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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

representation

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The strategy of visibility

If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. —Junot Diaz

About two years ago I wrote about how the “monsters” of Halloween give people a way to explore their own shadows. I’ve also written several times about various forms of demonization and dehumanization: how some people with power chip away at other people’s humanity by rendering them malevolent and monstrous.

But there are other ways to become monstrous than masked play and projection. Cultural invisibility is one of them. Though I had a nourishing community around me during my first two decades, I experienced cultural invisibility and later had to actively counter it for my own health.

Writer Junot Diaz once shared how not seeing people like him in literature or mass media affected how he saw himself:

‘You guys know about vampires?’ Diaz asked. ‘You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?’ And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might seem themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.”

It can feel good to open up a news magazine and see your people there. But if that representation is based on malicious stereotypes, it can do more damage than good.

Riz Ahmed is a British Asian actor who has traversed the Atlantic for work for about a decade. In that time, he’s discovered that being part of a hyper-visible demographic in post-9/11 UK and US border control processing rooms and auditions means that “you are a type, whose face says things before your mouth opens; you are a signifier before you are a person; you are back at stage one.” Ahmed nevertheless hopes that his art can change how the security state perceives him and others like him.

According to Cherrie Moraga, visibility is “the most effective strategy to quell the rising tide of discrimination.” Social activists from 19th Century abolitionists to the contemporary disability justice movement have used it as an effective, humanizing strategy.

People seem to need to know Others’ stories before they’ll grant them “neighbor” status and offer compassionate care or impartial service. I used to imagine that being invisible could be a superpower, but it turns out it’s more of an Achilles’ heel. Poor representation costs minoritized people dearly, and that’s why good stories told well matter so much, especially for people who rarely see the social spotlight.

Read Ahmed’s reflection in the London Guardian. It’s well worth the read.

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Representation and Invisibility

Photo of Neil deGrasse Tyson with quote: "The act of arguing and not agreeing seems to be fundamental to the law profession, and Congress is more than half that profession. What profession all these senators in Congress are? Law, law, law, business, law, law... Where are the scientists? Where are the engineers? Where is the rest of life represented here?"
(ht: @SaganSense on Tumblr)

Tyson asked this question on Real Talk with Bill Maher back in 2011; but he was not the first to ask and I suspect no answers will be forthcoming.

Discussing diversity and the relationships between social location, experience, and decision-making perspective seems to be one of the quickest ways to make lots of people uncomfortable. Just last week I read a report on a theological seminar held at a local Adventist university. The writer informed us that there were “about 170 attendees” and that “several [Adventist] General Conference leaders, including representatives from the vice presidential circle, the Biblical Research Institute and the Adventist Review, were present.” I wasn’t sure what meaning to assign this information, so I went back and reviewed the content of the article, the photographs of the room, and the attendee information provided. And then I asked:

Can anyone who was present share how many of the central discussants and conversants were female, non-White, non-American, or under the age of 35? Since the event was hosted by WAU, was it also patronized by WAU students? If so, how engaged were they with the presentations and responses? Did you sense that they felt any ownership of or responsibility for the story Brueggemann and other named speakers wove? (x)

So far my only feedback has been a thumbs down. Perhaps I’m not supposed to ask these questions about a public event held at a university. Perhaps it’s not supposed to matter if speakers and active participants in a theological conversation are all male, and all, apparently, over 40 years old. Perhaps we are still that naive.

Tyson’s question about the composition and disciplinary skew of Congress also applies outside politics. The collective that frames, writes, and presents theology and philosophy shapes the stories religious communities tell about their scriptures, beliefs, purpose, history, and relationship with the world beyond the gate. The composition of that collective isn’t neutral.

Millennials and other young adults are disproportionately exiting or losing confidence in environments that don’t seem to understand that social location and experience shape and limit perspective, that visibility matters, and that invisibility marginalizes. Neither the political realm nor the religious communities can afford to dodge this, not during the election cycle, not in decision-making committees, not in public ministry, and not on college campuses.

Who speaks for the people who aren’t invited to speak? How will the invited audiences hear them? And how will their absence skew the stories told?

In Case You Missed It: Check out and contribute to Tara L. Conley’s Millennial Manifesta. While focused on economic and labor injustices, Conley is also concerned that Millennials have no peers among current members of Congress and no bloc means of insisting on accountability based on their actual interests or needs.

