A Chasm Illuminated

UPDATE (2006-10-03 16:14EST): See more Zukiness at An Uncanny (Media Tactic) Resemblance and A Chasm Accentuated.

Over the past 5 days, I've undergone a tectonic shift in my view of and approach to the "liberal" blogosphere. You probably already know what I'm talking about: yes, the still-drizzling mildly-radioactive fallout from Bill Clinton's blogger-summit luncheon. It seems to me that the event itself was really no big deal — a fairly typical, non-committal, subtle-power-negotiating opening of avenues between a Big Man of Tremendous Stature and an assembled cadre of potentially useful scribes.

In China, there are written records of such encounters going back some 3,000 years — innumerable meetings where influential court officials summoned noteworthy poets, artists, and intellectuals for the purpose of determining eye-to-eye the opportunity or threat that these figures presented to the Dragon Throne. Personally, my favorite story along these lines occurred when the great Tang dynasty poet Li Bai [pictured left] received a summons from the emperor himself while lying on the floor drunk in the back of a wine shop. The mighty poet refused to budge and had a few choice words for the emperor's messengers; and he was such a bad-ass that he lived to tell the tale. But obviously, this was incredibly rare; for the most part, people complied. Anyone who achieved enough prominence in his or her craft — from musician to assassin to chef — might receive an imperial summons, which was considered a great honor. The nice thing about imperial China (if such an odd thing can be said) was that the flow of power was obvious to everyone; in quasi-democratic America, things never seem quite as clear.

All this is to say that when I read the early reports of the meeting, given the cultural background that I've just described, it didn't actually surprise or offend me. Of course, the modern American in me did notice the glaring lack of melanin in the pictures, especially given that they were eating soul food in Harlem; but as people of color so often do — perhaps wrongly — I was prepared to let it go. I even felt kind of grateful that Christy and Atrios, whose writings I read daily, were there to at least, to some degree, "represent".

Fortunately for me, Terrance at The Republic of T., Liza Sabater at Culture Kitchen, and Bint Alshamsa at My Private Casbah were not as sedated. They saw something uncool and said so. And that's when the tectonic shift began for me, triggered not by the event itself, but by the reaction to it and even more, by the reaction to the reaction. Not that I necessarily agreed with every word or turn of phrase that Terrance or Liza or Bint (or others with similar views) issued, but their raised voices, in combination with the harrowing responses they generated, flared up into sudden fireworks, illuminating the surrounding blogospheric landscape in a manner that I'd not previously seen, but now do. That landscape is scarred by a deep chasm. On one side stands a blogospheric elite consisting mostly of mainstream upper-middle-class white liberals who embrace the culture of celebrity (they even refer to themselves as the "A-list") and are primarily concerned with Democratic Party electoral politics and staying chummy with one another. The other side of the chasm, however, is teeming with an incredible diversity of progressives who are largely marginalized by the mainstream, who tend to embrace a more probing, depersonalized, institutional analysis of America's corporate-political power structure, and who are in many cases skeptical of the ability of current two-party electoral politics to truly transform our society and culture.

Perhaps to some extent, the astonishing horrors of the Bush-Cheney years have glossed over the liberal-progressive divide. Perhaps many liberals, after years of losing ground to a rabid GOP, want to see themselves as progressive, but remain unwilling to take a hit for The Other when push comes to shove and the stakes get intense. Perhaps at times, in a two-party system, glossing over the liberal-progressive divide can even be a good thing. But as we saw this past week, glossing things over doesn't make them go away. [Pictured to the right of this paragraph: Detail from "Biographies of Lian Pou and Lin Xiangru" by Huang Tingjian, a thousand-year-old calligraphic masterpiece whose text, about a court rivalry, contained a message of political dissent which resulted in the calligrapher's exile.]

