White Privilege Conference Share Out/Discussion

 Students, educators, consultants, staff from organizations, activists, therapists, social workers – broad range of experience at conference

Below are summaries, reflections and afterthoughts from a few of the workshops attended by dialogue participants:

Orientalism, anti-Asian racism, American Buddism

•   Correlaries between way yoga is appropriated and way Native Americantraditions are appropriated – this idea of “this is shared”
•   Led by two people, one Korean American, not raised in Buddhism, and awhite person who had traveled a lot in Asia and built relationships
•   American Buddhist magazine – Buddha’s face on Mount Rushmore – areaaround Mount Rushmore, sacred space that was stolen and all the layers of

  meaning behind that image

•   Called American Buddhism “white supremacist Buddhism”
•   History of Buddha’s head as remnant of white colonialization – caves in China– brought heads back to museums because they couldn’t bring whole statues – then this becoming a mass-produced icon of the tradition – thinking about what icons to have a relationship with
•   Meditation – showed a slide of prominent meditation teachers in U.S. – many/most white – in 60’s, most Americans being drafted in peace corps in Asia, introduced to meditation there – the way that meditation was shared in the U.S. – China invaded Tibet, elite Asian men came to U.S. and sought support – elitism doesn’t erase trauma – this is when meditation got shared, with politicians in U.S.
•   Idea of meditation – lay people don’t meditate (in Tibetan Buddhism) – monks go through long process to get to a point of meditating
•   Idea of taking a tradition and shifting it to something else is damaging
•   Cultural artifacts – “cultural baggage” – presenter talked about walking into aroom filled with artifacts makes them feel small
•   The idea that taking something and calling it meditation is anti-Asian racism
•   Workshop didn’t delineate other forms of meditation/Buddhism – focused onTibetan Buddhism
•   “zen” being used as an adjective
•   How will this inform being a yoga teacher?
•   Spiritual story “Navajo grandfather” – black wolf, white wolf – which one willwin? “the one that I feed” – breaking down black and white being good and evil, ways that Christian missionaries would implant stories and put an Indian American “mask” on it
•   Climate institute – analogy – saying “a Native American said…” essentializes, not naming different tribes – like saying “a European said…”
•   How do white women practice spirituality

•   Self-abuse – yoga being used as social self-abuse for white women – a way to force health and happiness in the role they’ve taken – a way to perpetuate body image ideals “yoga industrial complex”
•   Getting into shape/vanity versus spirituality/healing – how are contradictions there, and is there a both/and
•   So much to talk about why white women like yoga pants etc.
•   How do racism, spirituality, and class relate?Triggers

•   A lot of yes/and
•   Appreciate triggers, noticing them within ourselves, appreciating our ownjourney
•   Cyclical nature of triggers in interactions
•   Having empathy for the trigger but also step back, breathe, notice what’sgoing on – a self-processing cycle
•   What’s going on for me? What’s going on for the other person? Inquiry
•   Intention versus impact
•   Being triggered versus being activated
•   How is it different/how do we respond differently between being triggeredaround privilege or around marginalization
•   White women tears – crying because of
•   Productive around privilege = growth and learning, productive aroundmarginalized identities = healing trauma
•   Recognizing you’re triggered in your body
•   Putting a hand up to signal that you are activated
•   Theater of the oppressed – slow down and notice
•   Example of trigger – in a group, white man was attacking article for not beingacademic enough – made a good emotional case but… saying it in an aggressive way – felt like “aggressive white guy challenging emotional knowledge” – couldn’t address it because I felt overwhelmed
•   Thinking about how we in White Noise Collective tend to stay in cerebral/heady space and have a hard time getting embodied
•   When making someone else upset, relates to whiteness of “fix it” and also socialized woman thing of “helping”Decision-making process and the WNC workshop – White Women and Helping Professions/Buffer Zone

•   Drew on Paul Kivel’s description of the buffer zone – people who end up maintaining economic/racial inequality
•   White woman savior complex
•   At the end, talked about solutions, but some people left before we got to theend – agenda next time!
•   White supremacy culture and how it manifests in organizations – Tema Okun+ ??

