by James May • July 12, 2011
At the top left-hand corner of the home page of the YWCA of Minneapolis' web site are the words: "Eliminating Racism Empowering Women."
Below that is a photograph of 4 women, one white, 2 black and 1 Hispanic and the html alt-tag for that photograph, or in other words, the words that would come up as speech if a blind person enabled the feature says: "Serving women, children and people of color."
You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out who it is the YWCA doesn't serve and who the prospective enemy whose racism needs to be eliminated and that is conspicuously disinvited white men. Nor do you have to be a cryptanalyst to parse the same kind of vibe on the rest of that homepage when it addresses issues of oppression.
On that page there is a link called "Racial Justice" that brings one to a photo of a black woman and a statement titled: "Racial Justice Program: Living Our Mission." The statement begins: "The YWCA of Minneapolis offers racial justice training..." and has a bulleted precis that states:
We exist to eliminate the barriers that perpetuate racism by:
* Teaching skills that individuals can utilize as they begin and continue their journey against racism,
* Building commitments to policies and practices that hinder equal access, in order to create long-term, sustainable change
* Inviting dialogue and discussion towards the goal of mutual understanding and empathy, and
* Raising awareness of white privilege and institutional racism.
The copy below mentions "The YWCA of Minneapolis' Racial Justice department..." and there are further links, one of which is called "It's Time to Talk Forums on Race" which brings you to an announcement of the 9th annual such forum which is about "improving race relations in our community!" and says "Listen to thought-provoking keynote speaker Linda Chavez."
Back on the home page and right below that "racial justice" link is another link about "Resources and Tools for Racial Justice" where one finds the following bullet list:
* Why Racial Justice?
* Racial Justice History
* Racial Justice Facts
* 10 Simple Ideas to Eliminate Racism
* Get Involved
* Useful Web sites
The "Why Racial Justice" link brings you to a page with the following information:
We have come a long way, but we're far from living happily ever after. In spite of widespread reform legislation over the last century, justice is yet to be served. Equality laws may be on the books. But the laws of the land are still distorted when it comes to women and minorities. The fact is that from birth, women and people of color still face obstacles in 2005 that were intended to die with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A study reports that 70 percent of Americans believe racism is an issue in the workplace.
Several state studies show that Blacks and Latinos were being stopped for routine traffic violations in excess of their representation in the populations.
Sixty percent of African Americans say that race or ethnic background affects getting routine medical care.
Of the 43 percent of minority children attending public schools, more than half are poor and more than two-thirds fail to reach basic levels on national tests.
The next link in the list brings you to "Racial Justice History" and is a rather remarkable synopsis of the history of racism in the United States from 1614 to 2003 and touches on such things as the "3/5" clause, the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and a church bombing in Alabama.
The rest of the links follow the same tone and range from topics about inequality in the work place, racial profiling by police, ideas to eliminate racism such as "don't laugh at racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic and other stereotypical jokes or assumptions" and useful web sites such as witnessingwhiteness.com, a link that I hoped would be dead but instead brought me to an odious web site with such things as an "Unmasking Whiteness" conference which is a "A workshop designed for white people who want to work on their racial identity and anti-racism practice."
The poster for this workshop lists such things as:
The Meanings of Whiteness
White Privilege & Multiple Identities
How to Resolve Guilt & Shame
Systemic White Supremacy and
The Development of an Anti-Racist Practice & Identity
Witnessing Whiteness is also a book and on the "What and Why" link at the top of the site's homepage, we get such useful information as "white people need to be able to see their whiteness" to which I say, "What the fuck?"
The author of this book's name is Shelly Tochluk, Ph.D. and on this same page we get pearls of wisdom such as:
* Whiteness affects all of us in this society
* The history of whiteness is hidden from all of us
* It can help to understand why white people do what they do
* The voices of people of color in the book are strong
Apparently in Ms. Tochluk's view the morality of white people is polluted in a way she will only be too happy to explain to you along with why people of color are like Adam and Eve, (well, Eve anyway), in the Garden of Eden, an innocent bereft of the ability to experience hate, bigotry or racism. That seems to be making a patronizing argument that people of color are some kind of an other, not fully human or is the idea one that white people are not fully human? Certainly is the view of Ms. Tochluk, they occupy different positions based on skin color. The contradictions and problems inherent in such a goofball view of the world if you extend them out to their logical conclusion are lost on Ms. Tochluk but all is well, because racism has a moral compass and will always apply its principle where needed and women and people of color will get some kind of Passover marks on their houses so the angel of racism never comes back to bite them in the ass.
