queerbychoice | Test Your Unconscious Biases!

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Test Your Unconscious Biases!

Finally, a set of personality tests that are actually worth taking!

Age Bias—Do you prefer the young or the elderly? This test measures the automatic association between the young and old and positive and negative concepts.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for young.
[Hmm. I took this test first because it felt the least scary; I didn't think I had any preference.]

Racial Bias: Asian Americans—This test probes for an automatic stereotype that Asian Americans are not as "American" as European Americans.
Your data suggest little or no automatic ethnic association with American or Foreign.
[Yay, so I did learn something from having grown up with all Asian friends instead of Euro ones!]

Gender Bias—This stereotype test measures the strength of automatic association between women and men and the concepts "liberal arts" and "science."
Your data suggest a strong automatic association between male and science.
[This test was by far the most overwhelmingly difficult for me of any of them. I was pretty sure ahead of time that I'd get a rotten score, I was still shocked to find out just HOW extremely incapable I am of associating "female" with "science," no matter how hard I try. Off to feminist reeducation boot camp with me!]

Body Image Bias—Using drawings of people who vary in weight, this test measures automatic attitudes about obese people.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for fat.
[Cool! Maybe now all the people who keep annoying me by constantly declaring themselves "too fat" will shut up and start trying not to get too skinny for fear I won't prefer them anymore.]

Racial Bias: Weapons—This test measures the automatic association of weapons and harmless objects with Black and White adult faces.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic association between White and weapons.
[Um, actually I'm not used to seeing members of ANY race carrying weapons around in my everyday life.]

Racial Bias: Arab Muslims—This test measures the automatic association of Arab Muslims with positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims.
[Well, hey, all the Arab Muslims I ever went to school with were cool . . .]

Racial Bias: Black/White Children—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with Black and White children.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for White children.
[Bad me. I put off the Black/White tests until the end (except the Weapons one) because I knew I'd do well on any measurement of racism involving other races, but not so well on the ones involving racism against Black people. In California, there's always a good healthy and reasonably integrated mix of all races except Black, which is still extremely segregated. We even have a convenient naming system for segregated neighborhoods around here: any neighborhood that's 75%-100% Black is named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and any neighborhood that's 50%-75% Black is named after Abraham Lincoln, just so everybody knows which races are allowed to live where and all. I currently live in the Lincoln neighborhood, but my unconscious biases are unfortunately more influenced by having been raised across the river in the No Black People Allowed neighborhood.]

Racial Bias: Black/White Adults—This test measures unconscious or automatic associations of "good" and "bad" with black and white people.
Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for White.
[Ack, even worse me.]

Racial Bias: Skin-Tone—Do you prefer darker or lighter skin tones? This test measures automatic preference for skin color using faces that vary in skin tone and positive and negative words.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for lighter skin.
[Well, this is the only test result that I really feel is inaccurate. I do have definite skin tone preferences, I know, but my perception of skin color is divided for some reason very much into three categories of "light, middle, and dark," so the binary light-dark division presented on this test didn't really jive with the way I actually mentally perceive people - on top of which, the drawings on this test were really awful, and the fake drawn-in skin tones were not realistic looking at all. But I do have definite skin tone preferences in real life: I know that if I walk into a room full of strangers and I need to pick one of them to talk to, I invariably approach someone of medium skin color, with brown eyes and dark hair, and most of the time it's someone who is neither White nor Black. If there's anyone Asian in the room, especially, I'll always go to an Asian person first, because I've gotten used to thinking of Asian people as "the people I fit in with" and of Euro-Americans as "the people who have an annoying habit of mistaking me for one of them, and who I have to push away and put in their place for fear they'll succeed in actually making me one of them."]

What are YOUR Unconscious Biases?

P.S. In other, less important online personality test news, apparently I am a strawberry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It appears to me that the point of this test, however, is precisely to point out that implicit assumption of whiteness in most people's minds and protest against it. NOT to reinforce it. And I think you are missing that point.

I also think if you took the test, you would understand what I'm saying. To try to discuss it without having observed it fully does not make sense.

"Again, and listen to me carefully, I can help you with some of your Black/White biases if only you'll let me help."

