Don't Worry, You're Not Racist.

Except, you totally are. I am too. If you're American, then I can speak to our form of institutionalized racism and the cultural assumptions that surround them. If you're not, then trust me when I say you're a racist as well. Your culture has it's own biases and bigotries, it's own unspoken assumptions about the non ruling class or color of your land. This is not a judgement on you, this is a statement of fact. When you live in a racist society, you will have racist views. It's like gum on your shoe - you only see it if you end up stuck to something. 

Which means we're talking about Paula Deen. Look, I don't care about her. If the allegations in the lawsuit against her are true (and she's given us every reason to believe they are) then she should be forced to make reparations. My issue today is with her sons. Paula's boys are out swinging, understandably, to defend their mother from the consequence of her words. She didn't know any better. She's ashamed. She's the product of different times. She's not racist. To listen to my fellow white folk, no one is racist. There is no racism. Things just happen and they aren't fair but it's for reasons and these reasons have nothing to do with racism. They feel these ways about most black people because most (or some, or this one) are just like that. They aren't racist because they know these other black people (or employ them) and they are good to them and respect them and maybe they even voted for Obama because of how not racist they are. Let's listen to Paula Deen in her own words.

“Remembering now, it just shocks me,” she said of Jim Crow. “I’m plain horrified that things could have been that way and I was so blind I didn’t get that it was wrong.” - Paula Deen

Guess what boys? Those shoes are on your feet today. This doesn't make you special, it makes you American. Just yesterday my teenager turned to me and said "Wow, grandpa is really racist!" I said yes, yes he is. She is the only grandchild to notice because however the others define racism it includes the concept of a bad person doing bad things. It does not include upholding the status quo. It does not include making assumptions about people based on their class and color. The standard isn't even not to kill people of color because every day in every way people who are golly gee not racist murder innocents and walk away. Shoot a kid in their classroom, the president comes to town. Shoot a kid in a park, on their living room couch, on a subway platform, walking home with Skittles - well it takes a lot to get anyone to notice. It takes marching in the street because those kids aren't white so what do you expect? Having these unspoken double standards is racism, it's our racism and it's invisible to us white folk. (The tragedy of Sandy Hook is realizing that the safety of rich white kids is ceasing to matter. We are beginning to feel the pain of what our fellow citizens have always known.) 

Hey, you know that story your mom tells? The one where she beat a black girl for the sheer pleasure of it and the girl's mom ended up in jail? When your mom tells that story, gosh she feels bad. How did she not see? It haunts her, what she did. It haunts her so much that she tracked that family down and... oh wait. I don't think she has. Or if she did, she leaves it out of the story, because the point of the story is that Paula Deen felt bad about her actions because she came to see that they were wrong and she is not a racist so it hurt her soul. 

That she tells the story that way, that her pain is at the center of her shame, is racist. It places her above the harm she did. It prioritizes her experience over the experience of her victim. And it's hardly the only example of her unexamined racism. Look, I'm sure she was a good mom. She is probably, by most yardsticks, a good person. She may have given you the whole It's Not Easy Being Green and Free to Be You and Me education of your era. That has jack all to do with whether or not she's racist. 

And I remember telling them about a restaurant that my husband and I had recently visited. And I'm wanting to think it was in Tennessee or North Carolina or somewhere, and it was so impressive. The whole entire wait staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie. I mean, it was really impressive. And I remember saying I would love to have servers like that, I said, but I would be afraid somebody would misinterpret. - Paula Deen

Paula Deen is not an android. Black people are not electric sheep. That she dreams of a room where the wait staff is one ethnicity means yes, she is racist. She held back not from a recognition that her love for middle aged black men happy to serve her is a racist security blanket, but from a fear that her internalized racism would be exposed. When you think "Oh, everyone says that." or "Oh, everyone feels that way." You are wrong. You are racist and you are seeing the gum on your shoes but you haven't figured out it needs to come off. 