•   Process – submitted after the deadline, and were notified a few weeks before conference – realized we’d replicated so many things in the white supremacy culture handout – also did so much caretaking – had intensity of pace (we have to do everything!) – most people in room were white women, but when talking about antidotes, a woman of color pointed out that one strategy we didn’t name was taking leadership from people of color – also thinking about “white woman invasion” – having so many people leading the workshop was many overwhelming for participants
•   One person of color wanted steps to take home to white women she worked with, and thinking about how to honor that challenge
•   How to have this conversation/who to have it with… thinking about POC being triggered – maybe starting workshop naming that this workshop could be emotional/triggeringThe Colonial “white gaze” + savior complexes that appropriate the pain of others
  •   Watching the watchers – white colonial gaze
  •   The empire looks out on everyone else. Privilege to look / WhiteImperial Gaze
  •   What are the default narratives / pressure to play roles
  •   American Apparel ad / darkened skin / who gets to distort who?
  •   Who creates language?
  •   HP Lovecraft : On the Creation of N–. Who created this identity? Listsof people who support Lovecraft
  •   Roles and the rules of whiteness
  •   Patricia Hill Collins – the dominant group makes itself throughimagining itself as everything the other is not
  •   Narrative of the savior as the white person who can translate pain
  •   Fracturing POC experience / choosing ‘parts’ of pain
  •   When we make emotional appeals to POC experience, how are weappropriating fractured portions of their pain
  •   “I am African” campaign
  •   Looking White People in the Eye – Sharine Razak (sp?)
  •   “Identifying so readily with the pain, the oppressor replaces theoppressed and obscures their complicity in privilege” (para)
  •   Whose story gets told?
  •   World art day in Sweden – FGM – Afro-swedish artist / huge cake ofblack female body, artist in black face, head coming through cake / Swedish politicians cutting out the genitalia of the cake / screaming the whole time / everyone eats cake
  •   Anaethesia that is created / how can you cut that cake
  •   Pain as a commodity
  •   What would it mean to give problems back?

 Intersectionality / colonial white feminism (shift from white men saving brown women from brown men to white women saving brown women from brown men)

Hair

•   Discussed Chris Rock’s documentary about hair – people thought it was acomedy, but he felt it was very serious discussion about commentary about how

  African American women navigate around hair and white supremacy

•   Presented himself when younger with an afro
•   Question: When was the first time you had control over your hair?
•   Impact: the privilege of who has to navigate around their hair and who doesn’thave to think about it?
•   Gave out cards to associate first/real thoughts to terms: “blonde” “jewish hair”“weave” “perm” etc and then shared in small groups and answered questions –

  felt vulnerable

•   Shared responses from youth about the terms/ideas – word clouds
•   Showed image of Beyonce – hair is blond, skin has been lightened. Contrasted itagainst other pics of her, which were different, but they denied the images were

  altered

•   Showed images of hair and asked if people could determine the race/ethnicityof the person – also discussed “real” vs “fake” hair – people generally assume white hair is real and African American air is fake – we make a lot of assumptions about people because of hair
•   Scientist interviewed about the chemical in perms – toxic. Health implications.
•   Discussed little girls starting to get perms at age 2 or 3
•   Showed an image of a white man with dreads and asked “is this wrong?”
•   Discussed the need to alter hair to fit ino Group reflections:
  •   I have seen a lot of power and strength in African Americanpeers about how much strength they gain from the control of

    hair

  •   Interested in what he said about white women’s hair – thiswasn’t discussed in the workshop
  •   Noticing how I perceive/judge African American women becauseof their hair
  •   Reflections of white women and hair – why do we wear it long,why do/don’t we just chop it off, how do we relate to our hair, etc
  •   Intersections with queerness/femininity/identity andimplications for power balances
  •   It’s this symbolic physical trait that represents aspects of identitypartly due to its permanence
  •   Bodies that are okay vs bodies that are not good – what makes abody “less problematic” for society/the workplace/etc.
  •   Shaving/hairy legs/plucking facial hairs
  •   How much hair and class are interconnected – hairstyles that fitinto class –

Class – feels like it was not directly addressed in the conference. It was brought up in keynotes, etc. How can we start to layer class on top of other themes?
Keynote: The anti-racist movement needs to integrate more cross-class analysis.

Collusion workshop: How do you collude with…
Closing circle: One thing I want to keep exploring or thinking out:

•   How to navigate empathy/listening and when is it listening and when is it appropriation?
•   Taking it all in, buffer zone, formulate my own questions about white/female/working class and gender/roles in the movement
•   My relationship to “meditation” and my defenses related to hearing the reportback tonight/my relationships to class and the mixed-class experience
•   Class – mixed/in flux/changing throughout life – cultural vs economic wealth/revisiting buffer zone from a personal lens
•   White women’s tears
•   The class piece (reading class matters by bell hooks)
•   More vibrant intersectional class analysis – and also “meditation”
•   Writing about our process in developing our workshop through lens of temaokun reading / embodiment – push myself to be more in my body
•   Empathize but not so much you take it away from them, recognize that askingfor help is an important step and not to force help
•   Really looking at myself in the room, how am I perceiving identities, etc, whatare my thoughts here, back to the embodiment thing – craving connection beyond the ideas with the people in the room / my own reactions to identifying as owning class
•   How people in my life serve as buffers, taking on others’ pain/stories
•   Embodied intersectionality around class, family circumstances and choice,“acceptable bodies” as I feel them through queerness and identity of

  dif/ability / external and internal borders, skin as border, hair a border

•   These dialogues reinforce my trust, feels liberatory – noticing ways that spacescan require policing/safety systems and grateful for the process of strangers becoming known / how do we become accountable to what we’ve created / how do we share in a way that can build?
•   Working with my addiction to white supremacy culture and how to still have an identity without these tacticsNext dialogue on difficult conversations in may!