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yesterday i read a columnist's critique of joe biden's use of the particular word "articulate" to describe barack obama, connecting that usage to the thinly-veiled racism within such "congratulatory" white liberalist discourse. today i can't find the column again, or i'd post a link. it was a very interesting piece. i bring it up because like an hour after reading the editorial--i kid you not--i was riding the bus and chatting with someone i know from campus. he (a white man) was on his way to meet with charles johnson, a professor in my department, world-renowned scholar, novelist, essayist, cartoonist, mcarthur "genius" award recipient, and also a black man. my bus riding interlocutor said he couldn't wait to meet with johnson, and expressed a wide-eyed, amazed admiration for him, saying, "he's sooooo articulate! it's just amazing how well-spoken he is!"
was this just some weird coincidence? i felt deeply uncomfortable, and wanted nothing more than to exit the conversation. the thing is, i'm sure this guy genuinely does admire prof. johnson, and probably espouses progressive political views about various kinds of social justice. he is also the product of a society structured in dominance along the axes of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and as a straight, white male from an upper class background, he has access to privilege whether he wants it or not, whether he's conscious of it or not. as a (mostly) straight, white, overly educated female from a middle class background...so do i.
stuff like this makes me feel a kind of despair, and a wariness of opening my own mouth. what unexamined, privileged assumptions and presumptions lurk in my brain, haunt my speech? is there time, in a lifetime, exhaustively to unearth and sift and critically examine, reread, revise, rethink my entire psyche? no...and to try would be narcissistic. it's not about speaking, it's about engaging in conversation, which requires listening and hearing, letting go of power (which is not the same thing as disavowing it, denying its existence or my access to it, my role in reifying it), being open to potentially painful critique and transformative processes i cannot control.
was this just some weird coincidence? i felt deeply uncomfortable, and wanted nothing more than to exit the conversation. the thing is, i'm sure this guy genuinely does admire prof. johnson, and probably espouses progressive political views about various kinds of social justice. he is also the product of a society structured in dominance along the axes of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and as a straight, white male from an upper class background, he has access to privilege whether he wants it or not, whether he's conscious of it or not. as a (mostly) straight, white, overly educated female from a middle class background...so do i.
stuff like this makes me feel a kind of despair, and a wariness of opening my own mouth. what unexamined, privileged assumptions and presumptions lurk in my brain, haunt my speech? is there time, in a lifetime, exhaustively to unearth and sift and critically examine, reread, revise, rethink my entire psyche? no...and to try would be narcissistic. it's not about speaking, it's about engaging in conversation, which requires listening and hearing, letting go of power (which is not the same thing as disavowing it, denying its existence or my access to it, my role in reifying it), being open to potentially painful critique and transformative processes i cannot control.
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