On deciding whether to use language that is denotative and -ist

Girl.

Mexican.

Blindspot.

These are all words that are denotative and can also be used as insults to demean other people.

So what do we do with language that could be -ist: sexist, ethnoracist and/or ableist in its usage?

I’m not talking about words that are primarily or exclusively slurs: like the n-word (to dehumanize black people) or the c-word (to dehumanize women). I’m talking about words that could be used to but don’t always or even principally demean an identity and group.

1. We could just ban all words that could be deployed as a slur. But then, I could say, “Don’t be such a table!” and then “table” would be gone from our lexicon.
2. We could just let it go and “not be so sensitive.”
3. We could not just make up a “keep” or “trash” rule, but discern how to consider words we use, collectively and individually.

Here’s how I think about language when I realize it’s both “just” denotative and derogatory (which adds up to: not just denotative):

• I consider clarity.
• I consider the pejorative, even if I don’t intend it.
• I look for options: another way to say blindspot is A. “the point of entry of the optic nerve on the retina, insensitive to light” (regarding sight), B. “an area where a person’s view is obstructed” (regarding a circumstance, like the limits of side and rear view mirrors in cars), C. “an area in which a person lacks understanding or impartiality” (regarding an individual’s consideration of perspective and bias).
• I discern how to align my intention with my impact, and how to communicate most clearly and effectively (including not activating harm that may interfere with someone else’s ability or willingness to engage with me).
• Then I pilot and practice from my discernment. Regarding “blindspot,” here’s where I am now: if I’m using it as in A or B above, I’m still saying blindspot. If I’m using it as C, I’m striving to acknowledge that this is a physical fact that typically activates defensiveness when we name it (“you’re accusing me of not being able to be impartial?”) but it’s not a flaw or a fault. It’s an obstruction to our “seeing” in many senses that, when we acknowledge it, is not necessarily gone, but part of our awareness.
• And I prepare to have more conversations about my (for now) continued usage of “blindspot,” hopefully showing up for those conversations with curiosity and willingness to learn, discern and hone my ownership of the language I am speaking.

On board with DEI… until it gets real

This is what happens: sometime after your organization/community makes a commitment to DEI, people – including people who were formerly “on board” – push back. And your DEI practitioner/office/team now gets in trouble. For doing what you asked them to do.

Advancement does not get in trouble for raising money. Admissions doesn’t get called out for admitting students. But DEI predictably gets held to account for… advancing DEI.

This is the “DEI for real” phase, in which DEI is not just words and ideas, but structural and systemic change that impacts people, inconveniencing – and even disrupting – their usual way of doing and being, expecting growth and holding everyone accountable for impacts, not just intentions.

And this doesn’t have to be. Because we can predict this phase of institutional growth in DEI, we can plan for it. If your organization is aspiring to more than just saying you care about DEI – if, and only if, you really want to advance DEI – then you can:

1. Strategically plan your organization’s growth in DEI: look 20 years out. What’s your vision? Where are you headed? What institutional and cultural changes do you anticipate? What hurdles and growth pains can you expect? What will it take to get where you aspire to be?
2. Champion your organization’s DEI initiatives, especially throughout the leadership level. Be prepared for resistance and blowback. Practice what you will say when… And sometimes, name the discomfort, fear and stress because you can reasonably anticipate it, and it may be useful to acknowledge and address it, instead of waiting to see “if” it’s an issue. (Some things aren’t a question of “whether” they’re an issue, but how you’ll find out.)
3. Proactively stand as team in the spotlight of DEI, especially throughout the leadership level. Be the faces and voices at the front of this work, not to take the credit but to collectively shoulder the responsibilities.
4. Write DEI into your position’s responsibilities, especially throughout the leadership level. If your job description doesn’t say anything about DEI, yet your organization is committing to institutional change, well, this is part of that change. Yes, your DEI practitioner/office/team is running point on DEI. But they are not solely responsible for DEI, especially throughout your work. And when you write in those responsibilities for DEI, don’t let the fear of personally failing hold you back. Write those responsibilities truthfully, fearlessly and with the accountability that your position ought to bear. Then, pursue the professional growth you need to live up to the DEI you may not have signed up for originally, but is yours to advance. And share your DEI responsibilities with your DEI practitioner/office/team. Equity is that you know what they’re responsible for, and they know what you’re responsible for.
5. Name and talk about the developmental stages of your organization’s commitment with your community. Let everyone know the vision, the strategic plan and what you anticipate it will take to get there, including discomfort and the non-negotiable expectation to grow, but not to be unsafe.
6. Provide DEI professional growth to empower all employees and volunteers, especially throughout leadership, to pilot, practice and integrate in their work. Not just conferences and workshops – create professional learning communities and coaching. And you probably need to increase internal capacity to coach growth in DEI.

