Untitled

Recently I visited Minnesota to meet folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate. I was inspired by the amount of energy that people were devoting to the cause, and to emphasizing dialogue and conversation instead of shouting and slogans.

One thing we’ve learned is that a lot of Minnesotans (and Marylanders, Washingtonians and Mainers) are sincere in supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians and simultaneously sincere in their misgivings about same-sex marriage. Yes, there are absolutely-sure people on both sides, but there are also a lot of people sincerely in the middle. If you’re one of those people, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned as someone involved in this issue for several years now — and as someone who married my same-sex partner in New York a year ago.

First, I want to say that I get it. I know many people in the gay community who say that if you don’t support marriage equality, then you must be a bigot or a homophobe, but I know that that isn’t true. I know plenty of people who are sincerely concerned about the consequences of same-sex marriage for their communities and their values — and some of them are my friends. So this is not about bashing people who disagree. (Of course, it’s also true that there are some bigots and homophobes out there, too. But I’m not really speaking to them, because they’re not interested in what I have to say anyway!)

To those sincerely wrestling with this issue, I offer four points to consider.

1. Your church will never have to hold any kind of wedding it doesn’t want to.

Polls have told us that the number-one concern of “undecideds” is that their church, pastor, minister or rabbi would have to officiate a gay wedding if marriage equality passed. Let me be clear as a lawyer and a religious leader: This is absolutely 100-percent false. In every state with same-sex marriage, there are “ministerial exemptions” and other protections that ensure that this will never, ever happen.

There’s also the U.S. Constitution. The exact boundaries of the First Amendment have been debated since it was passed 223 years ago, but every justice on the Supreme Court, and every judge on every federal court, agrees that no church can be compelled to solemnize a wedding (or baptism, or funeral) that it finds religiously objectionable. It’s way, way beyond the pale of the law.

Unfortunately, anti-gay zealots have deliberately distorted this issue. They have taken a small handful of borderline cases and twisted them beyond their meaning, or warned of a “coming storm” that will happen in the future. This is misleading, and it’s led to confusion. But it is a fact that no church will ever have to perform a same-sex wedding if it doesn’t want to. Period.

2. You’re right to be stuck on the word “marriage.”

Another thing we’ve learned in Minnesota is that a lot of folks support civil unions for gay couples but not marriage. Why? Because the truth is that “marriage” is a religious term. The state has taken it over, but the word, the concept, is religious. It’s true that this debate is about civil marriage, not religious marriage, but it’s also true that the word “marriage” itself is derived from religious concepts.

The real problem here isn’t same-sex marriage; it’s the state deciding what marriage is in the first place. Many people, religious and secular, liberal and conservative, have argued that the state has no business deciding what “marriage” is. The state should just issue a civil union license to everyone and leave it to churches and other institutions to solemnize marriages.

In my opinion this is a good point. The trouble is that “marriage” is the word we use right now. It’s how the state, and our communities, recognizes families. It’s how we decide who gets to visit their lifelong partners in the hospital or leave their property to their loved ones. More importantly, this is the word we use to decide which families count and which don’t.

If we as a society want to change that, fine. But in the meantime, there’s a group of people — around 5 percent of people — who are excluded from being counted as families because of this definition. Unless we’re going to change the whole system, that isn’t fair.

So if you’re stuck on the word “marriage,” you’re right. It is a word that comes from religious traditions. But words take on new meanings all the time, and this is one of them. That’s what we’re voting on now: not the original, religious meaning but this new, secular one. It really is a different question.

3. Marriage has always evolved.

I know that two men getting married may seem like a huge, radical break from a tradition as old as the Bible, but it isn’t. In fact, the tradition has always changed.

For a start, let’s look at the Bible itself. Biblical marriage wasn’t monogamy; it was polygamy. Abraham had two wives; King Solomon had a whole harem. And that’s just the beginning. In biblical societies, when you conquered another group, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. Is this “traditional marriage”?

