Tim Wise, Bullying, and an End to Social Justice Warriors

I used to have a lot of respect for Tim Wise.  His book, White Like Me, is inspiring and eye-opening and a must read for whites concerned with racial justice and our place in it.  But, over recent months, I have become increasingly disenchanted with Wise's public engagements in which nothing is more important that his ego.  Wise famously had to apologize to black activists who were calling him out for making money off black suffering, a claim that while maybe hyperbolic, speaks to the perception that Wise is about Wise and pretty much no one else.  He also routinely taunts, abuses, or berates any white person, no matter how insignificant, that he feels threatens him in any way.  He promotes his greatness by never failing to reveal how many death threats that he has gotten or the pressure that he's under.  He's a hothead.

All of this would be fine if the attitude didn't bleed into the crew of Social Justice Warriors now populating the many overheated social media sites on the internet, who stake out the high ground and attack, refusing to engage in anything worthy of the Socratic method and even less worthy of Freirean popular education, the latter of which was designed as a way for advantaged folks to participate the cause of justice.  Instead, SJWs demand to be listened to without reciprocating, claim that it is "not their job to educate," and accuse people that they know only from an avatar of all sorts of crimes against the cause of justice.  Most of this has little to do with justice and everything to do with passing a rigidly scripted litmus test for entrance into the SJW community, the boundaries of which are tightly policed.  I have done this many, many times myself.  It was a mistake.

I suggest that we start judging people by what they do in the real world and not by their proficiency in speaking a language that has become increasingly exclusive.  Instead of assuming a whole host of things about people that we randomly know, let's start engaging in conversations about people's lives and experiences.  I work with many folks of all stripes, all of whom are active in social change projects, and few of whom would actually qualify for the SJW community.  All of them need to be treated like human beings and, in such, and in our friendships, all of us will grow and change.  Social media is a powerful tool, but it is time to step back from the combative and shrill discourse that has permeated social change efforts and focus on using social media to build real, human relationships.  In fact, it is imperative to do this now.

As a means of getting started I want to share my Rules for Talking to White People About Race:

1. Don't make it personal. Telling someone to check their privilege when they have no idea what you are talking about will mostly likely foreclose a conversation. Instead, use scientific fact about white supremacy to demonstrate both the existence of the system and how whites benefit.

2. Teach don't tell. Activists should never say things like "it's not my job to teach you." If that is true, why bring it up in the first place; why not just let sleeping dogs lie. It's the height of assholeness to bring up a concept that people don't understand and then just tell them to go do their own research.

3. Be wary of creating provincial activist cultures that no one understands but insiders. While all forms of culture are in some way exclusive, living only in the safe world created by activists defeats the purpose. Everyone needs a home base; just don't live there.

4. Meet people where they are at. Telling someone that is white and working class that they have white privilege is likely to come across as discounting every experience that they have gone through. Use language and terminology that people understand to communicate why whites benefit from racism. Avoid specialized concepts such as white privilege until people are more familiar with the mechanics of white supremacy. It is more important for people to learn how it works than the correct terms for it.

5. Be humble. If people start to come to you for information about racism that had previously been recalcitrant, treat them with respect and dignity; not everyone is at the same level. Encourage them to dig deeper and realize that what we are doing is working.

Rage, Midterms, and the Birmingham Land Bank Authority aka Bellistan

I've been teaching at Auburn this semester, which I think may be bad for my heart rate and overall mental health.  The place reminds me of the drug and alcohol fueled insanity after the end of my first marriage, yet it brings some of the only warm memories of my childhood since Auburn football was (and is) one of the few things my dad and I agreed on.  The commute is hellacious, especially the miracle of urban planning that is the 280 corridor.  By the time I hit Chelsea, I'm already so enraged from the driving that it's amazing that I don't jump out of the C-Max at 50 miles per hour.

My rage has been fueled lately not so much by the Democrats crushing defeat in the midterm elections, but by the handwringing and the weeping and gnashing of teeth by all the liberal activists on my Facebook feed.  Granted, the GOP victory pretty much guarantees that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an egregious example of neoliberalism or the Mark McGwire NAFTA, will pass with bipartisan support and a presidential signature.  Of course, this only proves what I have always said - that when it comes to economics, there is really only one party.

