don't forget to watch the movie

[bantha_fodder]

So I've been reading these posts by hederahelix, parts one and two, and she's thoughtful and she's made me think about all sorts of things. She talks about privilege, and listening, and in a post inspired by race it really made me think about my own heterosexual privilege (which I'll talk about another time), but the first thing I want to talk about is this:

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my fen friends of color, it’s that I’m more likely to get listened to when I say something about race than they are.

You can't look at my lj, or at my style of typing, and tell that I am fen of colour over the internets. So I wear my colour on my sleeve: I post stories about little Chinese girls, encourage people to learn about Chinese New Year and the things that I find important, talk about racism in my life. And I'm clearly not hiding my ethnicity at all, and in fact I'm actively encouraging people to look at my ethnicity, because if I didn't, then you couldn't see it.

So now I'm wondering how much hederahelix's point applies in an internets only context. Ignoring whatever Fan A's argument is, and whatever Fan B's argument is, is either one more likely to be heard because of the colour of their skin? I want to say no, because how can you tell? But I don't want to say yes, either, because who am I to make these sweeping judgement calls? I'm just some chick on the internet.

Comments

[angualupin.livejournal.com]

a self-identified (because we volunteer our identities) FOC is more likely to be dismissed as biased, reactionary, overly emotional, angry to the point of confusion, and so forth. Whereas a white fan is given credibility for looking beyond her own circumstances and speaking "calmly" about issues on an empirical level, having gone the extra mile to acknowledge her privilege and try to do something about it.

I find this view very interesting, because it speaks opposite from my own experiences. Being just about as white as it is possible to get (100% Welsh and very vocal about it), I often find that when I weigh in on discussions of race I am dismissed as "patronizing", "trying to make myself feel better about my own inbuilt prejudices by siding with the oppressed", or simply "have no idea what I'm talking about because I've never been oppressed myself". (If I had a pound for every time someone has told me that I am a racist and don't know it merely because I have "never been oppressed", I would be distinctly less worried about next month's rent.) Whereas People of Colour weighing in on the same discussions are listened to because, obviously, they "know what they are talking about".

I think much of it is that everyone who gets involved in these kinds of discussion encounters, sooner or later, someone who dismisses their views out of hand. If they are a minority, it is because they are overly sensitive. If they are white, it is because they don't know what they're talking about. If there is one thing I have learned from discussions on race, it is that there are bigots of all colours, ethnicities, sexuality, and class, and very few people seem honestly interested in hearing anyone else's point of view.