But let’s not stop there. Right up until the 20th century women were considered the property of their husbands — something the Bible explicitly states. Until the 19th century girls were married off at the age of 12. Is that “traditional marriage”?

Of course, let’s also remember that in some places, interracial marriage was seen as a “crime against nature” up until the 1960s. In the 19th century African Americans weren’t even considered fully human. As revolting as it is to even remember this fact today, some people at that time would have considered interracial marriage a marriage between a human and an animal. Is that the “tradition” we’re protecting here?

Thank God we have come a long way. Our society doesn’t treat women as property. All people are seen as fully human, equal in the eyes of God and the state alike. But getting from point A to point B was a radical change — no less, I submit, than including gay couples in the institution of marriage today.

Gays and lesbians aren’t trying to change marriage. We’re trying to join it. And marriage itself has grown and changed as long as the institution has been around. Yes, this can seem like a big step, but look where we’d be if we hadn’t taken such steps in the past.

4. It really is about “separate but equal.”

Finally (and I think this point will probably be the one that carries the day in Minnesota), this really is about “separate but equal.” Slice it, dice it, see it from every perspective, but at the end of the day this question is about whether your gay uncle or the lesbian in your church is a real person, to be treated fairly or not.

Let me speak from my own experience. When our families and friends gathered to celebrate our wedding a year ago, and when the state recognized it, they were affirming us as human beings. We are people, and our love is real. The joy in my mother’s face revealed the pride any mother would feel at her son’s wedding. And yes, it mattered that it was legal.

Civil unions fulfill the legal technicalities of marriage, but we all know that separate can never be equal. Anything less than marriage tells gay people that they’re second-class citizens.

I really do understand the complicated religious questions that same-sex marriage brings up, but make no mistake: A vote for so-called “traditional marriage” is a vote against the dignity of gay and lesbian people. It is deeply hurtful and deeply unfair. And unfortunately, there’s just no getting around that.

A person’s sexuality isn’t some kind of choice, a vice or a psychological defect. It’s a part of who they are, and the diversity of sexualities is part of the incredible diversity of nature. The question now is whether we can open our hearts to those who are different from us, and whether we can see them not only as God’s children but as God’s adults: fully human, deserving of respect and thankfully blessed with love.

The White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron

An Open Letter to “White Anti-Racists”

By Kil Ja Kim 

I received an annoying e-mail about white people and their struggle to do anti-racist work.  I keep reading and hearing white people talk about their struggle to do anti-racist organizing, and frankly it gets on my nerves.  So I am writing this open letter to white people who engage in any activist work that involves or affects non-whites.  Given that the US social structure is founded on white supremacy, and that there is a global order in which white supremacy and European domination are at large, I would challenge any white person to figure out what movement or action they can get involved in that will not involve or affect non-white people. 

That said, I want to begin with what has become a realization for me through the help of different politically conscious friends.  There is NO SUCH THING AS A WHITE ANTI-RACIST.  The term itself, “white anti-racist” is an oxymoron.  In the following, I will explain why.  Then, I will begin to detail how this impacts non-white people in organizing work specifically, along with how it affects non-white people generally.

First, one must realize that whiteness is a structure of domination.  As such, there is nothing redeemable or reformed about whiteness.  Intellectuals, scholars and activists, especially those who are non-white, have drawn our attention to this for years.  For example, people such as Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Barbara Smith, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Frank Wilderson, Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, and many, many others who are perhaps less famous, have articulated the relationship between whiteness and domination. 

Further, early on people such as Douglass and DuBois began to outline how whiteness is a social and political construct that emphasizes the domination, authority, and perceived humanity of those who are racialized as white.  They, along with many other non-white writers and orators, have pointed to the fact that it was the bodies who were able to be racialized as “white” were viewed as rational, authoritative, and deserving.  Additionally, and believe me, this is no small thing, white people are viewed as human.  What this means is that when white people suffer, as some who are poor/female/queer do, they nevertheless are able to have some measure of sympathy for their plight simply because they are white and their marginalization is considered an emergency, crisis or an issue to be concerned about. 

