My Place On The Ladder

Yesterday Shewara and I were downtown having random advetures like we do. We ate Tasmanian cheese in a cool bookstore, had dinner at a Thai restaurant, and concluded the evening by going to buy tickets for an upcoming concert by our favorite Peruvian singer, Eva Ayllon. Going up to the ticket counter, I promptly asked the woman there (early to mid-20s and Latina) for two tickets. Having lived in Peru for two months, I know that Peruvians pronounce "ll" something like a cross between "y" and "j", so her name is pronounced "Ay-jon"

Me: "We would like two tickets to the Eva Ayllon (Ay-jon) concert, please."

Her look goes from "helpful" to "condescending" almost immediately.

Her: "You mean Eva Ay-yon"

Instantly, I knew why she said this. She thought that I, are stereotypically-dressed white frat boy male, didn't know how to pronounce Spanish. I felt like responding:

"Posiblamente no lo sabes, pero estuve en Peru para dos meses en el verano del ano dos mil cuatro. Cuando estuve en Peru, aprendi hablar el Espanol Peruano, y ustedes pronuncian el "elle" asi "j" en Ingles. Comprendes?"

(You possibly may not know this, but I was in Peru for two months in the summer of 2004. When I was in Peru, I learned Peruvian Spanish, and they pronounce "ll" like an English "J'. Understand?")

But I didn't. I said nothing. And the remainder of this post will be me trying to figure out why.

. . . . . . . . .

In the spring of 2005, I was moderating a panel discussion on the role of race in academic society at the University of Illinois. Towards the end of the panel, the discussion was focusing on the changing ethnic makeup of graduate students, specifically how many peoples of other ethnicities are now being given the opportunity to study their own cultures in an academic setting - traditionally the white man's turf. I then posed a question:

"I completely understand the great accomplishment and necessity of allowing peoples of all ethnicities and nationalities to study their own cultures. But as these students play an increasing role in academia, I personally have encountered some resistance in my own studies. For exmaple, I once asked a graduate student if he recommended an anthropology course on 'Black Women and Culture,' and he promptly told me I had no business taking the class because I was not black, nor was I a woman, and that to learn about it would be paramount to racism. As a student who wishes to study art history and society in Africa and Latin America, who is trying to do meaningful work and spread the doctrine of multiculturalism and egalitrian pluralism, isn't it slightly prejudiced to deny me the opportunity to study these things because of my gender and the color of my skin?"

To my horror, the panel concluded that no, it was not. They told me that I, as a white male, needed to place myself inside the "discourse of power." As a white male, people like me have denied Africans and Latin Americans the right to study their own cultures (which we also destroyed and subjugated) for hundreds of years. To go into this discipline would be to further this problem, and thus I should stay away.

Of course I objected to this. Did men who were white males do all these terrible things? Yes. Did I? No. Why should I be held responsible for the sins of my predecessors?

My major complaint with contemporary movements in anthropology and other humanistic disciplines is that they claim to "eliminate" ethnocultural categories like "white," "black," "Western," "Oriental," "male," and "female." And they do - but only in theory. In real world applications, I feel that all we really do is keep the strictly constructed categories and then hypercorrect their position on this discursive power ladder by marginalizing and stereotyping the WASP elite. How do we correct for the poor positions Africans have been placed in? Deny white males the chance to study them. I am of the opinion that there are three ways to study a people: through their own eyes, through the eyes of others, and as they actually are. To get a full picture, we must fully examine all three approaches. Instead, what contemporary academia is trying to do is simply go from one myopic area of study to another without taking off the proverbial academic reading glasses and looking at the big picture that serious academic study allows.

This view boiled over to my class on "Women and Western Art, 1400-Present" a few weeks later. There were 32 people in this class - 30 women and 2 males, and I was the straight one. On this particular day I was wearing a basketball jersey (big Illini game later that night), so I was looking particularly fratboyish and potentially sexist. We had been assigned an article the class before that argued that, in all the societies of the world, men were viewed as being equated with "Culture" while women were equated with "Nature" and thus made subjectes of the male elite. Men did work and explored, ran the government, built and designed cities and social institutions - all things associated with "Culture." Women gave birth, cooked, cared for the home, and menstruated, all things associated with "Natural" processes. Thus, the article stated, male chauvinism and sexism was a universal truth, inherently ingrained in the minds of males from birth and now must be systematically done away with if women are ever to gain equal status with men. Every comment in the class before me (5 of them, all by females) made the point that the author was truly right. One girl went so far as to say that "It is impossible to argue with her conclusion." There was definitely a sense of empowerment in the room, and I, the white male in the very visible orange jersey, was the odd human out. And so, I decided to speak:

"My problem with this article is that it presupposes two major points. First, it assumes that all people everywhere have a conception of a Culture/Nature dichotomy, and that, if they do, they conceive of Nature as being inferior to Culture. For example, the Luba in Eastern Congo produce art that only depicts women (and depicts them in positions of power) - and they do this precisely because women are revered as the vehicle through which divine kings enter the world. Women are equated with nature, and they hold the most esteemed status in society for it."

The professor (who was female) praised me for being absolutely correct. In fact, the author of the article had published another paper a year later, recanting her first publication for entirely the same reasons I stated. But my damage had been done - even in my correct analysis of her argument, I had brought the feminist power trip in the classroom - a class concerned with the study of an historically male-dominated discipline which studied an historically male-dominated profession in its own right - to a screeching halt.

And so back to my concert tickets. I didn't respond to this woman because I would be labeled a racist whether I was right or wrong about the pronunciation. Even if I corrected her, even if I showed that I am in fact an educated, culturally aware white male who has tried so desperately to break with the sexist and racist past of his ancestors, I am still in the wrong. To correct her pronunciation would be to take away her ownership of her own cultural product - in this case the Spanish language. Her Spanish fluency is where she gets her cultural identity and pride, and I, by correcting her, take that away. On the flip side, since I said nothing, she can go on thinking that I am a stupid white male who is semi-ignorantly going out to try to experience culturally diverse things, but only in the context of my ritzy downtown Chicago international music club. I will be experiencing a priced and packaged version of Peru, which is all most white people really want. I should not and do not get to participate as a cultural member of Peruvianity, or Latino-ity, because of the color of my skin.

And I feel that this approach solves none of our problems, it only rearranges them. Instead of a discursive power ladder where whites males are on top, followed by white women and "other" men and women down the line, we are approaching a world where all ethnic groups exist on a level plane, but their dominions are separated by high walls. If I, as a white male, want to "experience" something of these other cultures, I am allowed to - but only so far as I can look. I cannot participate. I can look at a gallery of African art, but I can't talk about it. I can cheer at an immigration rally, but I can't march in it. I can support a woman's right to choose, but I can't join student organization for it. I can read about other cultures in the comfort of my own room - but I can't take a class, and I sure as hell can't get a Ph.D.

As you can see on the top of this blog, I have apologized for the fact that I am white and male. I want to study what I enjoy, and I do not need to feel bad about it.

Hablo espanol, y quiero entrar.

I speak Spanish, and I want in.