 "I want people to understand that my family and I -- we're not the kind of people that the press is wanting to say we are." - Paula Deen

What Paula is failing to grasp, what her boys are swinging against, is that it is not the press saying these things. It is the Deen family exposing the soles of their shoes and not realizing what they're stuck on. You are not, to my knowledge, evil. But you're racist. And I'm sorry learning it is proving to be a painful experience. I hope you look back on these days the way your mother does on the girl she beat and I hope you tell the story differently. I hope you understand that all pain is not the same, some is self inflicted.

You Ain't Even White Tho

*This post contains racial slurs

In America "white" is a social construct meant to denote a position of supremacy and privilege over others. The word "American" is most often used to mean "White American" as it is the only non-hyphenated common use of the word. You are American or you are something else. I am currently a white American and this has conferred many advantages despite my origins in American's lowest classes. I get this, and that things I say often need to be examined for hidden assumptions born from my less than universal experience. It's not a judgement on me when this happens, it's a evaluation of why I believe the thing I have said.

My mother was mostly white. Her father is from a line of very white and very economically and socially privileged people. Her mother was of Bohemian descent. The Eastern Europeans were only marginally white when her parents met, meaning that in infancy my mother would have been perceived as slightly less white than her cousins. Her social class conferred additional white markers on her (such as black housekeepers and personal affluence) that mitigated the effect of a marginally white parent. Therefore, my mother grew up secure in her white identity.

It is the ever evolving definition of white that marks it for it's artificial nature. When Susan Lucci was hired for the soap opera All My Children, she was not intended to be the core character she became. If you ask a modern viewer what ethnicity the actress is they would reply white. They would also say her character, Erica Kane, is a white woman. When Agnes Nixon hired her Lucci was considered "too ethnic" to be a female lead. She was not white. In the 19th and very early 20th century the lynching of Italian immigrants was not unheard of. Now most circles would identify an Italian-American as a white American.

All of this arises from two recent events. In the first event I was at WDW waiting for a tram with my family. The tram operator had a strong (but not difficult to understand) accent. If I were to guess, I would assume he was South American. Behind us a woman and her young daughter were also waiting. The woman began complaining that she could not understand the man. Her language was derogatory and her voice raised. She thought it was a shame he didn't speak her language. My sibling began asking her insulting questions in various languages. I stayed out of it. We all pick our battles and I wasn't in the  mood for that one. (Being white, I get to choose which bigots I interact with.) When we excited the tram I asked him to point out who the speaker was. I had expected him to point to some heavily tattooed and very pale people from the row in front of me. Instead he singled out a woman of apparent Italian descent. I said the first thing that came to my mind. "She ain't even white, tho." I didn't mean it sincerely, I meant it sarcastically. I meant it as an illustration of how absurd her insistence on accent free speech was in a country of immigrants. But maybe I didn't. Maybe I was making a snap judgement on her ethnicity from a place of class and color comfort. Because in this second incident, I absolutely meant every word.

In the area I live white is the default norm. We are so lightly integrated that neighbors feel free to complain when I have non white guests in the pool and have actually caused scenes if those guests are black. South Asian children are often referred to as "the negro kid" while the "good" Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) rarely stay in town long. (On the other hand, residents brag about black celebrities who have vacation homes here. Wealth trumps all.) For the last decade or so I have had a close friend who is pale skinned but visibly of Iranian and Indian descent. She has lived here most of her adult life, with her visually white but English and Indian spouse. We have talked many times about the racism accepted in our town. Her child has been one of the children objected to by my neighbors. Life in the White American gaze is something she knows well. Unlike some of our other South Asian friends she has never reacted rudely to gatherings including African Americans. I thought I knew her well and I would have said she was fairly free of bigotry (while adding the caveat that none of us are free of internalized or assumed bias).