In a very real way, this whole flare-up can be traced back to the "blackface Joe" controversy and the refusal of white liberal blog-celebrities to probe its meaning. This was the reason that Liza Sabater singled out Jane Hamsher as an emblem of the Clinton luncheon (not because Hamsher was a stand-in for every blond woman who'd ever pissed off Sabater, as FDLers claimed in yet another dismissal typical of white privilege). As Liza plainly put it in a Sept. 15 comment: "I am connecting two seemingly unrelated events to make the point this is not the first time this kind of cluelessness about race has happened among the allegedly democratic and progressively liberal blogosphere."

I believe that Liza was right to make that connection. Indeed, in the days leading up to the publication of the blackface image, I'd grown concerned about the manner in which Hamsher had begun to speak on behalf of African Americans in the Connecticut primary race. In a July 31 post, Hamsher wrote:

There is a special satisfaction I am going to take in watching Joe Lieberman get his ass kicked in this race by the African Americans who are showing up to support Ned Lamont.

One of the many delusions under which Holy Joe suffers is that he is black. [...]

There is a special kind of satisfaction I will be taking this week as leaders from the African American community show up to shatter Joe "Black Like Me" Lieberman’s illusions about himself. And I’m really happy that the liberal blogosphere is finding common cause with African Americans leaders in this race.  It’s a bridge that we desperately need to build and I for one will be spending my week enthusiastically trying to do so.

In that post's comment thread, I wrote:

Nice post, Jane. But I have to admit I’m starting to get just a wee-bit uncomfortable with the constant invocation of race in this … race. Look: both candidates are rich white males. Neither is an overt racist, but in the eyes of people of color, I can assure you that neither is pure as driven snow either. [...] In my view, it would be a mistake to over-racialize Lamont’s candidacy.

Two days later, Hamsher posted the blackface image at HuffPo. What's worse, it happened the night before Ned Lamont was scheduled to make high-profile appearances with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson at the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven. Incidentally, neither Hamsher nor her FDL colleagues attended these two events at bastions of African American activism — venues whose pulpits had been graced by Dr. King and many other luminaries.

In any case, in the waning days of the Lamont primary campaign, I went along with the program and kept my mouth shut, focusing on my volunteer work rather than blogging. But after Lamont's August 7 victory, I wrote my "Five Grievances" post and offered an excerpt in a Sunday morning thread at FDL. The response from FDLers was, for the most part, unhinged anger and a total refusal to engage in dialogue regarding the points I'd raised. To this day, Hamsher will not examine the issue and darkblack insists that the racism of the blackface image he created is "subjective". In a comment on FDL, he wrote:

...liberal bloggers didn’t leave people in the arms of Katrina.

I am certainly interested in Liza’s views, as I do the views of others…But if mine are to be discounted out of hand because I am supposedly racist, then it makes communication and understanding difficult.

I am not a racist.

From an artistic viewpoint, which is my sole contribution to this episode, I demand to be judged on my broader work.

It was fortuitous that Gilliard linked to Liza…Forced exposure creates honesty.

Temple3 took up darkblack's demand and wrote:

While reading comments to a write up at FireDogLake, I came across this line, “I demand to be judged…” and decided to take a look at the broader work. From my perspective, there are some interesting patterns that emerged. The patterns are probably obvious to some folks and imperceptible to others. I believe the patterns betray a sense of cultural tension that may or may not be racism, but it’s definitely white supremacist in orientation. [...]

These images are generally caricatures and ancient American stereotypes from the era of the Saturday Evening Post and Steppin’ Fetchit. The artists tends to traffic in these images for the purpose of conveying those traits most typically associated with Blacks (by white supremacists). The traits are disloyalty, weakness, stupidity, and cowardice. There are more traits, but in a political context, these may be the most relevant.