Moreover, even when white people have been oppressed by various dimensions of classism, homophobia and heterosexism, they have been able to opt for what DuBois, in his monograph Black Reconstruction brilliantly called “the psychological wage of whiteness.”  That is, whites who are marginalized could find comfort, even if psychological, in the fact that they were not non-white.  They could revel in the fact that they could be taken as white in opposition to non-white groups. The desire for this wage of whiteness was also what drove many white people, albeit marginalized, to engage in organized violence against non-whites.  

Of course, legal cases such as the Dred Scott Decision along with many different naturalization cases involving Asian individuals, has helped to encode a state-sanctioned definition of whiteness.  But there are other ways in which white people are racialized as white by the state.  They are not stopped while driving as much as non-white people.  Their homes and businesses are not raided and searched as much by police officers, INS or License and Inspections (L&I).  White people’s bodies are not tracked and locked up in prisons, detention centers, juvenile systems, detention halls in classrooms, and “special education” classes as much as those of non-white people.  White people’s bodies are generally not the site of fear, repulsion, violent desire, or hatred. 

Now some might point out to me that white people are followed, tracked and harassed by the police.  This is true.  White women experience state-sanctioned discrimination.  Queer whites are the subject of homophobia, whether by individuals or by the state through laws and police violence.  Some activist whites are harassed by the police.  White people who play rap music and wear gear are stopped by cops.  Poor whites can be criminalized by the state, especially around welfare issues.  What I want to point out is that, while I do not condone police violence and harassment, there is a way in which white people will not be viewed as inherently criminal or suspect unless they are perceived as doing something that breaks particular norms.  Further, the breaking of particular class and sexuality “norms” is highly racialized, meaning that it is generally when white people engage in acts that appear to the state not appropriately “white” that they are subject to state violence.  In other words, white people experience state violence when their bodies engage in acts normally considered deviant and inherent in non-white people. 

Other racial groups, particularly Blacks and Native Americans, are considered inherently criminal no matter what they do, what their sexual identity is or what they wear.  Further, it has always struck me as interesting that there are white people who will attempt to wear what will signify “Blackness,” whether it is dreadlocks (which, in my opinion, should be cut off from every white person’s head), “gear,” or Black masks at rallies.  There is a sick way in which white people want to emulate that which is considered “badass” about a certain existential position of Blackness at the same time they do not want the burden of living as a non-white person. Further, it really strikes me as fucked up the way in which white people will go to rallies and taunt the police with Black masks in order to bring on police pressure.  What does it mean when whites strategically use Blackness to bring on police violence?  Now I know that somewhere there is a dreadlocked, smelly white anarchist who is reading this message and who is angry at me for not understanding the logic of the Black masks and its roots in anarchism.  But I would challenge these people to consider how they are reproducing violence towards Blackness in their attempts to taunt and challenge the police in their efforts.

Now back to my point that white anti-racism is an oxymoron.  Whiteness is a social and political construct rooted in white supremacy.  Drawing from the work of Frank Wilderson, I understand white supremacy as a structure and system of beliefs rooted in European and US imperialism in which certain racialized bodies (non-white) are selected for premature negation whether through cultural, physical, psychological genocide, containment or other forms of social death.  White supremacy is at the heart of the US social system and civil society.  In short, white supremacy is not just a series of practices or privilege, but a larger social structure and system of domination that overly-values and rewards those who are racialized as white.  The rest of us are constructed as undeserving to be considered human, although there is significant variation within non-white populations of how our bodies are encoded, treated and (de)valued. 

Now, for one to claim whiteness, one also is invested in white supremacy.  Whiteness itself is a political term that emerged among European white ethnics in the US.  Some who used the term white were those who were part of the dominant social structure, such as the slave owning class, which included many of the US “founding fathers.”  Others were European ethnics, many of them reviled, who chose to cast their lot with whiteness rather than that with those who had been determined as non-white.  In short, anyone who claims to be white, even a white anti-racist, is identifying with a history of European imperialism and racism transported and further developed into the US. 

