Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

Hahahahahah COME AT ME, BRO.

nah I know, and this is not a thing I do, saying hello to random people on the street male or female. (People def do it to me but I am a man so it doesn't have the sexual overtones, at least not most of the time afaict, more "I am about to ask you for money"/"about my pet cause" overtones lol) It just bums me out that sexist assholes ruin things as basic as saying hello.

xxp

is her proper role to go to meetings and donate money to anti-SH groups and share articles and the like, but not to document her experiences in the form of images or video? i understand that she could still easily speak out/write about her experiences without the need to mention the race of the harasser, but when you visually document something - which i think is important and should be done as often as possible - there's no getting around race. suggesting to a white woman that she should participate in anti-SH in THIS way but not in THAT way just seems off.

I think organizations that work on SH have a responsibility, especially since they're working toward righting an injustice, have a STRONG responsibility to be accountable for their race, LGBTQ, etc positions as well. Hb has been around for long enough to notice that they have a problem with a lot of white women telling stories about being harassed by Black men, and that without any intervention, the air in the room can be completely used up by that one thing. (And the way we can talk about it sometimes gets SUPER uncomfortable really fast.) But they keep making these dumb missteps, like, whatever they SAY about not intending to single out PoC that's what they end up doing again and again.

there's an icon on public transportation here accompanying the dictum "no offensive language or conduct" that looks like an angry person of unverifiable color, i'll have to post a picture obv. that "rule" is so obnoxious and race/class weighted language police, why not "be considerate of others" ffs. the jackasses in charge of public transit here make me so angry.

I don't take any credit for working this shit out on my own btw. I didn't. I didn't know ANY of this when I moved to Crown Heights over 10 years ago. I didn't know that any stereotypes HAD been assigned to Black men because I almost literally didn't know any Black men or know anyone who knew any, basically, so I'd never heard of those slurs before.

But what I did feel was increasingly angry and traumatized by being sexualized everywhere I went, and also very, very ASHAMED. Like the things men said to me were my own fault, like I was being stripped and exposed and made dirty by their eyes and their words and the way they called public attention to their power over me because of my gender presentation, how helpless I was because they were in groups and I was alone--not that I was in danger, but that they always had the crowd on their side. And there was nowhere for my shame and anger to go, nothing positive or productive to transform it into, it was just eating me up.

The group that I meet with now gave me an outlet, they gave me a chance to try on a whole different framework about SH and objectification and to have a vision of transforming it into something better. I owe BMC like everything. No, I will not stop talking about them because they're so amazing.

http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/anti-street-harassment/

No Disrespect envisions a world free of harassment, particularly of people whose identities have been historically marginalized. We reject domination and objectification as the basis of public interaction and are working towards a world in which these interactions are instead based on mutual respect and love. We further believe that powerful, organized, and sustainable communities are rooted in the deep and compassionate understanding between individual members; and that the current culture of intimidation and harassment undermines our overall potential to create these healthy versions of community living.

that looks like a good group of people orbit.
yelling shit at people on the streets is bullshit. harassing people in offices is bullshit. basically people are bullshit is the way i break it down to an extent.

I kinda feel like in 2014 if a man doesn't *get* the difference between a friendly "hello" and a "hey hot girl you make me horny" hello, he has some self-examination to do. FWIW I almost never say a friendly "hello" to someone on the street unless there's some weird awkward eye contact moment and I need to break the tension. I might do so in my building lobby or somewhere more familiar, but not on the streets of NYC, that's just life in the big city imo. I can see how if you live in a small, tight-knit neighborhood it might be more of a thing to say hello to people on the street in that neighborhood. I can also see how if you were a woman in a small, tight-knit neighborhood, even the "hey you are hot" hello might be less threatening (not saying unthreatening) -- not necessarily wanted, but at least you are more likely to know who the person is or recognize them. Doing it to someone totally unfamiliar in a totally unfamiliar setting just seems menacing.

I just make a grand gesture of tipping my hat and offering a firm "m'lady" to let her know that she is not to be threatened by me.

I say hello to the next three men just so they know I'm a weirdo who says hi to everyone on the street, not a threatening menace. Then I mentally un-hello the men.