These traits suggest a white supremacist orientation precisely because there is no juxtaposition with a Black aesthetic norm. For me, this indicates that the artist clearly operates outside of a Black cultural milieu. There are no normalized frames of reference to satirize. [...] To be fair, I wanted to see if a collection with a preponderance of satirical images would also use “normalized” imagery for “whites.” The site has numerous examples of this: Bushmore, How’s Our Driving, Fascinating, LieBush - to name a few. There aren’t any “normalized” images utilizing African cultural phenomena. This is substantively different than normalized depictions of black individuals like Condoleeza Rice or Mike Tyson. The cultural (graphic, textual, etc.) formulations reveal a deeper level of insight than the mere re-presentation of a photo.

At this deeper level, the depictions of African phenomena are remarkably consistent. Take the case of Joe Lieberman: he has been depicted in black face with [Bill Clinton], as a lawn jockey (aka Porch Monkey), and Mr. Bojangles. But there is a twist…when Lieberman is depicted within “white” cultural paradigms, Lieberman is often feminized and the context is almost invariably sexual. There is a pattern here: A Cabinet Post, A Little Necking, Auld Lang Syne, Codless, Sitting In A Tree, Love Connection and others.

It seems like the artist has trouble capturing any African cultural phenomena in ways that do not comport with latent memories imbibed over decades. Does that mean this artist is racist? It doesn’t matter because this artist can consistently be relied upon to provide material that will be of considerable value to racists.

Temple3 also commented here at Zuky:

Aside from the trends I found in db's work, I believe one of the reasons for the defensive nature of the response is tied to "intelligence." This cadre of folks pride themselves on being hyper-intelligent. This specific example reflects historical ignorance. That is embarassing.

In yet another post, Temple3 continues:

The issue probably should not be dropped because it could be symbolic of something larger.  It appears that the personalities involved in this [blackface] representation, and the subsequent dissemination and defense [of the Clinton luncheon], are close colleagues.  This stands to reason.  However, the political arc of these individuals is trending up.  If the trend continues, this circle of affiliation may have it’s very own “macaca” to deal with.

Liberal Dismalcrats would not be willing to bear this burden. Still, there are disturbing patterns within this collective that may merit continued observation.

Agreed.

For better or worse, the blogosphere's chasm between liberals and progressives, and between white folks and people of color, has not only been exposed, but has also deepened and widened during the past week. To their credit, Daily Kos diarist Jeffrey Feldman and Terrance at The Republic of T. are at least attempting to heal some of the damage done and find a way forward. I applaud these proposals as good-faith efforts. Nevertheless, in the meantime, the reality of the now-illuminated chasm remains.

UPDATE (2006-09-20 18:53EST): For the sake of ending on a more upbeat note, here's Terrance:

Now I want to try and offer some suggestions for moving forward without rehashing [the blog-fight] if I can help it. More to the point, I want to address what I think progressive bloggers of color — or any other constituency of progressive bloggers, really — can do to help ourselves and others in our corners of the blogosphere, independent of what anyone else does or doesn’t do. The primary point is to strengthen ties and communications between us, and secondarily to help us find, support, and promote one another. So, I offer this as a proposal in response to Jeffrey Feldman’s diary on Daily Kos. [...]

One of the things we can do is to build and strengthen our own networks, develop leadership, and define success within those networks. Doing so may yield positive results beyond those networks, the larger progressive blogosphere, and progressive politics in general. But it starts with us.

There was such a network at some point, called Brown Bloggers, but as of right now there’s nothing at that domain. But it’s part of what inspired the idea I have in mind. The other inspiration is the Progressive Blog Alliance. (That’s one of the reasons I emailed Aldon to get his thoughts on the idea, as he’s one of the people behind the PBA.) What I’m suggesting is blending various aspects of the two in order to establish something like the Progressive Blog Alliance for progressive bloggers of color. It’s functions could include:

• serving as a place where members have individual blogs or diaries to which they can crosspost content from their own blog
• a blogroll that members would then post on their individual blogs.
• a blogroll of members, listed by state
• aggregate RSS feeds from members.

