This started out as being for The Angry Black Woman’s Carnival of Allies, but now I’m not so sure it fits with the intent of the Carnival. But it’s here either way.
So, I was reading belladame’s post for the carnival, about the perhaps limited utility of the word ally, and the notion that allies are ‘being PC to get cookies’, which is definitely a good read, but it actually got me thinking in a somewhat different direction, because of some of the most frustrating contexts in which I’ve heard it.
There’s been a lot said about ‘passing’, about the benefits and the costs, and about how it’s tied up with privilege. Now, I’m an asian/white woman with a white father/asian mother, and, as I grew out of childhood, an appearance that generally means you have to squint, or know what you’re looking for, to know that I’m not white. And there’s a lot of stuff I’m still working through that ties into all of that. But it does mean that, in certain respects, my ability to pass in certain contexts changes how my ‘being an ally’ for other PoC is perceived.
The difference between a mixed race asian/white girl talking about race issues and a white girl talking about issues in some contexts isn’t that big a difference, when you’re looking at the sort of folk who believe Asians are totally integrated, but in the late 90s and early 00s in Australia, when Pauline Hanson and her ilk had decided to invoke the yellow peril as ooga booga fear monster, it was a big difference. And though I thought about it in different ways back then, there were times when I used my ability to pass as a way not only of bypassing prejudice against myself, but as a way of presenting my argument as that of someone ‘like’ my interlocutor, rather than another PoC. And sometimes, that made more difference than it would have if I made an upfront choice to not pass.
Which doesn’t make my attitude to passing any less complex, because there’s interesting things to be said about having the ability to even weigh up the costs of making that choice. Because yeah, it’s a shitty choice, and feeling bad about having to make it doesn’t really get us anywhere, but I tend to think that in my own life, it’s important and even at times imperative for me to think about how, when and where I make that choice, if the opportunity presents. And that can be a big ‘if’, all on its own.
However, I have another story. A woman at work was talking today about how she didn’t understand the view of Aboriginality in terms of identification and ‘part-Indigenousness’, etc (i.e. the High Court definition of Aboriginality not only in terms of descent, but in terms of identification and acceptance by the community), because, in her view, much of racism is colourism, so she didn’t understand what prejudice and discrimination the Indigenous folk who ‘look white’ needed to be compensated for. Now, leaving aside the baffling notion that racial identification is purely about compensation, I’m no expert in notions of Aboriginality and Indigenous solidarity/community, but I know a little bit about racial prejudice that isn’t about colour. It’s about what happens when you’re ‘discovered’. For me as a kid, it was often when people met my family, but there were other contexts as well. And the reaction to ‘discovery’ can range from awkward to awful, and frightening.
But it’s not even just about discovery. It’s about those times when you’re sitting with a group of folk with whom you pass, because sometimes you just don’t announce these sorts of things upfront, and they start denigrating part of your identity; part of who you are, without realising, because they think you’re one of them. My partner, who’s a white guy, gets really uncomfortable in similar situations, because, as he rightly points out, the fact that he’s a white guy doesn’t make him automatically ‘one of them’ (though he acknowledges that it can if he doesn’t speak up and call out that shit). But I’m not sure I can really convey the feeling you get when it happens in a situation where you’re passing. For me at least, it’s always felt different when it’s folk being racist when they don’t know my race as compared to folk being racist when they do.
Perhaps it’s because that situation tends to call on me to make a choice as to whether I want to take the position of being ally to myself, or being myself. Or, to better explain it, the question of whether I continue to pass, if I think being ’someone like them’ is going to get a better response, or if I respond as my first instinct tends to wish; which is to point out just how hurtful it is to me personally. And I must admit, as time goes on, and as this happens more often, the times I have chosen the first option has decreased. Because it just gets tiring; because even whilst I’m talking about it now, I feel weird about the notion of being my own damn ally; because ‘you’re doing it to get cookies’ seems to be on the rise; because of the risk of just getting jack of it and ‘outing’ myself, and then having to deal with that. And so on.
But there’s a third choice, in that situation. The choice to pass and stay silent. The choice to not even be an ally to myself. And granted, the times I make that choice, it’s out of fear, when the people involved make me uncomfortable enough that ‘discovery’ is a much greater concern. But it doesn’t ever NOT feel gut-wrenching. It’s at those times that I almost do think of passing as a privilege; that it means I can give into my fear and fail to step up, because it’s at those times that I feel like I’ve failed to live up to my principles in terms of thinking carefully about how/when/where I make the available choices in relation to passing, even though it’s at those times that passing is further from a privilege than ever and sits even more in the realm of survival skill. And there’s the rub, I guess. The idea that passing is a privilege is rooted in the impressions people have of the times when we can think carefully through the choices we make, when the reality of passing lies in the times that we cannot.
I hear you on this. Great post.
hello! i just came over here from lj.
this is really interesting. before i comment i feel i should add that i’m whitey-white-white so only understand these things from that position…
anyhoo my housemate & i were talking once about why people in australia don’t use the term “women of colour” as much as they do in the US. what you’re saying here adds an interesting dimension to that with the fact that discrimination and prejudice aren’t just about skin colour.
i wonder if the absence of “woc” is partly because of the history of indigenous australians being divided according to how black they are? making “woc” or “poc” a tricky one for some who are seen as “white”.
actually it’s also complicated by the different context of “race” here vs in the US, really. indigenous issues seem to be much bigger here than there where the issues of black/latino/a people are so much more prominent. and while indigenous issues are obviously part of the whole racism thing, there are really important differences between racism for indigenous people and racism for other non-anglo people…
and i guess i’m wondering if some of that complexity meant there has been a different focus in anti-racist activism here, and whether that’s related to less talk about “people of colour”.
on the other hand the phrase seems to be taking off a bit lately – maybe cos of the whole blogosphere/internet thing?
what started the discussion with my housemate was that in social work etc they tend to talk about “CALD” people etc rather than “people of colour” as they might in the US.
now that is a complex question in itself really.
