I HAVE MOVED!!!!!

ATTENTION! EXTRA! EXTRA!

Please change your bookmarks please! The new home of The Primary Contradiction is finally here!

Remember this address:
http://www.genderracepower.com

Thanks!

For Veterans Day

Patrick Daniel Tillman, Jr.
1976-2004

Bring them home now.

Exposing Librul Boy Propaganda

Someone has finally written the essay I've dreamed about, and his name is Kai Chang. Earlier this week at Zuky, Kai posted what is perhaps the best (and as far as I've seen, only) critical debunking of the libertarian boogeyman known as "political correctness." This post finally puts into words a realization many of us have long known unconsciously---"PC" is an rhetorical device for the privileged (read: white boys). This essay came along right on time for me too, as I'm undertaking deeper theoretical study of liberalism.

Usually I would refer you all to the link, but I'ma go ahead and post Kai's critique here in its entirety, 'cause I want everyone to read this. Next time some fool wants to label you "PC" for daring to call out his horseshit, let him know what's up.
YC

The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness"
(from Zuky---Monday, November 06, 2006)

It's axiomatic that good writing tends to avoid clichés, because clear thinking is a fresh response to living reality, not a tired repurposing of brittle brain-crust. A logical inverse to this axiom is that political commentary tends to brim with toxic portions of vapid clichés, because good writing is about as widespread in today's political discourse as it is in corporate accounting memos.

The blogosphere has its own style of cyber-fad clichés, slightly more high-handed than the stentorian pap of talking-head TV, and occasionally more illuminating. Two examples that leap to my mind are the inescapable utterances of "schadenfreude" and "kabuki", expressions whose exoticism appears to elevate their usage to haute-cliché à la William Safire. No matter what political controversy is being discussed these days, you're likely to run across bloggers busting out these 3-syllable badges of faux-erudition with about as much linguistic adroitness as tap-dancers on stilts.

However, there's one political cliché so popular, so omnipresent, so densely far-reaching, that it is without doubt the greatest cliché of our time. It is the One Cliché to rule them all: "political correctness" and its variants. What's striking about the repetitive droning complaints about "PC" (from both conservatives and liberals) is that the expression itself, and the concept it invokes, is as sloppily unexamined as it is pedestrian.

The phrase "politically correct" can be used in two distinct ways: either with its original literal meaning, or with the mocking sarcasm that's common these days. I'll get to the former in a moment, but I'll begin with the latter. As it's commonly used, "PC" is a deliberately imprecise expression (just try finding or writing a terse, precise definition) because its objective isn't to communicate a substantive idea, but simply to sneer and snivel about the linguistic and cultural burdens of treating all people with the respect and sensitivity with which they wish to be treated. Thus, the Herculean effort required to call me "Asian American" rather than "chink" is seen as a concession to "the PC police", an unsettling infringement on the free-wheeling conversation of, I suppose, "non-chinks". Having to refer to black folks as "African Americans" rather than various historically-prevalent epithets surely strikes some red-blooded blue-balled white-men as a form of cultural oppression. Having to refer to "women" rather than "bitches" lays a violent buzzkill on the bar-room banter of men preoccupied with beating on their chests and off other body parts.

Obviously these examples fall on the simplistic side of things, but I think they illustrate the shaky philosophical foundation of today's usage. Underlying every complaint of "PC" is the absurd notion that members of dominant mainstream society have been victimized by an arbitrarily hypersensitive prohibition against linguistic and cultural constructions that are considered historical manifestations of bigotry. It's no coincidence that "PC"-snivelers are for the most part white men who are essentially saying, "Who the hell do these marginalized groups think they are to tell me how I should or shouldn't portray them? I'm not going to say 'mentally challenged' when it's my right to say 'retard', goshdarnit there's only so much abuse I'll take!"

In this context, the conceit that "political correctness" constitutes a violation of free speech is particularly zany; as though society's marginalized groups wield oppressive power over the dominant mainstream. Actually, as far as I'm concerned you're free to call me "chink" and I'm free to call you "moronic racist loser" (and more if necessary, but I'll leave that aside for now in the interest of false civility). Free speech is the straw man of choice for intellectual bums of all stripes too fragile and vacuous for critical engagement. Calling someone who says or does bigoted things "a bigot" isn't censorious, it's descriptively accurate, like calling a bad movie "a bad movie", even if the bigot didn't intend to come off as bigoted and the movie didn't intend to come off as bad.

As for the original literal meaning of "PC", the phrase is believed to have emerged from China (seriously, I'm not making this up) during the reign of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought. Revolutionary leaders unironically applauded words and actions as "politically correct" when these were seen to advance the revolutionary cause (ya think something was lost in translation?). Personally, I suspect that the Chinese phrase predates Maoism and hearkens back to imperial China when complying with the demands of the throne and advancing the interests of the empire, at any level of society, would be "politically correct"; as opposed to, say, writing dissident literature, which would be "politically incorrect" to the point of getting you exiled or executed. In both the Maoist and imperial contexts, the key point to observe is that "PC" denotes alignment with state power. On a semantic and philosophical level, this makes a good deal more sense than the vague pejorative sarcasm of today's "PC"-snivelers.

