My deepest apologies to All – this was
meant only for Jack.
Pressed the wrong button, somehow.
Terribly sorry for this.
Yaakub Murray
From:
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
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:
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.