I wish that you would, but the attempts so far have just frustrated me as much as they've frustrated you. We are not working with sufficient understanding of each other at the moment. If you're available to chat with me on AIM sometime (I'm QBC 101) that might help. The blockades between us are too complex for me to sort out in this medium without a real-time conversational supplement.

I think YOU are missing the point. There is what the test is and then there is what it _is_, meaning what it really means.

For example, because the test rests in dichotomies, it is flawed AND perpetuating European hegemony. However, this hegemony is supported by aggressively and passively by white and non-whites alike, respectively. People of color, the world's majority, do not think in hierarchies NOR dichotomies and sure as hell do not split things into good or bad camps. That is purely European/Euro-American. However, we, meaning non-whites, are forced to go along with this although it may offend us to our bone.

Secondly, it is a test to define unconcious biases, however, it is doing so within a definate cultural context. Rating them on the same scale and making them all universal. Universalism is one of the biggest, nastiest lies there are -- almost as nasty and repugnant as individuality.

There are no blocks, I feel. You don't want to hear. I am not frustrated. Contrary to what you might believe, I deal with whites every day on all sorts of levels. I know all whites are racist, they can't help it. I also know what causes this and it keeps me from turning them faceless, keeping them human. You are not special in that regard, rather, you are like the typical white people I have come across... This is not to say that there aren't anti-racist white folks, but what I come across, generally, are liberal racist white folks and they are the hardest to work with because they don't want to examine, they want to accept and keep their worldview.

Well, I have been doing this work for a long time, Gayle, and I have seen it all. If this offends your individuality, then so be it -- I will not be able to convince you of the race of white, the cultural group and it is not my place to do so.

NothingQ is my AIM -- and I am on.

Don't insist that these blockades are mine because they aren't, however, I am here and open to you as I have always been if you want to discuss this more. But what I have found is that closed is closed and it could only serve to further frustrate you.

Peace,

Q

ALL of the tests are structured in dichotomies, yet you only refused to take this one.

The fact that we have never had any conversations about any topic where you're not in the position of "teacher" is a major block in my being able to relate to you. People who are going to discuss sensitive topics with each other need a certain basic trust and understanding of each other as fully rounded human beings, and we don't currently have that.

Why are all our interactions focused around what you can teach me about racism, and never around what I can teach you about, say, sexism? White women didn't get the vote in this country until after Black men did; we're not oppressed in symmetrical ways at all but neither of us is all that un-oppressed.

And yes, I know you said you're "woman-identified," but if "identification" is worth anything to you then you ought to stop thinking of me as "white" and start recognizing me as Asian-identified instead: which I am; I grew up with all my closest friends being Asian, not white, from the time I was six years old all the way through college, and everyone who knew me used to joke that I was an "honorary Asian" until I protested that this was a racist title because it made me sound like I was better than a real Asian, so since then my friends have switched to teasing me about being a faux Asian, a pseudo-Asian, and every other fake-derogatory name they can think of. Now, that certainly doesn't give me at all the same experience as someone who has an actual Asian body: I recognize that the body through which I continue to experience the world is a white one, and that this profoundly impacts my experiences. But the body through which you experience the world is a male one, and that profoundly impacts you as well.

I recognize that I have unconscious racist tendencies, but that has not prevented me from having perfectly enjoyable serious discussions about race with other Black activists in the past who I felt respected me a whole lot more than you do. Black_Pearl on LiveJournal is a member of my Queerchoice Mailing List (I'm on her BorderFeminisms list as well), as is a Black transwoman friend named Ina, as are nearly two dozen Indian and Indian-American activists (my URL got passed around a lot on the GayBombay mailing list and we've had a huge bloc of Indian activists on my list ever since; I now stay more up to date about queer activist events in India than in any other country except my own). I like being with all of these people because I learn things from them; but I don't feel that while teaching me they generally talk down to me as though to a five-year-old, as I feel you're doing. They're able to teach me things without making me feel that they consider every single thought in my head about every single possible topic in the world to be infinitely inferior to every single thought they've ever had about every single possible topic in the world.

I don't want our conversations to be a perpetual battle, but I'm also not going to pretend to agree with you on every single opinion you hold if you can't actually explain to me why you are right, in terms that I can understand. It would require no effor or intelligence at all for me to simply say "I agree" after every sentence you write and win praises from you that way, and maybe that's what the "truly anti-racist white folks" you speak of did do - but I am not going to go that route, I am not going to tell you I agree with you when the fact is that no matter how hard I try I cannot make any sense out of the explanations you've given me so far.