However, this does not mean that white people who go around saying dumb things such as “I am not white!  I am a human being!” or, “I left whiteness and joined the human race,” or my favorite, “I hate white people!  They’re stupid!” are not structurally white.  Remember, whiteness is a structure of domination embedded in our social relations, institutions, discourses, and practices.  Don’t tell me you’re not white but then when we go out in the street and the police don’t bother you or people don’t ask you if you’re a prostitute, or people don’t follow you and touch you at will, act like that does not make a difference in our lives.  Basically, you can’t talk, merely “unlearn” or think through whiteness, as all of these annoying trainings for white people to “unlearn” racism will have you think.

Rather, white people need to be willing to have their very social position, their very relationship of domination, their very authority, their very being…let go, perhaps even destroyed.  I know this might sound scary, but that is really not my concern.  I am not interested in making white people, even those so-called good-hearted anti-racist whites, comfortable about their position in struggles that shape my life in ways that it will never shape theirs.

Indeed, white people could take another lesson from DuBois.  I recently finished the biography of John Brown written by DuBois.  The biography was less of a biography and more of an interpretation by DuBois about the now-legendary white abolitionist.  Now while John Brown’s practice was problematic in many ways—he still had to be in control and he had fucked-up views that Blacks were still enslaved because they were too “servile” (a white supremacist sentiment)—what I took from Brown’s life was that he realized that moral persuasion alone would not solve racial problems.  That is, whites cannot talk or just think through whiteness and structures of white supremacy.  They must be committed to either picking up arms for other people (and only firing when the people tell them so), dying for other people, or just getting out of the way.  In short, they must be willing to do what the people most affected and marginalized by a situation tell them to do.

Now I am sure that right now there are some white people saying that non-white people cannot understand what is going on, that we do not have the critical analysis to figure stuff out, or that we have fucked up ideas.  This is just white supremacist bullshit because it is rooted in the idea that non-white people have not interpreted our experiences and cannot run things ourselves.  It is also highly elitist because it assumes that only those who have adequate access to institutional and educational resources (whites) are able to understand reality.  It also assumes that there are not internal conversations within and between our communities—which I do not think white people need to be privy to or participate in—in which non-white people struggle over these contradictions, debate about our own visions for society and how to go about achieving them.  In short, this perspective by whites that non-white people cannot be in control of our own destinies is rooted in a paternally-racist approach to non-white people. 

Further, it is also rooted in the idea that white people are not racist or do not benefit from racism.  Rather, white people at meetings will often discuss how they feel “silenced” by non-whites, or that they are being “put in their place.”  Let me make one thing clear: it is impossible for a non-white person to put a white person in her place.  This is not to say that non-white people cannot have a sexist or homophobic attitude towards a white person.  But to say, or even hint at that as a “WHITE” person someone is being put in one’s place—whoever says this just needs to shut the fuck up because that is some bull.  It is impossible for whiteness to be put in one’s place, because that is a part of whiteness, the ability to take up space and feel a prerogative to do so. 

In addition, the idea that white people are being put into their place relies on the neo-conservative view of reverse racism that has characterized the backlash against non-whites, especially Blacks, in the post-civil rights era.  So when you say these types of things you are actually helping to reproduce a neo-conservative racial rhetoric that relies on the myth of the “threatened” and “displaced” white person. 

Additionally, white activism, especially white anti-racism, is predicated on an economy of gratitude.  We non-whites are supposed to be grateful that a white person is willing to work with non-white people.  We are supposed to be grateful that you actually want to work with us and that you give us your resources.  I would like to know why you have those resources and others do not?  And don’t assume that just because I have to ask you for resources that it does not hurt me, pain me even.  Don’t assume that when you come into the space, that doesn’t bother me.  Don’t assume that when you talk first, talk the most, and talk the most often, that this doesn’t hurt me.  Don’t assume that when I see you get the attention and accolades and the book deals and the speaking engagements that this does not hurt me (because you profit off of pain). 

