White World-TravelingAuthor(s): SHANNON SULLIVANSource: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2004), pp. 300-304Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670530 .

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White World-Traveling SHANNON SULLIVAN

Penn State University

La solidaridad requiere el reconocer, comprender, respectar y amar lo

que nos I leva a llorar en distintas cadencias. El imperialismo cultural desea lo contrario, por eso necesitamos muchas voces. Porque una sola voz nos

mata a las dos.... Pero si no aprendo tus modos y tu los mios las conversation es solo aparente. Y la apariencia se levanta como una barrera sin sentido entre las dos.... Porque entonces ya no dialogamos. El dialogo entre nosotras requiere dos voces y no una.

?Maria C. Lugones (1983, 573)

In his captivating essay in this issue of Journal of Speculative Philosophy, on

Geneva Smitherman, African American Language, and Black resistance to white

domination, George Yancy issues an invitation to white philosophers, and by extension white people in general. "Regarding white philosophers," he claims, "I believe that it is the job of knowledgeable and responsible Black philoso phers

... to invite them to enter African American semiotic spaces of discursive

difference and overlap" (Yancy 2004, 275). Given the constitutive relationship of word and world, the existence of African American semiotic spaces is crucial to the representation, power, and survival of Black experiences. White people's recognition of the importance of African American Language thus can be a sign that they value those experiences and wish to combat the racism that attempts to

eliminate, assimilate, and "forget" them. For white people to enter African American semiotic spaces can be a way for them to fight white privilege by

helping "make 'inroads against the established power-lines of speech'" (Yancy 2004, 274).

For these reasons, I ultimately wish to accept Yancy's generous invita

tion. Before I do so, however, I want to point out the dangers contained in it.

These are dangers that Yancy is well aware of. He understands that before a

Black philosopher invites white people into his or her world, he or she should be

knowledgeable of the risks involved, and that as a Black philosopher engages with white world-travelers, he or she must remain responsible to the Black com

munities and experiences that are being shared with others. It is his white read ers (myself included), whose good-hearted, antiracist intentions sometimes blind them to the racist damage they do, who concern me.

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2004.

Copyright ? 2004 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

300

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WHITE WORLD-TRAVELING 301

As I have begun to work more with Latin American philosophy and Latina

feminism, I have been wrestling with the issue of linguistic world-traveling.1 As Maria Lugones explains in the epigraph above, solidarity across cultural and racial differences requires recognition, comprehension, respect, and love, and

these, in turn, require genuine dialogue. For a dialogue to be genuine, more than one voice must be included, but this is possible only if each of the participants in the conversation understand the other's language or way of communicating.

A "dialogue" that takes place only in Standard American Language reinforces the cultural imperialism that demands one voice.

Lugones does not provide English translations of the Spanish portions of her essay co-authored with Elizabeth Spelman. She and Spelman require their readers either to travel to Lugones' world to engage in dialogue or to realize that

they are unprepared for genuine dialogue across racial and cultural differences

and, as a result, are missing the full meaning of Lugones' remarks. White/Anglo women's lack of preparation for dialogue with women of color is not uncom mon and, moreover, it goes beyond their typical ignorance of languages other than English. It often extends to ignorance of the history, geography, culture, food, politics, and other important features of nonwhite worlds. As Lugones and

Spelman explain, "white/Anglo women are much less prepared for this dialogue with women of color than women of color are for dialogue with them in that women of color have had to learn white/Anglo ways, self-conceptions, and con

ceptions of them" (Lugones and Spelman 1983, 577). This asymmetrical pre paredness is produced by an inverse relationship of power and knowledge. Latina and other women of color often have less power than white/Anglo women, but

they also tend to have more knowledge precisely because their relative lack of

power has forced them to learn about white/Anglo ways of life. Turning the

tables, Lugones writes in Spanish and forces white/Anglo women to learn some

thing about Latino/a worlds. While a white/Anglo person's learning Spanish can begin to balance the

relationship of power and knowledge between white/Anglo and Latino worlds, it also can have the opposite effect of increasing the hegemony of the white

