I saw some crazy, crazy, crazy good performances at Hell Froze Over.
So diverse, deep, though-provoking and powerful that I can’t handle them all at once, or even sequentially. This one’s been stuck in my mind for the past two days, and I feel like talking about it now.
The second though, I believe, had a stronger impact on me. It was a poetry program (a collection of poems memorized, spliced together, and performed on a common theme) about the “oppression of the white man,” centered on the self-immolation of an angry white man protesting something or other having to do with feminism. The poetry shocked by merely showcasing the twisted thinking that goes into this logic, and it ended on a powerful note: “I have no race . . . which is to say I have the option of silence.”
This line jammed its way up into the back of my brain and has been sitting there since. Does it make sense to say “I have no race” as a white person? Obviously not . . . because after all, there are characteristics/stereotypes/commonalities that do “define” white people – such as our wealth, racial unawareness, and awkward dance moves. But the line “I have no race” makes much more sense when thought of in context with the other half: “which is to say I have the option of silence”. Although I think you can interpret this phrase in a few different ways, I took it as white people not having to be “always conscious” about their race. A white man has “the option of silence” or the choice to have no race, to stand in a predominantly white society as a someone who isn’t defined primarily by his race, but rather by his quirks, interests, talents and failings as a person. Contrast with a black man or woman, who in any predominantly white social situation is not “John” or “Trevane” but instead “Black John” or “Guy with the Black Name”. It’s terrible.
I’m sure that no amount of writing on my part could convince anyone I understand, acknowledge or perceive my own racial consciousness and privilege entirely . . . which is good, because I don’t. I hope I haven’t offended here, and I might write about this much more in the future, since it’s a topic that interests me much. Tomorrow night: Either something totally different, or more HFO!