Referring to a new employee that had made a minor mistake my friend vehemently said "Ah god, that fucking nigger."  She then doubled down in the face of my shock to assert that we'd be better off without "every one of them, fuck them all" as casually as she would call me Baby Girl or order lunch. I walked out in shock. How could someone I thought I knew well have such deeply felt bigotry? As I processed my feelings I found myself examining why my emotional reaction was one of rejection. I have white friends who are deeply racist. We have passionate conversations about race in America. I've actually, if enough wine has flowed, been referred to as "the nigger lover" at parties. Why did this reaction from her bother me more than the same reaction from them? I realized it was because "she ain't even white, tho." Without examining it I was operating with two sets of standards. There were the views I required my white friends to listen to and the views I required my South Asian friends to actually hold. I had compartmentalized the intricate issues of South Asian color and class as their own concern while expecting adherence to my views on American color and class. I was viewing the conversations I have with my white friends as a need for education but viewing bias in my South Asian friend as a character flaw. "She ain't even white tho."

Five days later I still don't see resuming my relationship with her. There was a degree of hate in her voice that would also cause me to drop a white friend exhibiting it. (Trayvon Martin's death cleaned my address book right the hell out.) There is also a lesson here that I have not finished learning. Do I need to raise my standards for White American conduct? Probably. (Almost certainly. There are a lot of Roger Sterlings in my life.) In the moment that she said "nigger" a new reality formed, one that requires me to examine quite a bit about myself and my operating principles. Learning that I had different expectations for different groups is going to require long contemplation.

Bear Control

I just read a tragic news story... Apparently a 5 year old in Kentucky had his entire family eaten by his pet Kodiak Bear. Well, not his entire family - his Grandmother was able to give a brief statement to the press:
"He just slathered them in raw beef before he knew what was happening. No one could have known it would happen."
The family kept the bear in what they considered a safe location - with one leg in an umbrella stand by the dining room table, surrounded by pokey sticks. The family bought the boy the Kodiak Bear from a website that specializes in selling Bears for younger children, as well as shorter poking sticks in primary colors and tiny leashes designed for smaller users. The company's website has a charming animated character, Kenny the Kodiak, and their motto is "My First Man-Eater."

"This is an area of the country where a lot of 5-year-olds own full grown Bears, Lions, Tigers... it's not uncommon for them to receive Boa Constrictors covered in poisoned glue and broken glass fragments for Christmas. This is just one of those complete accidents... 100% unavoidable and entirely unexpected. You just can't do anything about it," said the responding officer, who judged the incident an accident.

"We're still holding the Bear - we'll want to make sure the incident didn't damage any of its teeth and that the jaws are in good working order before we return it to what's left of the family."  
Getting it back in healthy condition will surely bring them closure.

You Must Be This Tall To Ride

Ever since the Marathon I've been holding down the impulse to write about the concept of Enough. Regardless of the situation, you are never doing Enough. In the wake of the Marathon bombings I saw a flurry of activity from people who wanted everyone upset about Boston to know that they hadn't been upset Enough about Syria, or Afghanistan, or India, or the Sudan, or whatever topic that particular person is upset about and wishes everyone else would get upset about too. I see this version of Enough all the time and it makes me feel vaguely violent. It's the political equivalent of walking into a wake and screaming "Do you know how many people die each year? Why didn't you cry this hard for them?" There is a scale of grief. You care about the neighbor dying, but you care more when someone in your house does.

I can't stop hate in the world. I can't even stop it in my HOA. Society is a boulder we continually push uphill. If enough people stop pushing, it crushes those remaining. Sometimes, you get a miracle. Sometimes the boulder clears the top and you can breathe for a second before it starts rolling backward. Trayvon got that breath of relief. Rekia did not. They're still dead. Hate can't push a pebble so we tap it down to push on. If you tell me there is no point to my effort I have to wonder why. How have you defined Enough? Since you are obviously doing it, is it working? Have you solved what you wanted to solve?

I didn't think so.