“There’s such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so many of us are guilty of that.” – Dolly Parton

Someone just reminded me of this quote from an interview with Dolly Parton a couple of weeks ago, in which she addressed the Dixie Chicks’ decision to become the Chicks.

“As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” –@DollyParton on removing the word "Dixie" from Dollywood.

The full cover story ➡️ https://t.co/AN9zNk1dRX pic.twitter.com/JpSpYzDi0B

— billboard (@billboard) August 14, 2020

“Ignorant innocence,” indeed. My innocent ignorance has included:

• Being taught and then repeating the phrase “Irish twin” (which is an ethno-religiously disparaging way to say that I’m 11 months younger than my sister);
• Being indoctrinated into and then actively participating in a youth culture in the late 70’s and 80s in the suburbs of Philadelphia, in which we commonly called things and people “retarded” and “gay;”
• Accepting that I was “an Eli” while at Yale (this nickname for Yale-affiliated folks honors Eli Yale, after whom the college was named; Yale was not just a slave owner but a slave trader);
• Not realizing that always being willing and able to turn my video on while videoconferencing (and wishing that other people would, too) is a privilege in so many ways (among them, socioeconomic, cisgender, hair and generational/regional – I remember when growing up, that my mom, who is not a vain woman, wouldn’t leave the house without make-up, such was the sexist, generational and racist expectation of that time and place).

And then there’s my not-so-ignorant innocence, which is actually my “but I’m not a bad person!” feint, as I sidestep responsibility for what I actually know on some level, but haven’t to date cared enough to really own.

For example, my lifelong adoption and use of mental health terms as throwaways to describe anything but mental health. I know that the US has a hard time talking directly and respectfully about mental health. And I know that meeting wasn’t actually “insane” or that students don’t actually “lose their minds” when they aren’t thinking through the consequences of their actions. And yet. I used these terms at 40. I’m 49 now and still discovering all the ways mental health terminology infests my speech when I’m not talking about mental health.

In order to, in Dolly’s words, not “be a dumbass,” we have to:

• Accept and anticipate that we have zones of innocent and not-so innocent ignorance, that
• Require us to reckon with our blindspots (which, I have been informed, is ableist) and
• Discern what we will own, abide and/or “rewire” (Santos) in our behavior.

You’ll notice that I just used the phrase blindspot. I acknowledge that blindness as a condition is dismissed and that “blind,” like “crazy,” is misapplied as an insult (e.g. “Are you blind or something?” when pointing something out to someone). And (not but) a blindspot is a physical phenomenon that is part of the inherent limitation of sightedness. I suppose “blindspot” can be an insult. And that derogatory connotation hasn’t yet caught up with the denotative use of blindspot, in my experience (ex. blindspots when you’re driving aren’t a matter of your deficiency as a driver; they’re just a fact). And when people try to make a blindspot an ableist insult, I think we can try to prevent or reduce that. (“Alison, do you have a blindspot or something?” “Why yes, in fact I do. Several. They’re dynamic, and can be hard for to notice but dangerous for myself and other people if I don’t, so thank you.”) Is the implication that we should “fix” our blindspots? Yes, there can be that implication that blindspots are “bad.” I would say they’re human: the result of our design, practice and exercised capacity. So I’m not innocently ignorant of the issues with “blindspot” anymore. I’m still discerning my ownership, because I’m less interested in performing correctness than I am owning what I’ll abide, practice and rewire.

