A picture so another great big blog full of text doesn't scare readers away. This is a piece of textile I've been working on to use a sample piece in classes. A combination of patchwork, stencil and hand sewed running stitch. Its entirely made from used clothes and textiles so it has a nice soft feel and a faded look. The round holes are where I cut out circular motifs from another stenciled piece to applique onto the piece to the left.
I finished Ijeoma Oluo’ “So you
want to talk about racism” a few days ago and found it very insightful for building
on what was learned from “White Fragility”. I’ve been going back re-listening
to many chapters and making notes on my thoughts.
In this blog I'll talk about Chapter 5. Over the next week or 2 I'll talk about my thoughts and reactions to other chapters. Another thing that really intrigued me was how Oluo calls Pacific Islanders "Asians". This really astounded me because as a 60 year old dual citizen of NZ/Aus we have occasionally been prompted by politicians to think our nations as part of Asia. But never have I heard someone just lump us in with Philippinos, Japanese, Tongans, Chinese, Koreans, Hawaiians, Samoans and more. I've always thought of Pacific Islanders as Polynesians and Melanesians and quite distinct from Chinese, Koreans and many other nationalities Oluo named. She doesn't clarify if she would include Maori and indigenous Australians as Asians but the chapter does seem to imply she would. However....I'm pretty sure she wouldn't think of me as an Asian! though my european ancestors lived in the Pacific for 125years +, I was born a 4th generation NZer and many in my family married Maori and had children.....anyway chapter 14 is a discussion for another day....
Of the 17 chapters in the
book I found #5 – What is intersectionality and why do it need it? – the most
challenging to get my head around. After 6 listenings I hope to be getting it
right, through strangely in retrospect this should have been the one concept
most easy for me to relate to personally. I hope to try to clarify it here as
even Oluo acknowledges it is little known and often misunderstood but she
regards it as a foundational to her work towards social justice.
Here is the Wikipedia link for Intersectionality
Essentially I understand intersectionality
as the contention that every individual lives in several overlapping identities
and that when engaging with others or addressing an issue that person can be
operating from more than one or multiple of their identifications at once. Oluo
urges social justice advocates to keep this in mind when engaging with others
because it can lead to misunderstandings of various scale developing. For
example – imagine two people talking about what is “white privilege” but 1
person is male, black, 30 years old, has a prison record, is currently
unemployed and is poor, talking to a white female, 50 years old, college
education with a high paying job who has never been unemployed. I’ve outlined a
very stark hypothetical so it jumps out how the disparity in life experience
means each individual cannot help but form very different world views and
understandings of how the world operates.
Another discussion Oluo spends
time clarifying in several chapters that neatly overlaps with what I read in
White Fragility is why BIPOC will either withdraw or refuse to get engaged in
discussions where they feel unheard, mocked/ridiculed, dismissed, take up too
much of their time and energy or recognise as coming from the challengers
default white privilege.
Here, I’m acknowledging that is
what I’ve done in the last few weeks with my blogging and ignorant expectation
that I deserved to be addressed. Now I’m understanding why the various people I’ve
called on – Emily Ito, Aja Barber and Makiko Hastings – won’t talk to me. My
approach to challenging the assertion that using the description kimono for a
sewing pattern was an unacceptable cultural appropriation was found to be
offensively aggressive. I think they might have felt an interaction would give me
unwarranted recognition for a view that didn’t have any credibility in the way
they see things.
I now get the point that there
won’t be any acknowledgment or discussion and are no longer perplexed why they
won’t say anything and understand there is no point in continuing to ask them
to say something. They are not listening and don’t care and I wholly get it. If
I had been able to approach my queries with more subtlety and open mindedness
perhaps the situation wouldn’t have become so distressing. I am sorry Makiko
Hastings.
As an Aspergers person that my
way of saying things, viewing the world and asking questions can be irritating
and offensive to neurotypicals (NTs) is quite a familiar place for me. By
saying this I don’t want people to interpret it as an emotive manipulation to
try to exculpate my offensiveness or make the pretence that my cognitive
dissonance gives me a special license to be rudely oblivious. Its everybodys
obligation to educate ourselves about civility, respectful interaction, social
mores and expectations. Aspergers might merit me maybe a few more inches of
rope than NTs, but not a lot more. I will do better in the future about applying
way more mindfulness in the way I ask about things.
What NTs experience as my “confrontational”
attitude has been a problem all my life. My very first school report said I had
to learn to play more with the other kids. So even at 5 years old Mrs Brown my
teacher picked up behavior she perceived as insular and anti social.
Throughout my entire school life I had no interest in making friends or
playing. Every lunch time spent reading the library was the best part of
school. I learned to spell deoxyribonucleic acid when I was 11 and knew the 4
components of DNA.
I have been disliked, bullied and
kicked out of every workplace I’ve been in because of my pedantic, obsessive
and (perceived) aggressive attitudes. People either dislike me or hate me, at
best I get indifference. In 1983 I was evicted from the most permissive
alternative lifestyle community in New Zealand by 60 adults chanting “fuck off,
fuck off” at the top of their lungs. They couldn’t stand having me there any
longer after 2 years though I’d given a baby I wasn’t able to mother to a
couple in their community to adopt as their own. I also have the dubious infamy
of being sacked from working in 2 brothels, so unfriendly has my behavior been
perceived. I didn’t take drugs or fall asleep on the job, I just preferred
reading newspapers and books rather than talking to the other workers.
What I believe is trying to live
with integrity by educating myself about things is often perceived by NTs to be
snobbery, self righteousness, aggressiveness and anti social behaviour.
This is describing the main intersectional
identity I have to negotiate getting through the world with every day. Life isn’t
easy or a bed of roses for anybody so this is not a claim for special
privileges but just hoping for some empathy for mistakes made.
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