b. medusa 16 December 2006 1:05:04 am
- how do you “fight the power” when you don’t even know what “the power” is up to, let alone what weapons (& i do mean weapons) are in their arsenal?
- how do you build a community/network when there’s a lack of communication amongst your own group?
- how do you recruit when you can’t retain?
- how does a group call itself a collective when it lacks community & diversity? how can it care about community when its callous about it’s small homogenous self?
- how does such a group described above build a broad-based coalition when outreach is limited by narrow ideology?
i’ve struggled with the concept of community for over 40 years, so i admit i’m not good @ it. in my younger years i was a self-professed loner, after being a long-term misfit. now i believe i’m communally challenged, but i’m finding (as the questions above attest) it is a common ailment.
b. medusa 14 December 2006 9:36:02 am
“i don’t see color,” he said proudly. i snorted in derision, apparently something he wasn’t expecting. “what’s the matter with you?” he asked. “nothing,” i replied. “it’s you who has the problem.” “how so?” “color-blindness isn’t an attribute, it’s a defect,” i began. “in all forms. color-blindness regarding race means you don’t see people of color, the struggles they incur because of color, or the privileges you accrue because of whiteness.” i couldn’t let his remark pass. i’d heard it so many times before it made me nauseous.
color-blindness ≠equality. in fact it is just one of the more recent strategies deployed to maintain white privilege. particularly effective because some poc go along with & enable this strategy. once again the phenomenon of poc aiding in their own oppression.
additional reading – ‘White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism’ , A.W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva; ‘Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States’, E. Bonilla-Silva. cited in C. G. Robbins essay “How to Hide Structured Racism“