Is this about control?

What can you teach me about sexism that I did not learn from my mothers and the women of my community?

So, Black people were offered suffrage "first". Big whoop. Have you read DuBois' _The Souls of Black People_? Do you know why they were offered sufferage or does it not matter to you in your diatribe?

You can be as Asian-identified as you like, it does not erase the fact that you are preceived as a white woman and granted privilege thusly.

You don't need to tell me, in so many words, that you have "Black friends" -- poor, poor move.

You know nothing of my body nor what marks me feminine. *smiles* You know nothing about the hormones I have taken. And, ovbiously, you are unable to understand linked oppressions. Yes, my body is male, but my skin is still black. You are unable to think complexly enough to realize how things are linked -- this is a major problem. You want to see things as dichotomies -- Black or white. But you cannot understand what happens when these things are joined and how different they are.

You haven't hit on one thing you can teach me. And I never sought you out as a teacher anyway. I sought you out because you and your group looked cool to me, being a pomosexual, the idea of choice appealed. You were the one who started bringing all of this universalist rhetoric into my journal. And I was the one to challenge.

If you feel inferior it is simply because you have met a person of color who is not going to kowtow to you because you are white. And I am sorry for that. Your internalized racial superiority means nothing to me. It is one of the illusions I have had to free myself of. I do not want nor expect you to "agree" with every single thing I say -- I am not your Baba, I am no one's Baba. However, why is it that you are all angry and upset and I am not?

*shakes head*

Q

You have my AIM screen name. I invite you to use it.

I've been forced to work 20 hours of overtime this week and on the rare occasions when I'm home and have AIM access for a few minutes before collapsing into bed, you're not around anyway. But in truth, maybe it's just that I'm exhausted but I find it hard to sustain interest in this conversation anymore. I will respond to this message but not to any further ones unless I see some reason to believe that further interaction will produce any different results.

"And I never sought you out as a teacher anyway."

Oh, so you're into black/white teacher/non-teacher dichotomies, are you? There are things you can learn from everyone and things you can teach to everyone. For someone as into non-Western modes of thought as you claim to be to fail to recognize something as basic as that is astonishing and appalling. Must be a sign of your Western education and upbringing having taken root more deeply than you'd like to admit.

"You haven't hit on one thing you can teach me."

On the contrary: you have not recognized one thing I can teach you. You were not aware of the industry which makes money off of stealing boys' foreskins; I was, and I never even had one. You were not able to recognize the sentencing of male criminals to wear dresses as a sexist act: you could not even see the difference between calling that sentencing sexist and claiming that voluntary drag is sexist (which it can be, if used like blackface for purposes of parody, but it usually isn't).

"You can be as Asian-identified as you like, it does not erase the fact that you are perceived as a white woman and granted privilege thusly."

I know that; I stated that already. However, even if I were an Asian woman, do not delude yourself that this would magically make me any less racist against your race either: several of my Asian friends have shocked me by being even more racist against your race than I am. Some of them are also racist against themselves; the popularity of surgeries to acquire Caucasian-looking eyelids is appalling, and you cannot even imagine what it felt like to me to find out that the woman I loved more than anyone, my best friend of nine years, had spontaneously sneaked away to a surgeon one day without telling me and had the face that I loved surgically mutilated because she didn't think it was as good as mine - the helplessness of having my own face used by my loved ones to tell themselves they're not as good as I am: this is one of the pains of racism that only white people. And she was not the only friend of mine who got this operation done. It is a common operation, and when I cried over it my friends told me that I was being racist, that I had no respect for the Korean cultural custom of getting eyelid surgery to look more Caucasian - that snce this operation is so popular in Korea it must be a good way of showing loyalty to one's Korean heritage.

"You know nothing of my body nor what marks me feminine. *smiles* You know nothing about the hormones I have taken."

To take hormones does not give you the social experience of being female. To be perceived as female in public does give you some social experience of being female; but it is not equivalent to the social experience of being raised female all your life, from your earliest childhood. You would be extremely foolish to pretend to yourself that it is equivalent to that.

"You don't need to tell me, in so many words, that you have 'Black friends' -- poor, poor move."