That’s a start, but it could also encompass better communications between members, organizing realtime member events, coordinating actions on various issues, etc. Most of all in could serve as a place for new bloggers to get exposure, for established bloggers to expand their audience, and a resource for anyone who’s interested to discover blogs and bloggers they might not have come across otherwise. it might also serve as a place to continue discussing diversity, for anyone who’s interested in participating. It could serve as a place to promote stories that might not otherwise get much exposure. Ideally, it would help build a community to nurture and promote voices from our communities. It could help promote and support ideas like FuturePAC, which promotes progressive African American women for state and federal office. [...]

So, I offer this as a possible way of moving forward, and I’m willing to commit myself to helping build it if there’s support for it. Beyond that, I’ll commit to helping and working with any proposal to move forward on this issue that has sufficient support to make it happen.

In the ensuing comment thread, here's Nanette:

Well, I think it’s a good idea. Sort of. I think a lot of its success would also depend on its independence…

if it’s to be another sort of kos satellite site, only browner, I don’t know… there are reasons many people of color have left kos, mydd, myleftwing and others, and didn’t attend the yearlykos. Not from a lack of them reaching out, but from a conscious decision to shake the dust off their feet.

But, as with building every new thing, you are taking a good first step. I’m sure you’ll (eventually) get a variety of opinions and can go from there.

And here's XP:

the question I have, who gets the invite? Who is doing the outreach and what method will be used? Is there a list of potential poc bloggers people already in mind or is it only those who participate in dKos? What are the requirements, because it is well known there are certain topics that can be blogged about and those that forbidden?

It is one thing getting attacked from the Rethugs because I know where they are coming from, and it is easy debate them. It is another to get blindsided when it comes from people who say they are our allies. Some of those things were very hurtful, sure you can say, this is politics and we have to develop a thick skin, but that is not what makes it hurtful. What makes it hurtful, the people who are speaking in our behalf are to be handled with kid gloves, because to call them out will only cause consequences as it was told over and over again. If we sided with Liza, don’t complain if we get less traffic. Will this be the case for this group? If somebody who disagrees with the poc “gatekeeper” will they be quickly cut off?

The discussion is really just getting underway, and I imagine will produce many interesting ideas.

UPDATE 2 (2006-09-21 01:44EST): I decided while writing this post to avoid mentioning TRex and his juvenile attack against Liza Sabater, but this is impossible to resist: Chris Clarke over at Creek Running North takes up TRex's snotty demand that bloggers learn the proper rules of English writing:

Grammar and usage problems are a bit trickier than spelling problems. Some grammar goofs are innocent, inevitable in informal writing, even to be prized. There are quite a number of types of grammatical errors, and not all of them signify a lack of either education or clear thought. It is my contention, however, that some do signify a lack of either education or clear thought. Let’s run through a few examples of both kinds of errors.

[ Read it! ]

UPDATE 3 (2006-09-25 02:34EST): As a final note on this matter (ahem, I guess we'll see about that), I just wanted to point out that a number of bloggers have weighed in on this brouhaha with words that I've found encouraging (though the silence of celebrity bloggers remains deafening). I don't want to rehash all of this now-familiar terrain, but I'm posting this update because I want to express my respect for the voices herein. There are more, but here's a roundup:

Over at Alas, a blog, Ampersand writes: "One difference that shows up here - and that frequently shows up in these discussions - is that (generalization alert! generalization alert!) POC bloggers focus on what actually happened, while white bloggers focus on establishing the purity of people’s hearts."

Over at Crooked Timber, Belle Waring writes: "Please tell me I didn’t just read a white male blogger dismiss a black woman complaining about the lack of any black or latino bloggers at the Bill Clinton blogger meetup by telling her not to attack 'her betters' and insinuating that she is too ignorant to write properly. Pleasepleaseplease. Aw, damn."

Over at Feministe, Zuzu writes: "If you’re a minority, and you want some answers as to why no minorities attended the lunch with the powerful person, someone will be along directly to remind you not to sass your betters. If you continue to protest, you will be pegged as angry and hysterical."

