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...my problem with the entire question of tone and courtesy is that it's typically only applied one way: people of color/non-white people who are angry about racism are told to watch their tone and be more polite.
It reminds me of how women angry about sexism are told that they're being shrill and strident, and men would listen to them if they were more polite and phrased it better. I say that not to compare oppressions, but to say that the mechanisms of socialization work in some eerily similar ways to maintain oppressive power structures: Speaking up for your rights is rude. Telling people who are being kicked from corner to post that it's their own fault nobody's listening, because they're not saying it right, is normal and polite.
The question of "personal attacks" is also applied and seen in a similarly skewed manner. When a person of color says, "Hey, so-and-so said a racist thing," they're seen as making a personal attack. When a white person says, "You're not smart enough for your opinion to count," they're seen as arguing the issues.
The burden of being polite and impersonal - in a matter that affects people's everyday lives on a profoundly personal level - is placed on the backs of the people who have to cope with the oppression in real life. And the people who are at the top of the power structure are the ones who get to be perceived as being polite and nice, when the substance of what they're actually saying - your opinions don't count, you're not educated enough to have a valid opinion, you're too educated to have a valid opinion, we don't want you - is neither nice nor polite.
These are not my original ideas, just my phrasing. I have seen this argument made many, many times by people of color. And also by white women. And also by GLBT people. A much more detailed explanation here, including the point that no tone is ever good enough.
It reminds me of how women angry about sexism are told that they're being shrill and strident, and men would listen to them if they were more polite and phrased it better. I say that not to compare oppressions, but to say that the mechanisms of socialization work in some eerily similar ways to maintain oppressive power structures: Speaking up for your rights is rude. Telling people who are being kicked from corner to post that it's their own fault nobody's listening, because they're not saying it right, is normal and polite.
The question of "personal attacks" is also applied and seen in a similarly skewed manner. When a person of color says, "Hey, so-and-so said a racist thing," they're seen as making a personal attack. When a white person says, "You're not smart enough for your opinion to count," they're seen as arguing the issues.
The burden of being polite and impersonal - in a matter that affects people's everyday lives on a profoundly personal level - is placed on the backs of the people who have to cope with the oppression in real life. And the people who are at the top of the power structure are the ones who get to be perceived as being polite and nice, when the substance of what they're actually saying - your opinions don't count, you're not educated enough to have a valid opinion, you're too educated to have a valid opinion, we don't want you - is neither nice nor polite.
These are not my original ideas, just my phrasing. I have seen this argument made many, many times by people of color. And also by white women. And also by GLBT people. A much more detailed explanation here, including the point that no tone is ever good enough.
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Statements like "No wonder everyone hates you feminist bitches! You're so nasty and mean and foulmouthed and immature and bitter and so on that nobody wants to deal with you! People might give you what you want if you learned to ask for it politely!" are a patronizing pile of shit.
Fair and equal treatment, socially and legally, is not a "reward" for good behavior, or something we have to earn by being polite or pleasant or easy to deal with. It is something to which we are entitled by being born human.
Period.
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The last day or so has brought about some heroic attempts to get the real work back on track, but wow.
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*sick*
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http://thingswithwings.livejournal.com/57068.html
(Yes, I link compulsively ...)
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I can see this aspect of it in the reaction of many white women to being accused of racism. So many of us have had to get over huge amounts of false guilt imposed by society and family for things we were supposed to have done, not to have done, did to other people without knowing it, etc., that if we can get over any of it and speak freely, it's very destabilizing to hear "that hurt me" or "that was wrong." It's not immediately obvious that this is not coming from someone within the same family/kinship group and the guilt/shame issues are different.
And for some of us the false guilt issues have to do with white perceptions of nonwhite people, and how we were educated to relate to nonwhite people, which often turned out to have little to do with reality (the reality of nonwhite people). It's easy then to resist taking the next step into realizing that liberating oneself from this kind of false guilt doesn't mean there isn't still white privilege.
