Diversity and the Progressive Blogosphere

Jenifer Fernandez Acona deserves a medal for her patient and thorough explanation on MyDD of what it means to foster diversity in an activist organization or movement.

She is responding to a series of posts at MyDD by Chris Bowers about the relationship fostering diversity holds to MyDD's mission of progressive electoral politics. Blogging is a niche, Bowers says, and the demographics of that niche are heavily male and overwhelmingly white and economically privileged. As long as progressive bloggers are not actively exclusive, he asserts, there is no particular onus on progressive bloggers to promote or emphasize diversity in their own blogs.

I say that's hogwash. As an American, Chris Bowers, like me, is a citizen of an essentially racist culture with an elaborate and far-reaching complex of institutions and beliefs that automatically favor people like Chris Bowers and me at the expense of women, people of color, and other groups at society's margins. Because this system is automatic, Chris and I don't need to notice it at work. Affluent white men like us are generally unaware of the system's workings, and so it is easy for us to not take it into account. This means we don't have to question why most of the people who turn out to be writing about politics are affluent white men like us.

When Chris says that he's working on Important Matters here and that this diversity stuff only gets in his way, he is actively strengthening our culture's infrastructure of racism and sexism, even if he believes with all his heart that he is not.

That's why what Jenifer Fernandez Acona is saying is so important. Teaching Diversity 101 to the white guys is difficult and frustrating. Activist people of color find themselves doing it over and over and over again, and they get tired of it. One of the dynamics of racism is that it is well-nigh impossible for us white guys to work those dynamics out for ourselves, while at the same time it is grossly unfair to ask our victims to take on the additional burden of showing us the way. People like Fernandez Acona who actually take that burden on, even for a little while, deserve our thanks.

As an aside, the apparent whiteness of the blogosphere is illusory, and there are rather more women and people of color writing blogs than people realize, because readers assume by default that everyone in the blogosphere is a white man until and unless it is proven otherwise.

Fernandez Acona passes on a list of things that social change groups should be doing to include diversity in their agendas. She quotes her friend and colleague Daraka Larimore-Hall:

Here are some steps that white students can take to begin the process of building an anti racist movement:

• Include racial justice issues in your organizational discussions and analysis.




• Commit to doing serious work against racism as part of your organizing and to forming meaningful, principled alliances with people of color organizations in your communities.
• Make sure that your agenda isn't set before considering the goals and demands of activists of color. Too often, white activists think of the issues that they are working on as "universal" and approach activists of color asking them to join their "big tent". Why aren't white activists holding themselves accountable in the same way and viewing racism as a universal concern?
• Take steps to create a more tolerant culture within your own organization. Sometimes, white culture is "invisible", meaning that methods of work, choice of music, food, ways of communicating, etc., are thought of as "progressive" ways of doing things, instead of "white progressive" ways of doing things. One way should not be held up as "authentically progressive", especially when that cultural form is typically or historically white.
• Consider the needs of people of different backgrounds than your own. Can people with jobs attend your meetings? What about people with children? What email list or social scene do you have to be a part of, to hear about meetings?
• Work to build long term, authentic and trusting relationships with organizations led by people of color in your community. As we stated above, white activists are prone to "shopping" for minorities. Too often, when it comes time to host a conference or chose speakers for a rally, white activist organizations are out looking for brown faces, when they haven't supported the daily work of anti-racist organizations all year long.
• Speak up when people of color in your community are being attacked! Don't wait for the Black Student Union on your campus to write all the letters to the editor of your student newspaper. It is time for white people to police their own communities around these issues — after all, whose responsibility is it to fight racism in the white community?
• Listen harder, and better. Too often, white activists try to be the savior — instead of the ally. One of the legacies of the early Civil Rights Movement's organizing style, which came from people like Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses of SNCC, was the deeply rooted belief that there is no one who knows more about the experience of oppression than those who are oppressed themselves. Simply put, go to meetings of people of color organizations, find out what they are up to, and help out. Period.

(Klonsky, Amanda, and Daraka Larimore-Hall: "Ain't Gonna Let Segregation Turn Us 'Round: Thoughts on Building an Inter-Racial and Anti Racist Student Movement." School of the Americas Watch, http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=490)

The only change I would make in that list would be to put the last item, "Listen harder, and better" at the top of the list rather than at the bottom. Listening to and learning from people at the margins comes before anything else.