Welcome To The Victim Olympics!
Some ridiculous girl tweeted to me:
@FancyBebamikawe
@amyalkon @robbysoave lol it must be so hard to be white on Twitter
She's an "indigenous" person, she says in her Twitter profile. I take it from her remark to me that she must use some ancient indigenous form of communication to tweet, making it far more difficult for her than for me -- a white person using modern digital technology.
Oh, and never mind that she knows fuck all about me, save for what she can see -- the color of my skin. (I like to describe my origins as part Eastern European Jew, part Wite-Out.)
Her Twitter profile says this:
Anishnaabekwe, Medical Physics, Indigenous Health, FN education #STEM #Neurodiversity #DisabilityWikwemikong Unceded, Ontario
I was waiting for a call, and curiosity took me down her Twitter feed, where I found this:
@mays_kyle
I wrote this piece for my white-coded Indigenous friends. White privilege is something we need to discuss.
Here's Kyle:
A bit of his bio:
Kyle T. Mays (Black/Saginaw Anishinaabe) is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a transdisciplinary scholar that works at the intersection of Afro-Indigenous Studies, Urban Indigenous Studies, and Indigenous Hip Hop culture.
And a bit from his piece, "The Souls of White-Indians: A Letter to My White Indian Friend":
What up doe? How you been? Boozhoo.
I am writing to you because I love you. Because, as a Black/Native hetero-cis male, who grew up with three urban influences -- Cleveland and Detroit -- in Lansing, Michigan, the capitol of Michigan, once the home of Malcolm X, I have long understood the complexities of race and racism, and I want to share some with you. I have the experience of a poor, urban, Black Native person. Even as I gain more cultural and social capital because of my education, I cannot shake off my upbringing, which I am very proud of.
I am writing because I hate white supremacy, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. I hate all things oppressive. And I hate how they have injured us all.
Can we talk about what it means to be a White-Indian in the United States? It's funny, using that phrase "White-Indian;" though I hear it every so often, it is barely used in academic circles, or not in the same frequency or manner as Black-Indians. I guess only the full bloods -- the most authentic of the authentic Native people use it. Let's talk about what it's like to be Native but look white.
I know: there's the problem of "pretindians" who have a long forgotten "full-blooded" Indian relative, and those who have a Cherokee princess great-grandmother. I'm sure you've heard of a few "scandals" over the last few years, those who claim an identity but it seems skeptical at best. I don't want to talk about that; our conversations there are too saturated, too predictable. Black-Indian folks got problems as well. We can't hide from state violence, or at least pass as white, and therefore be invisible from it, both as a structural choice and at one's convenience.
A major issue for me, which I haven't heard you speak on, even in private, is your own white skin privilege. Before you stop reading, please hear me out. You see, I'm often read as only Black, unless someone knows me as Black, simply because of my skin color. I'm cool with that. Like your Indigenous ancestry, mine, too, is invisible. But because I'm read as a Black male, the animalistic threat to society, I can't hide. I can't hide my blackness, no matter how white I sound. And I ain planning to. I can't sweep it under rug if I put on white people's moccasins. Society reads me as Black....I'm sure you have a well-rehearsed story about your family history -- well-documented -- about how long you've had Native relations, to explain why you look white. It's a shame we have to go through that, huh?. But why don't you talk about your white skin privilege? I know you deal with similar trauma of Native invisibility. People dismiss your identity outright because you look white; and that has a psychic affect I'm sure. But you have a privilege that I don't, at all, and I have yet to hear you acknowledge it. Let me list a few examples of your skin privilege; you can operate in public spaces and enjoy the public and psychological wages of being white at your leisure. You can also access some material benefits of being white if you so desire.
...There is a certain level of power being a white-Indian. Even as you might speak so eloquently about what it means to be Native, how negative representations effect Native people, how Native people are rendered invisible, there are consequences in the framing. You might say that Native people come in all shades of color, but you cloak it within the rhetoric of multiculturalism, without acknowledging the structures of power rooted in whiteness and difference. White people likely equate your hypervisibility with power and authority that is not afforded to a Black-Indian.
Is there racism out there? Absolutely. From whites and from blacks and from people of various colors.
However, this view would be like telling people who grew up wealthier than I did that they should feel guilt and shame over how much money their family had. (In case you're wondering, I grew up middle-class in a non-chi-chi Detroit suburb.)
What also strikes me is what a pernicious thing it has to be, dragging along through life identifying as a victim.
It's become a thing now on campuses -- the Victim Olympics, basically, as I titled this post: People competing to be victimized minorities so they can go around campus (in whatever passes for sackcloth and ashes these days) moaning loudly about how they need special privileges.
Of course, they so often skip class to do these protests -- when the real privilege, for any of us in college in the past century, is simply to be able to be there...attending school, getting a higher education, instead of, say, working on an oil rig or on a road crew.
All I can say is wow. I was going to crack some jokes but after that wall'o'text about white/black indians jibberish he pretty much covered them all.
Ben at September 23, 2016 4:48 AM
I'm not normally the grammar police, but since his piece is a published work and not merely a blog post dashed off in an idle moment - is this what passes for scholarship these days? A post-doctoral fellow at a prestigious university can't write any better than this - a hot mess of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors?
