Clue: Post-Racial Edition. It was the black kid in the hoodie, with his cell phone, and “hostile” girlfriend.
During a week when I want to be happy about the death of DOMA, I can’t help but return to my regularly scheduled disillusionment. It shouldn’t be news that Paula Deen is a self-pitying racist in desperate need of waterproof mascara—or at least it shouldn’t be bigger news than the Voting Rights Act ruling that rolled back racial progress about fifty years. And then there’s the George Zimmerman trial with all of its smug punditry, including the focus on witness Rachel Jeantel’s credibility (snicker, snicker), all cloaked in careful, racially neutral language about her education, her behavior, and whether or not she can read cursive.
Part of why this coverage so disillusions me has to do with the writing I am doing, about the drunk-driving arrest in 2005 and subsequent sixty-day-stint in a Houston jail that radically changed my life. I am trying to portray the people I met on that journey—namely poor people of color—honestly, fondly, and with their full humanity. As a young, white, middle-class woman, it was there in the criminal justice system that I received what I now call my “other education,” perhaps even my real education.
For two years, my felony charges worked their way through the Kafka-esque machinations of the system, and during that time, I could do little but steep in a particularly noxious homebrew. Shame, sadness, and fear of the hyperventilating variety collided with the white, middle-class entitlements that I had the arrogance to believe I’d shed. By way of some magical alchemy of interracial dating, a lifelong love of black music, and a good liberal education with a reading list calibrated toward writers of color, I believed that I didn’t have any unacknowledged whiteness or racial or class entitlements. I had been anointed, absolved, made clean—maybe even made nonwhite or racially neutral. In a word, I had been made into an asshole.
I can laugh now at some of this myopia, this near-clinical hubris, but as I go forward in life, I cling to two truths: one, I will constantly be stepping in it—my own white middle-class shit—and two, the dominant cultural view is one of universalized whiteness—that is, the view is so white as to be blinded by its own lens, unable to see even itself. In a workshop taught by the brilliant writers and teachers Alexs Pate and David Mura at my MFA residency this past January, Mura said, “Unconsciousness itself is a privilege.” This unconsciousness has been on parade all week, but nowhere did it seem more glaring to me than in the cultural examination of Ms. Jeantel, whom we all hovered around as if she were an exotic insect pinned in a display case.
I learned a lot from the criminal justice system, but I learned more from my own reactions to it. One of my early and persistent reactions was that I didn’t belong there, not really. This reaction was so automatic it was like a reflex that kept kicking me in the face. Sure, sure, I belonged there: I had committed a crime, a serious one in which I had caused a car crash and the victim broke her leg as a result. I was a bad drunk; it was only a matter of time before I ended up in court. But felony court for two years? Jail for two months? Now wait a damn minute. This protestation was what my white, middle-class entitlement said to me. Nothing in my upbringing, my environment, or my education prepared me for being in the system (except maybe as a do-gooder attorney or social worker). That’s, on the one hand, what I mean by not belonging there. It wasn’t even on the radar. Being charged with a felony, going to jail—these outcomes were as alien to this white, middle-class kid as, say, not going to college or disliking Starbucks. Jail? It seemed preposterous. No one my friends or family knew had been there, not really.
On the other hand, what I mean when I say that I didn’t belong there was the belief—good, bad, indifferent—that the system was a place for poor people and people of color. I knew this before I even knew this. I knew this truth in my body before I knew it with my eyes and experience, and before I knew it by the numbers. People of color, especially poor people of color, are disproportionately incarcerated in this country. According to the Sentencing Project, “[m]ore than 60 percent of those in prison are now racial or ethnic minorities.” In the all-out sprint to incarcerate in the last thirty or so years, people of color, especially poor black men, have borne the brunt of get-tough drug policy, policing, and sentencing—not because they’re committing more drug crimes but because they are poor, black, and/or brown.
All of this comes up for me, like so much bile rising in my throat, as I follow the Trayvon Martin case, in particular the treatment and negative stereotyping of Jeantel, who is being cast as just another fat, uneducated, head-wagging black girl who can’t behave properly. The evisceration of her credibility on social media and in the mainstream news media is a shame on us, not on Jeantel, and it reveals the two primary fates allowed for certain women of color—humiliation or lovably sassy Internet meme. Failure to see her humanity and to understand her attitude constitutes a blindness that is a manifestation of whiteness and privilege itself.
