Escapade Panel Report - "Becoming Better Allies: Consciousness-Raising for White Fans"
I am so very sorry this took me such a long time to post. What started as a post-con/post-panels/post-vacation break to do some thinking and watch Psych turned into dealing with some truly sucky family stuff and trying to regroup from that, even though it's really just going to be ongoing. *sigh* Families will fuck you up every time, won't they? Anyway, I've been working hard to keep myself from sliding into the kind of depression to which I am frustrating susceptible and to keep myself energized for dealing with life, but also for doing things I enjoy and care about, dammit, like fandom. I've been working on this in the last couple weeks mostly by taking walks and making myself go out in the world, even if it's just to sit with my laptop somewhere other than my bedroom. That's been good. Recently I took a walk on the bike/pedestrian trail along the bay, and the day was windy and sunny and cool. The bay was this beautiful bright blue-green, and because it was windy, it was dotted all over with little whitecaps and my walk was accompanied by the rhythm of waves crashing on the rocky shore. It was the most energizing, enlivening thing to experience. I am so lucky to live here, and I've been feeling it recently.
Honestly, I also have had a really hard time writing this! I finally had to approach it like writing a paper and make outlines and things in order to get my thoughts sorted out. In addition to my time-out to regroup from personal stuff, I think I also freaked out a little bit about having just sort of jumped into trying to do "ally" work without really knowing what I was doing. I've been doing a lot of writing about that for non-public purposes, and I think there are now some things I'd like to put out there and get feedback on. I wanted to have a separate post ready as a companion to this panel report, but instead it will have to follow shortly after. I did need to work some of that stuff through in my mind right away, however, because I have Issues With Authority, and any time I feel myself assuming a role that other people could perceive as exercising authority in a situation, I get really uncomfortable and have to figure out what I'm doing with that. Especially because in the area of race and racism and power, I most emphatically do not consider myself an authority. And I don't want to be one of those annoying white people who set themselves up like that. I don't want to be the equivalent of the really annoying Sensitive Feminist Man who once doggedly and aggressively tried to instruct me about how I, as a feminist and a woman, should be really offended by a movie that I had actually quite liked. Anyway, I've been working on sorting out what "ally" means to me and why I am choosing to identify myself and my goals with that term right now, and I hope to post something soon because I'd like to hear from other people who might be thinking about these things.
So in this report, I want to both summarize the substance of the discussion in the panel and contextualize it in terms of how Sinead and I approached the panel and what our goals were. I hope very much that more panels like this will happen at cons, and more connections can be made among white fans who want to be better allies to the people of color in fandom. I want to talk about how I was thinking about my decisions as a moderator, and how I think things worked, because I'm really interested in people's feedback on how to keep having this conversation, differently or better where necessary.
I should also point you to my co-moderator smallbeer's panel report and note that I wanted to write up my own summary and my own impressions without reading hers first, so there are some things she remembered to talk about that I didn't, and vice-versa. Of course, we prepared the panel together, and we debriefed together after we got home from Escapade, so it's not like we have wildly divergent reports to give. :) Also, she is very kind to me in her report, and I can only respond that she is a marvelous intellectual partner and true friend, and working with her on challenging and difficult ideas always reminds me that there is pleasure and joy to be found in doing hard work with people you love, especially when the goal is making the world suck less.
Becoming Better Allies: Consciousness-Raising for White Fans
All fans are welcome, but this panel's purpose is for white fans to help each other get better at supporting fans of color in discussions of race. We will kindly and respectfully challenge each other to think past triggers, knee-jerk defensiveness, guilt, and fears of "getting it wrong." We will focus on hearing what fans of color have actually said and applying it to our own behavior.
General Structural Info and Goals Behind Panel
As The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom 2009 rapidly turned into RaceFail '09, when it started to become apparent how far the "conversation" had been derailed from the issues originally raised by people of color in this latest imbroglio, I was sharing a lot of folks' frustration about that. It was also getting closer to Escapade, and I was thinking about panels. After ladyjax and coniraya's panel back at Escapade 2006, The Absence of Color in Black and White Fanfiction, I made for myself the project of suggesting panels related to race issues at every con I go to and moderating them when necessary, especially if they wouldn't happen otherwise. I was feeling like I didn't want to have a panel specifically about RaceFail, but it also seemed like it would be very weird to have some random panel about race in police procedurals or something when this crazy, awful thing was happening all around so many of us. I really wanted to address the derailment that had occurred by talking about the things we white fans can do to help that not happen next time something race-related blows up in fandom, and by focusing on what people of color have said to figure out how to do that. I was talking to ciderpress and smallbeer about it, and ciderpress suggested doing a panel specifically for white allies to work some of this stuff out, and thinking about it in retrospect, DUH. Thanks, Anna, for reminding me that we could just go ahead and do that! :) I suggested the panel and then pretty much said..."so, Sinead, you totally don't have to co-moderate all the panels I end up doing, but, uh...if the panel on Becoming Better Allies happens, you'd probably want to do at least that one with me, right, please say yes???" So that worked out well. :)
Because I'm a nerd about language when I think it's important, and I do think it can be terribly important how we choose to frame things and what vocabulary we use when we are communicating about issues of social justice and liberation struggle, I thought long and hard about what to title the panel and how to word the description. I went with "Becoming Better Allies" because I really wanted to emphasize that this is a process, that it's not like someone could attend the panel and leave it with an "ally" card to flash in discussions of race, and that even if we don't feel like "ally" is a name we can claim for ourselves, we can at least come together with the goal of working toward that. And I went with "Consciousness-Raising for White Fans" because I wanted to be straight up about what the goals of the panel were, and I wanted to emphasize that the process of becoming an antiracist ally is about changing one's whole perception of the world, about learning to become self-aware and conscious of race in a way our white privilege has so often allowed most of us not to be. And in the panel description, I wanted to be clear that fans of color would be welcome, but that the goal of the panel was for white fans to talk to each other about race. I wanted to set the expectation that we would be challenging each other when necessary, but that the goal was to be in this struggle together, helping each other get better at being antiracist. I went into the panel assuming that we all shared these goals and were there for that purpose, and I feel like everyone who attended either day was participating in that spirit. As we were discussing why we were there, someone simply said, "I want to be less stupid." That works for me! :)
Once we knew we were doing the panel on the alternate programming track, we initially considered signing up for a 2-hour block, but we really had no idea how many people were actually going to show up, and it was difficult to find a 2-hour stretch that we could fit around the other panels we were moderating. After Friday's panel we had a request to continue the panel for another hour on Sunday, so we had to think about our energy levels since we were both moderating so many other panels, but we felt good about continuing. I am so glad we did. It really felt like we had just barely gotten started at the end of the first hour, and I knew there were people who would have liked to be there but couldn't be. While Friday's discussion was definitely good, I think I would have felt much less satisfied overall if the panel had ended there.