world. This occurs when white people learn a language other than Standard American Language?Spanish, African American Language, or otherwise?pre cisely to dominate the world that speaks that language. Certainly this happened during times of colonialist conquest, but it also continues today as business

corporations and advertising firms in the United States learn (bits of) African American Language and Spanish to better market products that promise the "exoticism" of Blackness and the "spiciness" of Latino culture. (Standard, middle class whiteness is so unhip nowadays, as Yancy notes [Yancy 2004, 276].) It also can happen in less insidious ways, however, such as when white people learn another language to (try to) break out of their white solipsism. Even in these well-intentioned instances, the protection provided to minority races by

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302 SHANNON SULLIVAN

white people's ignorance of their languages can be eroded once white people begin to understand and speak them.

This point was brought home to me when a Latina friend and philosopher explained that she did not want white/Anglo people to learn Spanish because their knowledge would intrude on the Spanish/Latina world that she and other

Spanish-speaking philosophers are able to create in the midst of white/Anglo dominated conferences.2 Opening up her world to white/Anglo philosophers tends to result in the destruction of a valuable point of resistance to white rac ism. Because of the dominance of white people in philosophy in the United

States, she frequently is forced to travel to white worlds and wants to preserve a small space that is relatively free of white people and the issues of race and racism that their presence inevitably (though not necessarily deliberately) pro duces.

Although he ultimately wants to risk inviting white people into Black semiotic space, Yancy clearly shares my friend's concern.3 As he explains, Afri can American Language and song often have functioned as powerful counterhegemonic expressions because they are a code that white people gener ally do not understand (Yancy 2004, 287-88). While white people thought that Black people were meekly singing of the glory of God and heaven, for example, Negro spirituals were surreptitiously encouraging and planning rebellious es

cape from slavery. The linguistic resistance of Negro spirituals was possible only because white people did not understand the language being spoken. Let "the ofay" (Yancy 2004,287,288,296) into the secret of the code and an impor tant form of resistance to white domination is eliminated.

Letting white people into the code also risks reinforcing a particular habit of white privilege, that of ontological expansiveness (Sullivan 2001). As

ontologically expansive, white people often manifest a way of being in the world

(often nonconscious) in which they presume the right to occupy any and all

geographical, moral, psychological, linguistic, and other spaces. From the point of view of white ontological expansiveness, the existence of a linguistic space off-limits to white people is an "unjust" violation of the "natural" order of the world that must be rectified. From an antiracist perspective, however, white

ontological expansiveness not only presumes a "right" grounded in white su

premacy, but also tends to damage and destroy spaces of resistance to white

domination. White people's knowledge of the code of African American Lan

guage thus can strengthen their sense that it is appropriate for them to inhabit

any space they choose to enter. In contrast to white people, Black people tend to be ontologically con

strained by a racist world, needing "documented reasons for excursioning into

neighborhoods where they do not live, for venturing beyond the bounds of the zones to which they are supposedly confined" (Williams 1991, 68). Given that one important way that human beings control how they see themselves is to

control their own language (Yancy 2004,294), Smitherman's and Yancy's argu

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WHITE WORLD-TRAVELING 303

merits for African American Language can be seen as resisting racist ontologi cal constraint by staking a claim in the onto-linguistic space that nonwhite people are not "supposed" to authoritatively inhabit. By using African American Lan

guage, Black people effectively demonstrate that white people do not have a

monopoly on ontological creation. To combat white ontological expansiveness, white people need to accept

that there are spaces in which they do not belong. This idea tends to produce a sense of dis-ease for many white people, who are accustomed to being in a

position of mastery and control vis-a-vis nonwhite people. I am fairly sure, for

example, that as a white person, I am one of the ofay to which Yancy refers. I do not know, however, exactly what the word means, and so I do not know exactly what I am saying about myself when I acknowledge myself as an ofay. Here is a

perfect instance of whiteness as mystery to white people, described by bell hooks. Given the history of white control of the Black gaze, white people generally do not think of themselves as the object of Black vision and judgment. White people tend to "think they are seen by black folks only as they want to appear" (hooks 1992,169). For white people to identify themselves as ofay is for them to recog nize a linguistic space in which they do not belong but that nevertheless has

power over them. This recognition thus requires them to give up the related racist fantasies of total mastery of language and singular control of ontology.

