Failing at IBARW, you're doing it.

[megwrites]

This is how you DON'T do IBARW, and how you can actually end up disrespecting it and the people it's supposed to be for if you're just out looking for cookies.

I think Avalon's Willow has a really excellent post about it and her post is much better than this one is going to be, so go over there. And she also makes really excellent responses in the LJ in question, and I urge you to go read those.

The original post makes me angry, and this is why:



Offering up a "racial diversity resource" list that contains racist portrayals without bothering to at least mark which is which (because you yourself don't even know) is like going to someone's birthday party and offering them a cake that you dropped on the floor and saying, "Well, I didn't pick out the hair or dirt or the bugs that got in, but you can eat around those, some of it is still good! It's still a cake and it's your birthday!"

That's a lousy thing to do, and makes you lazy and disrespectful. That's what this person did. They offered a cake full of bugs, a list full of racist portrayals and just said, "Oh, some of it might be bad. You can just work around those".

Then she tried to defend it by saying, "But, but I warned you about the bugs! You can still eat around them! Or maybe someone can assemble a Super Team to pick them out for you, but I'm not going to. Enjoy!"

Like people of color don't have to work around racism every fucking day of the fucking year when it comes to books and movies and TV shows and conventions. Like PoC haven't had to wade through piles and piles of material that was supposed to be about them but was just a slap in the face. They already have lists and collections and what not where they have walk in a minefield of things that blow up in their face. That's called Everyday for them.

IBARW is not supposed to be Everyday, it's supposed to be just a little better.

That's one of my problems with my fellow white people just people jumping on the IBARW bandwagon without doing any thinking or listening. In America, it seems like we have these "causes", and for a day or a week or a month a year, we're all about that. Black History Month, Veteran's Day, or Domestic Violence Awareness Week.

Sure, for that day, we're all about helping out and pitching in and saying the right things. But call us a month early or a month late? And damned if we're going to plaster pictures of a bunch of African Americans in the halls or celebrate black leaders and heroes, damned if we're going to donate to homeless veterans or volunteer time for them, damned if we care about that shelter for women that's about to close down.

Like networks and companies that are all about showing their good works (Food Network wants to Fight Hunger in America around Thanksgiving or Subaru is all about Going Green) but if you wanted to talk to them about hunger in, say, March, they wouldn't even take the call. If you wanted to ring Subaru up and ask why they think making their factories green is sufficient when their product still poisons the environment, you couldn't get someone to even pick up the phone and listen to you.

It seems like a lot of people think IBARW is like those annoying ribbons that you stick on the back of your car or pin on your shirt to show how much you care. Like if you just put that little tag on your LJ, then you did a good thing and you'll get a pat on the head because, yes, you white person, you helped end racism without even getting your ass out of your chair.

And it's not. IBARW is not white people getting to look good. IBARW is not about white people, period.. Emphasis for the clueless. It's about beating back the ugly, horrible racism that has been oppressing millions of people for centuries by getting together and talking about the problem and the solutions via our blogs.

That's my main problem with swan_tower's list. It was so much posturing and bragging about how "oh, look, I just happened to have this 'racial-diversity resource' lying around, aren't I so anti-racist and cool?" and it wasn't even good posturing or bragging. It wasn't even a good list, either. It wasn't like she did something really amazing by reading all those books and sorting out which are lousy and which aren't - she didn't even bother completing the entire ass by cherry picking for the authors of color and making a list of just those. No, she went with the half ass approach, which never works.

I don't know her intentions. I know her results. And results > intentions. She may have intended all the best (or supposed she did), but she ended up doing something crappy.

I know she took a week which was supposed to be about maybe giving PoC's some more breathing room and having them and their issues take front stage and blogging about these things and made it about her. Whatever she intended, this is what she did.

So don't come to the birthday party and offer up a floor cake and then try to defend yourself. If you really have nothing to say and nothing to offer, just don't come. Stay away and let others actually enjoy the party. Or better yet, try doing a little learning and reading the posts that others have made for the last four years that IBARW's been running. Read their words instead of making up crappy ones of your own.