My original intention was to have a handout for this panel that would include the definitions of some terminology we would be using, and would also include quotes/excerpts from posts made by fans of color, drawn from the most recent series of imbroglios as well as from the last several years of discussions in fandom, that were relevant advice for white fans trying to become better allies. The idea in my mind initially was: let's have a panel focused on the most important "lessons" that fans of color have been saying it would be really, really helpful for white fans to figure out now, please. For various reasons, I didn't get a handout put together. Just before the panel, smallbeer and I did put together this post on the Escapade con LJ that included definitions we would be using for four terms (racism, white privilege, white allies, people/person of color), links to Rydra's master post of fannish conversation about race from the last few years, and links to two different PDF documents recommended to me by nyssa23 and bearfairie that provide some nonfannish frameworks for beginning antiracist work. We figured at least this way there would be some links immediately available for people after the panel who might want to follow up. In the interest of documenting and crediting people of color for their words and ideas, I would still like to go back to make a new post with additional links to specific posts by fans of color that address aspects of our discussion during the panel.
For both panels, we had the definitions of those four terms posted in the room, and we also posted three basic "rules" for the discussion: 1) while no space can be made completely "safe" for anyone, the room would be as safe a space as possible for people to speak honestly, 2) we would remember to use "I" statements as much as possible, and 3) we would participate with the understanding that we are all implicated in racism and structures of privilege.
So instead of having a handout, we had that post to the con LJ, and smallbeer and I had made a list of "lessons" we had seen fans of color writing about over and over again during the last 5 or 6 years that we have observed/participated in fannish discussions of race. After writing a lot of notes, we consolidated everything we had come up with into eight basic ideas that white people could learn to employ as antiracist strategies. For the second hour of the panel on Sunday, we were able to have these posted on the wall in the room to refer to during the discussion, and that was really helpful. On Friday we had only a couple small whiteboards to work with, so we used them for the definitions and rules, and then we actually spent most of the hour simply talking through the list and discussing examples or questions as they came up.
For context, we cleverly thought to do a little check-in with the room at the first hour of the panel on Friday, to find out what kinds of experience everyone had with thinking and talking about race, in fandom or otherwise. We less cleverly neglected to do this for the second hour on Sunday, and I totally forgot to take a total headcount for each day. However, Sinead and I estimated that there were 12-15 people there on Friday and 15-20 people there on Sunday. On Friday, everyone but one person in the room had either followed or participated in discussions of race in fandom over the last 5-6 years. About half the people in the room had been involved in or had exposure to some kind of antiracist work outside fandom. And about a third to half the people in the room had done reading on their own or taken classes related to race issues. My completely personal knowledge and impression-based sense is that there was a higher proportion of people on Sunday who had more kinds of experience with and exposure to antiracist work in whatever context.
While most of the hour on Friday was actually spent talking through our definitions, rules for discussion, and these eight strategies, discussing questions or examples that came up in relation to each, we definitely also used the strategies to frame and guide our discussion during the second hour on Sunday. I'll list the basic eight ideas that framed the discussion, and then in the following section I'll lay out as much of the substance of the discussion as I can remember, including some questions and examples that provided us with the opportunity to have a broader conversation about a range of possibilities for antiracist response to specific situations. The days are a bit blurred together for me at this point, but the panel had enough continuity over both days that I don't think it does a disservice to the report if I can't remember which day a certain topic came up. Also, I won't be attributing discussion contributions to any specific people unless I remember specifically that it was me (and one time Sinead), both because I don't always remember who said what and because I want to preserve the safety of the panel space for the people who participated.