I do not have 'Black friends.' I have never had 'Black friends.' I have been very honest about that at all times. I have, however, been able to have more worthwhile conversations with 'Black people' on occasion than I have been able to have with you - though I did have one or two worthwhile conversations with you a while back, which is the only reason I've bothered being saddened by the current state of affairs.

Your idea of racism is flawed, but that is understandable. In America, to properly understand and look at race means white people would have to be made to see that which they don't want to see.

Racism is not the same thing as prejudice, bigotry, or discrimination.

Racism is race prejudice + power. Without power, race prejudice is "individualized". What power does is to make ones race prejudice into law or make law or pass laws that reflect the race prejudice. In America, the dominant culture is European and Euro-Americans... or "white" and so the only people who can be racist, who indeed have the power to be racist are white people.

So when you talk about your Asian-American friends who have had eye surgery, you are not witnessing them being racist against themselves, you are witnessing the very real effects of racism on people of color. And this is just one of its manifestations! Cornell West calls this "colluding with Western culture", however, in anti-racist lingo, this is called internalized racial inferiority and oppression. This is something particular to people of color as the "others" in a society that is racist. It sometimes make us passively perpetuate the racist system by attempting to assimulate into it instead of fighting for ourselves, our culture, our natural selves.

The white counterpart of racism is different because, yes, racism affects white people in profound ways as well. The immediate counterpart is internalized racial superiority. Where white is "normative" which because all things that are white become normative and all things that are said by non-whites suspect or inherently wrong because, well, they are non-whites. When white people are not anti-racist, they are perpetuating racism in many, many ways because, firstly, the culture is set up in such a way as to hide that white is just as much a race as Black -- instead you have the myth of "individuality" to hide that white people act as a group just as other peoples -- they just lie about it.

******

Because I am a person of color and I was raised in a racist, white society, I have the ability or sin of what DuBois calls double-consciousness. This means that I can think in the European/Euro-American mindset -- and do when I am in the process of trying to reach -- there is no need to bring my personal self into this -- only my analytical, somewhat removed self because I refuse to get serious about any of this. Not only that, but this is old hat for me and someone needs to keep calm.

But as long as you refuse to acknowledge and see your whiteness, you will remain single-identity political and unable to see the connections which would be so crucial to the work I would imagine you want to do. EVERYONE is hurting -- you know that. However, it is important to understand the ways and the causes of this hurt. It is important not to assume that everyone hurts the same or that because we all are hurt that we can identify over hurt because that is creating a movement of victims... and none of us are victims.

Consider those early conversations with me fake --and if you are bothered or sadden by anything, be bothered and saddened that I was allowing my internalized racial inferiority and oppression not to tell you when I felt you were over-simplifying or "universalizing" what I had to say.

The tension will prove to be helpful if we allow ourselves to ride it and know when to take a break and to strive for dialogue instead of debate. I am not going to debate with you. I am going to share and attempt to share in ways I hope you can understand and wait for you, honestly, to let go of some of the stuff you carry. If you feel this is unfair, I am sorry. I cannot become "equal" with you as I have spent my whole life being a cultural other. I cannot erase twenty-six years of my life and I am not asking you do that either -- only to consider it as I had to consider those years when I first started to delve into the issue of race and ethnicity in the country.

What I meant by "Black friends" was that you were attempting to use you relationships with other people of color to cow me. AND that was a poor move. I am not going to submit to you. White culture and people were demystified for me long time ago. With the huge help of a text called _Yurugu_ by Marimba Ani. Not to mention that to bring up your more "pleasant" experiences with people of color is a common weapon in the racist arsenal whose only purpose is to furthe divide people of color so that we can never unite and dismantle European/Euro-American/"white" hegemony and imperalism.

Racism is the glue which holds all the other -isms in place. Racism ensures that there can never be a unified movement because "race" is the visible marker that divides us from each other. Pretending it doens't exist only makes the problem worse as the default (in the language and mindsets of ALL Americans across cultures)is always "white"/European/Euro-American.

And I have to wonder... how honest were any of them with you? Did they tell you when they felt... trampled upon? Did they lose their fight with internalized racial inferiority and oppression just to keep you as a friend?

Did they?

*shakes head*

I am not going to substain the energy that was in this post. I know you are sick and aren't feeling very well. I don't want to add to that.

But let me explain some things.

