I am not, and have not been, asking you to take notes for me.
I am not, and have not been, unwilling to do the research myself.
The reason I have come to your blog and you questions about what you're saying is because you're the one speaking. You're a living, breathing, representative of a person who is immersed in a particular conversation from a particular viewpoint, and what I have been interested in is how you in particular are using the language. I've not always been certain that you are using the terms correctly, which is why I've been asking you about what you mean. This is not information that I can get from someone else. The information that I can get from someone else, I do.
Given the fact that language changes, reading "what's out there" isn't going to help me understand what you understand. Look at the debates about what the word "slash" means.
Just google "racism 101" for heavens sake!
You say this like I haven't.
That's like asking a first year med student about brain surgery. I am not an expert, I am not the voice of anti-racism.
Nor am I treating you like one. I've been treating you like exactly two things: a) a person who has some sense of the workings of your own mind, and b) a person whom I consider a friend, and therefore felt more comfortable approaching with awkward questions.
This may strike you as unfathomable, but the fact that you're white, the fact that you were raised in Tennessee, and the fact that now live in New York are things of interest to me in figuring out what you're talking about. You often base what you're saying on assumptions about a world that doesn't sound familiar to me. When I want to know PoCs' perspectives on a world that does sound familiar to me, I ask them.
I cannot ask for help in it, I cannot burden others with my ignorance. I must seek my own materials, I must do my own processing. I must digest, not regurgitate.
Asking for help is not the same as regurgitating. Perhaps you should consider asking for more help to make sure that you're digesting properly.
You want to explain to your students why using the term "colored" is wrong - start with the fact that you're asking another white person for the definition of "colorblind" instead of reading up on what people of color are telling you it means.
Try again. I wasn't asking a white person for the definition of colorblind. I was inquiring of a white person how the definition was being used by that white person.
Some of my students are going to be going out into the world and reading blogs like yours--if not yours--and they're not going to know how to make sense of it. Asking them to catch up on hundreds of years of reading before they can parse your arguments is self-defeating.
Privilege enables your students to use those words, and more importantly, to face no consequences.
Yes. In more practical terms, the fact that they live in a town of 500 people, all of whom are white relatives is why they can use those words and face no consequences. More than a few of these kids have never actually seen a PoC in real life.
Language is symptomatic. It is not the end in and of itself, but a gateway to meaning, action, and reality. It is reflective. It is the mirror, not the object. Changing the mirror does not change the object.
Now it's you who needs to do some research. Changing the mirror absolutely does change the object. If it didn't, we wouldn't be so interested in changing the mirror. Language can, and often is, the object in itself, especially for people who teach language and who are trying to teach people how to be aware of the language that is being used around them.
BTW, this is not an exclusive function of white culture, as your more recent post asserts. Using language to affect magic is a feature of every single world culture. If you don't believe me, do some research on African death curses.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 06:37 pm (UTC)I am not, and have not been, unwilling to do the research myself.
The reason I have come to your blog and you questions about what you're saying is because you're the one speaking. You're a living, breathing, representative of a person who is immersed in a particular conversation from a particular viewpoint, and what I have been interested in is how you in particular are using the language. I've not always been certain that you are using the terms correctly, which is why I've been asking you about what you mean. This is not information that I can get from someone else. The information that I can get from someone else, I do.
Given the fact that language changes, reading "what's out there" isn't going to help me understand what you understand. Look at the debates about what the word "slash" means.
Just google "racism 101" for heavens sake!
You say this like I haven't.
That's like asking a first year med student about brain surgery. I am not an expert, I am not the voice of anti-racism.
Nor am I treating you like one. I've been treating you like exactly two things: a) a person who has some sense of the workings of your own mind, and b) a person whom I consider a friend, and therefore felt more comfortable approaching with awkward questions.
This may strike you as unfathomable, but the fact that you're white, the fact that you were raised in Tennessee, and the fact that now live in New York are things of interest to me in figuring out what you're talking about. You often base what you're saying on assumptions about a world that doesn't sound familiar to me. When I want to know PoCs' perspectives on a world that does sound familiar to me, I ask them.
I cannot ask for help in it, I cannot burden others with my ignorance. I must seek my own materials, I must do my own processing. I must digest, not regurgitate.
Asking for help is not the same as regurgitating. Perhaps you should consider asking for more help to make sure that you're digesting properly.
You want to explain to your students why using the term "colored" is wrong - start with the fact that you're asking another white person for the definition of "colorblind" instead of reading up on what people of color are telling you it means.
Try again. I wasn't asking a white person for the definition of colorblind. I was inquiring of a white person how the definition was being used by that white person.
Some of my students are going to be going out into the world and reading blogs like yours--if not yours--and they're not going to know how to make sense of it. Asking them to catch up on hundreds of years of reading before they can parse your arguments is self-defeating.
Privilege enables your students to use those words, and more importantly, to face no consequences.
Yes. In more practical terms, the fact that they live in a town of 500 people, all of whom are white relatives is why they can use those words and face no consequences. More than a few of these kids have never actually seen a PoC in real life.
Language is symptomatic. It is not the end in and of itself, but a gateway to meaning, action, and reality. It is reflective. It is the mirror, not the object. Changing the mirror does not change the object.
Now it's you who needs to do some research. Changing the mirror absolutely does change the object. If it didn't, we wouldn't be so interested in changing the mirror. Language can, and often is, the object in itself, especially for people who teach language and who are trying to teach people how to be aware of the language that is being used around them.
BTW, this is not an exclusive function of white culture, as your more recent post asserts. Using language to affect magic is a feature of every single world culture. If you don't believe me, do some research on African death curses.