* Thanks to Dolly and to MB for the quote. And I have to add this one from the same interview:

“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

Article of the day for educators

“What Makes an Effective Zoom Class? – A Student’s Perspective: 16 Ideas to Take Your Distance Learning Game to the Next Level” by Aminah Aliu.

My name is Aminah, and I’m a senior in California. Why should you trust unsolicited and under-qualified advice from a 16-year-old? Because I don’t think you deserve to work in a vacuum. Yes, you may be doing professional development to prepare for this upcoming school year, but why not get answers directly from the students themselves?

Of course, students are totally and essentially qualified to advise on their learning. And I’m both grateful to Aminah and worried about teacher over-dependence on students to tell us how to teach them effectively. This requires that our students already have the sense of safety, necessity, ability and trust that what they have said will matter.

That’s a tall order while you’re also learning. And it makes me think we should be paying some of our students salaries, or at least honoraria.

At the very least, we can do our part while we learn with and from our students. Here’s an example. The Abolitionist Teaching Network has published their Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning.

Let’s just name it: if the Abolitionist Teaching Network says it, it must be just, right? Well, yes, and… I think that’s a lot for a kid to have to articulate to us. So here’s my take on it before we ask them any questions, we should ask and investigate those questions for ourselves (see examples I added in bold below):

The work of education requires owning the work of education. We can’t just “plug and play” tips from even the most accredited of sources.

So read Aminah’s tips. Apply, adapt and expand on them. And if it’s helpful, this is the basic and essential framework in which these ideas are grounded:

• Self-awareness and monitoring
• Equity: Fundamental access to learn, and the ability to thrive
• Inclusion

… in other words, cultural competency.

If we work from this framework, we don’t have to follow someone else’s instructions. We can discern, design for, pilot and elicit feedback in our learning and relationships with students.

It’s fire season in California

It’s fire season in California, and will be for a while. If you’re able and would like to support our firefighters (including those who are coming from out of state), and the people and wildlife injured and displaced by the wildfires (magnified by climate change), California Community Foundation, which has a Charity Navigator rating of 4 out of 4 stars, can point you to where you can make donations, from UndocuFund for Disaster Relief in Sonoma County to the LA County Fire Department.

For Northern CA wildfire relief

For Southern CA wildfire relief

Qualification to my recommendation

I found myself adding this qualification about my recommendation of Damon Young’s What doesn’t kill you makes you blacker in an email exchange with colleagues at a predominantly white institution:

I wouldn’t recommend sending out my blog post to all employees. I’m sharing just with you because we [the folks on this email] talked about the book. Honestly, I think there’s too much “teach this, NOT that” going on (always, and especially right now).

Without speaking specifically about any particular teachers (because I don’t have that basis or intent), let me make an analogy to driving:

All drivers need a regular license (I forget what class that is)

If you’re going to drive a motorcycle or vehicle with more than 2 axles, you need additional levels of licensing.

Currently, independent schools do not have a uniform expectation or requirement for cultural competency that, in my opinion, is vital to teach at all (see: regular license), let alone to teach critical race theory (see: special class license).

I hope I do not sound condescending when I say that this book requires a special class license to teach. It’s not an indictment of your teachers. It’s about the safety and growth of your students in an industry (by which I mean all education in the US) that has never taken responsibility at the institutional level for the well-being, learning and thriving of students of color, with the exception of HBCUs.

Btw, not to make you read more, but here’s my follow up blog post about the book.

And a final coda: there’s a directness about sex and sexuality in this book that is self-reflective, culturally reflective and could make some educators and parents queasy.

