believe that people of colour are inherently less capable.
17. White Privilege is not having your people and their culture appropriated, romanticized or eroticized for the gain and pleasure of other white people.
18. White Privilege is being able to ignore the consequences of race.
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