In African culture there is something really real about seeking out teachers -- you don't allow just anyone entrance into your head. You told me information -- you didn't teach me anything which is well because I didn't ask you to. I asked a question, you answered it, but surely you know that this not "teaching". Teaching is not about answering questions, but entering into dialogue and being open to new avenues of thought.

I have to admit that, later, when I really thought about it, I realized that I was really pissed because you said that you can teach me something about sexism and/or feminism. I felt that this was extremely disrespectful and later I realized that this is one of the problems -- you don't know me. You know "things" about me -- woman-identified, Black, trans-mesh/gender outlaw. But you know nothing about the very real experiences behind any of them and seem unwilling to question -- only defend because you don't feel safe and secure.

And, note, I have seen you on, you didn't see me or didn't acknowledge my presence and before I could say anything, anyway, you were gone...

To charge me with ignorance of sexism and womanism is to not know me or my upbringing. I was raised in a very woman-positive household -- but really that doesn't get to it. I was raised in a woman-identified household -- I'm talking matriarchal. I was raised by three very strong Black women who raised me to be aware and wrote their stories into my skin and when not writing, I noticed the differences based on that hated and most sought-after grail: their vaginas. Add to that being sexually abused ages 5-11 for not conforming to masculine gender constructs and you have someone who has always understood sexism, gender, and even womanism/feminism on a visceral level. And, to add, my sexual abuses were by both men and women to show me, using the praxis by Joanna Kadi, what would happen to me if I didn't "become a boy and stop acting like a little girl" -- that I would be treated like one. The only reason why this abuse stopped at the age of 11/12 is because I figured out how to protect myself which mean giving in, saying yes to avoid the beatings. I never "became a little boy", I just hid myself as best I could.

To say that I experience life in my male body does not give credence to the other ways in which I experience life and the added complications of every single one of those levels. Being a Black man does not help, Gayle. And it is really simple of you to attempt to dissect me like that. Go talk to white men -- that is who you mean all of that rhetoric for -- not me.

Also, the social experience of being a woman differs on cultural levels as well. When you picked up some Audre Lorde, did you bother to read it? _Sister Outsider_ itself would start to point out where you are wrong in your strident accusations upon my perceived male-ness without my culture or "race" as a Black(and black) man who is transgendered and a feminist.

"What can you teach me about sexism that I did not learn from my mothers and the women of my community?"

There is nothing I can teach you about sexism that you couldn't have learned from your mothers and the women of your community. There does appear to me, however, to be much I can teach you (or rather: I could if your ears were open to listening, which they are clearly not) that you did not choose to learn from your mothers and the women of your community.

"So, Black people were offered suffrage 'first'. Big whoop. Have you read DuBois' _The Souls of Black People_? Do you know why they were offered sufferage or does it not matter to you in your diatribe?"

I did read The Souls of Black Folk, actually, for a class on African-American History that I took in college (I presume this is the book you are speaking of, though the last word of the title is "Folk," not "People"). I know why Black people were offered suffrage and I also know why women were, and furthermore, I'm not under any illusions that a democratic system in which "majority rule" continually silences all minority views is a system in which the power to vote can ever be very worth having; but even so, I don't think either of us would want the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments outright repealed. There are other indications I could point to if you need more help being convinced that sexism is of a comparable severity in our culture to racism, but I had sufficient respect for you to believe you could figure that out without me having to enumerate them all. Perhaps I was wrong to have that respect for you, but I think not: I think you are merely being willfully ignorant rather than honestly incapable of figuring it out. Think about it: we have in this culture separate pronouns for males and females but not separate pronouns for race. This in itself should hint to you that gender has at least approximately as great - if not greater - a significance in determining people's social status as race has.

Furthermore: in the time of slavery, white women also were the property of white males and compelled to perform unpaid labor for them, yet modern historical biographies continually persist in glossing over the importance of this and presenting those marriages purely as romantic "love affairs," as though the fact that the woman was denied education and the right to paid employment and sold by her father into ownership by her so-called "loved one" does not render utterly perverted and disgusting the whole idea of her loving her husband. How would you feel if the common history books on Black slavery still, in this day and age, went so far as to extoll the virtues of slaves who supposedly loved their masters dearly?

