Dear Yaqub,

Yes, as you may imagine, in many ways I warm to this theme too. It is 
consistent with my critique of natural selection in particular and 
rationalism in general as 'concrete block-headedness' with a cancerous 
potential (natural selection and associated selfish gene theory is an 
excellent model for cancerous degeneration, but not for evolutionary 
co-creativity).

As you also might expect me to say, I have two issues with regard to the 
possibility of enhancing the influence (not spreading it like a cancer) of 
the awareness you are expressing. One concerns the use of 'anti', as in 
'anti-racist'. Antiness tends as you know to up the antiness in vicious 
circles rather than bring about transformation. Personally I would describe 
myself (hopefully) as non-racist, non-selectionist, non-Darwinian, 
non-white/light supremacist, non-perfectionist, which means that I cannot 
accept the premises of those ways of thinking, even though I may understand 
the human fear and associated desire (for absolute freedom/security)from 
which they arise. Non-acceptance, however, is not (though it may be 
perceived to be, from a rationalistic standpoint) the same as absolute 
rejection (absolute rejection is a product of fearful rationalism, not 
receptive-responsive inclusionality). It always holds out the possibility 
for acceptance once violating definition has been lovingly (mindful of its 
fearful and desirous foundation)loosened or punctured (if needs be, 
painfully). It implies a receptivity, which can only be fulfilled when it 
is itself acknowledged rather than abused (it's not too life-affirming to 
be receptive to cancerous potential!). It is a receptivity which is 
'unconditional yet provisional' as in the following lines from one of my 
'poems':


So, if you try to close me in
Or close me out
In your Manly human quest for Godly immortality
I cannot love you as you stir within my womb


The second issue does indeed concern the use of 'whiteness'. Personally I 
think there should be no problem with this as long as it is used to imply 
'a frame of mind' ('Light supremacy'/'concrete blockheadedness'!) 
historically and culturally associated with white-skinned people, but not 
necessarily a (genetically determined) characteristic of white-skinned 
people per se. So there is a need (as you generally do) to make this 
intended usage abundantly clear if it is not to be interpreted as 
'anti-racist racism'.


I say all this as ever in a spirit of neighbourhood, not telling you or 
anyone else how to suck eggs, dear granny.