Pplains as ron burgundy ovah heah

more on the video, from Slate: The Problem With That Catcalling Video

...The video is a collaboration between Hollaback!, an anti-street harassment organization, and the marketing agency Rob Bliss Creative. At the end they claim the woman experienced 100 plus incidents of harassment “involving people of all backgrounds.” Since that obviously doesn’t show up in the video, Bliss addressed it in a post. He wrote, “we got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.” That may be true but if you find yourself editing out all the catcalling white guys, maybe you should try another take.

...Activism is never perfectly executed. We can just conclude that they caught a small slice of catcallers and lots of other men do it too. But if the point of this video is to teach men about the day-to-day reality of women, then this video doesn’t hit its target. The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.” They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin.

"White people just aren't as loud as persons of color. Now a Puerto Rican, there's someone who can drown out a firetruck siren."

This whole thing is getting way overthought imo. The video pretty effectively makes the point overall and now it's getting drowned out by the think piece arms race. But why not just do a sequel? Have multiple women of different races walk around and caption the white guy comments that are allegedly too hard to hear. Sun is gonna rise again tomorrow and men are gonna keep catcalling too, easy to repeat the result.

So... is Slate implying that only white people have office jobs or visit cafes on purpose or did they just do the exact same thing Hollaback did?

At least the Rosin piece doesn't throw in "differing cultural expectations" like a lot of the pieces I've seen, like you know "Hey, I don't want to be a presumptuous white person here, maybe black and latina women love being harassed on the street." I even saw one that said there should be a "study" of how women of different races and classes feel about catcalling before we make any assumptions. I'm being a presumptuous white guy here too, but my presumption is that most people of all races and classes don't like being harassed on the street by strangers, until proven otherwise.

I think that's a safe bet. Also just in general I'm pretty sure anyone who wants to talk about how it's a "cultural" thing is being hella racist. But if that dude wants to ask a bunch of Black and brown women how they feel about street harassment, I support that! He might even learn something.

Dan: I...don't know? That sentence went right by me. I don't have a take on it, but if that's your read, then the piece has a problem.

Did you feel the same way when I said (above) "white men, who on the whole have academic and economic privilege"? My take, if anything, is that she's referencing that fact without specifying it. Maybe that's too charitable, or maybe it's important to be specific?

But if the point of this video is to teach men about the day-to-day reality of women, then this video doesn’t hit its target. The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.” They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin.

If the main criticism of the video is that it unconsciously pitches catcalling as something more likely to happen when men of color see a "white" woman, causing a swathe of white men guilty of or complicit in similar/analogous behaviors to go "phew, not me!", this section in that context reads to me as casting comfortably middle-class men in offices and cafes as almost exclusively white. "Man" is intended to be read as "white man". I don't have a strong problem with the baseline sentiment but it should be expressed explicitly, not implicitly.

(I do have a small problem but I have a meeting to go to)

Hurting, I currently live and work in an area with a lot of gang members, street people, drug addicts...and I'm coming to the difficult realization that 1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people - whether they live like a street person 2). these people don't KNOW what self-examination is and probably find the concept threatening.

Thanks for the report from the trenches

U R Wronged

I think I M Losted's statement is grossly inelegant and incomplete but not inaccurate; where it falls down is the implicit "only" in the statement

I currently live and work in an area with a lot of gang members, street people, drug addicts...and I'm coming to the difficult realization that 1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people

I don't think I get what he's trying to say here but I actually think I disagree w it? None of those categories are made of up a "class" of ppl, first of all. It's possible a reader could grok the sentiment? But otoh most white people envisioning the categories of "gang members," "street people," and "drug addicts" are going to imagine them as being made up of Black ppl so it's just super unhelpful at the very least? (Esp gang members, altho maybe West Coast ppl are more used to seeing white homeless alcoholics or something, I don't know.)

I M Losted's comment kinda reminds me of the TFA teachers who after their first 6 months on the job start essentializing their students

But mostly because I feel safe saying that "guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest" do NOOOOOOOT only come from any particular "class" no matter how you define class.

^^^ my point as well

Yeah actually I would say misreading cues from women, at times wilfully, is a trait of men that crosses race and class.

but I couldn't exactly follow what IMLosted was trying to say tbh

I try to clarify that whole issue for men who catcall/hit on me by being as mean as possible right off the bat. Because I am just that helpful! You're all welcome, btw.