The 8 Anti-Racist Strategies We Used to Frame the Discussion
1. Listen. Read carefully.
2. Decenter whiteness.
3. Educate yourself and share information/links.
4. Consider carefully where you do your own processing.
5. Self-identify as white in discussions online.
6. Counter the derailment of the concerns of people of color.
7. Normalize discussion and analysis of race in fandom by doing it.
8. Think strategically about when to engage in or disengage from a discussion.
Discussion
As we began to talk about listening and reading carefully as the first strategy, we looked at the example of white people hearing that they have been accused of racism, or even hearing the word "racist" itself, when no one has used that term or made any such accusations. Someone noted that the underlying issue there is, in fact, white defensiveness. We talked about how that knee-jerk defensiveness keeps white people from reading carefully and really hearing what people of color are saying, which derails the conversation into a focus on a perceived accusation of racism and the white person's feelings about it, rather than the substance of the actual criticism that was offered.
In discussing what it means to decenter whiteness, we talked about the way white privilege operates to make white people assume our experience and perspective is universal, that we are often or usually unaware of the degree to which people of color may be experiencing, reading, watching differently than we are. I used my own example of reading ciderpress's post ven ve voke up, ve had zese wodies, and recognizing myself in the section about the privilege that allows white people to find these imbroglios to be rewarding learning experiences when the price of that learning is pain and suffering for people of color. I know that I have expressed similar sentiments naively in the past, and that post was a wake-up call for me about an area where I need to continue working to decenter my own white experience in order to see and understand hers. As we talked about the consciousness-raising process around this strategy, we discussed empathy and the power of our imaginations to at least provide us with the glimpses into different experiences that will enable us to recognize and take responsibility for our privilege.
Sinead mentioned the strategy of self-identifying as white as it had been discussed by zvi_likes_tv in the "Safe Spaces for Fen of Color" panel she and ciderpress did at Con.txt 2008. She noted Zvi's observation that white people will often listen to other white people when they won't listen to people of color say the same things. When we were discussing tactics that could counter the silencing of people of color and derailment of their concerns, however, we also looked at the importance of crediting people of color for their ideas, quoting them where appropriate, and linking back to their entries whenever possible in conjunction with our own self-identification as white.
We looked at the need for white people to educate ourselves and share information as we learn, and we placed that need in the context of the frustration people of color experience when white people expect them to provide instruction about racism, and even factual information that is easily findable with a little research. We talked about the importance of being able to do this for ourselves, to be proactive in our self-education about race and different racial and cultural perspectives, especially perhaps for those of us who live in very segregated or homogenously white communities and may have very little interaction with people of color in our daily lives.
We looked at the normalization of discussion and analysis of race as a strategy that will not only advance the conversation about race in fandom overall, but could also help to decrease white defensiveness, hopefully making words like "racism" and "privilege" and "whiteness" less likely to trigger freak-outs in white people in and of themselves when they are more frequently used by white fans and fans of color alike. We talked about ally work as something that requires ongoing commitment, and one of the ways to do that is to talk about race as part of our normal fannish lives and not just when an imbroglio flares up or we are attending a panel.
Someone raised a question about how to deal with a long-unfinished WIP that she now recognizes relies centrally on problematic cultural appropriation. Should she abandon it for good? Should she finish it and deal with the consequences? People had a lot of suggestions for ways that she could finish and post the story, as she feels an obligation to the fandom to do and wants to do as a writer, but also include supplementary materials beyond the normal author's note. We discussed the story as a sort of "teachable moment" for educating herself and sharing that with fandom. Folks suggested she could include notes about her own process of coming to recognize what was problematic in the story, or link to another post about cultural appropriation as a racist practice in general, or link to current critical writing about the Western appropriation of the specific culture in her story, or link to factual and historically accurate information about the culture in question from the perspective of, and written by, people from the culture. All of these ideas were suggested as ways to negotiate her desire to finish a story in which she had invested a lot of personal and fannish energy, and her new recognition of the unconscious privilege she exercised previously by appropriating another culture for her fannish writing.
Someone also raised a specific example of a white fannish writer who might want to explore a "race play" kink (link to a short but relatively complex article on race play--ETA: be aware that the article includes concepts and racist words that could be triggery) in a story about a white character and a character of color engaging in explicit master/slave erotic dynamics. Should she write and post that story at all? Would it be possible to write a story like that in such a way that it would not be offensive, hurtful to fans of color, and racist? I chose to take this question as a useful, if extreme, thought experiment. I found it really useful for discussion because it gets to the heart of one of the very common fears that I think white people have when they begin to confront white privilege and racism: the fear that in order to do this, we must give up many of the pleasures in our lives, and beyond that we must even give up our right to decide for ourselves what is pleasurable. This fear underlies a lot of the backlash against so-called "political correctness"--white people freaking out that they are no longer "allowed" to like the things they like. I think this fear is especially relevant for white fans since so many of us value fandom as a space where we define and control our own pleasure, and often because we are people who our culture erotically marginalizes and largely denies that right--women, queer, trans, kinky, fat, disabled, etc..
This question was framed in terms of concerns about the stifling of fannish creativity when imbroglios like RaceFail '09 stimulate white fans' fears of being racist or creating racist representations. I saw that come up a lot during RaceFail '09, so I was glad we had a chance to talk about it. Some people offered fairly reassuring perspectives from a history of observing social change in fandom, essentially summed up by: white fannish writers will freak out a bit and then get over it, creativity will not ultimately be stifled.
We initially looked at whether it would be possible for a white fan to write a race play story in a way that was not racist and hurtful. Someone suggested how important it would be to decenter whiteness in the narrative itself, to provide space in the story for the character of color to have a subject position, to have independent thoughts and feelings about the action in the story and for the white character to have to respond to them. We talked about thinking through the implications of the race play power dynamic and making sure that they are a part of the story for both characters, that they are a part of the characterization and the narrative arc.
