a multi-part series of posts about what straight allies can learn from Critical Whiteness Studies
As I wrote in part 1 of this series of posts, I’m taking a summer course called Critical Perspectives on Whiteness. I explained:
In addition to helping me start working through my own relationship to White privilege, Whiteness, and racism, this course is helping me think more deeply about the role of Straight privilege, Straightness, and heterosexism. Because I’m conditioned not to recognize so much of the privilege I receive as a white person, I’ve been finding it helpful to use my experiences as a gaylady and outsider to Straight privilege as a tool for trying to see White privilege. And that, in turn, helps me to think better about Straightness and Straight privilege.
The first part of this series focused on the dangers of turning the debate over gay marriage into the emblematic issue of the gay civil rights movement. This part considers a second danger: “straight heroism.”
white heroes / straight heroes
In defining “white heroism,” Lacanian psychologist Derek Hooks offers the example of Peter Gabriel performing ‘Biko,’ a song about the assassination of the Black South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, at a Live Aid concert in the 1980s
before an audience of 25 million people. Despite the obvious political potential of such an act, it is difficult not to feel a slight sense of unease in watching this footage today, in an era where such political anthems are less in vogue. It seems harder now to deny that such a performance holds Gabriel himself up to the limelight, securing for the singer and his audience a kind of anti-racist social capital. One might adopt a psychoanalytic perspective here, by asking whether such a gesture, no matter how well-intentioned – and which certainly can be read as a laudable form of consciousness-raising – does not risk tipping over into an instance of ‘anti-racist narcissism’. We should not be blind to this possibility: that at the very moment in which one is fully immersed in publicly applauding the sacrifice, the heroism of an other one is simultaneously reaping the rewards of the attention thus called onto one’s self. Although he directs his comments at white South Africa, Chabani Manganyi’s (1973, p. 17) words nonetheless seem pertinent here: ‘liberalism can only be a form of narcissism – a form of white self-love’.
This is the rocky path of White Declarations, of public statements of antiracism that release a person from the responsibility to actually change behaviors, attitudes, or actions that maintain the (White) status quo. This is the joining of an MLK Day march, the writing of an antiracist letter to the editor of a local newspaper. This is the “I have a black friend” declaration, the “I have a gay friend,” the “I have a Muslim friend.”
Here's one way to be pro-gay without running the risk of having people actually think you're gay
Let’s go back to the rhetoric surrounding gay marriage for a minute. I’ve seen lots of public declarations from straight allies that go like this: I have gay friends who are in love and are happily married / who are in love and want to get married and I demand / request / suggest that you support their right to legally marry. Which is super and awesome but which risks ringing somehow false. Too often, those declarations seem a little too full of magnanimity, of I-am-open-minded-and-therefore-an-awesome-liberal, of pat-me-on-the-back-for-being-an-awesome-straight-person. This is another reason why gay marriage has become an emblematic issue: Because it’s an easy way for straight people to support gays without risking any loss of their own Straight privilege. This has even become an official part of the gay marriage rhetoric: Gay marriage helps straight marriages. Also, Glenn Beck is not threatened by gay marriage.
I believe in gay marriage precisely because I think it does threaten straight privilege. In my view, if gay marriage does not threaten straight privilege, then it’s not part of the solution. If it’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.
The third and final part of this series of posts will be published on Sunday, June 5.
No related posts.
Wessel van Rensburg
June 4th, 2011
An interesting piece and much of what you write has more than a grain of truth. But I can’t help thinking that considering the state of the world and the current upheavals, you wasting your obvious intellect and energies on what amounts to relatively inconsequential western debates – naval gazing if you will.
The discourse is parochial, self obsessed and quite removed to the huge under currents sweeping the world. (And sometimes also incorrect because it ignores what is happening elsewhere, contradicting the narrative.)
The west is not the world. People are dying for freedom from want and discrimination of all kinds.
I don’t want to belittle the US ‘condition’, but it smacks of fiddling while Rome burns. I read the blog of a Gay girl in Damascus daily – those are real issues. Yes one day she too might muse about Sunni privilege and how liberal Sunnis are benefitting from their magnanimity. But frankly I doubt it. If you can free yourself from tyranny I doubt these things will interest much. (Even if they exist).
The world is way more complex than the western paradigm, and you are in danger of raising western intellectual pursuits / points scoring to global eternal truths.
Unfortunately I did not read your other posts on this subject, so you might be making some important points that I am missing. Sorry if that is the case.
Jenna McWilliams
June 4th, 2011
Thanks for your comments, @wildebees. I certainly can see the critique of Western (even American!) blinders in what I’ve written, and I appreciate the concern about the dangers of writing and thinking from that perspective.
I also think this issue and the discourse around it, while not as immediately life-threatening as linked issues elsewhere in the world, is deeply necessary. There is in America a rising tide of neo-conservative, racist, heterosexist, and anti-tolerance politics, and one that has both intra- and inter-national implications. Certainly the role of American religious figures in the push for anti-gay legislation in Uganda is one example of how anti-gay sentiment in the United States helps to spread hate crimes and hate killings elsewhere. So I wonder how to best engage issues of local relevance and connecting them to broader global issues. What do you think?
Wessel van Rensburg
June 5th, 2011
Ugandan’s are pretty much able to decide for themselves what they want to do or not. If anything western pressure moderated what the government did.
The problem with much of western lefty discourse is that it denies black agency. Denying responsibility. It was a pet hate of Biko, which inspires much of his work.
The US is on a global scale much more tolerant of Queer culture (as opposed to homosexual practise) than the vast majority of countries in the world. That is a sad state of affairs and unevenly spread, but true.
Also note – As far as I am aware homosexuality might not be punishable by death in many African countries, but it is only legal in South Africa. And in SA violent hate crimes against Lesbians are on the up. It has not been studied properly, but in black SA Queer culture is a new urban phenomena – and it much more visible than I think it ever was before. It challenges deeply held ideas of masculinity in a much more systematic way, than ‘just’ sleeping with another woman does. Thats my own little theory as to why so many women are being correctively rapped and killed. A few have died this year.
To confuse matters, In some states in Europe, the protection of gay rights is one of pillars of right wing parties, in their quest to keep Muslims out.
I agree with you that in every country one must guard tolerance. But when I read your posts they are not about tolerance. They are about confrontation based on hair-splitting arguments.
Biko wrote:
“Blacks have had enough experience as objects of racism not to wish to turn the tables.
“While it may be relevant now to talk about black in relation to white, we must not make this our preoccupation, for it can be a negative exercise. As we proceed further towards the achievement of our goals let us talk more about ourselves and our struggle and less about whites.”
Jenna McWilliams
June 5th, 2011
It looks like your concerns are primarily about how I’ve characterized Whiteness and the role of White privilege–which makes sense to me, since I’m very new to the field and am only now starting to read and write and think about these things. I’ll keep working to refine and mature my understanding of these things as I continue to learn. Do your concerns extend to the points I’m making about queer civil rights?
Jenna McWilliams
June 5th, 2011
@wildebees, I also wonder where you see the hair-splitting. To me, an important question is how best to guard against being lulled by a beautiful song–the primary reason that gay marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in America have become THE gay rights issues is that people can get behind them without actually changing their beliefs and attitudes about where queers belong. If I have made this seem like an argument about terminology, or about “splitting hairs,” then I’ve done a woeful job of representing how deeply necessary it is to question the rhetoric and impulses behind these things, to consistently and systematically challenge our own and others’ beliefs and motivations.