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My deepest apologies to All - this was meant only for Jack. Pressed the wrong button, somehow. Terribly sorry for this. Yaakub Murray _____ From: BERA Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Murray Sent: 09 November 2006 10:14 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: What are living standards of judgement? I've seen the recent significant shift in your own view of whiteness from an understanding flowing with hate to one that flows with both beauty and hate Then you have seen something hugely important for you, Jack. For what I have experienced and seen is whiteness flowing with hate and having experienced the hate in whiteness I have chosen (and would still choose) to respond to whiteness flowing with hate (I like that inflection very much) with all my passionate resistance (Hill Collins' fighting words) to that consummate hatred because whiteness flowing with hate as you describe it is rotten to the core. In writing this I am clear about bringing a different inflection through my words as I write from the grounds of my experience of whiteness flowing with hate (and over-flowing with privilege- just look at the sudfden spate of withdrawals from the list..I wonder why? Whiteness as..?) I notice something profoundly important about your inflection. It denies the truth of whiteness flowing with hate as you choose to focus on my view of whiteness from an understanding flowing with hate. But you are right and I agree with you unequivocally. One of my great qualities, and insights, flows from my lived experience (after Paula Saukko) of the hate that flows -is imbricated - in whiteness as privilege. As you say it will take you a long time for you to shift from that 'habitus' of whiteness, if at all. I understand. In the meanwhile I will continue to do what I can to encourage that movement. But this next bit is vital to me: please appreciate that in my thesis I'm writing from a situated reflexivity where I despise whiteness flowing with hate because in my life I've experienced countless moments of whiteness flowing with hate. Yet, I have always been able to hold onto another facet of my knowledge - that is the way I know whiteness as an aesthetic capacity that carries love, care, responsibility, recognition and Adab and in this way has a powerful energy for sustaining life affirming energies. In my encounter with whiteness flowing with hatefulness and privilege from people associated with the bath AR community I became so consumed with anger in having to put up with it that I errantly subordinated my 'knowing memory' as relational accountability to my bloody anger and then mirrored 'hatefulness'' back to those white people. Yet while I was bitterly entombed within a fixation for justice and getting you to see the way whiteness was flowing with hate, I lost complete sight of the sustaining relationships I was mutually available to with white students whose respect, care, love, and trust in my educative capacity shone through with whiteness as availability for the mixed-race educative other. That living standard of judgement was lost to me in the moment in the sense I couldn't use it as a positive energy for sustaining my patience with the Bath colleagues. I can see that now, and how my living encounter with whiteness as respectful care for me could have fuelled a healing energy to generate a transformation in my disposition to people whose expressions of whiteness were profoundly imbricated with privilege and hatefulness. But now that this wonderful insight has been recovered I'm practicing it within the complex whiteness of the BERA list with some intriguing 'live' consequences. One of which is Susie Goff's feedback. Imagine my joy. Of course, I have this knowledge of whiteness as loving care indelibly imprinted in the dna of my mixed heritage - my white birth mother loved a black man; my white adoptive parents loved a mixed race child into adulthood; my white grandfather loved my black grandmother to the tune of ten children. That said, of course I fully accept your prerogative to write - I've seen the recent significant shift in your own view of whiteness from an understanding flowing with hate - because this is your lived experience. It doesn't exactly correspond with mine because it elides my truth of then hegemony of whiteness as privilege and hatefulness to which I reacted with equally vehement hatefulness. What I am seeing is a profoundly significant shift in my ability to shit all this stuff out in words that make compelling sense, in my ability to order my insights as living standards of judgement, and especially in my mental strength to withstand the colonizing potential of your linguistic formation of meaning 'as if' it were my meaning, as I craft and sustain doctoral quality meanings of my own here and now and in the BERA list. As I make this profound shift in my autonomy I hold out my arms, hug the big bear and more than ever recognise why you have been vital for my learning, my life, and my comprehension of my purpose in the world. I think it is going to take some time for me to shift this experience of seeing the concept of whiteness flowing with hate. Yes, I know what you mean. It's taken me ten years to come to this knowing. And through this period you have stayed 'near by' (Trinh Min Ha) in postcolonial love and decolonizing hope. Insha'allah we have ten years left to us and I will stay alongside you (in the spirit of Pound's post-doctoral practice) and find ways of working with you to come to a different consciousness of the complexity that is whiteness as hate/whiteness as love - in that way that I live the complexity as descendant of once were slaves/once were masters. Love you profoundly Yaakub _____ From: BERA Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jack Whitehead Sent: 09 November 2006 08:32 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: What are living standards of judgement? On 9 Nov 2006, at 07:54, Paul Murray wrote: Jack, I hope I'm beginning to influence your education of whiteness to consider whiteness as a loving and responsible care for the humanity (Adab) of the other that carries hope for the future of humanity for all our sakes. I've seen the recent significant shift in your own view of whiteness from an understanding flowing with hate to one that flows with both beauty and hate. I've been influenced by the power of whiteness of hate for several years. I think it is going to take some time for me to shift this experience of seeing the concept of whiteness flowing with hate. Love Jack.