Interestingly enough, according to this non-sarcastic, relatively unconsidered, more meaningfully precise definition of the term, the USA is a politically correct nation indeed; but not in the way that most Americans are led to believe. Some examples: Magnetic yellow ribbons are PC. Denouncing Islamism in the name of 9/11 is PC. Reciting the pledge of allegiance is PC. Not talking about radical politics at work or in polite company is PC. Gay-bashing is PC. Standing and placing your hand on your heart during the national anthem is PC. Smiling and applauding when the president enters the room is PC. On the other side of the equation: Marching for civil rights is not PC. Protesting a US war is not PC. Questioning US-Israeli neo-colonial policy in the Middle East is not PC. Calling the US government a white male supremacist corporatist kleptocracy is not PC. Agitating for structural change in our society's distribution of wealth and power is not PC. Refusing to shake a corrupt president's hand is not PC.

Frankly, I can think of far more extreme examples of politically incorrect acts and statements, but it's a testament to the real coercive power of the police state — not some imaginary "PC police" — that I hesitate to publish these thoughts even hypothetically, even with ample theoretical padding. Given this reality, perhaps we might reconsider exactly whose free speech is being violated by whom. As far as I know, "the PC police" haven't thrown any insensitive white men into Gitmo or launched CointelPro operations against white bloggers who publish blackface. For some reason, people of color who oppose US imperialism haven't had that same good fortune.

Simply put, the great "PC" cliché, as commonly deployed in mainstream discourse, is cultural propaganda designed to befuddle and misdirect while defending the current power structure. All politics deal with power relations, and in the debate over America's alleged climate of "political correctness", there's a stark asymmetry of power between the defiant megaphone-wielders who complain of being constrained by humorless hypersensitivity from below, and the under-represented people of color, women, LGBT, handicapped, poor, and otherwise marginalized or dispossessed people who have no choice but to absorb the linguistic, cultural, and physical barbs of the ruling class. The former feel psycho-emotionally oppressed by their inability to crack puerile ethnic jokes without criticism; the latter simply are oppressed.

Copyright 2006 by Kai Chang

A Message to the White Man, From a White Man

Dear Readers: I am posting this essay by an activist friend-mentor of mine who has been a soldier in the movement's trenches for nearly three decades. Please read, and distribute widely.

YC





Whitemale Supremacy: What It Is and What It Does

by Julian Real

An open letter to all white men.

I am a white man, which means I can be (and have been), at any time, in any place, a whitemale supremacist. This is not a revelation about my genetic code, or an indictment of my own soul. This is a statement about structural political reality.

Every time I side with a white person who is being racist, against a person of color who is challenging that racism, I become a whitemale supremacist. Every time I do not see how my actions, as a white man, silence, disrespect, invade, or threaten a woman of color, I am being a whitemale supremacist. Every time I project a racist-sexist meme onto a woman of color, and treat her as if she were my (our) projection, I am a whitemale supremacist.

Whitemale Liberalism would have us believe that white men are only whitemale supremacists when we wear white hoods and burn crosses on the yards of African-Americans. White Conservatism would have us believe that the time of white supremacy has passed, and now the real threat to all humanity (which, as defined by whitemale supremacy is white men as a group, and its supporters and apologists) is people of color: including poor Black people, poor Mexican immigrants and other non-European U.S. Latina/os, angry or non-deferential Central and South Americans of color, angry or non-submissive Middle Eastern people, angry or non-obedient Asians.

White Conservatism has never acknowledged the existence of male supremacy. White Liberalism doesn't either. On a good day it says there is something called "racism" and "sexism" but immediately adds that those suddenly asocial realities can "work both ways". It claims a level playing field—an as yet fully illusory land of equality—whenever a white man speaks or acts in ways that are harmful and dangerous to women, especially to women of color. It claims to be brutally honest, bravely politically incorrect, necessarily truthful, and boldly noble as it does this. It is either ignorant or arrogant in these claims, except the part about being brutal.

There is no space, cyber or not, where whitemale supremacy isn't lurking or acting in its own interests. There is no time in which whitemale supremacy is asleep. If there were, we should suffocate it with a pillow or inject into it something that will make it never wake up.

Whitemale supremacy's stories go like this: handsome white men can bring women back to life. It is in whitemale supremacist's company that women are most content. Women of color exist for the use and abuse of any man or group of men; women of color have no other function. Women of all ethnicities are for white men, in any way white men need—that is to say, interpersonally or institutionally coerce and force—women to be for them.