I am not going to tell you that sexism is a more severe problem than racism, because the two oppressions function in different ways and have different kinds of results that are difficult to strictly compare - certainly White women are able to glean certain monetary comforts from being born into families headed by White men (provided that they are born into families with fathers present) and from marrying White men (provided that they're bi- or heterosexual), and certainly White women are not treated by men with the same fear and alienation that Black people are generally viewed with by White people in the North and the West (though racism in the South is structured in a more comparable way to sexism, I think); but for you to dismiss sexism as being of drastically inferior importance to racism is quite plainly sexist and unworthy of you.

Of course it was Folks -- sorry for the disconnect between my brains and fingers. Maybe that'll be resolved during the next evolutional shift.

I think you are being ignorant and offensive. But I am going to do my best to ignore your offensiveness.

I am glad that you have read _The Souls of Black Folk_, however, I find it pitable that you didn't understand what, exactly, it was that you were reading.

Suffrage was offered to Negros because the liberals won and the Freeman's Bureau was being dismantled. Suffrage for Negros was the _counterstroke_ not the stroke. So while you are sitting there itemizing, you are missing important lessons. You are guilty of glossing over the reality of slavery -- or at least -- universalizing it so that it fits the reality white women lived under. But let's review this, shall we? Were white women kidnapped and beaten and treated like dumb animals? You say in some ways they were? I am saying in all ways were slaves. That suffrage was offered to Negros was nothing more than how the Freeman's Bureau could _screw_ the powers that be. And you seem to forget how many Black bodies littered the ground or were "disqualified" from voting.

As I read this post, I kept thinking about Alice Walker. I thought about the reasons why she (and others) started the womanist movements... you, too, seem to be quite unaware of your whiteness and insist on woman-ness in the face of woman-ness coupled with culture. You are blind to your whiteness and your narrow constructs -- but this doesn't anger me. I just look at it and think, "Typical" because I have only seen this kind of thing and I pray for something different by the Ancestors don't feel the need to lie to me.

You wanna talk about white women? White women are STILL slaves to white men -- along with everyone else. This is not because of mere sexism. No! This has to do with the culture of whiteness. Am I to feel sorry for you because you are second in line to the white man? You experience all of his power _except_ having a penis, that is, unless you choose to have one inside of you. White women are known to be just as racist as their men. They have killed Black bodies or caused the death of Black bodies.

I have said before that racism is the glue that holds all the -isms together, but I never said what it is that racism holds together: European/Euro-American/"white" Imperialism, Dominance, and Hegemony.

Besides, having my ears close to your version of socialized feminism (within its cultural trappings) does not mean my ears are closed to that of my mothers and the women who raised me. White womanhood, for the most part, just doesn't look like anywhere I would want to put my hands. Sorry, I like Black womanhood. I like their strength and their determination not to be perpetual victims.... these are the stories, the experiences, the lives I am open to. Yes, there are white woman-hoods that speak to me. But it is because they remind me of them, not because they have swallowed all of this other BS. I identify strength with femininity. Show me weakness and I'll show you a man at the bottom of it.

Some slaves did love their masters dearly, Gayle. It is to be expected. Especially those who were born and raised into slavery and know nothing better. It is no different today -- for either of us. We recognize the system in some ways, but we love the system -- can't even imagine other ways of being. This is slavery, Gayle. When you know something's wrong, but don't know how to stop it. Learning about European/Euro-American/"white" imperalism/hegemony/even culture is learning how to not be a slave. How not to fear. How not to feel stuck.

(Continuation) 2

And we return to white women. Do you really mean to tell me that some white women have not been very much okay with the arrangement? Maybe she isn't equal to her husband or other white men, but she is superior to all other others? Is this _not_ power? Do some white women not become drunk on this power? And we are not talking about the obvious ones, we are talking about the liberal ones, the ones who would never really admit to the power they have as white women, but instead like to bitch about the plight of woman-hood as if universal? Bitching about the plight of woman-hood even as they use their power to silence each other and non-white women? Is this what you are in favor of? Is this the stage of the dialectic that you cannot reach? Power analysis?

You are not going to tell me that sexism is a more severe problem than racism, but racism doens't touch your life in any meaningful way. That is part of your privilege as a white person -- that you only have to think about racism if you want to. You are not going to tell me that, but it is obviously what you believe -- and you are right to believe it. Through the privilege your whiteness affords you, you can afford sexism to be more severe than racism and not have anyone, any people of color who obviously know better and/or different, to tell you that this is not true.