So should you send the blog post? Up to all of you to own that decision.

* Note on my note in this email about sex and sexuality: while I think we should talk with young people about sex more honestly, integrally and complicatedly, as Young has written about it, I can reasonably anticipate charges of “inappropriateness” among any group of educators and parents/guardians to whom this book is recommended. Just look at the state of sex ed in this country.

If you’re thinking, wow, Alison, you’re spending a lot of time on this book, yes, I am. Because it’s not just about the book.

On racism within antiracism and the white supremacy of cancel culture

So I finished What doesn’t kill you makes you blacker by Damon Young, and I stand by what I wrote yesterday:

I recommend this book.

Full stop. No qualifications. (For transparency: I’m only on p. 297 of a 304 page book, so I suppose I could change my mind, but I doubt it.)

And, I almost laughed when I arrived on p. 304 and read this line in the essay “Zoe,” which is named for and about Young’s daughter:

She will still contend with the Chinese water torture of racial microaggressions.

Almost.

This is a racial microaggression in a sentence about racial microaggressions. At first glance, this is the same as calling covid-19 the Chinese virus or the Wuhan flu. (Notably, no one calls waterboarding “white US waterboarding.”)

And then, there’s the etymology of the phrase “Chinese water torture.” According to Wikipedia:

Chinese water torture is a painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time allegedly making the restrained victim insane. This form of torture was first described by Hippolytus De Marsiliis in Italy in the 15th or 16th century.

Origin: The term “Chinese water torture” may have arisen from Chinese Water Torture Cell (a feat of escapology introduced in Berlin at Circus Busch on September 13, 1910). The escape entailed Harry Houdini being bound and suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, from which he escaped, together with the Fu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer that were popular in the 1930s (in which Fu Manchu subjected his victims to various ingenious tortures, such as the wired jacket). Hippolytus de Marsiliis is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body. Other suggestions say that the term “Chinese water torture” was invented merely to grant the method a sense of ominous mystery. The victim would be stripped of their clothes, shown to the public, then tortured. They would be driven insane while bystanders watched, mocked, and laughed at them [emphasis added].

So, “Chinese” water torture is really white European heritage torture, assigned fictionally to the Chinese for sinister effect.

OK.

So I wish Young hadn’t just tossed that clever-ism into an otherwise intentionally aware essay about antiblack racism and blackness.

And I get that he’s writing specifically about antiblack racism, so antiAsian racism is either not in the arena, or up in the cheap seats for this book. His book. Still my book as a reader.

And I know that antiAsian racism matters, even if it’s not acknowledged and even if it’s perpetrated in the name of antiracism, because it’s either no racism or racism, folks. There’s no some racism option.

And I’m not interested in “cancelling” this book or Young because the fault isn’t individual. It’s not about what he wrote on p. 304 (and what his editor subsequently approved). It’s about a system that has failed to document and educate, about a culture that has never had an interest in holding us accountable for justice for all (sure, for some, but for those some at the cost of injustice for everyone else – and that tallies up to: injustice).

I get cancel culture. I feel the urge, believe me. And in the end, it’s just white supremacy embodied.

What do I mean by that?

White supremacy culture demands: perfection, urgency, defensiveness, worship of the written word (so especially if you wrote the “wrong” thing, you’re going down), only one right way, either-or thinking, individualism and the right to comfort (Okun).

And let’s just focus on individualism for a moment. White supremacy’s brilliant ruse is that everything is about and comes down to the individual. This is why, despite the clear “-ism” right there at the end of the word (comprising half the letters it takes to spell “racism”!) some folks are just now learning that racism is systemic and structural. This game of “pin the racism on the individual” is how white supremacy survives.

We all know that white supremacy doesn’t love people of color. But here’s the full truth: white supremacy doesn’t even love white people. White supremacy is a campaign for itself that will sacrifice Amy Cooper, Derek Chauvin, three armed guys in pick trucks in Georgia, any “Karen” and everyone else it needs to – “hey, look at that racist over there!” – so that it may trundle on, the moving walkway carrying us forward in the direction it has determined, at the pace it defines.