Bluntly put, white people sometimes just need to leave Black people alone. Yet the appropriate response to the dangers of white world-traveling is not al

ways for a white person to decline the invitation to do so. This is because white

people's distancing themselves from the interests, lives, and languages of non white people can function as a racist dismissiveness of them. This attitude can be found Yancy's APA encounter in which a white philosopher criticized him for using "slang" in his presentation. Dismissing African American Language as "too Black" to be appropriate in a formal conference setting manifests a "dis tance of unconcern" (Kruks 2001,154-55), rather than the respectful distancing that might combat white ontological expansiveness. Instead of dismantling white

privilege, a distancing way of living one's whiteness can shore it up. Given that both accepting and rejecting Yancy's invitation to enter Black

linguistic space present significant dangers, what should a white person do? There is no categorical answer to this question, in my view. Whether to say "yes" or "no" to the invitation depends on the specific situation at hand, and for white people to be well intentioned in their acceptance does not guarantee that their presence in nonwhite worlds will serve antiracist ends. For these reasons, I appreciate Yancy's insistance that "an invitation is not the same as a forced introduction" (Yancy 2004, 275). Because Yancy's invitation is not a mandate for white people to learn African American Language, it creates an important opening for white people to think about the implications of their acceptance of it. Just as Black philosophers must be knowledgeable and responsible when

issuing invitations to white people, white people also must be strive to be knowl

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304 SHANNON SULLIVAN

edgeable and responsible when accepting them: knowledgeable of the racist harm they can inflict with their acceptance, responsible for that damage and to those in Black worlds who are harmed, and finally knowledgeable of when such an invitation should be responsibly declined.

I have decided to continue learning Spanish. I also have decided to accept Yancy's invitation to enter African American semiotic space. I want to learn more about the Latino/a and African American worlds that I dismissed while

growing up even though I was surrounded (and unconsciously constituted) by them, which entails learning more about my onto-linguistic existence as an Anglo (gringo) and an ofay. Of course, there are no guarantees that in doing so, I am not merely reinforcing my ontological expansiveness and the related need to

feel in control of the nonwhite worlds that help compose who I am. I can hope, however, that on the whole, my new knowledge will help create a solidarity of

many voices born of discursive difference and overlap that combats cultural

imperialism.

Notes 1. I take the term "world-traveling" from Lugones (1987). 2. She also rightly points out the cultural capital that I gain by mentioning in this essay that I

have a Latina friend, which adds to my privilege as a white feminist (at least in the world of

academia) even as I try to challenge it.

3. I do not have space here to address the different implications of white world-traveling to

Latino/a versus African American worlds. While I do not wish to elide those differences, both

worlds regularly confront white racist domination and thus are potentially harmed by the intrusion

of white people into their semiotic spaces.

Works Cited hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End P.

Kruks, Sonia. 2001. Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics.

Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Lugones, Maria C. 1987. "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception." Hypatia 2(2):

3-19.

Lugones, Maria C, and Elizabeth V. Spelman. 1983. "Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist

Theory, Cultural Imperialism, and the Demand for 'The Woman's Voice.'" Hypatia, WSIF 1:

573-81.

Sullivan, Shannon. 2001. "The Racialization of Space: Toward a Phenomenological Account of

Raced and Anti-Racist Spatiality." In The Problems of Resistance: Studies in Alternate Politi

cal Cultures, ed. Steve Martinot. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Prometheus/Humanity Books.

Williams, Patricia J. 1991. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. Cam

bridge, MA: Harvard UP.

Yancy, George. 2004. "Geneva Smitherman: The Social Ontology of African-American Language, the Power of Nommo, and the Dynamics of Resistance and Identity Through Language." Jour

nal of Speculative Philosophy 18(4): 273-299.

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