With this general state of despair and overall hatred of all things not Robyn Hyden, I decided to attend the Birmingham Land Bank Authority meeting to appraise how the process was moving and what was happening.  What I saw was a Frank Underwood-esque example of how to manipulate the democratic process to the ends of an authoritarian leader, William Bell.  The community development department ran the meeting, not Heager Hill, chairman of the BLBA.  As one community leader stated, "William Bell is community development."  Phillip Amthor began rather innocuously by presenting the new website, which seemed to pique the interest of board member Adam Snyder, who in the interested of transparency proposed that the BLBA put all relevant documents on the website.  This was warmly received.  Things devolved.  Amthor blew through a presentation about best practices in about five minutes, leaving the distinct impression that all that mattered for the BLBA to be successful was for it to follow his majesty's RISE plan word for word.  No peep from the board members.

Then came a confusing and bewildering set of events.  It happened fast.  Amthor and community development director John Colon presented a plan for the first group of tax delinquent properties to have their titles cleared in preparation for disposal.  The plan asked for approval from the BLBA for 25 properties in Pratt City to go to the judge.  The flimsy justification for this area was that the Red Rock Trail is going through Pratt City, but the real justification is that they can't do more damage than a tornado.  Pratt City is the experiment.  Amthor and Colon skimmed the plan, touching the high points, but never mentioning low-income housing, which would seem to be important in Pratt City.  There was a vague reference on a slide to hiring a financial consultant to make housing affordable, but I left with the impression that they plan to build market-rate housing.  I could be wrong about this, but that's the impression that I got.

Finally, Gwen Calhoun spoke up asking whether the people of Pratt City actually wanted this.  Colon stated that they had gone to 27 neighborhood associations, suggesting that residents were involved in this decision-making.  My sources tell me that community development merely went to neighborhood associations and showed a RISE propaganda video, hard-hitting participatory work by anyone's measure.

Next, Amthor and Colon presented a resolution for the BLBA to vote on.  With almost no debate, Chairman Hill called for a motion on the resolution with the addition that community development had to produce a plan at the next meeting.  Why would the BLBA give the ok on 25 properties without first knowing the details of how they were to be disposed?  Nonetheless, it passed unanimously.  Colon, Amthor, and community development had successfully railroaded the BLBA, an organization without so much as a strategic plan or a vision statement, into approving the agenda of RISE and Bell.

So, where was Bell in all this?  The answer is that he was genuinely disinterested.  He showed up late, checked his phone, his hair, and his fingernails, cracked a couple of jokes, left for ten minutes, and finally chimed in to quash any debate about community development's resolution.  That's what he was there for.

All of this for a plan that, if it creates market-rate housing, is bound to either a) have vacant land or houses for years to come or b) lead to the gentrification of Pratt City, neither of which is acceptable.

I left disgusted, dismayed, and enraged.  The complete and utter disrespect for the democratic process not just by individuals, but by supposedly democratic institutions is enough to lose all faith in this city's ability to respect it's people.  No one, and I mean no one, trusts the city to do the right thing and that's why there is 20% turnout for municipal elections.  What the BLBA does is not nearly as important as respecting the democratic process and rebuilding the trust between this city's leaders and its people.  There are those on the board who have the ability to stop this in its tracks- you know who you are.  It's going to take some guts and some real leadership, but it's time to take a stand and say "we won't take this in our city anymore.  Enough!"

Food Deserts: Solution or Neoliberal Governance

In response to the recent in kind grant from IBM given to the city, the Birmingham News has created a series on food deserts.  In many ways, this looks to be a great series, focusing on voices from the community and from those experiencing hunger.  I commend and support this effort to catalog how it feels to be hungry.  This is important work.  However, I believe there are serious problems with the concept of food deserts that need to be addressed.  Some of these problems stem from some conceptual looseness and maybe a bit of laziness in the methodological arena.  Other problems are more nefarious.

First, hunger and food insecurity are economic problems and not geographic ones.  The editorial board of the Birmingham News seems to understand this and has made it a point to focus on poverty.  However, focusing solely on geographic factors would not solve the problem.  Low-income people could get to the store, but can't buy high quality groceries.  Essentially, the idea of food deserts assumes that proximity to a grocery store is the primary determinant of hunger and obesity.  This is clearly untrue.

Second, and more nefarious, food deserts, when used as a planning tool either by government or non-profits, is a form of neoliberal governance.  Neoliberal governance is the use of market-based tools to shape the behavior of target populations.  I suspect that one of the main conclusions of the IBM consulting will be to use economic incentives to attract grocery stores and to promote farmer's markets and community gardens in areas deemed food deserts, most of which are low income.  This is an attempt to change the behavior of the residents in a way that will reduce hunger, but importantly prevent obesity, which have been connected in much of the literature.  This is not just an attempt to promote access, but the influence target populations to purchase the right food, which usually means fruits and vegetables.  What this means is that the food behaviors of those living in food deserts, low income target populations, have been deemed aberrant, and that it is basically a matter of individual choice as to whether target populations will become less hungry and less obese.  In essence, a food desert is a constructed space of aberrant behavior that needs to be repaired through market processes.  I ask you, do we really have any business telling poor folks how and what to eat? For more on these click here.