Now, I am a Southerner and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest and now in the Southwest and I can tell you that, actually, racism is healthier in the South. *smiles* In other places, white people are just as racist as those Southern whites they like to be superior to, but they aren't as honest about it. Instead, they act racist while telling me it isn't. In the South, at least, they say it, but it isn't always an action.

I dismiss _all_ other -isms as being inferior to racism because they don't hold people apart from each other as plainly as racism does. For you not to recognize this is racist and unworthy of you... but expected and I do not hold that against you -- it is the nature of the beast.

I do not know enough Black women, even as acquaintances, to be able to generalize at all about their opinions on the Taliban; but I do know plenty of women of other nonwhite colors, and without exception all of them I have asked about it would like to see a coalition of non-Taliban (not necessarily the United States, but the United Nations is a common choice) intervene to stop the Taliban's violence against women - not with bombs, but by simply ensuring that every woman in Afghanistan is given the opportunity to escape and find asylum in a neighboring country where no violence will be done to her. I find it absurdly sexist for you to declare your own position as a Black person born male to be any more "objective" and able to see the full picture of Afghanistan than is my position as a White person born female, and I suspect you have been very seriously negligent in listening to the opinions of your "mothers and the women of your community" on this subject. I believe that you find it convenient to surround yourself with White people who can be intimidated into agreeing with anything you say in order to avoid getting accused of racism. But obviously you aren't going to listen to me on this, so go listen to other women instead - women of whatever colors you feel like listening to.

I am not likely to try to converse with you any further in the near future, neither on LiveJournal or in any other medium. I will continue to read your journal if you choose to continue to read mine, but I do not feel that there's any point in further interaction if you can't even acknowledge that I could possibly have one single shred of knowledge that you could learn from. If you really are actually interested in chatting with me then by all means initiate it (whenever my employer lets me out of my cubicle for a change so I can actually go on AIM in the first place, that is), but if you are not any more interested in listening than you appear to be right now, then there's no point in my attempting it.

So be it.

And so we are back to the Taliban.

Gayle, why is it so important that we Euro-Americanize them? Is it because we are slaves, too and want all the world to be slaves so that we might not feel so horribly and worthless about ourselves? Is it because the colonialist impulse has not died its death amongst whites? Only was spread to non-whites, too, and this makes it ok?

And, you know what? Black people are non-whites, too. But, as I already pointed out, you are set on separating them out from other people of color.

To quote the Hurricane, "What's up wit dat?!"

You can suspect what you want. *grins* I have nothing to prove to you. And of course you find it sexist of me, but I can't help but wonder if you would really like to simply call me a nigger and be done with it.

As I drew out in the last post, the problem is not with sexism or with racism, but what it holds -- which is European/Euro-American/"white" imperialism and hegemony. As a cultural activist, I do not think it a good idea that America does anything over there. Period. I am refraining fro saying, really, anything else except we need not be over there doing what we are doing. We do not understand their culture. We have brain-washed so many people into seeing things "our" way without offering the reality of it that people think changing beasts necessary. But the the beast you know is always a comfort. They don't know this beast of European/Euro-American imperialism. I do. I am a product of it. You are, too, but you won't/can't allow yourself to see it. As a product of it, I have to say: NO! and if you have a problem with that, well, to be honest, you can just piss off.

I am not surrounded by white people either, Gayle. In my circle, there are some white persons. But in my heart, I know I shouldn't even bother with white people (note the difference between people and persons) at all because I need to be worrying about my own and I do feel, on some level, that having conversations like these which are exhausting and exhaustive, divide my attention and I don't like that. But thank you for attempting to discredit my commitment to my people, but you are ill-equipped to do that. You see, it isn't true. *shrugs* Sorry. *smiles*

And I am fine with your control play -- I am shocked it didn't come earlier!

You wanna know what I have learned from you? Firsthand knowledge of what all Black womanist say of white feminist. So, I did learn from you, just not what you thought I would learn.

I have no problem with you so *shrugs* whatever. But please, don't be passive-agressive. Remove me from your friend's list of you want, just don't pretend that you are waiting for what I do -- that's just immature.

Peace,

Quentin

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Test Your Unconscious Biases!

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