Lecture 14: RacismGeorge Yancy – “Dear White America”

Mariam Thalos – “What’s Problematic About ‘All Lives Matter’?”

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Agenda

1. George Yancy

2. Dear White America

3. Mariam Thalos

4. What’s Problematic about “All Lives Matter”?

5. Race and Identity

6. Mobilizing Identity

7. Solidarity

8. We Are All Black

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George Yancy

• Professor of Philosophy at Emory University

• Ph.D. in philosophy from Duquesne University; M.A. in philosophy from Yale University; M.A. in Africana Studies from New York University

• Author of Black Bodies, White Gazes, Look, a White!, and Pursuing Trayvon Martin (co-edited with Janine Jones)

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Dear White America

Guiding Questions:

1. What is sexism and racism? How are they similar or different?

2. What is George Yancy’s main point to “White America”?

3. How does George Yancy’s connect with Charles Mills’ idea of the Racial Contract and epistemologies of ignorance?

4. How does George Yancy think his letter will be received by some? And why?

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Dear White America

• “What if I told you that I’m sexist? Well, I am. Yes. I said it and I mean just that. I have watched my male students squirm in their seats when I’ve asked them to identify and talk about their sexism. There are few men, I suspect, who would say that they are sexists, and even fewer would admit that their sexism actually oppresses women. Certainly not publicly, as I’ve just done. No taking it back now.”

• “Let me clarify. This doesn’t mean that I intentionally hate women or that I desire to oppress them. It means that despite my best intentions, I perpetuate sexism every day of my life.”

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Dear White America

“As a sexist, I have failed women. I have failed to speak out when I should have. I have failed to engage critically and extensively their pain and suffering in my writing. I have failed to transcend the rigidity of gender roles in my own life. I have failed to challenge those poisonous assumptions that women are “inferior” to men or to speak out loudly in the company of male philosophers who believe that feminist philosophy is just a nonphilosophical fad. I have been complicit with, and have allowed myself to be seduced by, a country that makes billions of dollars from sexually objectifying women, from pornography, commercials, video games, to Hollywood movies. I am not innocent.”

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Dear White America

• “I’m asking for you to tarry, to linger, with the ways in which you perpetuate a racist society, the ways in which you are racist. I’m now daring you to face a racist history which, paraphrasing Baldwin, has placed you where you are and that has formed your own racism. Again, in the spirit of Baldwin, I am asking you to enter into battle with your white self. I’m asking that you open yourself up; to speak to, to admit to, the racist poison that is inside of you.”

• “You may have never used the N-word in your life, you may hate the K.K.K., but that does not mean that you don’t harbor racism and benefit from racism. After all, you are part of a system that allows you to walk into stores where you are not followed, where you get to go for a bank loan and your skin does not count against you, where you don’t need to engage in “the talk” that black people and people of color must tell their children when they are confronted by white police officers.”

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Dear White America

“What I’m asking is that you first accept the racism within yourself, accept all of the truth about what it means for you to be white in a society that was created for you. I’m asking for you to trace the binds that tie you to forms of domination that you would rather not see. When you walk into the world, you can walk with assurance; you have already signed a contract, so to speak, that guarantees you a certain form of social safety.”

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Mariam Thalos

• Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah

• Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Illinois at Chicago.

• Wrote Without Hierarchy and A Social Theory of Freedom.

• Researches the philosophy of action and practical reason.

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What’s Problematic About “All Lives Matter”?

• “Black lives matters” versus “All lives matter”. What is the tension between the two statements? What are their practical functions?

• “The right response at this point is to say that the pattern of brutalities which have recently come to light reveal a systemic bias in use of lethal force, and that this systemic bias is due to a racism disproportionately working against the lives of ordinary black people. It is because they are black that they are disproportionately suffering. It is not randomly that these victims are black in the preponderance. Using the label “Black” is consequently a key to combating the racism at the root of the problem.”

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Race and Identity

• “Race is an aspect of identity. … Identity is the set of characteristics one self-ascribes. It contains information about all the memberships that are important to a person’s self-image, as well as characteristics that render the person distinctive or unique.”

• But race is also not merely a matter of self-ascription. It is also a function of how others perceive you and treat you based on the color of your skin that is outside of your control.

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Mobilizing Identity

• “How is identity mobilized in contexts of action? In other words, what goes on in our heads when we employ our self-concepts to help us work out how to proceed in our present circumstances? There are a multitude of ways that identities can be modeled as shaping behavior. I will discuss only one way here.”

• “The model of behavior-shaping that I will describe employs reasoning patterns, with a self-concept (identity) at its core. The pattern looks something like this:• Someone of such-and-such character would perform actions of type A;• I am (aspire to be) a person of such-and-such character Q.

—• Therefore, I shall undertake an action of type A.”

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Mobilizing Identity

• “Most of the time, the pattern of reasoning works just beneath the level of awareness, but not necessarily against our will.”

• “Stereotype threat involves a situational setting in which people how are subject to a negative stereotype, due to their membership in a stereotyped social group, are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes simply because context makes the stereotype salient in their minds.”

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Solidarity

• “Identity politics” (for example, gay pride) and the politics of solidarity.

• “From the German occupation headquarters at the Hotel D’Angleterre came the decree: ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARMBAND WITH A STAR OF DAVID. That night the underground transmitted a message to all Danes. ‘From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.’ The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing a Star of David. The following day the Germans rescinded the order.”

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Solidarity

• “On Sept 12, 2011, the lead headline on the front page of LeMonde, Paris’s flagship newspaper, read “We are all Americans” in outsized letters. And in a moving gesture the European leaders of NATO invoked Article 5 of the organization’s charter, for the first time in history, urging NATO members to treat the attack on America as an attack on them all. (Ironic: Article 5 was meant to ensure America would be bound to retaliate against an attack on Europe, rather than the reverse.)”

• “Self-ascriptions are fundamentally declarations of loyalty.”

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We Are All Black

“‘Black lives matter’ aims at this form of expression of our allegiance with black people who have fallen under the wheels of institutionalized racism, and so with black people generally as brothers and sisters under threat. As platitudinous as ‘Black lives matter’ might sound at first blush, the urging it contains cannot be more powerful. And it most decidedly cannot be generalized by the genuinely platitudinous statement ‘All lives matter.’ The latter statement misses the mark entirely. Because it misses the importance of the identity marker offered as an instrument of solidarity. I am be tempted to say that that ‘All lives matter’ works against the effort to generate solidarity. Its effect is to blunt the force of ‘Black lives matter’ by draining the latter of the relevant identity marker.”

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