Should we call in, and sometimes out, actions and words that carry white supremacy’s water – that campaign for white supremacy’s agenda? YES.

Should we mistake playing these eternal rounds of antiracist whack-a-mole for systemic change? NO.

Antiracism requires strategy. And “culture eats strategy for breakfast” (Drucker), so we have to be strategic and tactical, and we need to commit to the lifelong work of “rewiring” (Santos) how we show up every day with ourselves and each other, with authentic growth mindset – not false growth mindset – (Dweck) that puts people before our own delusions about needing to be perfect.

Quote of the day

“We have to tell the truth about even those we vote for.”

– Cornell West

That this even has to be said is disheartening, and yet I’m also heartened that West did say it.

For more of West’s thought on this presidential election and voting as “a coalition of conscience,” check out his interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper: it’s partisan, and I believe West speaks non-partisan truth. We shouldn’t have to be reminded that “We have to tell the truth about even those we vote for,” but there it is.

For more resources on talking about politics, check out Blink’s “Can we talk about politics?” padlet. And maybe see you for the webinar on Tues 9/22/20.

Working in PWIs as a POC

I’ve said: hiring more people of color is not a strategy.

And let me add, quoting Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

So if you’re a predominantly white institution (PWI) with a goal of hiring more people of color, you need:

• A strategy that has factored in and planned for the anticipatable threats to your strategy (e.g. long-term commitments to DEI, like “becoming more diverse,” typically gather dust, until it’s time to re-up, whereupon that same old goal and strategy – of hoping you’ll magically become more diverse – just get copied-and-pasted into a new document with a current date)
• As part of that strategy and in immediately actionable practice, a shift in the culture that has sustained the predominant whiteness of your institution and community.

Just for starters, you can and should:

• Proactively and relentlessly correct the diversity “versus” merit myth.
• Track data about the racist inequities that you should reasonably anticipate are happening, until evidence indicates otherwise (e.g. in hiring, promotions/bonuses, disciplinary actions and layoffs).
• Hold white employees accountable for the predominance of the work of antiracism (because you are a predominantly white institution, this is simply equitable, and because racism affords white people privilege, including in antiracist work, this is also just).
• Practice spotting the racism in your efforts at antiracism.

While shifting culture requires strategy (which your culture will try to eat), and white employees en masse will not overnight shoulder the responsibility for antiracism, what you can do now is expect them to practice. Hold people accountable for growth and impacts that you intend as an institution.

Book recommendation: What doesn’t kill you makes you blacker by Damon Young

I recommend this book.

Full stop. No qualifications. (For transparency: I’m only on p. 297 of a 304 page book, so I suppose I could change my mind, but I doubt it.)

I want to point to a few essays that stand out to me personally and professionally (by which I mean, I am already citing these in my work, and were I still teaching English, I would teach these chapters):

“Three Ni**as”: This is a complicated, clear, compelling-the-reader essay about, that’s right, the n-word. Specifically in the form that some youth, across races, argue isn’t a slur. When I say “compelling the reader,” I mean that Young models what we should all be doing, which is: our own discernment about our relationship to not just the n-word but any identity slur, acknowledgment of the intra- and inter-personal complexities of our usage of slurs that are part of the machinations of mass dehumanization; and owning what we say, including why, when, to whom and in what context. Young enriched my baseline perspective that there’s a difference between “getting” to say a slur and living the full 360 of its consequences with reflections like this when a white friend (who is even, a “down-ass white boy”) casually injects the n-word into a story while among black friends:

It’s telling, also, how shocked the room was by Nick’s ni**a, and the juxtaposition of that shock with how chill we were with the racism nestled in Nick’s effortless sexism. We were more bothered by his clearly accidental ni**a than by this down-ass white boy matter-of-factly speaking about working-class black women as if their disposability was inherent and assumed.