Some define Enough as a constant engagement with those around them. Some define Enough as an abdication of their daily life in favor of continual activism. Some define Enough as radicalizing and joining a militant group. But the struggle continues. Enough isn't even enough. The Sandy Hook Parents and 90 percent of the American people united to call for a bill making tiny commonsense restrictions to our gun laws. It wasn't Enough. Like Gold Star Parents or the 9/11 Widows the Sandy Hook Parents are now accused of doing too much. If they had just done things differently, then magic would happen and our efforts would be Enough. Bostonians defined Enough as staying indoors while their first responders responded to bombings, murders, carjackings, and shootings. To many people who don't live in Boston, this wasn't Enough. The city of Boston exists because the native people of the area didn't do Enough to repel the invading force of European settlement. In 1642 my ancestor was granted a farm of 92 acres in Watertown (an upgrade from his previous 10 acre homestall). To the people who lived in Watertown before it was Watertown, before he arrived, was there the same inability to define Enough? The struggle is the struggle is the struggle.

To the people who are upset when I don't care Enough, when I don't march Enough, when I don't define Enough the same way they do I say I am out here. I am pushing. We are all together in wanting peaceful coexistence. We are all together in rejecting extremism and radicalism. We are all working on our side of the boulder. It's going to crush us all. Look for those moments to breathe. Make them enough to push you forward. America is largely safe of bombs in public spaces. I'd like that to be true for every nation. I won't squander the privilege of that safety by accepting it may end. There are struggles all over the world. The boulders will always be rolling. I don't deny our part in them, but push on the surfaces I can touch with the strength I have. It might not be Enough for you, but it will have to be enough for me.


*The tipping point for this rant was this Salon article, more specifically the passage: "Don’t look the other way and tell me that you signed a petition or voted for John Kerry or whatever. The fact is that whatever dignified private opinions you and I may hold, we did not do enough..." without then defining what Enough looked like. 

Too Big To Fail

I've been waiting for J.C. Penney to replace Ron Johnson since shortly after they hired him. He had a fundamental failure to understand the J.C. Penney customer. While I was not the Penney's customer, I've worked for them and my great-grandfather was friendly with their founder. Actually, let's hear from the man himself.

“We told store managers that, unless they knew their communities and unless they were prepared to enter sympathetically into community life, they could not make a success of their stores.” - James Cash Penney

Penney believed in meeting the customer on their own level. He believed strongly in individual service as a path to success. This is a basic truth of retailing that I rarely see deployed. Even this otherwise spot on article misses that point. The best tool a retailer has is not pricing but staffing. Current trends in retail are to reposition payroll hours into stock and cashier positions while expecting stockers to do double duty as service persons. In some retailers this works. Target has a customer who expects little to no service and a call button system that loudly reminds those in the store that floor personnel are timed in their response. Some retailers staff adequately but train and deploy that staff poorly. (Looking at you, Best Buy.) Staffing is an art, best handled by the store manager, not by a chart from the home office. Retail workers wages have declined steadily. Walking into a store I can tell you who makes what. The paycheck shows in the performance.

Penney's customer is a service driven budget shopper. Their shopper can't (or chooses not to) pay high end department store prices but wants to have the same shopping experience. The Penney's customer is not a person of leisure. They're busy. Generally they know what they want but they are also willing to add purchases. They prefer to order things that are out of stock rather than waste time hunting sizes or styles down. If they like an item, they may order the full color range.  Before Johnson came in Penny's was losing customers by increased centralization of ordering and reduction of staffing. If the Penny's customer has to hunt down their own purchases, they might as well shop at Target. It's not a surprise to me that Johnson wanted to reposition Penny's as Target without the groceries. The problem is that Target already does Target, and quite well. That customer is being served. 

At the top of retail choices are made that lose sight of what those at the bottom of retail know. The key to success is not focusing on the customer you don't have, it's increasing the amount of money your customer spends. Find out what your customer likes and give them more of it. As James Cash Penney knew, this requires local involvement. School event with specific dress code coming up? Let the stores order for it. Lots of size 5 feet in the area? Stop shipping them size 14. When the customer walks into a Target in Miami and sees a wall of ear muffs you might as well throw that merchandise away. The widget model cuts costs and excites Wall Street but it's the retail equivalent of telling the customer you neither understand them nor care to. You see a shipping model with a loss threshold offset by  organizational practice savings. The customer sees a bunch of idiots running this place. 