Warmest


Alan


--On 28 November 2006 00:50 +0000 Paul Murray 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>
> For our sake and for those of generations to come, women must play a
> central role in articulating a vision for an evolved society in which the
> ugly remnants of racialized inhumanity and barbarism are finally
> discarded. In doing so, Americans should not strive for the delusive
> "melting pot" but for a coexistence in which human beings are recognized
> for our experiences, character, skills, talent and cultural/ethnic
> backgrounds -- Excerpt from Erasing Whiteness, The Nation,
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/talvi Retrieved 27/11/06
>
> I warm to this theme.  It carries hope for the future of humanity in
> difficult times.  My scholarship and my practice of freedom focused
> teaching have been influenced in the past few years by my deepening
> appreciation of the political and philosophical projects of Hannah
> Arendt.  I embrace Arendt's thinking that the unique horror of
> totalitarianism is in creating a system in which "all men have become
> equally superfluous". I imagine that as you read this you will, like me,
> become acutely aware of a personal discomfort as you frame a question --
> how do I remain complicit with totalitarian regimes as an educator? I
> really love the way Patricia Hill-Collins the Black Feminist writes about
> that moment when she realized that she had two choices -- to teach the
> status quo or teach for change.  I'm sure each of us will have wrestled
> with the consequences of such choices for ourselves and our students.  Of
> course I am bound to be interested in discursive practices, language,
> words and 'moves' that are totalitarian because they seek to, or have the
> consequence of, reducing people to superfluity.  I have chosen to give my
> life as an educator to the pursuit of those practices that seek to affirm
> the unique existent (Caverrero, 2000) not reduce the unique person to
> superfluity.
>
> In this way my teaching practice is guided by a revolutionary standard of
> judgment that I hold in my political activism as an anti-racist. I
> consciously bring my teaching practice and my political social practice
> together in an action aimed at undermining the terror of totalitarian
> regimes of thought, practice and 'deed' in contemporary British society.
> According to Villa (1999, Philosophy, Politics, Terror: Essays on the
> thought of Hannah Arendt) Arendt was moved by a fear of a future world in
> which human dignity no longer exists, in which 'masses of people are
> continuously rendered superfluous'. (p.13). I feel and live within
> Arendt's fear. Today in the  'here and now' world, I am acutely aware
> that whiteness as privilege and as hate is an example of a totalitarian
> regime that contributes to the superfluity of people of colour, and other
> less than centered human beings, too.
>
> It is for this reason that I am campaigning to have 'Critical Whiteness
> Theory' included in teacher education curricula at all levels. At my
> transfer seminar for progression to PhD write up, I was asked by a
> professor of the education faculty -- 'and if you were asked to envisage
> the extra mile that you could go beyond your doctoral thesis what it
> might it be' -- I didn't have it in me to respond. Now I know: my extra
> mile is to influence the social formation of teacher training, which in
> the UK is devoid of a critical appraisal of whiteness theory, and as such
> remains implicitly raced.   For this reason alone I'd imagine that
> colleagues in this BERA list would be concerned, as was Susie Goff, to
> include within our riff-like postings a critical focus on whiteness as
> privilege, and critical whiteness theory.  To expose the implications of
> whiteness as privilege and hate does not seem to be a racist enterprise
> to me; on the contrary. But once again I cleave to my belief that just
> because my teaching practice is anti-racist I don't expect everybody else
> to be passionate about adopting an explicitly anti-racist approach to
> their teaching practice. And there can be no anti-racist educative
> practice unless and until whiteness as privilege is not only
> 'interrogated' but renounced. In this I'm  radical, and I'm grateful to
> my past 'mixed' experiences in the Bath University Educational Action
> Research community for invoking a quickening, a personal and professional
> radicalization, in effect,  of my performative identity as a Mixed-Race
> Griqua British teacher, Progressive Muslim, and 'militant' educational
> practitioner-researcher committed to peaceful non-cooperation with
> discursive totalitarian practices.
>
> To bring closure to the influence of Arendt's work on my emergent
> standards of judgement as an educational researcher, I would like to
> share Villa's interpretation of Arendt's project:
>
> "If the horror of totalitarianism, its 'radical evil', is the creation
> and treatment of masses of human beings as superfluous, then it presents
> us with a new danger to the human status, one which continues to darken
> our moral horizon."
>
> This insight about the human condition which affects us all, especially
> those of us who teach children through to adults, and who teach the
> teachers of the future, fuels my 'tadbir', my focus, to want to dissolve
> whiteness as privilege.  Dissolving whiteness is a key political and
> social aim of my educative project. But it is important not to conflate
> whiteness with White people. I'm much clearer now about how I resist this
> injustice. But please do exercise this discernment for yourself.  I
> believe my anti-whiteness project can be enhanced by collectivist and
> communitarian actions that change social reality in Ubuntu rather than
> through stubborn acts of resistance. This is why the postings of Pip,
> Susie, Mohsen, Alan, and Barbara have been so generative of
> transformation when all around us is the evidence of those social
> formations of violence and exclusion that we have to live and teach
> within.   The postings in Ubuntu as an intimation of transformation
> standards of judgement have been productive in Marx's meaning as he
> distinguishes the productive from the abstract.
>
> On Whiteness -- Words like White and Whiteness and privilege and
> Totalitarianism and Anti-Racism are difficult, I agree.   More then ever
> I'm aware of my own ineptitude and inelegant calibration in my use of
> words.  So I will call upon Allan Johnson's (2001) subtle way of handling
> difficult words; enjoy:
>
> "I use difficult words freely in this book because I'm writing about the
> problems they name. Readers who happen to be white or male or
> heterosexual or economically comfortable or members of some privileged
> category will have an easier time of it if they try to tolerate the
> discomfort such words evoke. I don't use them as accusations. (If I did
> I'd have a hard time looking in the mirror each morning). As a white,
> male, middle-class heterosexual, I know that in some ways these words are
> about me. There's no way to avoid playing some role in the troubles they
> name, and that's something I need to look at. But in equally important
> ways, the words are not about me because they name something much larger
> than me, something I didn't invent or create, but that as passed on to me
> as a legacy when I was born into this society. If I'm going to be part of
> the solution to that difficult legacy, it's important to step back from
> my defensive sensitivity to such language and look at the reality it
> points to.  (Pages 13-14.  Privilege, Power and Difference: Mayfield)
>
> Johnson is as wise as Robert Jensen is brave. When Jensen wrote his
> anti-capitalist couplet the President of his university -- Texas A&M (I
> believe) - immediately announced to the media his disassociation from
> Jensen's anti-neoliberal and anti-whiteness writings.  I love Robert
> Jensen for his actions and his research and thus what I count as his
> 'action research beyond whiteness' as a university educator.
>
> When I write about my abhorrence of whiteness as privilege I'm writing
> from similar sentiments to those of Jensen stated in his 2005 book the
> Heart of Whiteness:
>
> "I am White. My most immediate ancestors came out of Scandinavia and
> northern Europe. My skin is pale. I am a Caucasian. I was born and raised
> in the very white state of North Dakota. I'm as white as white gets in
> the United States of America. I am a white-bred, white-bread white boy.
> My life has been lived white in a white-supremacist society. As I was
> growing up in North Dakota the fact was invisible to me. Once aware of it
> I spent a number of years trying to avoid dealing honestly with that
> fact. .....I am going to write as harshly as I can, in part out of
> exhaustion -- I'm too tired to struggle with being polite. ....It is good
> to dream, to love in dreams, to dream of a day beyond white supremacy.
> But those dreams will remain only dreams unless we speak and act,
> harshly. We need that kind of love -- not just tough love, but a truly
> harsh and dreadful love. ...I am a white person living in a
> white-supremacist society. I am surrounded by, enveloped in, trapped by
> -- I am forced to live in -- a depraved and degraded whiteness. I want to
> escape this trap. I want to live in a world on which I can at least
> imagine that someday I will be able to stop being white. I want to be
> able to dream of being a human being instead of a white person. That's
> where this book starts, with an acknowledgement that this writing is born
> of selfishness. I want to find a way out of whiteness so that I can claim
> my own humanity...Whiteness is based on lies not only about others but
> lies about ourselves, and we can't lay claim to our full humanity until
> we find our way out of the web of denial" (Pages xiii- xx).
>
> For those who are not my audience if this writing feels indulgent, it is.
>
> But it is also a colour-full contribution to the 'languaging rainbow' of
> practitioner-research.
>
> Yaakub Murray
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