A friend of mine, when asked, "What do you think are some effective strategies against catcalling?" said, "Tasers. I think the answer is tasers." Which is turns out it's illegal for civilians to carry tasers in NYS but we're working on it.

i got heckled on the street yesterday and it's definitely a good thing i didn't have a taser

"gang members," "street people," and "drug addicts" are going to imagine them as being made up of Black ppl so it's just super unhelpful at the very least? (Esp gang members, altho maybe West Coast ppl are more used to seeing white homeless alcoholics or something, I don't know.)

haha gtfo this is a ridiculous assumption

1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people - whether they live like a street person

i think I M Losted accidentally left off "or not" at the end of this. if that's right, i guess the point would be that guys that take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest, regardless of economic class, can be grouped together with gang members, drug addicts, and street people as...people who are lacking social skills (?)

??? Do you think that most white people don't assume "gang members" are black? I'd be willing to let "homeless" go but I'd even bet on "drug addicts"!

I would say that in any given metropolitan area there are gang members, homeless people and drug addicts of all ethnic groups. this is certainly true of where I live (which is yes, the west coast)

sorry but wtf does i m losted mean when he says "street people"

I...didn't say that wasn't the reality, though. I said that I would bet that most/a lot of/do you really want to argue about this? wite ppl would mentally picture a gang member or drug addict as Black.

idk what the pt is of assailing theoretical strawmen who automatically assume all gang members, homeless people and drug addicts are black. Sure these people exist but let's not let extrapolation get outta hand here.

Oh my god it was in the context of saying, maybe this isn't an effective way to talk about the problem also it doesn't make sense in the first place, so jesus christ ease up.

it puts the emphasis on class rather than race, which may be relevant. or maybe not idk. these things are all knotted up together. "rich white people harass like THIS" lol

HARASSMENT IS ALSO NOT ABOUT CLASS IS THE THING HERE.

the kind of street harassment we're talking about might be, though... and hard to avoid with this subject?
like generally rich/white/whatever people do their harassing in other places if i go by the standard stereotypes, unless you're talking about, I don't know, Italian construction workers or whatever

"Ayyyyyyy, BOSCHK!"

Me, yesterday:

The story about street harassment of white women is really also the story of gentrification. Do all races and cultures harass? Obv, because they all are shaped by patriarchy. But white men, with, on the whole, educational and economic privilege, may do their harassing in other spaces than the street, like the office or job site or in the home to their domestic laborers--and when young white women move into majority-minority neighborhoods, their experience of SH can be almost completely that of being harassed by Black and brown men whose home community they are now living in.

Maybe like 10-12 years ago, another white woman made a SH doc called War Zone where she took a (non-hidden) camera around various cities and tried to talk to the men who harassed her. Some of those cities had a majority white poverty class who were more vicious and obscene than any of the New York PoC she spoke to, and some of them had white-collar men on their lunch break who harassed her even harder than non-white men but were way more ashamed of it when they got recorded/confronted.

To be more specific in light of today's posts the "white-collar" men in question were iirc all white but I haven't seen the movie in a long time so I might be overlooking other people in a group scene where office dudes are sitting outside eating lunch. And in any case street harassment happens regardless of either race OR class/employment/whatever.

hey guys guess what
http://news.yahoo.com/woman-seen-harassed-nyc-streets-video-gets-rape-180905117.html

The nightmare scenario is that somehow Gamergate merges into this

kinda feel like it already is

eh i don't think so

i asked my students* to define and give examples of street harassment today and they were 100% on it -- examples, animated discussion, laughing/stories, the whole thing. they asked about the video, they knew all about it.
my guess is that they don't know what gamergate is and if they did, they would not care

SH is way bigger
that's kinda why i think the infighting "the problem with the problem with" rhetoric/position jockeying is annoying to me -- that video was really effective regardless of how PROBLEMATIC it was
"the conversation" is going on -- there's no way to control it; better to encourage it to continue and fret about who's doing it better behind closed doors
imo

*14 young women 18-24, 1 young man in the same age bracket, all Latina/o/Hispanic aside with one exception and she grew up in Turkey

Are there any other videos out there doing the same basic experiment as '10 Hours'? I bet a bunch are going to start popping up in the next week.

LL, that is like EXACTLY what I was saying in a clusterfuck facebook thread about this today -- I think I even used something to the effect of "The Problem With The Problem With..." "Position-jockeying" is exactly how I feel about a lot of the response, as much because of the tone ("This stuck up white girl doesn't even see her privilege!") as the actual content. I agree, video was effective, particularly in showing just how pervasive and commonplace this is.