Right now you may be thinking: you would teach this, Alison? Yes, and warning: those asterisks aren’t there in Young’s essays. I would teach this because it embodies and requires the discernment that I think the n-word, in all its forms, requires of each of us. Not equally or identically, but all of us. I would teach not the text, but how to engage the text, given individual positionality, collective engagement and context. (And to be clear: who I am and my choices as a teacher and consultant are not yours. Each of us needs to teach, cite and recommend what we can own.)

For Young, this discernment includes reflecting on the responsibility black people may have not to use the n-word around white people because “if we don’t want them to use it, we shouldn’t.” Young interrogates the blame and respectability politics underlying this logic – logic that he himself has “possessed” – and critiques the notion “that our salvation is found in a self-induced and performative filtering of our own behavior.” As if anti-black racism is black people’s fault and fully within their responsibility and agency to fix.

“How to Make the Internet Hate You in 15 Simple Steps”: In this essay, Young reflects on his public and private processing after he posts an article in response to a piece by Zerlina Maxwell (“Stop Telling Women How to Not Get Raped“). Young owns the presumptions of engaging in public discourse for the glory (but not the critique), his apology-that-was-not-an-apology and his “performative self-flagellation… through clenched fangs.” And then, he tells us:

… if your desire to avoid continuing to disappoint and hurt the people affected by your words is deep enough – if your lament about the pain you spearheaded is sincere – this is also where the work starts. This is also where that incredulousness and anger begin to transmute, eventually shifting to full-fledged embarrassment. And then fear. Where you pledge to never do this again. Because you don’t want to hurt people like that again. People you know and love and people you don’t know and don’t even like. And also because being the very deserving source of the Internet’s outrage fucking blows.

Maybe it wasn’t or won’t be on the internet. Maybe it will be face-to-face, on a videoconference or in person. Maybe it’ll be “the public” or your students or your colleagues or your family whom you’ve hurt. Somehow, though, I think this essay is vital for each of us. It’s about acknowledging harm (not just performing an apology), doing our work (not just other people’s forgiveness) and trying to repair and restore relationship and trust (with others, and with ourselves).

And then there’s “Thursday-Night Hoops”: This is the last essay I’ll shout out about, not because there are only three essays worth reading, but because you really should just go buy the book or check it out of your library, and read the whole thing (she says, with 7 pages left). This essay begins with a one sentence paragraph:

My point guard is a conservative.

As a basketball-illiterate reader, this essay was educational (I still have a lot to search, like what a “Unseldesque overhead outlet… in perfect stride” means) and resonant. When Young writes:

Still, despite my decade-plus membership to Thursday-Night Hoops, I’ve never quite felt completely comfortable there, particularly during the post-hoop beer sessions in Paul’s office. I’ve never felt unwelcome, but while clutching and pretending to enjoy Labatt Blues… it’s as if they’re all in on a joke. It’s a joke I get – I understand why it’s funny and appreciate its humor – but don’t get get it…

This was Yale for me. This was Harvard. This was working at Head-Royce and Marin Academy. This is working with many clients. This is any time I’m with my in-laws, after almost 20 years with my partner. This is brunch (pre-pandemic) with many of my friends. Like for Young, this is when I’m with people I like (and in some cases, love), doing things I love, in predominant whiteness. And like Young, sometimes what I’m choosing to do is not “strangle the unicorn.” (Yup, you’ll have to read the essay yourself to understand that reference 😉

Stop reading this. Go read that.

And (one last thought): if you’re thinking there’s NO WAY our school should or would be able to teach any of these essays, trust your instinct. Harm happening in “academic” conversations is real. And here’s what I think: anyone who is or aspires to be an educator should have the practice, discernment and skills in mind, heart, gut and action to be able to engage these conversations, striving and assessing for safety, equity, inclusion and empowerment so that students can show up fully and responsibly in their lives, in and beyond classrooms.