As I attempt to portray myself and the women of color I met in jail with honesty, respect, and gratitude, I misstep, back into my own shit. In one example, my bunkie Yolanda, a young black woman from southeast Houston, caused a stir when she refused to make her bed in time for head-count one morning. She was tired, grumpy, and slow-moving on that particular day, but the refrain that ran through my head as she got hauled out of the pod in handcuffs was that she brought it on herself. She couldn’t play by the rules. She wouldn’t behave. But according to whom? Couldn’t play by whose rules and norms? Mine? Society’s? Who was society, anyway? Whoever it was, I knew it wasn’t Yolanda. What I couldn’t see was that she had her own reasons for acting the way she did, and the consequences for it were a fair trade-off for a small break from the self-immolation and soul-crushing despair that came from constant capitulation to the hierarchy.
This newer perspective was gifted to me by my mentor David Mura, by way of Aristotle’s central idea of the good—in short, why people do what they do. (I would go into it here, but “the good” requires its own discussion, and besides, you can look it up.) That someone else’s goal, their good, or their very rationality, might be diametrically opposed to mine simply did not occur to me. (See: white privilege.) Whites universalize their idea of the good, Mura kept insisting, and I began to see how I did this, how I believed what worked for me must work for all others.
As I watch Jeantel’s character on trial, I can’t help but think of all of this—how mainstream culture is universalizing its good and imposing it on Jeantel, how the way I saw myself and people of color wasn’t really seeing, and how I am trying to see better. “What is important now is to recover our senses,” Susan Sontag said in her essay “Against Interpretation.” “We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.” While Sontag was talking primarily about art, I think it applies here, too, with one addendum. We need to not only recover our senses, but also to recover our sense. That is, if we ever had any in the first place.
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Second image screencapped from here.
13 responses
Sometimes people get angry and write an article. Seems like that’s what happened here. The writer all but screams in her first three lines: I’m a liberal, I have the moral high ground, everyone is wrong. Just ’cause your “mentor” showed you some Aristotle, doesn’t make you smart. Rachel Jeantel is a sidenote of a footnote of an endnote. She doesn’t matter. Trayvon Martin is a slightly more important story. But coming across like a self-righteous undergrad is not helping his case. Did you ever stop to think that part of how she is being portrayed is her own fault? Should people not take responsibility for the way they present themselves? Has the writer even considered that Jeantel might, to even a small extent, actually BE fat, or uneducated, or lacking in social skills? To speak of ‘white privilege’ is to spout nonsense you overheard. You’re no better than conservatives who spout off about how ‘socialism’ is taking over America.
This is an interesting journal entry, but does not feel complete as an article. It seems like what the author is attributing to race is really about class.
For example, when the author says, “I had committed a crime, a serious one in which I had caused a car crash and the victim broke her leg as a result. I was a bad drunk; it was only a matter of time before I ended up in court. But felony court for two years? Jail for two months? Now wait a damn minute. This protestation was what my white, middle-class entitlement said to me. Nothing in my upbringing, my environment, or my education prepared me for being in the system,” this really has more to do with class as opposed to race, no?
In addition, the author says, “That someone else’s goal, their good, or their very rationality, might be diametrically opposed to mine simply did not occur to me. (See: white privilege.) Whites universalize their idea of the good…” Don’t we all, as human beings, do this? The fact that someone else’s goal or their “good” is opposed to our own is not dependent, necessarily, on race. It could be. But, it could also be dependent upon religion, yes? It could be dependent upon culture. It could be dependent on a variety of things. This, and other parts of the article, do not substantiate the white privilege comment.
Re: Above: The first three sentences = a slow, hesistant nod of agreement.
The latter part of the response = …
“Has the writer even considered that Jeantel might, to even a small extent, actually BE fat, or uneducated, or lacking in social skills?”