The rest, of course, is just a convoluted appeal for special treatment based upon a self-identified and self-specified Precious Victim status. All of it based upon fanciful ideas of always-unilateral injustices visited on ancestors 10 and 20 generations ago. It's all he's got - without this fabricated persona, shrouded in self-assigned victimhood, he'd be nothing special, just a face in the crowd.
llater,
llamas
llamas at September 23, 2016 5:24 AM
"... works at the intersection of Afro-Indigenous Studies, Urban Indigenous Studies, and Indigenous Hip Hop culture."
"Black privilege" describes the above if this is what he's paid to do and not a hobby.
Black church elders have lost their way and their children's children.
Instead of wringing their hands over "racial" injustice they should have been slapping some sense into the very few kids going to school/college.
Tutoring them (plenty of white liberals available for that) for real jobs/positions. Demanding that they "act" white if it means actual work paying good money (all trades and some college).
They should have privately told the colleges "either educate my children or we will hurt you in the pocketbook anyway we can". They should have worked w/high schools and local trades to get the kids off the streets and into apprentices. Local human interest stories would feed this stuff and it would grow.
Laugh all you want but these simple steps would eliminate the internal room for them to "hate".
Ultimately their hate is for themselves as a failure.
(An acquaintance was serving 10 days of community service to pay off $1,200 of fines. He could not find the discipline to simply wake up in the morning to get to an 8 am start time. He still does not get it. He's upset over the fines (part truth they are excessive) but not over his inability to simply wake up early for 2 five day periods.)
The sad fact is that a church sponsored jobs program at the neighborhood level would work at any age. BUT you have to decide to walk through the door when it opens.
That is "white privilege" and "asian advantage" in a nutshell. Anyone that fails to do this is a failure and will continue to fail unless they place themselves in an environment where "doors" are opened.
That's not on a street corner w/your hood buddies, are in your Mama's house smoking dope, or texting on 'da net about "I hate ...".
Bob in Texas at September 23, 2016 5:45 AM
I'm glad you used "indigenous".
Humans are not native to the Western Hemisphere. The "indigenous" peoples are immigrants. Very long established immigrants, but immigrants none the less.
But when you come across "intersectionality" brace yourself. It's just mumbo-jumbo, modern day witch doctors nonsense. Over educated people who use $5 words when $0.25 words will suffice, and they love to hear themselves talk.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 23, 2016 6:24 AM
Bob, the sad fact of the matter is that many churches have lost their way, and expect the government to perform charitable works on their behalf and lobby for such charity to be doled out by the local government bodies.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 23, 2016 6:31 AM
She complains in one of these pictures how strangers don't take her for Indian:
https://www.google.com/search?q=FancyBebamikawe&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil4dGDzKXPAhVGbz4KHRh1AM4QsAQIJg&biw=1143&bih=508&dpr=0.9
kenmce at September 23, 2016 6:33 AM
All this me-me-me squalling obscures a basic truth: no matter who your ancestors are, they can't help you, not really. If you get a handout from squalling, well, everybody knows at that point that you didn't earn anything.
Radwaste at September 23, 2016 11:48 AM
Llamas has a good point (ok, a few) about the 10 o 20 generations ago thing. A big part of the American experiment is to get free from inherited class. Kyle T. Mays isn't helping at all. He's still holding a grudge. And of course he advertises himself as academic royalty. He may be a lost case and only fit for non-competitive employment in the government sector.
Canvasback at September 23, 2016 12:22 PM
So many people live their lives looking to be offended by something. This guy seems to have hit the "mother lode." Everything offends him!
Jay at September 23, 2016 1:45 PM
If your parents are French/English, their ancestors conquered each other about 30 times/both ways. Can you still "feel" it? What should you feel? Guilty how for what?
If no one knows he has indian ancestors (and I sure could not tell from the photo), how could he be oppressed by their oppression? It is only in his mind.
Many white settlers to US in the 1700s volunteered to be indentured servants (slaves) for a period like 5 years to get their way paid over. Were they oppressed? If psychic scars could be inherited, then we would all be suffering from the Civil war, the Great Depression, and the break up of the Beatles. My ancestors fought against the Romans on several fronts, should I still bring that up? But these things dissipate. The only thing you can claim is your immediate experience and perhaps what happened to your parents (though amazingly many people get over the trauma their parents went through in life or are even unaware of it!).
Many oppressed people do not see how hard many whites have to work because they do not get to inherit any actual wealth. Like working their way through school, having 2 jobs or working 55 hours per week or commuting 1 hour so kids can have a good school and painting their own house and getting up every day at 5am to do all of this, and not having parties all the time. This is privilege? It is purely imaginary that white people are just handed a great job without working hard for it. Just check out the barristas at Starbucks.
The biggest advantage anyone can have is 2 parents who value hard work and education, but white people can't prevent anyone else (e.g., Asians) from also having this advantage. It is not something that you can prevent others from having.
Craig Loehle at September 23, 2016 2:39 PM
Humans are not native to the Western Hemisphere.
Technically humans are not indigenous to any continent but africa, and only a relatively small area of that.
When ever I meet a tool like this in meat space I always ask "So, you want me to feel guilty about actions I never took, and sorry for things that never happened to you?"
lujlp at September 23, 2016 5:55 PM
I hear the joke but what's the punchline?
Bob in Texas at September 24, 2016 6:01 AM
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