We agreed, however, that even if all those strategies were employed as skillfully as possible, it was unlikely that it would be possible to post such a story without someone finding it racist and offensive. And negotiating what to do with that probability if we are white people who want to be antiracist is what gets us to the heart of that white fear of losing our sources of pleasure when we confront and reject racism. We talked some about the fannish ethic around pleasure and self-definition, the "my kink's okay, your kink's okay" value that so many fans use to negotiate differences in the fannish context. And that is also the point at which this example provided us with a really useful way to think about how "being an ally" is not something that we can do by following any simple, straightforward rules to govern our behavior and thinking--it's a constant process of self-aware negotiation, and strategic thinking, and developing a personal ethical framework around race and white privilege.
So, in this case I thought about how if I was that writer and I wanted to be antiracist, figuring out what to do about the story would require a process of self-examination to determine how important is to me to satisfy that kink by exploring it in a story, and how important it is to me to share that story with other people, and then considering those feelings in the context of the potential to hurt and offend people of color and to contribute potentially racist representations to the overall body of fannish work. I was comfortable responding to the discussion in the panel by saying that I would never tell another fan that her kink is inherently "wrong" or that she shouldn't write that particular story if she has decided it is important enough to her to do so, but that if she posts it, then she has to be prepared to deal with the consequences. We talked about how it would, in fact, be an exercise of white privilege to post a story like that at all, and so a writer making that choice would need to recognize and take responsibility for that, as well, especially when responding to any criticism received. Some of the consequences might well be that some fans of color and antiracist white fans would decide that the writer is not an antiracist ally. And we agreed it would be important for her to listen very carefully if someone confronted her with criticism about the story.
That example also provided us with one of several opportunities to look at the importance of context in figuring out how to be an antiracist ally. I have frequently thought about how helpful it would be for white fans to get better at thinking contextually--accepting, for example, that meanings do actually change depending on who is speaking, and when, and where. (Personal aside because this has been making me crazy lately: I swear if one more defensive white person tries to throw around a "dictionary definition" as evidence, I will kick them in the head. Yes, I'm looking at you, Will ShittyReally.) And so we also have to look at context when deciding how best to promote antiracist thinking or behavior in a given situation. For example, we recognized that it would mean something different for a white fan to post her race play story in the middle of an imbroglio like RaceFail '09 than it might mean if she posted it at a different time, whatever the author's intentions with the story itself and however much care she might have taken to be sensitive to the race issues in her story. And context is one of the things we need to think strategically about when we engage about race in fandom if we want our behavior to have antiracist effects.
Another time the white fear of losing our sources of pleasure came up was when we talked about learning to hold complex and sometimes contradictory reactions to a text. We talked about how finding elements of a show/movie/text racially problematic or offensive doesn't always have to preclude our enjoyment of other aspects of that source. We discussed various ways to talk about that when we post about the fannish sources we're engaged with, to acknowledge problematic areas while still discussing the things we enjoy. The idea was to normalize those kinds of complex responses so, for example, fewer white people are inclined to think they're being told they can no longer like a show (or are racist if they do) when other people try to talk about racially problematic aspects of it.
What Concluding Thoughts I Have At This Point
Overall, I felt very good about how this panel went. I knew that we would have to spend some time setting up the structure of the panel, but I was hoping that people would come with specific questions and examples of things that they wanted to talk about, questions about how they could be a better antiracist ally in a certain situation, etc.. It was really, really helpful that people were willing to speak honestly about their own feelings and experiences and questions--if we all had all the answers already, there would have been no reason to have that panel at all, right?
If I were to do a panel like this for the first time in any other context, I would plan from the beginning to have more than one hour. In my observation, dealing with the different levels of experience and education around race in fandom is always somewhat problematic at panels related to race issues because it's very, very easy to spend a lot of time going over some very basic ideas that will almost always be new to someone in the room. I've thought a fair amount over the last few years about how to continue to make sure the conversation advances in fandom overall, even as new people are continually starting to think about race. I've wondered if it would be helpful to set up separate spaces for conversation among white people who have different levels of experience with thinking about race, and I was happy to see the formation of racism_101 for people who need space and time to work through some of the most basic deas about race that are key to antiracist work.
I don't think it's feasible or desirable at the relatively small slash cons I attend to have panels structured intentionally separately along those lines. It can be very productive for people with differing levels of experience and education about issues of oppression and justice to sit in rooms and have conversations with each other. But I have found that it is really helpful to provide a lot of structure, to have definitions of key terms provided, to set parameters for what the discussion will and will not allow. I really wish I had been able to put a handout together. That is the one thing about this panel that I remain truly bummed about, both because I really think it would have been best if I could have provided material from people of color in their own words, and because having some of the structuring information available in handout form would have been very helpful for efficient use of panel time. At the very least, I think having some of that info posted in the room when people arrive for the panel helps cut down on the amount of panel time that needs to be used going over it--people can be reading "rules" and definitions, etc., as they arrive and get settled.