Over at Fetch me my axe, belledame222 points out: "And no, 'I see no color' cuts no ice. Of course it’s much easier to see no color when you see no color. That tends to happen when your circles are blindingly white. 'Oh, I never even thought about it.' YES. That kind of would be, you know, the point?"

Over at Spot-On, Chris Nolan observes: "The purpose of the lunch was for William Jefferson Clinton, possibly the most charming and charismatic politician of our time, to sprinkle a little fairy dust on some political neophytes, people who are - despite what they're saying now - going to vote Democratic regardless of who the nominee may be. And people who have made no secret of their desire to be courted by the politically powerful and the mainstream media they love to disparage."

Over at Wampum, MB Wiliams notes that the blogosphere has its own "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to race: "I recognized long ago that if I wanted to increase my readership, I should just stop talking about all that Injun stuff. Once I accepted that, I became a lot more comfortable with the few links we get from the A-listers"

Over at Women of Color, brownfemipower writes: "does it really mean absolutly nothing that a former head of a racist imperialist nation/state had a luncheon with an all-white group of people who control the 'new frontier' of media?"

Finally, Elayne Riggs offers a limerick:

Some bloggers are way too amused
By wingnuts who bitch about boobs.
They choose to ignore
The stuff that counts more
Like the absence of Blacks at the schmooze.

In the end, I must say that I'm strangely happy all this happened (the post-summit blog-fight, not the existence of institutional racism itself) because it forced me to re-evaluate my blogospheric orbit and discover a fresh landscape of noteworthy blogs. The concrete result is reflected in the composition of my Jump Off list in the sidebar.

Comments

[Ryan O'Connell]

This isn't the first time T.Rex has made with the racism and misogyny. Mind you, I have no love for Michelle Malkin or her ilk, but T.Rex's dismissal of her as an "anchor baby" and a "c*nt" were extremely disturbing to read.

Someone needs to tell the white people, all of them, that racism is not ever appropriate, even—ESPECIALLY—when working against the right wing.

[Kai]

Thanks for your comment, Ryan -- though I can't say I exactly enjoyed the link!

Anyway, you're right, this isn't TRex's first lapse into racist terrain. To be fair, he's a proud Southern boy from Georgia, so you've gotta assume that some of this stuff was pounded so deep into his psyche at such an early age that it's utterly invisible to him.

He actually believes that being gay somehow innoculates him against racism. As though white gay men never owned slaves. As though white gay men never lynched Blacks. This alone reveals quite a lot.

A vivid example: on July 5, TRex wrote a post on FDL about John Yoo's torture-memo:

When I was studying in Japan in 2001, I met a very handsome red-haired guy named Patrick. He stood about 6' 5" and was teaching English in Japan for the summer [...] Japanese girls would stop and stare gape-mouthed when they saw him coming, sometimes erupting into near-ultrasonic squeals and storms of uncontrollable giggling.

He was known as something of a Cassanova. I asked him if he was being an American in Asia because he liked Asian women.

He shrugged and said, "Yeah, I guess. When they’re good, they’re really good. But, when they’re bad, they’re Christians."

Which brings me to tonight’s topic. The Asian Honky.

There you go. In TRex's worldview, the proper avenue of attack against John Yoo's degenerate justification of torture is: his race.

Most FDLers seemed pretty comfortable with TRex's diatribe, but a handful of commenters, myself included, objected. TRex's response:

Okay, let’s get something straight here kids. I never attack anyone on the basis of what they are. I attack them on the basis of what they do.

Where were all you sensitive types when I put up this post decrying right-wing homosexuals?

Are the homosexuals among us not worth sticking up for?

The logic speaks for itself.

[sokari]

Yes I read about this event. A similiar discussion has been taking place in the African blogosphere over a "Indaba" African blogging conference that took place in South Africa. The debate was started African Bullets and Honey and continued throughout the blogosphere and is just tailing off now. White blogging africa and Tiresome are a couple of mine but please check through the comments for more posts and comments on the subject if you are interested.