Because whitemale supremacy is institutionalized, it does not need to behave badly all the time on an interpersonal front. It just needs to maintain its institutional power and privileges. It shows off its deadly interpersonal self, it rears its ugly individualized head, when it is exposed as such, named as such, treated as such, by human people that white men seek to silence and destroy for allegedly being blasphemers, heretics, and madwomen.

Men of Northern, Western, and Southern European descent have, for centuries, claimed the power to name reality, to decide what it true and what is false, to construct the meaning of intelligence and the parameters of insanity, to make laws and gods which most serve white men and oppress everyone else, to distinguish what is respectable religion from what is delusional cult, to declare, with whitemale state authority, the qualities and standards of what it means to be human, which somehow, not accidentally, leaves out the humanity of those who are not white, wealthy, or male.

It claims to value peace when it is warring, to love when it is hating, and, especially if liberal, to value free speech while it swiftly silences those who speak directly about the atrocities white male supremacists commit either unconsciously or unconscionably.

A voice—any voice—may, if brazen enough, speak in such a manner that whitemale supremacy is (potentially) revealed to itself as an ideology-based merciless system of tyrannical power. Those who need it to live on unnamed must silence that voice ASAP. Those unprivileged "others" who must know it and name it, viscerally or verbally, in order to have a chance to survive with any degree of dignity or esteem, will be defamed or destroyed for doing so, if they are seen as human at all, which is usually not the case in whitemale supremacist societies. This means whitemale supremacy usually ignores all voices that don't speak in its domination-driven dialect, with a European-American accent.

When that voice is heard from a woman of color, her voice will be distorted in the ears of whitemale supremacists. They will not acknowledge this voice as a humanitarian voice. They will call it all manner of sexist-racist names, and treat it according to how enemies of whitemen's supposedly sacred reality are to be treated. Whitemale supremacy cannot acknowledge the full humanity of the woman who owns that voice, because she is being so corruptly and systematically denied human rights status by those with the unjust authority to give it.

Much of what we know as reality is a construction of whitemale supremacy. It has arranged this forcibly, over many centuries, across many lands, so that when it speaks, people listen as if someone important were talking. Never mind that the whitemale supremacist voice speaks most eloquently of death. Whitemale supremacy is death to humanity and non-human life forms. When it is radically and successfully challenged, humanity can rise again, including the humanity of those who are pale and male. Until that time, women of color will live lives of humanitarian rage or desperate despondency, or a combination thereof. Until that time, women of any color will be stigmatized and oppressed. Until that time, men of color and all "other" marginalized men will seek one of two things: to successfully become humane by forming a trustworthy and accountable allegiance with radical women of color, or to become a whitemale supremacist, unrelentingly if unsuccessfully.

White women and men of color sometimes support but do not control whitemale supremacy. Only white men control it. Not all white men need to keep it going for it to thrive, but if all white men spoke our truths—against the interests of whitemale supremacy—about what we have done to women of color, to white women, to men of color, and to ourselves in order to be whitemale supremacists, then at least and at last the white elephant in the room would be named by those with the privilege and power to name it. That would be a radically humanitarian occurrence, or, more accurately, would open the possibility for radical humanitarianism to wipe the Earth clean of whitemale supremacy.

Black Radical Feminism is a powerful source of information about whitemale supremacy. Two of its spokespeople are Jennifer McLune and Yolanda Carrington. Earlier voices of this movement include Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan. Other contemporaries include Alice Walker (who has also used the term Womanist), bell hooks, Patricia J. Williams, and Patricia Hill Collins. But most radical Black women are unknown to us, whether they are living in Africa or are part of the Diaspora. Also unknown to white men are the voices of women living in Greater Asia, including India and the Middle East, as well as women from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Listen to all women of color, including the Aboriginal women of Australia and New Zealand. Listen to the women of Indigenous civilizations worldwide, who have had their land, people, and bodies colonized by whitemale supremacy.

Pop quiz: name two radical Black women not already named above. Now name two allegedly radical white/European/U.S. men.

White men know our history well (we wrote the books, after all, from our perspective). We banish anyone else's history, calling it invalid, biased, or unscientific. We, white men, do not take the time to seek out the knowledge and truths that threaten to decenter and destabilize us, let alone take unjust power from our blood-stained fists. Listen carefully to what any Radical Feminist has to say about reality. Listen especially attentively and with unusual humility to Black Radical Feminists. They know far more than any white man ever will (or will publicly admit to knowing), about how whitemale supremacy works.

And, please, in the very meantime, tell the truth about what we have done and are doing, to maintain whitemale supremacy. Do not leave it to women of color to do that work for us too. They have their own humanitarian work to do, and it is called surviving our understanding of reality, which has become the social world they must negotiate, or else.