(sorry i’m ranting a little maybe. almost finished!)
the only thing i have to add about the CALD vs POC question is that maybe there’s something similar to the distinction between “lesbian” and “woman who sleeps with women”. “lesbian” is good for politics, in my view; “wwsws [hehe]” can be good for stuff like medical records when the important thing isn’t what the person identifies as but their behaviours? although sometimes you would want your identity to be part of how your doctor understands you. but not always, e.g. if they couldn’t understand your identity maybe?
*phew* well that’s a mess of thoughts for you
*For the non-Australians: CALD = Culturally and Linguistically Diverse, which is what replaced NESB = Non English-Speaking Background, generally used by government (though NGOs as well) agencies. I’m not sure how much it’s used in relation to Indigenous folk as opposed to migrant (of various generations) folk in terms of whether it’s just used for migrants or is intended to be a bit of a catch-all for ‘non-white’ and the like.
daiskmeliadorn:
I think there are some interesting differences, but also some interesting intersections between the way different racial groups are perceived between here and the US. Part of that’s to do with geography – forex, in some ways, the attitudes to Asian immigrants in Australia can be somewhat more similar in certain ways to attitudes to Latino/as in the US, because we perceive Asia as having that closeness, though Australia does have some differences, being an Island Continent. But there’s some non-geographical interesting intersections too; like the fact that Australian Indigenous folk have ways of identifying with black folk in the US, as well as with the indigenous peoples of the US. And well, I’m far from an expert on race relations in the US (or here, for that matter), so I’m just kinda thinking out loud, here.
I’m not sure why PoC tends to get less play here; afaik the colourism (stuff about ‘how black/etc’ someone is) stuff happens a lot in the US also, so I’m not sure that explains it. I have tended to find that Australian willingness to really engage on race issues is somewhat disappointing, and there’s far too much “racism is a US thing” which makes my blood boil. I’ve found it to be improving somewhat, but that’s mostly on the internets.
As far as CALD/PoC being analogous to lesbian/wwsww, my own experience with CALD is that it feels like the government is naming me, rather than having the descriptive power that wwsww does, so I dunno. Though it’s certainly a better term than NESB – it’s funny, I spoke Cantonese before I spoke English, but I started speaking English about a week later, and spoke both languages in about equal parts at home. So technically, I was NESB, but I never really fit in that box, either.
interesting.
i’ve never quite known what to do with this thought, but i remember when i was a youngun and there was all the pauline hanson madness. our old neighbours had been living in the US and they came back to visit us. anyway one of them said that because of the uproar that pauline had caused, americans were getting the impression that australians were very racist; this ex-neighbour thought that in fact we were just talking about it very openly.
hmm. do we talk about racism openly?? i doubt it, but maybe “we” did at that time? or some of us did?
i have to admit i haven’t come across the ‘racism is a US thing’ really, although thinking about that, probably i have, just said a bit more obliquely.
anyway, yes. i’m sure you’re right about both differences and intersections. good point about indigenous people here being inspired by and having links with black people and movements in the US. and interesting what you say about “CALD”. how much have you had the experience of being labeled “cald”? in what kind of places?
(i’m not sure how i feel about being labeled ‘wwsww’ actually, since unlike many young queers these days [hehe] i think of my self as a lesbian and who i sleep with is a part of that, not the defining thing about me – although i understand it would be a useful distinction for some people like doctors. i guess it would be weird though if they were running a community centre or something for ‘wwsww’ rather than ‘lesbians, bi and queer womyn’)
oh, and another thing! about ‘racism is only in america’. people seem to forget that chinese people (and others) came to australia before the ‘white australia policy’ and thus were here during it…
i think the fact of the white australia policy makes people assume we have been white, which is part of why they assume racism has been an american problem. they had exclusionary immigration policies too, though.
I think part of the ‘openly’ thing, particularly wrt Hanson, and it comes out where there are particular sorts of racist tirades in the US, is that the big old racist diatribe carries that sort of “everything we think, but the nasty PC police won’t let us say”, and these sorts of racists tend to hold themselves up as brave for “speaking truth to power” when they’re doing no such thing in reality, because institutionally speaking, they’re the ones WITH power.
(And yeah, I hear you on the wwsww thing. I mean, my queerness is about who I love as well as who I fuck, but I guess that’s sort of the distinction between wwsww as a descriptive of behaviour and lesbian as an identity that encompasses the former.)
Oh lordy yes. Whilst my mother came out to Australia in the 60s, I have distant relatives who have been here for generations. Historian John Fitzgerald has a great book called ‘Big White Lie’ which talks about the White Australia Policy and includes how it impacted on the Chinese Australians that were already here. He has some interesting discussions about how the White Australia Policy was formed and the rhetoric around it, and whilst he never mentions it, some of the contemporary comparisons one can make are quite obvious despite being only implicit.