overlooking content (for Tookie)

in a meeting last week with my advisor and another student, both of which are white women that interrogate issues of white privilege, i was decidedly offended by an article we were asked to read. the article, ""We Feel Like We're Separating Us": Sixth Grade Girls Respond to Multicultural Literature" by Sally A. Smith, contained a number of problems--hot spots if you will--for me as a black woman. this article sought to understand and describe the complex identities young adolescent girls take on in a book club while reading texts written by a black author. the group of girls smith interacted with and oberserved was racially diverse--two "african american" girls (i prefer black, but that's a post for another day), one latina girl, "one had a European father and a latina mother," and two "European American" girls (i prefer white,***please see african american).

there were a number problems that i had with the article. first, smith relies very heavily on black identity models. i don't think that blacks can develop an identity. being able to fully develop an identity and choose who one wants to be is a privilege granted to whites and, too often, denied blacks. blacks are forced to develop bounded identities. this became obvious to me as smith referred to one of the young black women as "articulate." the assumption, as i see it, is that being articulate goes against the norm; in other words, most blacks are unintelligible. smith further highlights the double quandry of black identity, when she assigns negative connotations to the other black girl's behaviors. smith writes, "The sixth participant, Tara, is African American. She held strong opinions...though often off-task in book club, when her attention was focused, she was a vibrant and thoughtful member" (p. 366). smith doesn't share with the reader what Tara's off-task behaviors were, however, the reader--assumedly white--simply knows that black people often get off task (read: lazy), but when they focus they can achieve a great deal. how much of this rhetoric has been circulated about black students since 1954? too much. while i have a great deal more to say about the article, it is not the reason for my post.

i brought up in our discussion one of the passages in the article that didn't sit well with me. in this interaction, smith is interacting with her study participants as the "Facilitator." She sets up the dialogue by saying that the book club group, herself included, were discussing black people passing as white as describe by a couple of anecdotes from the two black girls in club. smith writes,

Tara: And another thing, it's really screwed up, but my grandfather, he's really light complected, and he
was riding the bus, and the bus driver said, 'Mr. you can sit in the front, because White people aren't
supposed to sit in the back.' And he said, 'That's okay I'm Black."

Nereida: [the latina girl] You'd think he's sit up front!

Facilitator: That must have been hard for him to say... (pp. 369).

so i took offense to this interaction. i shared with the women in this discussion that this interaction proves to me that many people think that black people want to be white. most of the black people i know have no desire to be white. in the fire next time, james baldwin writes, "white Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want" (pp. 94). I tried to share this with them. instead of acknowledging the pain--yes pain--that i felt around this passage of the article, we, instead, spent the next twenty or so minutes discussing how they didn't believe that the author meant it that way. I kept at it. I wanted them to understand that this passage is speaks to the assumption that blacks want to be white and that was painful for me. it was like a slap in the face. i've wanted to be a lot of things in my life, but i have never, never wanted to be white. to go back to baldwin, he eloquently describes my sentiments. he writes, "But the Negro's experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live" (pp. 22). but i don't think that white people understand this, i mean really get it.

i think that many white believe that blacks want to be white. many whites believe that's why black people seemingly take such atrocious behaviors aimed at taking, distorting, and, eventually, snuffing out their humanity. after years of suffering, only the strongest will prevail, and at that time, those left standing, that handful, will be granted whiteness, or at least a fraction of the power that is associated with being white. in realizing that the majority of black people do not want to be white, white people would begin to realize that they are terrorizing and killing people that would never want to enact the same kind of hurt, degredation, and dehumanizing upon them--in this instance, Newton's principle would ring false--for every action there is NOT an equal and opposite reaction.

but power is an addicting drug. their fear is, i'm sure, that once in power black will be persuaded to oppress and marginalize in ways similar to the ways in which they have been oppressed and marginalized. the prevailing thought, though, is to never give blacks the opportunity to actually assume the moral high-ground. if they are deprived of food, of rights, of their humanity, then they will always have to take the moral low-ground--stealing, conniving, killing. it isn't worse than what white people have done and continue to do. but when one makes the rules and has the power to name, he can name what other people do and overlook his own actions.

this is what i tried to convey in my objection to this passage and, further, smith's article. pressed for time, my professor told us to overlook the content of the article and pay attention to the author's use of data, where the data was place, and how it functioned in the article. look at the book that i included at the top of this post. "ten little niggers." hopefully, a teacher wouldn't walk into her classroom and ask her students to overlook the content of the book to focus on the ways in which the author uses numbers and counting. for black students in the class, it is damaging. and, though i am an adult, i was damaged in my class last wednesday. i cannot overlook the content when i feel that it ultimately discounts my humanity.

i'm still looking for a way to share this with my advisor and classmate.