Two epiphanies I had today

[alias_sqbr]

First, a rant:
I came across a post today with white americans whining about having no culture, because they're a bunch of immigrants with mixed backgrounds, a dark history they feel ambivalent about, and an emphasis on both conformity and individuality and consumerism. Other cultures, on the other hand, are distinct and uniform and well defined and have a wholly positive effect on people's lives.

Now as someone from a culture with similar issues who finds american culture distinct and rather alien (in an interesting, sometimes cool sort of way) I find this annoying (Australians may whine about not having any culture too, but we don't tend to act like it's a Special Unique Pain Noone Else Understands)
It's like the question of "How do non-white/non-American people feel about their cultures, and what does it have in common with how we feel?" doesn't even register.

For a start, afaict pretty much every non-American in the world has angst about the difficulty of being "modern" without becoming American, of defining ourselves without relying on rigid outdated jingoism. And no culture is an unchanging monolith, everyone has to balance tradition and change, personal preferences with accepted social mores, multiculturalism with flattening and uniformity. Every choice along those continuums has both benefits and costs. And pretty much every culture has dark patches in their past, unethical social practices(*), and just plain unappealing expectations that make it difficult for a lot of people to embrace their "people" unselfconsciously and without caveats. Afaict being a POC makes this more complicated, not less, since you have external and internalised racism to contend with telling you your culture is worthless.

The second is a bit advanced, and is only really annoying (to me!) when I see it from, say, feminist bloggers who should know better. Or myself :)
Hopefully a lot of people have gotten their head around the fact that only people who experience Xism are qualified to say if something is Xist or not. EDIT: This came out wrong. See this post. I am NOT saying that, for example, white people cannot say something is racist. I'm saying we can't say with as much authority as POC, especially when it comes to saying if something is not racist.

But a lot of people who get that have trouble understanding that even if you do notice something someone did is Xist all by yourself that doesn't mean you get to judge whether or not they apologised well enough for it. On seeing an apology for Xism of a sort you don't experience but still found personally offensive, your first priority should not be "Do I think this is good enough given how offensive I found their behaviour?" but "What do the people who experience Xism and were hurt in the first place think?".

And now I feel better :)

(*)According to ones own personal ethics, whatever they may be

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

I do get to decide whether an apology is adequate for *my* offense

Agreed, assuming you wouldn't see your offense as the most important thing :) The sort of situation I'm talking about is:

White Person 1: *racist thing*
POC: That's racist!
WP2: Seconded.
WP1: *apology, kind of*
WP2: Oh wow let's all celebrate how awesome WP1 is for apologising!
POC: That apology wasn't good enough.
WP1: Yes it was! Gee, what do you want, blood?

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Right, I was reading it the other way, like, white people don't get to say an apology is inadequate, for some reason.

Never mind then. :)

[alias_sqbr]

It wasn't just you, I've edited it to be clearer.

[auntpol.livejournal.com]

I don't know, what confuses me about that situation is a similar one where
White Person: *racist thing*
POC1: That's racist!
POC2: Seconded.
WP1: *apology, kind of*
POC2: Oh wow let's all celebrate how awesome WP1 is for apologising!
POC1: That apology wasn't good enough.
POC2: Yes it was!

I think that just exposes that whether or not an apology is "good" enough has less to do with the groups a person is "part" of and more to do with their personal feelings.

(I'm running off to a tute so this isn't totally well thought out, but I just don't GET this whole thing at all. But I'm not trying to flame war here, I just disagree and I think it's more because I'm willing to compromise on external moralities than you guys are :P )

[alias_sqbr]

I think that just exposes that whether or not an apology is "good" enough has less to do with the groups a person is "part" of and more to do with their personal feelings.

See, I would say it shows it's a mixture of those things, but it doesn't show that either of them is the most significant (and I don't think either always is, it depends). In the particular cases I'm thinking of, it really was ALL the POC saying "That's not enough" and the ONLY people who thought it was ok were white. Also in one case it was one specific POC who was targetted, and in that case she was the only person who could judge if the apology was enough.

But I was oversimplifying, as I tend to do when I have epiphanies. I had the same problem during my Phd, and then I'd realise my wonderful theorem didn't work for primes or something...