Break the bonds of the white supremacist brotherhood. Politically, and radically, betray every white man you know who values the well-being of his white brothers over his Black sisters. Understand: this betrayal is a tremendous act of love. Stop apologizing for and excusing white men's oppressive behavior. Nurture a conscience and a heart that sees all people as people. Actively support and be accountable to those we oppress who are working to sustain dignity and to institutionalize justice infused with empathy for humans raped, sold, enslaved, starved, and silenced. In these acts of compassionate rebellion, we will be nurturing, with the rest of humanity, societies free of organized, systematic harm, as communities of color self-direct their liberation from whitemale supremacy.


Copyright 2006 by Julian Real

Women's Fightback Conference on Saturday!

If you happen to find yourself here in Raleigh this Saturday, I urge you to drop in at Exploris Middle School downtown for this historic event. On November 4, 2006, activists from all over North Carolina and beyond will be in town for the Women's Fightback Conference. The goal of this conference is simple: To make the struggle against patriarchy and misogynist oppression a key site of struggle in the overall movement for social justice.

Starting at 9:30am, the all-day event will consist of an opening plenary, workshops, breakout sessions for women's and men's discussions, and cultural performances. The workshops will tackle critical aspects of the oppression women face, such as sexual violence, imperialism, male privilege, and institutional discrimination. There will also be a workshop on feminism and women's political organzing (co-facilitated by yours truly).

Best of all, this conference is FREE! (but donations are always welcome :-).)

Here's the when and the where:

Women's Fightback Conference
Exploris Middle School
207 E. Hargett St. (Downtown Raleigh)
Raleigh, North Carolina 27601
Saturday, November 4th, 2006
Registration begins 9:00am

For more information, stop by http://www.raleighaction.org/conference/

The Resistance of Women in Oaxaca

Whether you've been following the political struggle in Oaxaca or you know nothing about it, I urge you to read this excellent article by BrownFemiPower at Women of Color Blog. With all the outrage from the US radical community over the murder of IndyMedia reporter Brad Will by paramilitary forces (culminating Tuesday with protests at Mexican consulates across the United States), BrownFem talks about how critical the struggle of indigenous women against white male supremacy is to the entire struggle against Oaxaca's violently corrupt government. As she makes crystal-clear for feminists (and by extension all leftists) in this passage:

All feminists MUST pay attention to what is happening in Oaxaca. Indigenous women are leading the way to female liberation–which means that just as their demands for access to birth control carry the same weight in their actions that their demands for access to community radio do, they are also taking the brunt of the violence liberation often brings. But their entire community recognizes that they will never have liberation (aka community health, freedom from poverty, clean air to breath[e], workers rights, sexual freedom, control of the land etc) as long as the nation/state has ultimate control over what happens to their bodies and souls–or as long as violence against women is acceptable in any form.

Pay attention to what is going on in Mexico. Blog about it. Call the Mexican consulate, join in the protests that are happening all over the country–maybe even start thinking about how you might reshape your own idea of feminism. And always know that a small slice of power that the women in Mexico have is YOU.

This is what real feminism is about, folks. Resistance.

FULL ARTICLE

Creating a Safe Space

Hello everyone. I've been away from you for almost a week, but when you hear why, you'll be happy. What I've been working on are plans to make The Primary Contradiction a more welcoming and user-friendly space. Since I'm not exactly advanced on technical issues like XHTML, RSS, or CSS, I need other people's help with that.

What is most important to me, however, is making TPC the most comfortable and politically thorough blog it can be for marginalized people, especially for women of color. I hate it that this blog and most left-wing blogs are not safe/welcoming/empowering spaces for sistas. This is what enrages me about the Internet---and global society---as a whole. Everything is built for white men, including the political blogosphere, a fact evident by the enormous volume of arrogance, condescension, political posturing, phony intellectualism, horseshit liberalism, gender-baiting, race-baiting, snide homophobia, and trolling tendencies that can be found at most blogs. No surprise that most sistas (and brothas) avoid political blogs like the plague. Besides, there are too many goddamn political sites (right-wing, liberal, progressive, "radical"---does it really make a damn difference?) that cater to the never-ending needs of white guys already. I will not allow TPC to become one of them.

Of course, white men are welcome to stop by and join the discussion, but please know this, guys: Here at TPC, it ain't about you. This space is by, for, and about us: the rest of humanity, in all their/our stunning ingenuity, creativity and diversity. It is a place where we can be ourselves, be informed, be educated, encouraged, strengthened, and healed (I know---sounds like freakin’ Oprah, damn). In other words, I intend for TPC to be woman-people of color-marginalized folk-centered space.

With that said, sistas and brothas---I need your help. If you have any ideas/suggestions for making TPC more user-friendly, whether they pertain to layout, text, graphics, links, content, theory, whatever---I need to hear from you. Just drop me a line on this thread.

Onward!