I really would like to see more panels happen specifically to continue developing personal connections and shared goals among white fans who want to be antiracist allies. I know hederahelix has been talking about an LJ community for white allies, and I think I am ready to be a part of that if we can make it happen. If anyone else wants to try to do a panel like this at another con and wants to talk through ideas with me, you can definitely email me at my LJ address, and I would be happy to talk and offer whatever help and support I can. And I completely welcome questions, feedback, suggestions, criticism, etc. from anyone reading this report. And I thank everyone who attended either or both days of the panel and made it such a challenging, rewarding discussion! I hope we all keep chewing on the stuff we worked on, and I'd love to keep talking with all of you. If anyone who was at the panel wants to chime in with aspects of the discussion that didn't make it into one of our reports, that would be cool, too--I know there are things that aren't in mine.
Honestly, I also have had a really hard time writing this! I finally had to approach it like writing a paper and make outlines and things in order to get my thoughts sorted out. In addition to my time-out to regroup from personal stuff, I think I also freaked out a little bit about having just sort of jumped into trying to do "ally" work without really knowing what I was doing. I've been doing a lot of writing about that for non-public purposes, and I think there are now some things I'd like to put out there and get feedback on. I wanted to have a separate post ready as a companion to this panel report, but instead it will have to follow shortly after. I did need to work some of that stuff through in my mind right away, however, because I have Issues With Authority, and any time I feel myself assuming a role that other people could perceive as exercising authority in a situation, I get really uncomfortable and have to figure out what I'm doing with that. Especially because in the area of race and racism and power, I most emphatically do not consider myself an authority. And I don't want to be one of those annoying white people who set themselves up like that. I don't want to be the equivalent of the really annoying Sensitive Feminist Man who once doggedly and aggressively tried to instruct me about how I, as a feminist and a woman, should be really offended by a movie that I had actually quite liked. Anyway, I've been working on sorting out what "ally" means to me and why I am choosing to identify myself and my goals with that term right now, and I hope to post something soon because I'd like to hear from other people who might be thinking about these things.
So in this report, I want to both summarize the substance of the discussion in the panel and contextualize it in terms of how Sinead and I approached the panel and what our goals were. I hope very much that more panels like this will happen at cons, and more connections can be made among white fans who want to be better allies to the people of color in fandom. I want to talk about how I was thinking about my decisions as a moderator, and how I think things worked, because I'm really interested in people's feedback on how to keep having this conversation, differently or better where necessary.
I should also point you to my co-moderator smallbeer's panel report and note that I wanted to write up my own summary and my own impressions without reading hers first, so there are some things she remembered to talk about that I didn't, and vice-versa. Of course, we prepared the panel together, and we debriefed together after we got home from Escapade, so it's not like we have wildly divergent reports to give. :) Also, she is very kind to me in her report, and I can only respond that she is a marvelous intellectual partner and true friend, and working with her on challenging and difficult ideas always reminds me that there is pleasure and joy to be found in doing hard work with people you love, especially when the goal is making the world suck less.
Becoming Better Allies: Consciousness-Raising for White Fans
All fans are welcome, but this panel's purpose is for white fans to help each other get better at supporting fans of color in discussions of race. We will kindly and respectfully challenge each other to think past triggers, knee-jerk defensiveness, guilt, and fears of "getting it wrong." We will focus on hearing what fans of color have actually said and applying it to our own behavior.
General Structural Info and Goals Behind Panel
As The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom 2009 rapidly turned into RaceFail '09, when it started to become apparent how far the "conversation" had been derailed from the issues originally raised by people of color in this latest imbroglio, I was sharing a lot of folks' frustration about that. It was also getting closer to Escapade, and I was thinking about panels. After ladyjax and coniraya's panel back at Escapade 2006, The Absence of Color in Black and White Fanfiction, I made for myself the project of suggesting panels related to race issues at every con I go to and moderating them when necessary, especially if they wouldn't happen otherwise. I was feeling like I didn't want to have a panel specifically about RaceFail, but it also seemed like it would be very weird to have some random panel about race in police procedurals or something when this crazy, awful thing was happening all around so many of us. I really wanted to address the derailment that had occurred by talking about the things we white fans can do to help that not happen next time something race-related blows up in fandom, and by focusing on what people of color have said to figure out how to do that. I was talking to ciderpress and smallbeer about it, and ciderpress suggested doing a panel specifically for white allies to work some of this stuff out, and thinking about it in retrospect, DUH. Thanks, Anna, for reminding me that we could just go ahead and do that! :) I suggested the panel and then pretty much said..."so, Sinead, you totally don't have to co-moderate all the panels I end up doing, but, uh...if the panel on Becoming Better Allies happens, you'd probably want to do at least that one with me, right, please say yes???" So that worked out well. :)
Because I'm a nerd about language when I think it's important, and I do think it can be terribly important how we choose to frame things and what vocabulary we use when we are communicating about issues of social justice and liberation struggle, I thought long and hard about what to title the panel and how to word the description. I went with "Becoming Better Allies" because I really wanted to emphasize that this is a process, that it's not like someone could attend the panel and leave it with an "ally" card to flash in discussions of race, and that even if we don't feel like "ally" is a name we can claim for ourselves, we can at least come together with the goal of working toward that. And I went with "Consciousness-Raising for White Fans" because I wanted to be straight up about what the goals of the panel were, and I wanted to emphasize that the process of becoming an antiracist ally is about changing one's whole perception of the world, about learning to become self-aware and conscious of race in a way our white privilege has so often allowed most of us not to be. And in the panel description, I wanted to be clear that fans of color would be welcome, but that the goal of the panel was for white fans to talk to each other about race. I wanted to set the expectation that we would be challenging each other when necessary, but that the goal was to be in this struggle together, helping each other get better at being antiracist. I went into the panel assuming that we all shared these goals and were there for that purpose, and I feel like everyone who attended either day was participating in that spirit. As we were discussing why we were there, someone simply said, "I want to be less stupid." That works for me! :)
Once we knew we were doing the panel on the alternate programming track, we initially considered signing up for a 2-hour block, but we really had no idea how many people were actually going to show up, and it was difficult to find a 2-hour stretch that we could fit around the other panels we were moderating. After Friday's panel we had a request to continue the panel for another hour on Sunday, so we had to think about our energy levels since we were both moderating so many other panels, but we felt good about continuing. I am so glad we did. It really felt like we had just barely gotten started at the end of the first hour, and I knew there were people who would have liked to be there but couldn't be. While Friday's discussion was definitely good, I think I would have felt much less satisfied overall if the panel had ended there.