Today, she shared a quote from Carole Pateman’s classic book on participatory democracy (1970). Whereas some ’70s theorists claimed that citizen apathy kept a system stable, and 1980s theorists thought participatory models quaint and “outmoded,” Pateman argued for engaged citizenship. She has evolved beyond the raw populism that was au courant in the 1970s, but continues to advocate for a space beyond deliberation for ordinary citizens in the routine political spaces that affect us all.

The [empirical] findings show that ordinary citizens, given some information and time for discussion in groups of diverse opinions, are quite capable of understanding complex, and sometimes technical, issues and reaching pertinent conclusions about significant public matters. Moreover, they have to justify their reasoning in their reports. These empirical findings provide a valuable counterweight to the poor opinion of ordinary citizens found in much political science, and to the frequently heard view that many, perhaps even most, matters of public policy are best left to, or must be left to, experts.

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Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

In case you missed it: the PBS tribute to James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket. (Length: 1:25:12)

What is it you wanted me to reconcile myself to? I was born here, almost 60 years ago. I’m not going to live another 60 years. You always told me ‘It takes time.’ It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time. How much time do you want for your progress? —James Baldwin

I grew up in a home with at least two of Baldwin’s books, each thin republications. On one I remember a line drawing of his face in peach and purple pencil; on the other, a black-and-white photo.

Time Magazine cover -- a life-like painting of James Baldwin looking directly at the reader
James Baldwin | TIME magazine, 1963

I saw them on the shelves, picked them off and looked at them, but never read them. I had no context for him. No one told me stories about him. Oh, they told me that he wrote; they told me what he did. But they never told me about who he was. They didn’t tell me about his life, about his consciousness, about his wholeness, about his many faces, about those faces that looked like mine.

Twenty years pass. I discover the internet and YouTube. The internet includes his articles, and YouTube hosts his interviews. I read and hear and see this young black man with fire in his eyes and piercing clarity in his mind. I see this wrinkled graying sage who never fathered children but fathered many of us nevertheless. I watch him projected from the memories of his friends… Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Ishmael Reed.

He debates with the United States establishment and presents his thoughts to my parents’ generation of West Indian immigrants to the UK. I eavesdrop on my ancestor, grateful, reverent, wondering what he’d have seen in me, my millennium, this America.

From the Fire Next Time era:

It comes as a great shock around the age of 5 or 6 or 7, to realize that the flag to which you have pledged along with everybody else has not pledged allegiance to you. —James Baldwin

and

I’ve loved a few men, I’ve loved a few women. And a few people have loved me, and that’s, I suppose, all that’s saved my life. —James Baldwin

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Videos: Gabrielle Union & Dustin Hoffman

1.

At the 2013 Essence Magazine Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon this February, Gabrielle Union received the Fierce and Fearless Award. Her acceptance speech is remarkable. (It starts at about 1:03 of 11:32.)

Gabrielle Union at the 2013 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon | via OWN
Gabrielle Union at the 2013 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon | via OWN

“We live in a town that rewards pretending and I have been pretending to be fierce and fearless for a very long time. I was a victim masquerading as a survivor. I stayed when I should have run. I was quiet when I should have spoken up, and I turned a blind eye to injustice instead of having the courage to stand up for what’s right…

“Being fearless is simply doing the work. It’s doing the work that it takes to recognize you no longer want to function in dysfunction and misery and that you would actually like to be happy and not just say you’re happy.” —Gabrielle Union

2.

This AFI clip of Dustin Huffman discussing his process with the character Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie has made the rounds today. He began with the question, “How would you be different if you’d been born a woman?” and asked his make-up team to help make him “beautiful.”

“I said [to my wife] ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said ‘Why?’ I said ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself onscreen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out… There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I’ve have been brainwashed.’ [Tootsie] was never a comedy for me.” —Dustin Hoffman

Hoffman’s comments about wanting to “pass” as a woman and avoid double-takes when walking down the street made me uncomfortable, but I’m glad he had the insights he did. What if we lived in a world where our social categories didn’t make anyone vulnerable to street harassment, and where “beauty” wasn’t so restrictive that it made “interesting” people invisible?