Finally, food deserts depoliticize problems in low income communities rendering them legible to technical, apolitical solutions.  Conditions in food desert communities are not natural, but the result of years of racial and economic segregation.  Food deserts have been redlined by supermarkets because the populations of those areas are not wealthy enough to produce a profit.  Supermarkets in those areas often charge more for the same product than in wealthy neighborhoods.  Instead of talking about access sans income increases, we need to be talking about the deeply rooted and long-standing processes of racial and economic segregation that created these conditions in the first place.

I want to suggest that community development through an agricultural economy is an alternative to the food desert concept.  What food desert communities need is not more grocery stores or farmer's markets or community gardens.  What they need is more money, plain and simple.  By utilizing technologies like aquaponics, an agricultural economy can be built in low income areas.  Aquaponics is highly productive, producing approximately 140,000 heads of lettuce and 12,000 pounds of whole fish a year on about a quarter acre.  Combine this with a cooperative form of firm organization, and community members can use neoliberalism to their advantage instead of detriment.  Increased incomes make neighborhoods more attractive to grocery stores that are selling the food produced in the neighborhood. It's a virtuous cycle.

I hope that those considering solutions to food deserts consider thinking about it in a different way and consider working from the bottom up instead of the top down.

The End is Nigh...

On the Subject of My Behavior
I admit that my behavior during the debates of the past year has not been at the level of a seasoned public intellectual.  I have personally insulted people.  I have not listened to arguments.  I have been unwilling to compromise.  For some of these, I apologize.  But, let me say this; I have not been the only one with bad behavior during these debates.  As an example, DB Irwin read the first chapter of my dissertation and called it, "poorly-cited, jargon-filled, piece of self-hating crap."  My education has be insulted numerous times by numerous different people.  Imagine the cognitive dissonance when a city that purports to be for home-grown people, innovation, and new ideas, turns those into an insult.  Nonetheless, the debate was acrimonious and unfair to both sides.  I accept my responsibility for my part in that.  I do not apologize for criticizing people who gave interviews to newspapers or wrote public articles.  You put yourself in public, and you opened yourself to criticism.  Don't take yourself so seriously.

On the Subject of My Topic
My agitation for the past year plus has been simple - to educate the public about the existence of hierarchies, particularly white supremacy and capitalism.  To do this, I used the tools of white privilege and gentrification.  The gentrification debate has more or less been universally accepted by even the most recalcitrant people.  However, whites refuse to accept even on the most basic level that the world is hierarchically organized based on race, in spite of the fact that numerous examples of peer-reviewed evidence exists.  This, unfortunately, confirms what most people of color say - that whites are unable to change.  Again, this is not a complex concept.  The world is hierarchically organized based on race.  This is clearly delineated by numerous anecdotal and scientific facts.  It is not even radical or revolutionary in even the most minor ways.  It is simply clearly observable reality.

On the Subject of Saviors
The clear motivation for much of the animosity is that a significant group of Birmingham white people have positioned themselves as saviors of Birmingham.  Let me say this clearly and for all to hear; there is nothing to save.  Birmingham is not special in any way.  It is not worse than any other city.  It is not better.  There is no more potential here.  The politicians are not more corrupt.  The whites are not more racist.  There is not any more racial animosity in this city than in any other city.  There is nothing at all distinct about Birmingham.  It is a city like any other city, and its primary purpose is to make money for the bourgeoisie.  If you want a city that is different than every other city, then you have to become a revolutionary who doesn't accept hierarchies in any way.

On the Subject of Revolution
We live in revolutionary times.  The environment is destroyed.  Inequality in this country is greater than it has been in a long time.  Democracy is significantly curtailed at all levels of government by the influence of money.  Trendy, cool restaurants and parks don't do a damn thing to address these things.  The only thing that can address these things is a complete transformation in the way society works.  Before we can actually address the root cause, which is economic, we must address the other hierarchies of race, gender, and others.  This facilitates solidarity to address the capitalist system which is destroying the planet and impoverishing its people.  The situation is dire.  Let me say that again, the situation is dire and it requires a radical answer.

The revolution is here.  The revolutionaries are here.  I am the loudest, but there are more than me, and I meet more on a daily basis.  Stop taking yourself so seriously, and fight for a new world.

Peace,
Zac