My original intention was to have a handout for this panel that would include the definitions of some terminology we would be using, and would also include quotes/excerpts from posts made by fans of color, drawn from the most recent series of imbroglios as well as from the last several years of discussions in fandom, that were relevant advice for white fans trying to become better allies. The idea in my mind initially was: let's have a panel focused on the most important "lessons" that fans of color have been saying it would be really, really helpful for white fans to figure out now, please. For various reasons, I didn't get a handout put together. Just before the panel, smallbeer and I did put together this post on the Escapade con LJ that included definitions we would be using for four terms (racism, white privilege, white allies, people/person of color), links to Rydra's master post of fannish conversation about race from the last few years, and links to two different PDF documents recommended to me by nyssa23 and bearfairie that provide some nonfannish frameworks for beginning antiracist work. We figured at least this way there would be some links immediately available for people after the panel who might want to follow up. In the interest of documenting and crediting people of color for their words and ideas, I would still like to go back to make a new post with additional links to specific posts by fans of color that address aspects of our discussion during the panel.
For both panels, we had the definitions of those four terms posted in the room, and we also posted three basic "rules" for the discussion: 1) while no space can be made completely "safe" for anyone, the room would be as safe a space as possible for people to speak honestly, 2) we would remember to use "I" statements as much as possible, and 3) we would participate with the understanding that we are all implicated in racism and structures of privilege.
So instead of having a handout, we had that post to the con LJ, and smallbeer and I had made a list of "lessons" we had seen fans of color writing about over and over again during the last 5 or 6 years that we have observed/participated in fannish discussions of race. After writing a lot of notes, we consolidated everything we had come up with into eight basic ideas that white people could learn to employ as antiracist strategies. For the second hour of the panel on Sunday, we were able to have these posted on the wall in the room to refer to during the discussion, and that was really helpful. On Friday we had only a couple small whiteboards to work with, so we used them for the definitions and rules, and then we actually spent most of the hour simply talking through the list and discussing examples or questions as they came up.
For context, we cleverly thought to do a little check-in with the room at the first hour of the panel on Friday, to find out what kinds of experience everyone had with thinking and talking about race, in fandom or otherwise. We less cleverly neglected to do this for the second hour on Sunday, and I totally forgot to take a total headcount for each day. However, Sinead and I estimated that there were 12-15 people there on Friday and 15-20 people there on Sunday. On Friday, everyone but one person in the room had either followed or participated in discussions of race in fandom over the last 5-6 years. About half the people in the room had been involved in or had exposure to some kind of antiracist work outside fandom. And about a third to half the people in the room had done reading on their own or taken classes related to race issues. My completely personal knowledge and impression-based sense is that there was a higher proportion of people on Sunday who had more kinds of experience with and exposure to antiracist work in whatever context.
While most of the hour on Friday was actually spent talking through our definitions, rules for discussion, and these eight strategies, discussing questions or examples that came up in relation to each, we definitely also used the strategies to frame and guide our discussion during the second hour on Sunday. I'll list the basic eight ideas that framed the discussion, and then in the following section I'll lay out as much of the substance of the discussion as I can remember, including some questions and examples that provided us with the opportunity to have a broader conversation about a range of possibilities for antiracist response to specific situations. The days are a bit blurred together for me at this point, but the panel had enough continuity over both days that I don't think it does a disservice to the report if I can't remember which day a certain topic came up. Also, I won't be attributing discussion contributions to any specific people unless I remember specifically that it was me (and one time Sinead), both because I don't always remember who said what and because I want to preserve the safety of the panel space for the people who participated.
The 8 Anti-Racist Strategies We Used to Frame the Discussion
1. Listen. Read carefully.
2. Decenter whiteness.
3. Educate yourself and share information/links.
4. Consider carefully where you do your own processing.
5. Self-identify as white in discussions online.
6. Counter the derailment of the concerns of people of color.
7. Normalize discussion and analysis of race in fandom by doing it.
8. Think strategically about when to engage in or disengage from a discussion.
Discussion
As we began to talk about listening and reading carefully as the first strategy, we looked at the example of white people hearing that they have been accused of racism, or even hearing the word "racist" itself, when no one has used that term or made any such accusations. Someone noted that the underlying issue there is, in fact, white defensiveness. We talked about how that knee-jerk defensiveness keeps white people from reading carefully and really hearing what people of color are saying, which derails the conversation into a focus on a perceived accusation of racism and the white person's feelings about it, rather than the substance of the actual criticism that was offered.