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I don't think the onus is one one side only, although sometimes one side is acting vastly more honourably/sensibly than the other and it would take a saint to not react; and sometimes how something is meant and how it is received bears little relation to the text. It's not an easy minefield to traverse, although sometimes it *is.*
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GAPE.
He whaa?
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I'm impressed that he steps down (impressed, isn't that sad, how my standards are lowered), but lololol oh loser.
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Usually, once people have realized I'm white, I can be as snarky as I want and I'll still get patted on the head and told how polite and rational I am and how they can have a reasonable conversation with me, unlike Those Scary Angry Hostile People over there.
(This has even happened when I've simply re-iterated or expressed my agreement with something that a POC just said.)
So it was a new and exciting experience!
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TNH. Kathryn Cramer. Avalon's Willow when condescending (Which was about 1 comment in every 6 or so), rather than when angry or critical. Bear in a foul mood as opposed to Bear after being hit with a clue-by-four. Medievalist. PNH. Abydos_Angel. autopope's female friend who used the C-word.
(WS's problems weren't in his tone. They were worse and different.)
Maybe I'm the exception, but that was what I saw.
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(Also, I would count Shetterly in this, but his TONE is never bad, just every third sentence he says. Oh, wait, I say, on editing, you said that.)
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Yeah, Will Shetterly is... an exception to a lot of things. I can't quite bring myself not to read his fiction though, which is easier and more thoughtful than his fact...
... I also feel a little irked at people who slag his wife for his actions. They struck me as simultaneously a deeply affectionate couple and very strongly marked individuals.
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The reason people some times slag his wife, is that Will uses her work/life to prop up his own awesomeness on a regular basis. Also, he runs around defending her in ways where he ends up insults the crap out of people.
I agree it's problematic.
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I also admit, I still want to read some of Shetterly's books, too, and not just because he can't be easily separated out from the rest of Shadow Unit. HIs fiction is a lot saner. But then, I've read Harlan Ellison's fiction after I knew his other reputations, too.
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I'll try to muster up some "Give A Damn" for that later.
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(I am not one of those who feel there was nothing wrong done on the anti-racism side - obviously - but, as has often been stated, there is a significant difference between the two, and the wrong of being too contemptuous to get your point across, versus the wrong of tarring reputations, threatening people, and outing someone? NOt even comparable.)
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That's a really excellent point.
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Snagging this for, er, THIS. :)
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This was really hard for me personally to realize because I grew up in a household where anger was a discussion-ender instead of a discussion starter, wherein anger was used to bury other feelings (guilt, fear, shame, other anger) instead of talk about them, and where you could never be angry, because if you were angry something was wrong, and there couldn't be anything wrong (repeat cycle).
It took me a really long time to realize that many people didn't think like that, and it's taking me a really long time to realize (daily) that I don't have to think like that. It took me applying those principles that I'd learned about personal interaction to see how I could reframe my mental understanding of activism so that instead of me seeing activism as a bunch of angry people, that sometimes when activists were angry it was because it was ok and even necessary to express anger. That was a big shift for me. It's helped me understand, at least a little, discussions like this one.
I don't know how many people might find that useful for them as a way of thinking about it, but that is the path I'm currently thinking about it on so I thought I would share.
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I say this as someone with rampant Pollyanna tendencies and issues with conflict who reads an etiquette board daily: I am sick of seeing people who have had to take bullshit their entire lives have their perspectives dismissed because they got angry enough to tell someone to go fuck themselves, and it is absolutely sick that all manner of hostility is taken as polite discourse because someone uses the "right" words. As a queer person, I've had to leave the room instead of confront homophobia a lot of timesbecause I am so angry that I know my words would just be dismissed as hysterical and not worth considering, and it is JUST SO WRONG that the perspectives of people who don't care much are privileged. I have no more patience for people who think the most important part of contentious discourse is for oppressed people to stand there and take it.
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I would say that the former is not a personal attack but the latter is. Accusing someone of racism is different from calling someone [insert expletive here] for being racist. And saying that "you're not smart enough" places similar emphasis on the you, personally, rather than your actions.