I mean, sure. But w/ African-Americans the lens is constantly skewed. If we do not speak in specific, appropriated language (ie, that of the academic upper class), we are naturally deemed as uneducated and/or dumb. Language is an interesting beast. Language, words, are used to represent an idea or set of ideas. Therefore, you can use language of any sorts to relay complex ideas. The language a person uses is often, and mistakenly, used to gauge ones intelligence. Instead, people should really attempt to understand the ideas the language is attempting to express. This is how politics is able to brainwash the mass public, because people are too caught on the words and not the ideas being expressed. Do not take this to mean absolution. It is a balance.
I am African-American. I grew up in a household where we had stocked bookshelves filled w/ the likes of Tar Baby and multiple brands of encyclopedias. But we were/are also rooted in “classic” African-American culture. So, fast forward and you can find me easily speaking slang w/ the homies, or using ain’t, or ain’t no. Though on the same token, I’ll switch to something more erudite.
You will be amazed how people will stereotype you based upon your language, even when talking about quantum physics. If I’m throwing around “aiyo homie, it’s fucking nuts, atoms and shit,” and then break down quantum entanglement and how it relates to thermodynamics.
Intelligence isn’t something so readily quantifiable through word use.
P.S. The comment above is directed to the first comment, not the second.
That first comment is a brilliant response to a piece about white privilege…using satire as a way to perfectly illustrate how exactly white privilege works. The carefully placed quotation marks? The expression of personal opinions as universal facts? The strategic use of capitalization AND condescension? Bravo! If people didn’t get it before, they certainly do now. P.S. I’m still chuckling over all the fake indignation in this comment…I hope this dude does sketch comedy somewhere.
It occurred to me to try to adhere to my leftist bias and add some pomposity about class. But the stone fact, in this country, is a rich black man has to live with the knowledge that he’ll have trouble hailing a cab at night and the cops are going to look for (or create) a reason to stop and search his Mercedes. The great Marx couldn’t appreciate that the forces of oppression would allow race to transcend class. But it doesn’t matter, in this case, what transcends what. This woman is the result of both oppressions. So having subjected to her to a lifetime of oppression, we say, “Look. She’s uneducated and inarticulate and over-weight and it’s her fault.” And somehow, from that, it becomes okay to gun down Trayvon Martin.
It’s a shame that the comments started off with the one we have here. I’m left with the impression that the first comment came from someone who either didn’t read the piece or read with a closed mind. As a personal essay, the writer let me into her headspace on this charged issue. It made me think and examine my own feelings…which is the the goal of a personal essay…not to open a psuedo debate with libertarian overtones.
I googled and read some of the writer’s other essays. She’s thoughtful, consistent, and has a poetic use of language. She’s also very easy on the eyes.
Roberto: “She’s also very easy on the eyes.”
How dare you oppress her.
Loved this Alexis! I get it. And, as the future adoptive parent of a child of color, I appreciate it.
Wanted to say, Sean H, I wasn’t vitrollin’, I was just saying.
No problem, MJ. I just always find it interesting when people play the race card (or gender card). To begin a statement online by announcing one’s race or gender is a power play, right? Like, if the discussion is about a gender issue and a woman states her gender, it’s an attempt to say ‘I have a vagina, therefore what I say has more weight.’ You took it to another level though when you went with not just ‘I’ but ‘we.’ At that point you played yet another card, the identity politics card. The collectivist trump, if you will. I don’t disagree with anything you said about language or race, I just am vary of card use. I prefer to stick to the cards of reason, rational discourse and straight talk. There was only one part of your post I actually disagreed with slightly. That’s when you said “The language a person uses is often, and mistakenly, used to gauge ones intelligence.” I don’t think it’s a mistake to use someone’s speech or writing as part of the way you determine their intelligence. Being eloquent and articulate are often congruent with intelligence, or at least strong indicators of intelligence, no? You even back this up by showing your flexibility between discourse which involves slang and discourse which is more formal in its terminology and diction.
“wary,” not “vary,” my bad
It’s not just poor black and brown people who are getting locked up, its poor white people also. Many court appointed attorneys don’t give a damn about their client. They are getting paid a small fee and they want to do the min. required to get paid. Our justice system locks people up who cannot afford to pay for their justice. It really is guilty until proven innocent, trouble is, many just do not have enough money to prove they do not belong in prison. Prison is a multi-billon dollar industry. America tops the list for having the most inmates of all the other developing countries COMBINED!
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