On the "Author's Info" page, we are told that "no one can escape the infusion of racist messages that are part of our country's foundation" and the it will take a "very long time to dismantle the systems of white supremacy that support current structures of inequity. Amazingly, Ms. Tochluk claims a background in psychology though she is blissfully unaware of how she projects her own bigotry, cheap psychology, logic and racism onto people who have no face or names, only white skin, a fact I am sure she would normally be somewhat ashamed to share were it not for the sheer power of her intellect and moral positioning that allow her to effortless rise above such considerations. That probably explains why she is a member of the "Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere-Los Angeles." America - racist - why didn't I see that?
Ms. Tochluk gives a tip of the hood to a Michelle Fine for that very clever suggestion that "white people need to be able to see their whiteness" and there is a "What and Why" link to an essay called "Witnessing Whiteness/Gathering Intelligence" from Ms. Fine in the book, Off-White: Readings On Power, Privilege and Resistence which discusses the "'merit' that accumulates within the hue of 'Whiteness'" which results in "goodies not otherwise available to people of color." I, being unaware of Ms. Fine's very astute observation that I benefit from the "shadowy interdependence" of this "parasitic webbing" wanted to learn more and so I read more, always interested in people who think more is less and hate the idea of "Occam's Razor." Of course, in my own theory of less is more is the simple idea that people who actually fail are not doing so because of somebody they don't know but who has white skin in Nebraska.
I am always amused by people who come from the exact same philosophical space as a neo-Nazi or Klansman but claim to be anti-racist.
Ms. Fine wants to be "clear about the assumptions that drive this work" and then descends into excuse/blame language that provides as much clarity and logic as a mud covered frog croaking in the woods at other frogs:
As so many authors in this volume argue, Whiteness, like all "colors," is being manufactured, in part, through educational arrangements; specifically, withing and across institutions designed "as if" hierarchy, stratification, and scarcity were inevitable, natural, and essential. Schools do not merely inherit or manage racial and ethnic identities; they create and enforce racial meaning. Schools, as contested spaces, structure the conditions for the embodiment, performance, and/or interruption of sustained and inequitable racial formations. In such institutions, whether or not the buildings are in fact "integrated," Whiteness is coproduced with other colors, usually alongside Black, Asian American, and Latino identities, in symbiotic relation. Where Whiteness grows as a seemingly "natural" signifier for quality, merit, and advantage, the Asian American identity runs a close second - always never quite achieving Whiteness - dressed in "model minority" wear; the African American and Latino identities, as signifiers, disintegrate to embody deficit or "lack."
That's an awfully lot of verbiage to merely say that white people are stupid, racist, jerks and where I'm from we simply call it "stupid bullshit." Apparently no one who is a minority in any society can ever innovate or actually show themselves to be equal and so white Americans sent to Haiti would also be making cookies out of mud if not somehow rescued by their "Whiteness" or "privilege" or as Ms. Fine puts it "the miraculous ways quality seems to rise to the glistening white top."
Before I'd read Ms. Fine I had no idea what witless zombies we all are, buffeted about by invisible but very real forces which dictate which skin color will put men on the moon and which won't. Whatever one thinks of Ms. Fine and her colleagues, they are guilty of what amounts to hate speech in my opinion and of complicating the obvious not to say their own weird form of patronizing racism that always favors people of color while positing that to favor white folks in a like manner is racist. The clue that this is hate speech and not any kind of science is that the same principles could easily be applied, rightly or wrongly, to people of color but they are not and it is this lack of even an attempt at even-handedness and to place blame in such a racial and highly one directional manner that is the problem. How in the world can everything always be the fault of white folks who apparently have not only led easy and charmed lives, but stumbled their way to success through the Enlightenment mostly through dumb luck.
Together with local colleges, the Minneapolis YWCA also lent their sponsorship to the 12th Annual White Privilege Conference held in the Spring of 2011 in Minneapolis which is yet more hate speech wrapped up in fine talk of wheel chair access, sign language and allegies to scented products.
Well, aside from utter idiocy, it seems there's a war going on and "we have met the enemy and he is..." a white man, although the original quote is more appropriate: "we have met the enemy and he is us," since combating racism by indulging in it oneself in such a cartoonish manner as does the YWCA by foisting all the ills of the world onto white men and furthering the very stereotyping by gender and race the YWCA seems so ardently against hardly seems the road to "racial justice." For people who consider their thought processes to be on such a high level they have not learned the simplest lesson about success or moving forward and that is that one cannot get to a better place by blaming others; it just doesn't work. The idea behind all this flim-flam seems to be that life would be so much better for everyone who is not a white man if only white men would simply stop being such idiotic racists and misogynists, endemic qualities which seem unalterably attached to their gender and skin color.