In discussing what it means to decenter whiteness, we talked about the way white privilege operates to make white people assume our experience and perspective is universal, that we are often or usually unaware of the degree to which people of color may be experiencing, reading, watching differently than we are. I used my own example of reading ciderpress's post ven ve voke up, ve had zese wodies, and recognizing myself in the section about the privilege that allows white people to find these imbroglios to be rewarding learning experiences when the price of that learning is pain and suffering for people of color. I know that I have expressed similar sentiments naively in the past, and that post was a wake-up call for me about an area where I need to continue working to decenter my own white experience in order to see and understand hers. As we talked about the consciousness-raising process around this strategy, we discussed empathy and the power of our imaginations to at least provide us with the glimpses into different experiences that will enable us to recognize and take responsibility for our privilege.
Sinead mentioned the strategy of self-identifying as white as it had been discussed by zvi_likes_tv in the "Safe Spaces for Fen of Color" panel she and ciderpress did at Con.txt 2008. She noted Zvi's observation that white people will often listen to other white people when they won't listen to people of color say the same things. When we were discussing tactics that could counter the silencing of people of color and derailment of their concerns, however, we also looked at the importance of crediting people of color for their ideas, quoting them where appropriate, and linking back to their entries whenever possible in conjunction with our own self-identification as white.
We looked at the need for white people to educate ourselves and share information as we learn, and we placed that need in the context of the frustration people of color experience when white people expect them to provide instruction about racism, and even factual information that is easily findable with a little research. We talked about the importance of being able to do this for ourselves, to be proactive in our self-education about race and different racial and cultural perspectives, especially perhaps for those of us who live in very segregated or homogenously white communities and may have very little interaction with people of color in our daily lives.
We looked at the normalization of discussion and analysis of race as a strategy that will not only advance the conversation about race in fandom overall, but could also help to decrease white defensiveness, hopefully making words like "racism" and "privilege" and "whiteness" less likely to trigger freak-outs in white people in and of themselves when they are more frequently used by white fans and fans of color alike. We talked about ally work as something that requires ongoing commitment, and one of the ways to do that is to talk about race as part of our normal fannish lives and not just when an imbroglio flares up or we are attending a panel.
Someone raised a question about how to deal with a long-unfinished WIP that she now recognizes relies centrally on problematic cultural appropriation. Should she abandon it for good? Should she finish it and deal with the consequences? People had a lot of suggestions for ways that she could finish and post the story, as she feels an obligation to the fandom to do and wants to do as a writer, but also include supplementary materials beyond the normal author's note. We discussed the story as a sort of "teachable moment" for educating herself and sharing that with fandom. Folks suggested she could include notes about her own process of coming to recognize what was problematic in the story, or link to another post about cultural appropriation as a racist practice in general, or link to current critical writing about the Western appropriation of the specific culture in her story, or link to factual and historically accurate information about the culture in question from the perspective of, and written by, people from the culture. All of these ideas were suggested as ways to negotiate her desire to finish a story in which she had invested a lot of personal and fannish energy, and her new recognition of the unconscious privilege she exercised previously by appropriating another culture for her fannish writing.
Someone also raised a specific example of a white fannish writer who might want to explore a "race play" kink (link to a short but relatively complex article on race play--ETA: be aware that the article includes concepts and racist words that could be triggery) in a story about a white character and a character of color engaging in explicit master/slave erotic dynamics. Should she write and post that story at all? Would it be possible to write a story like that in such a way that it would not be offensive, hurtful to fans of color, and racist? I chose to take this question as a useful, if extreme, thought experiment. I found it really useful for discussion because it gets to the heart of one of the very common fears that I think white people have when they begin to confront white privilege and racism: the fear that in order to do this, we must give up many of the pleasures in our lives, and beyond that we must even give up our right to decide for ourselves what is pleasurable. This fear underlies a lot of the backlash against so-called "political correctness"--white people freaking out that they are no longer "allowed" to like the things they like. I think this fear is especially relevant for white fans since so many of us value fandom as a space where we define and control our own pleasure, and often because we are people who our culture erotically marginalizes and largely denies that right--women, queer, trans, kinky, fat, disabled, etc..
This question was framed in terms of concerns about the stifling of fannish creativity when imbroglios like RaceFail '09 stimulate white fans' fears of being racist or creating racist representations. I saw that come up a lot during RaceFail '09, so I was glad we had a chance to talk about it. Some people offered fairly reassuring perspectives from a history of observing social change in fandom, essentially summed up by: white fannish writers will freak out a bit and then get over it, creativity will not ultimately be stifled.
We initially looked at whether it would be possible for a white fan to write a race play story in a way that was not racist and hurtful. Someone suggested how important it would be to decenter whiteness in the narrative itself, to provide space in the story for the character of color to have a subject position, to have independent thoughts and feelings about the action in the story and for the white character to have to respond to them. We talked about thinking through the implications of the race play power dynamic and making sure that they are a part of the story for both characters, that they are a part of the characterization and the narrative arc.
We agreed, however, that even if all those strategies were employed as skillfully as possible, it was unlikely that it would be possible to post such a story without someone finding it racist and offensive. And negotiating what to do with that probability if we are white people who want to be antiracist is what gets us to the heart of that white fear of losing our sources of pleasure when we confront and reject racism. We talked some about the fannish ethic around pleasure and self-definition, the "my kink's okay, your kink's okay" value that so many fans use to negotiate differences in the fannish context. And that is also the point at which this example provided us with a really useful way to think about how "being an ally" is not something that we can do by following any simple, straightforward rules to govern our behavior and thinking--it's a constant process of self-aware negotiation, and strategic thinking, and developing a personal ethical framework around race and white privilege.
