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MATTERIALS:
red ink
tissues
red foil
cardboard
diy table
1st concept: words of poc written in red, the audience wars red-lens glasses, the act of removing them is an action condemning white supremacy. words of white people in white so they can be seen either way
What went wrong? The foil we bought was too thick and obstructs your view completely, the point of having the glasses is lost since nothing can be seen
2nd concept: A red light as a symbol of white privilege obstructing the view of the words of poc. The effort of reading them comes from shielding the words from the light or lighting them with a different source.
What went wrong? The foil was not meant to be used on lights, the light ended up being orange, instead creating mood lighting.
3rd concept: The words of poc are written in black but obstructed by red abstract forms, a magnifying glass is used to remove the obstruction from the view of the audience.
Nothing has gone wrong yet!
Becoming comfortable with conversations of race/ dealing with discomfort when speaking of race
Text featured in our work:
Quotes
X “It’s not for the black person to be more open-minded. It’s for the white person to be less racist.” ”White supremacy is a white problem that white people need to fix, and it’s a further imbalance of justice to sit around expecting people of color to do the work of addressing it for us.”
Marlon James https://lithub.com/marlon-james-why-im-done-talking-about-diversity/
X “Too often, I wonder if artists responding to Black Lives Matter are doing so because they truly are concerned about black lives, or if they simply recognize the financial and critical benefits that go along with creating work around these subjects.”
Taylor Renee Aldridge https://www.artnews.com/artnews/news/black-bodies-white-cubes-the-problem-with-contemporary-arts-appropriation-of-race-6648/
X *“Just once I want to speak to a room of white people who know they are there because they are the problem. Who know they are there to begin the work of seeing where they have been complicit and harmful so that they can start doing better.”
Ijeoma Oluo https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/28/confronting-racism-is-not-about-the-needs-and-feelings-of-white-people
X “Society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort”
Katy Waldman, 2018
X The social costs for a black person in awakening the sleeping dragon of white fragility often prove so high that many black people don’t risk pointing out discrimination when they see it. And the expectation of “white solidarity”—white people will forbear from correcting each other’s racial missteps, to preserve the peace—makes genuine allyship elusive. White fragility holds racism in place –the (reproduction) loop
Katy Waldman, 2018
X “White people cling to the notion of racial innocence, a form of weaponized denial that positions black people as the “havers” of race and the guardians of racial knowledge. Whiteness, on the other hand, scans as invisible, default, a form of racelessness. “Color blindness,” the argument that race shouldn’t matter, prevents us from grappling with how it does.”
DiAngelo, R., & Dyson, M. E. (2018).
“Whites profit off of an American political and economic system that showers advantages on racial “winners” and oppresses racial “losers.”
X DiAngelo, R., & Dyson, M. E. (2018).
“Every time I think about color it’s a political statement. It would be a luxury to be white and never to think about it.”
X Emma Amos, 1993
“Do you feel hurt because it’s the “all black people look the same” moment, or because you are being confused with another after being so close with this other?”
Claudia Rankin, Citizen, 2014
X “Yes, white supremacist terrorism can happen in 2017, the same way it happened in 2016, in 2015, in 1967, in 1915, in 1492 – not only are white supremacist values carried by people in our society, they are carried in the representations of history we engage with every day...”
Pratt Artists Against White Supremacy, 2017 https://theracialimaginary.org/issue/the-whiteness-issue/pratt-institute-mfa/
Parents can be so nervous of making a mistake that they avoid conversations about race. They make an assumption that the topic hasn’t come up for their kids yet. But that’s not true. It’s easier to imagine that kids aren’t seeing things we aren’t comfortable with, versus that they’re observing the world around them with a higher level of accuracy than we notice or want them to.
X Sachi Feris, 2020 - https://cupofjo.com/2020/06/raising-race-conscious-children/
“ [Natalie] Diaz meditates on the question of race by deconstructing the language, concluding that “race implies someone will win.” The existence of race, then, implies competition, and the winners have always been the ones with the full force of an imperialist history behind them.”
Dani Janae, 2020 https://www.autostraddle.com/natalie-diaz-writes-the-love-poem-for-our-lives-in-postcolonial-love-poem/
X It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being.”
X Toni Morrison, 1975
X “Humans can only be bullied for so long. “
Dr. Brittany Cooper, 2014
X “At its core, anger is just another emotion. The reason it is coded as unacceptable and destructive is that it threatens to disrupt our currently unequal world.”
Diamond Yao, 2021
“The term ‘people of color’ centers whiteness even as it attempts to be an affirming identity label for non-white people. The term perpetuates the pernicious idea that whiteness is the default and white people therefore have no particular race.”
X Daniel Lim, 2020
Theory/definitions + thoughts
white privilege
1. An advantage, good, or resource that people with ascribed white racial identities receive and/or have greater access to and that people with ascribed nonwhite racial identities are denied and/or have less access to, primarily as a consequence of their ascribed racial identity and not because of what they do or do not do as individuals.
2. A condition of whiteness, whereby one is not, nor needs to be, cognizant of the racial dynamics that systematically benefit white people and disadvantage people of color
X white supremacy
1. The systematic provision of political, social, economic, and psychological benefits and advantages to whites, alongside the systematic provision of burdens and disadvantages to people who are not white
2. A set of norms and expectations predicated on white habits, or the preferences, tastes, emotions, and perceptions of white Americans
3. The belief that white people are inherently superior to people of color and should dominate over people of color
X White fragility:
White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.
X Colorblind racism:
1. The worldview that suggests that since race should not matter, it does not matter
2. An ideology that insists that everyone be treated without regard to race, accompanied by a denial of the causes and consequences of racism. (it denies ‘white’ as a race --> see quote DiAngelo)
Bunyasi, T. L., & Smith, C. W. (2019).
Cultural Reproduction and Habitus
Cultural reproduction only involves that of the dominant class. Habitus is a set of classifications, perceptions, ways of talking, moving and generally carrying oneself, that are passed on by generations. Bourdieu argues that schools only pick up on the habitus of the most powerful (social) classes, the dominant culture. He argues that the educational system has systematic biases against working class knowledge and skills.
X Social reproduction: the maintenance of power and privilege between social classes from one generation to the next.
X Cultural reproduction: the process by which a society transmits dominant knowledge from one generation to another.
Macionis & Plummer (2012)
Our own thoughts
Is it my place to talk about this?
Humble yourself.
This conversation is not hurting me.
Racism doesn’t care about your feelings.
*This is why I am doing this, to learn humbly and be able to share that with peers that don’t yet know how to have this conversation
We’re learning to have the ‘right’ conversation about race, but does that exist?
When do we make the conversation too much about white people?
How do you talk about white privilege without creating space for white denial?
What can I do with my privilege?
“Data is not Racist” --> but who interprets this data?
There is no logic in racism.
-> the visual language – illustrations in the news trying to explain privilege as a race with less obstacles. Why is life described as a competition?
It’s easy to think:”from now on I'll be more aware of the narrative around me that frame people of color differently from white people” - but in reality you can’t check yourself that well
We need a privilege reminder alert
When discussing race, does it still refer to reality without inlcuding ethnicity, culture or class?
The white person in the conversation might feel discomfort, but what about the black person? Discomfort goes both ways.
Is this project centering my white thoughts? Is this project too much about white people?
Learning is the right thing to do.
I have to stay humble during this conversation.
It is not our job to police how people of color discuss their experiences.
Should we refer to poc as the global majority to stop centering whiteness?
We must stop arguing with other white people about the “right way” to not be racist.
I want to remove the burden of educating me from people of color, however I need to center them here.
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