In the world of the Minneapolis YWCA, opinions and leaps of logic are simple facts and reality. One wonders whether the powers that be at the this YWCA consciously indulge in Marxist influenced Critical Pedagogy or are merely robots repeating its mantras which are more popularly known as Political Correctness. Whichever is the case, it is in fact classic Critical Pedagogy as preached by such people as Paulo Freire, Ira Shor and Henry Giroux. Basically, in Critical Pedagogy, it is more important to be socially educated that vocationally; that is why for decades women's and ethnic studies classes have been offered since the cultural revolution of the 1960s and why an unprecedented number of people have careers based on and, more importantly, dependent on, the idea of a continuing conflict of race, class and gender in America.
The Minneapolis Y has conferences and historical synopsis that lay out why and how men need to be maneuvered into a civilized society. Considering the nature of much of the information on how to promote "justice" on the Y's site, I can only conclude that they are projecting there own bigotry onto others and what makes it racism, bigotry and misandry is the fact that there are no names and faces to the enemy but only gender and skin color and this is parceled out to unseen and unknown millions of men - they are simply there, a malevolent, baleful and omnipresent shadow whose nature and presence is known for a fact by the failures of anyone who is not a white male and statistics that shout inequality.
On one side of this equation there is no such thing as group failure and in fact to suggest such a thing is considered bigotry and on the other side of the equation there is only group failure. This is what George Orwell characterized as "doublethink" in his novel 1984: the ability to hold two mutually exclusive thoughts in one's mind simultaneously and believe it. I am apparently in a trap myself since I cannot imagine respecting anyone who is so willfully stupid but to express such a thing merely places me firmly where I already was according to the Y and that is in the land of misogyny and racism; how can I fare other than poorly in a world that doles out morality according to gender and skin color and posits such things as people of color blame/failure and white privilege failure/failure as some kind of reality one trots out and directs where it feels the best and where reality has nothing to do with anything really.
Now, look at the YMCA Minneapolis homepage where the tone is quite different and in fact does not say at the top, "Empowering Racism Eliminating Women" alá James Tiptree, Jr's (aka Alice Sheldon) science fiction short story, "The Screwfly Solution." I'm surprised the men's Y page doesn't have a blurb at the top that says, "We're not racists!" But since white men are obviously doofus racists and incurable mysoginysts in need of a long stay in a re-education camp, perhaps the YMCA's alt-tag should be the same as the women's Y page but simply say "We're sorry but willing to learn," or perhaps the exact opposite could say, "serving white men" and we all know what kind of groups do those sorts of things.
Feminsts and so-called "anti-racists" seemingly have no clue as to the self-contradictory nature of their philosophies on race and gender wherein it is stipulated that racism and gender bigotry can in fact be attached to people by race and gender as long as it's not them, because that is an impossibility. The hyperawareness of social justice of people of color and women acts as a impervious shield eliminating them from the possibility of impure thoughts such as racism. This is how it is possible to be a user friendly version of Joseph Goebbels and be unaware of one's ancestry in this regard. What emerges is something in the nature of an unthinking dial tone which is what happens in all disconnects. That dial tone is unvarying and unwavering and firmly says that white men are a problem and that is a truth so real that everybody knows it.
The YWCA's web site about racism verges on hate speech not to say the most odious stereotypes of unchallenged political correctness. While challenging others unnamed but definitely white males to "make an effort to get to know people different than you" it is obvious that such blithe bigotry as displayed at the YWCA's web site can only be empowered within an insulated community that constantly jabbers at each other unchallenged by outside voices.
As someone who was born and raised in Minneapolis I find everything on the Y's web site about racism utterly disgusting because there is no doubt whatsoever that I am a target. The smug superiority assumed over white men in terms of morality and perception and a desire for justice is depraved in my opinion.
One would think a part of the Y is a Bosnian refugee center with medical aid stations ready to treat the wounded who have survived that harsh world of racist and hateful white men who more or less seem to occupy the philosophical space of H.G. Wells' morlocks who are prominent in the world of the Y as regards racism only by their conspicuous moral absence. The YWCA of Minneapolis' absurd and hateful assumptions about the cheap psychology that comprises such things as "white privilege" amount to a weaponized and hateful version of "armies of compassion." Eliminating racism and bigotry by practising it oneself seems an odd way to fight a war or to expect any outcome that would resemble "justice." For all its talk about justice the idea of the greater good is left to those the Y has such disdain for.
My own reaction to the YWCA's web site is, you treat someone like a dog, you shouldn't be surprised if they act like one. I have no sympathy, none at all, for the YWCA's notions of "racial justice" and if they wish to consider me an enemy I say, consider it done. And by the way: fuck you too.