Penney's is a common tale. (I play a game with former coworkers called "Months Till Closing" where we put major chains on deathwatch.) I've worked for or shopped at any number of retailers who were once Goliath but are now gone. They fail because failure seems impossible to them. They are too big to fail. For part of my career I worked for Service Merchandise. It was a great job with a highly profitable company. We had real benefits, real wages, respect from corporate and a fair amount of local control. They hired a new CEO. This guy was already known to rank and file as the dude that broke Dalton's. He gave his first internal broadcast briefing. I gave notice and sold my stock holdings. It was clear he didn't understand our concept or our customer. In the broadcast he showed serious class blindness by using Spam as the prop for a series of jokes about low profitability. To much of his audience Spam was a luxury purchase, not a punchline. His opening move was to show contempt for the people he was trusting to execute his vision. You know who made a fortune by taking over the Service Merchandise concept? Amazon. 

*Too bad they didn't adopt the profit sharing model of Service Merchandise's founders.

Cheesecake And A Fork

Magritte, a photo by The Physiognomist on Flickr.

There's this actor named Jon Hamm.  Every so often it's pointed out that he's got a rather large dick. Being a slow news week, the latest acknowledgement of his package led to a media frenzy. Knowledgeable sources were quoted talking about on set reaction to the The Full Hamm. Quotes popped up in the usual places from friends of friends who know this guy who walks this dog that once passed by Jon Hamm and wow did that dog react! Reporters asked Hamm to discuss his endowment. Understandably, the actor was not amused by this sexual harassment.

Thus more ink was spilled. Should Hamm expect pants privacy? What does it mean that the age of junk measurement is upon us? Some excellent satire was written using the language usually applied to women's bodies. Discussions are underway about how we objectify women (That new hairstyle is not doing John Kerry any favors. Staffers hide his styling products but he just buys more!) while allowing men bodily autonomy. Except, you know, not really. There was something missing from the last few weeks for me. I did not feel any piece had a real sense of regret for Jon Hamm, the man. While I understand the impulse to come from a place of "How do you like it now, male members of society!" the man has been violated. He has been victimized and I will be happy to cry him the appropriate river.

As a society, we should absolutely not be so obsessed with policing each other's bodies. That includes the bodies of men. The recent focus on Hamm brings to mind an internet conversation I once had with Mark Consuelos. At the time, he was better known than his wife (Kelly Ripa) and was holding a chat for whatever project he was promoting. I asked him about his stint as a romance novel cover model. Consuelos was uncomfortable with it. It's been far too many years for me to recall his exact words but it was obvious that this was a career choice he was not happy to have made, one that he would prefer to forget. We talked briefly about the Cult of Fabio that was in it's heyday and the odd objectification of these cover models by book fans. I hope, and believe, that he understood I was speaking from a place of curiosity (which turned to empathy) and not from fandom.

I am uncomfortable with the way we depersonalize humans once their image has been captured. It might be Man Titty Monday, it might be Turkish Oil Wrestling, but women who would rail against soft core galleries of female celebrities are completely at ease objectifying their male counterparts. The answer of objectification is not more objectification, and yet as Jon Hamm has discovered - that's how we roll. If your coworker came home, cracked open the laptop and began composing explicit sex scenes about you and the boss it would freak you out. It would cross boundaries. It would be very not ok. Yet this is an accepted practice in fan fiction - to write about sexual relationships between actual people. Actors and actresses are told that they have to expect these objectifications as part of their employment. By going to work, they have invited this.

I can't agree. I have never agreed. There is a privacy we should each be afforded as humans, a line that is crossed so often we forget it exists in their lives, as it does in our own. Finding an individual attractive, admiring their publicity shots or collecting a gallery of ridiculously photogenic people is normal. Viewing other humans as something consumable, something to be examined and used in whatever way the viewer feels appropriate is simply wrong. When we encounter it, our reaction should always be the same. Regret. Sorrow. An understanding that something undesirable has taken place.