I like your phrase: A Chasm Illuminated (Sep-2006) Over the past 5 days, I've undergone a tectonic shift in my view of and approach to the "liberal" blogosphere. - it is exactly the way I feel and possibly a number of others.

[belledame222]

>In the end, I must say that I'm strangely happy all this happened (the post-summit blog-fight, not the existence of institutional racism itself) because it forced me to re-evaluate my blogospheric orbit and discover a fresh landscape of noteworthy blogs>

I felt the same way the first time I got pissed off with the bigger feminist blogs, and it keeps happening every time there's another such eruption.

anyway just to say that i'm glad i found -you- in the aftermath of this one; this is a great blog.

[belledame222]

and the fact that T-Rex has now gone back to "what about ME, huh? am i not a minority too, HUH??" suggests strongly to me that in fact a good part of what's really fuelling him is that he knows he has to dance extra fast if -he- wants to keep up with the Big (straight) Boys; and resents the hell out of it; but since he can't or won't really bite the hand he thinks is feeding him, he transfers all that resentment onto the -other- people who remind him of how it really is; which he knows quite well at some level, i expect. fuck you! they do TOO like me, they REALLY LIKE ME! MY NEW FRIENDS ARE NOT HOMOPHOBIC!! All things just keep getting better, GODDAMIT

[belledame222]

...mind you, not that i haven't encountered gross racism and misogyny from other gay white boys even when they -aren't- trying to speak nice to power, especially.

my favorite line possible ever (in Chelsea, where else, on my agreeing that sure, a typical chi-chi little restaurant entirely filled with clonelike XY's would be fine for us to have dinner):

"Okay! You can be my hag for the night!"

Die.

same guy who was training me for the LGBT hotline; at the end of the phone call, we were supposed to write down stats as much as we'd gotten them, just for organizational purposes: you know, age, gender, location...race/ethnicity. A lot of the time you wouldn't get most or all of these because there wasn't a good way to interject the question in the middle of the actual counselling. oh, "don't know/Not Available" was also available to mark, as they understood that in fact this was the case (you wouldn't always be able to ask).

so after the third or fourth time boyfriend marked down "white" for one of these that should have been "don't know," I finally asked him why he was doing this.

shrug. "He sounded white."

[belledame222]

...from the John Yoo thread: "I'm sorry if you were offended."

classic.

Well, him and the Pope, I guess, so he's in good company.

[belledame222]

...oh. (sorry,i do have this habit of multiple posts, i know...) but,

yah, and i noted that about T-Rex's possible defensiveness before i scrolled down to the bottom of that thread and saw your comment wrt whosis and the easy recourse of him and his buds to girly-man type-slurs. hadn't been that familiar with the kossacks, but that doesn't surprise me at all.

also T-Rex using "sensitive," and...mmm, mmhm.

that internalization/turn around and kick down thing is really depressing, isn't it?

[Kai]

sokari: Thanks for your comment, and for bringing this African blog discussion to my attention. I'll be sure to keep an eye on what happens.

belledame222: I kinda like your serial posting style. :-) Thanks for the anecdotes. "Hag for the night"?! "Sounded white"?! Wow. Regarding TRex, also notice that he uses the expression "an American in Asia" in a racial manner; meaning that "an American" indicates a white American (who is in Asia to sexually exploit his white handsomeness with giggling Japanese girls).

Anyway, I'm glad this discussion has ended up happening, because as I said in the post, glossing it over doesn't make it go away.

Peace.

[belledame222]

heh, thanks. i know it's generally considered bad netiquette (to post multi-posts in a row), but i tend to indulge unless people actively complain, i'm afraid. "postorrhea," was the unkind but perhaps not entirely unfair term given me back on the WELL.

and yeah, that guy was a piece of work. sadly, i think not at all atypical of a certain erm demographic ("Chelsea" has an immediately recognizable connotation to pretty much all NYCgay folks, and a number of straight ones as well).