So, in this case I thought about how if I was that writer and I wanted to be antiracist, figuring out what to do about the story would require a process of self-examination to determine how important is to me to satisfy that kink by exploring it in a story, and how important it is to me to share that story with other people, and then considering those feelings in the context of the potential to hurt and offend people of color and to contribute potentially racist representations to the overall body of fannish work. I was comfortable responding to the discussion in the panel by saying that I would never tell another fan that her kink is inherently "wrong" or that she shouldn't write that particular story if she has decided it is important enough to her to do so, but that if she posts it, then she has to be prepared to deal with the consequences. We talked about how it would, in fact, be an exercise of white privilege to post a story like that at all, and so a writer making that choice would need to recognize and take responsibility for that, as well, especially when responding to any criticism received. Some of the consequences might well be that some fans of color and antiracist white fans would decide that the writer is not an antiracist ally. And we agreed it would be important for her to listen very carefully if someone confronted her with criticism about the story.
That example also provided us with one of several opportunities to look at the importance of context in figuring out how to be an antiracist ally. I have frequently thought about how helpful it would be for white fans to get better at thinking contextually--accepting, for example, that meanings do actually change depending on who is speaking, and when, and where. (Personal aside because this has been making me crazy lately: I swear if one more defensive white person tries to throw around a "dictionary definition" as evidence, I will kick them in the head. Yes, I'm looking at you, Will ShittyReally.) And so we also have to look at context when deciding how best to promote antiracist thinking or behavior in a given situation. For example, we recognized that it would mean something different for a white fan to post her race play story in the middle of an imbroglio like RaceFail '09 than it might mean if she posted it at a different time, whatever the author's intentions with the story itself and however much care she might have taken to be sensitive to the race issues in her story. And context is one of the things we need to think strategically about when we engage about race in fandom if we want our behavior to have antiracist effects.
Another time the white fear of losing our sources of pleasure came up was when we talked about learning to hold complex and sometimes contradictory reactions to a text. We talked about how finding elements of a show/movie/text racially problematic or offensive doesn't always have to preclude our enjoyment of other aspects of that source. We discussed various ways to talk about that when we post about the fannish sources we're engaged with, to acknowledge problematic areas while still discussing the things we enjoy. The idea was to normalize those kinds of complex responses so, for example, fewer white people are inclined to think they're being told they can no longer like a show (or are racist if they do) when other people try to talk about racially problematic aspects of it.
What Concluding Thoughts I Have At This Point
Overall, I felt very good about how this panel went. I knew that we would have to spend some time setting up the structure of the panel, but I was hoping that people would come with specific questions and examples of things that they wanted to talk about, questions about how they could be a better antiracist ally in a certain situation, etc.. It was really, really helpful that people were willing to speak honestly about their own feelings and experiences and questions--if we all had all the answers already, there would have been no reason to have that panel at all, right?
If I were to do a panel like this for the first time in any other context, I would plan from the beginning to have more than one hour. In my observation, dealing with the different levels of experience and education around race in fandom is always somewhat problematic at panels related to race issues because it's very, very easy to spend a lot of time going over some very basic ideas that will almost always be new to someone in the room. I've thought a fair amount over the last few years about how to continue to make sure the conversation advances in fandom overall, even as new people are continually starting to think about race. I've wondered if it would be helpful to set up separate spaces for conversation among white people who have different levels of experience with thinking about race, and I was happy to see the formation of racism_101 for people who need space and time to work through some of the most basic deas about race that are key to antiracist work.
I don't think it's feasible or desirable at the relatively small slash cons I attend to have panels structured intentionally separately along those lines. It can be very productive for people with differing levels of experience and education about issues of oppression and justice to sit in rooms and have conversations with each other. But I have found that it is really helpful to provide a lot of structure, to have definitions of key terms provided, to set parameters for what the discussion will and will not allow. I really wish I had been able to put a handout together. That is the one thing about this panel that I remain truly bummed about, both because I really think it would have been best if I could have provided material from people of color in their own words, and because having some of the structuring information available in handout form would have been very helpful for efficient use of panel time. At the very least, I think having some of that info posted in the room when people arrive for the panel helps cut down on the amount of panel time that needs to be used going over it--people can be reading "rules" and definitions, etc., as they arrive and get settled.
I really would like to see more panels happen specifically to continue developing personal connections and shared goals among white fans who want to be antiracist allies. I know hederahelix has been talking about an LJ community for white allies, and I think I am ready to be a part of that if we can make it happen. If anyone else wants to try to do a panel like this at another con and wants to talk through ideas with me, you can definitely email me at my LJ address, and I would be happy to talk and offer whatever help and support I can. And I completely welcome questions, feedback, suggestions, criticism, etc. from anyone reading this report. And I thank everyone who attended either or both days of the panel and made it such a challenging, rewarding discussion! I hope we all keep chewing on the stuff we worked on, and I'd love to keep talking with all of you. If anyone who was at the panel wants to chime in with aspects of the discussion that didn't make it into one of our reports, that would be cool, too--I know there are things that aren't in mine.