I wrote this piece earlier today. I was thinking in terms of celebrity and online culture. A man I've known casually for almost two decades told me something I'd never known about him. For 16 years he moonlighted as a male stripper. It was, he said, degrading dehumanizing physically painful work he would never wish on anyone. Men were generally respectful, possibly as a result of the homophobia of the time. Women, especially once drunk, became frighteningly aggressive. It was routine for them to yank on his dick, to tug his concealed sexual organs into the open without warning or permission. Stripping was a life that once he started, he had trouble leaving. If he knew now how he would feel about it, it's not a life he would have chosen. But at the time, it seemed an ideal second job. The days turn to weeks to months to years to decades to bad memories that you don't shake. Those women saw their fantasy, not the man in front of them. Fantasies don't require consideration. By showing up for work, their consent is presumed. To all of them, whoever they are, my support.

Fair Rarely Means Balanced

This is about specifics and about generalities and about all points in between. Really, it's about the life cycle of an open mind. I've lived on the internet for enough years to know better but I always hope. I hope that whatever community I wind my way into, on whatever topic, will resist the quiet whispers of the Civility Police. You would think, as a person that moderated boards for AOL before that was a badge of shame, that I'd know better.

Here's how it goes.

Someone (or a group) decides the problem with their current habitat is an excess of moderating. They decide to form a new group where open conversations are the rule, not the exception. Big girl (and boy) pants are handed out. The community grows because people enjoy open conversation. Fervent disagreement educates as much as it link baits. Eventually, the community faces a crossroads. Are they chicken, or are they fish?

Always, the question comes couched as the question of civility. It's the tone argument. The strong voices, the ones that build the community, attract conversation, and distinguish it from the bland, are undervalued. There are important people not being heard. Fearful people. Quiet people. People who send emails and whisper in ears and quake in the self satisfied boots of the pious. It doesn't have to be a book community. I've seen it play out in places as absurd as travel communities. On the face of it, it seems so reasonable. Rather than institute an ignore feature or tell people to man up, the choice is made to change. To become more like the place they fondly remember as great, before the moderation drove away the strong voices and the self policers.

The thing is, I've never been interested in people who hold civility up as a goal. The poison they drip is far more vile to me than the frontal assault of a true believer. When asked "You don't want to make people uncomfortable, do you?" I say yes. Yes I do. I want the gays to marry, the people of color to party at the beach, the country club to celebrate Purim, the headscarf to be worn at the school play. Yes. I want people to be uncomfortable. I do. When you are uncomfortable you are forced to examine if you are right.

Then the argument is made that passionate debate is still welcome. Just not with that voice, not in that tone, why are you taking it personally? Yes, these people may be directing their words at you but... and but.. and but. Wait your turn. Raise your hand. Think about the other person but don't expect them to think about you because you, you're loud. You make people uncomfortable. You want them to defend their words instead of bask in them. Often those who are most vehement in their tone arguments are the most hateful, the least inclusive, the quickest to uphold the status quo and wave away the dissent. Class issues? Race issues? Pish and tosh. Pish and tosh, we say! How you speak becomes more important than the content of your speech. More important than the content of your character.

Civility goes hand in hand with solidarity. Trust in us! Support this feminism and that feminism will follow! Believe in the past instead of the present! Every book is a good book for someone! Toxic messages are in the eye of the beholder! If that fails, then it is generally pointed out that the ball is owned by the rule maker, and the rule maker makes the game. Which is why I run a series of blogs instead of communities. I believe that communities belong to those who populate them, not those who begin them. A lack of civility is not abuse. People no longer sharing your taste is not disdain.

Some of you have been in communities with me for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years. You know that nothing I say here is inconsistent with any position I previously held. Some of you don't know me at all, and that's fine. Choosing to honor the whispering horsemen of the nicepocalypse isn't a crime. Having the right to take an action is not the same as being right in your actions. Communities rise and fall, they struggle on or enjoy rebirth. Somewhere there is someone thinking about building a new one. It may be six weeks, it may be six months, but one thing I know about the internet is a new home is always under construction. My choice forever is to go with the loud girls, the proud girls, the girls we say we want but almost never support.