And don’t assume that when I see how grateful non-white people are to you for being there, for being a “good white” person that this doesn’t hurt me.  And don’t assume that when non-white people chastise me because I think your presence is unnecessary that it does not hurt me.  And don’t assume that when I see you attach yourself to the “sensible” non-white person who condones your behavior that this does not infuriate me.  Because all of these things remind me of how powerless non-white people are in relation to white people.  All of these gestures that you do reminds me of how grateful we are supposed to be towards you because you actually (or supposedly) care about what is happening to us.  I am a bit resentful of economies of gratitude. 

Moreover, this structure of white supremacy known as white anti-racism also impacts the larger social world because it still makes white people the most valued people.  Non-white people are forced to feel dependent and grateful to white people who will actually interact with us.  We are made to feel that we are inferior, incapable, and that we really do need white people.  And the sad thing is, that given all of the resources that whiteness has and that white people get and control through white supremacy, there is an element of material truth in all of this, I am afraid.  But white people need to think of how their activism reproduces the actual structure of white supremacy some—not all whites activists—profess to be about challenging.  This structure of white supremacy is not just in activist spaces, it actually touches upon and impinges on the lives of non-white people who may not be activists (in your sense) or who do not interact with you in activist worlds. 

But consider what your presence means in a community that you decide to set up your community garden in, or your bookstore in, or your meeting space in, or have your march in.  What does it mean when you decide that you want to be “with” the oppressed and you end up displacing them?  Just because you walk around with your dreadlocks, or decide that you will not wear expensive clothes, or that you want to march in someone’s neighborhood does not mean that your whiteness doesn’t displace people in the spaces you decide to put yourself in.  How do you help to bring more forms of authority and control in a neighborhood, whether through increased rent and housing costs, more policing, or just the ways in which your white bodies can make people feel, as Wilderson brilliantly asks, “squatters in somebody else’s project?”

So what does this mean for the future of white anti-racists?  This might mean to figure out ways in which whiteness needs to die as a social structure and as an identity in which you organize your anti-racist work.  What this looks like in practice may not be so clear but I will attempt to give some suggestions here.  First, don’t call us, we’ll call you. If we need your resources, we will contact you.  But don’t show up, flaunt your power in our faces and then get angry when we resent the fact that you have so many resources we don’t and that we are not grateful for this arrangement.  And don’t get mad because you can’t make decisions in the process.  Why do you need to?  Second, stop speaking for us.  We can talk for ourselves.  Third, stop trying to point out internal contradictions in our communities, we know what they are, we are struggling around them, and I really don’t know how white people can be helpful to non-whites to clear these up.  Fourth, don’t ever say some shit to me about how you feel silenced, marginalized, discriminated against, or put in your place as a white person.  Period.  Fifth, stop calling me sister.  I will tell you when you are family.  Finally, start thinking of what it would mean, in terms of actual structured social arrangements, for whiteness and white identity—even the white antiracist kind (because there really is no redeemable or reformed white identity)—to be destroyed. 

In conclusion, I want to say to anyone who thinks that this is too academic or abstract, I write as a non-white person, meaning that from my body, my person, I experience white supremacy.  I draw from the analyses of non-white people, many who were or are engaged in various struggles of activism, but most importantly who tried/are trying to speak out and stay alive.  They did not or do not get accolades from many for speaking out but instead experience(d) constant threats to their lives for just existing and doing the work that they did or do.  Finally, I want to know when a discussion of whiteness, white supremacy and domination became seen as abstract and not rooted in the everyday concrete reality that we experience? 

Copyright ã 2003 February 24, 2003 

Kil Ja Kim  is a writer, educator and activist currently living and working in Philadelphia.  Her intellectual and political interests are Asian American politics, immigrant politics, and Black-Asian American relations. Kil Ja is currently working on working on a research project that examines the role of global racial politics in shaping the disproportionate presence of Korean immigrant business owners in Black neighborhoods in the US.