Your Writing Has Power. Use It To Be Anti-Oppressive.
Lessons From a White Supremacy Detective #1: Writing With Privilege, Power, and Prejudice in Mind
I literally smash things for a living- namely racism and genderphobia and as you might guess, I’m surrounded by lessons about power, equity and anti-oppression. Lessons from a white supremacy detective is a series of 10 things I’ve learned about people, systems, and how we use our power to do great shit in the world. Here’s #1.
I’m an anti-oppression consultant and multidisciplinary artist, and one of the things I do at the convergence of both is radical copy editing. Meaning, people hire me to help them refine personal essays, all staff emails, ads for Facebook, copy for websites etc., and oftentimes the folks looking for copy through a lens of bias awareness begin by saying one thing:
I just don’t want to say anything that hurts anyone’s feelings.
And not wanting someone to leave the figurative table of your writing feeling hurt is understandable. But when we write through a perspective that accounts for being radically honest about the existence and experiences of queer folks, women, Black folks, femmes, non binary people — we take on a new responsibility. And this new responsibility is a commitment to doing all in our power to interrupt systems of oppression; systems that begin with ideas communicated in person and on paper. It means doing all in our power to disrupt belief systems that keep well intentioned people prioritized over the harm they cause the most marginalized who are out to survive so that they may one day thrive.
Here’s your first lesson: you will hurt people’s feelings and to keep growing you must learn to be okay with that.
The reality is not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings is not enough. Some of the best writing, some of the most captivating work is made great because it is not all inclusive. Because it does not seek to please every single person who reads it — because the writer whether they be exploring fiction or non-fiction understands that their writing is not for them, but their writing is for those who need it. And when we write for people who need our work it is guaranteed that more dominant populations of folks who are used to being centered and having their harm ignored (I.e. white people, cis het people, people with economic privilege for example) will be hurt that we are disrupting that pattern with writing established in acknowledgement and embrace of people who have systemically had their power taken away from them time and time again. So, when you sit down to compose your copy through a lens that considers the past and present dynamics of power, you make a decision to hurt someone’s feelings and as an individual with values and principles you decide early on who those people will be and why. Whose feelings are you willing to hurt?
Here’s your second lesson: It’s Your World Baby. Define it. *grandma voice*
Through writing we develop community. We decide what that community will look like by what we write about and how we write it. Everyone has a different idea of what community means. I define it through a framework I created which is made up of three parts:
Inclusion,
Autonomy,
and Exclusion
Inclusion defines the people who are a lot like us, who have principles, beliefs, and experiences like our own and who will most likely want to engage with us because they already admire our work and feel connected to the expression of our identity and our values. They choose to include themselves in part because they are a lot like us. Inclusion is the founding bed of community because it is the first group of people who embrace our experiences because it isn’t very hard “to get” us and our why.
Autonomy describes the way we frame sitting at our table for the folks whose experiences and identities differ greatly from our own. Within the context of our copy, these are people who find us because we welcome them by directly communicating and demonstrating our commitment to interrupting the ways they’re harmed by oppressive beliefs and biases. These folks discover our work on the internet and lurk on our timelines to see if we are the kind of someone using our power to get theirs back to them. The idea is that you’re inviting marginalized folks in not to sit at your table as you do, but to exist independently of you while being welcomed and looked after and protected like they deserve.
Exclusion is my favorite. We hear the word “exclusion” and we think only about kicking somebody out- and that’s an important part of it, yes! But that is not the only part. Exclusion is when we consistently articulate acceptable standards of behavior within the spaces we inhabit in real life and on the internet. People read our work and we make sure it’s easy for them to see just how much we care about the health and wellbeing of women, of femmes, of Black folks, of queer folks, etc., and after witnessing this undeniably direct articulation of where we stand, these people don’t take out their wallet to invest in us or click the “follow” button because they don’t want to be in a space where people whose identies they don’t share are offered community that cares about their wellbeing and seeks to share power with them. Those in the exclusion category choose not to follow a set standard of behavior that we have painstankingly articulated with great intention in our copy so they auto-opt out of our community because they know where they stand. And because of what we’ve written they know where we stand and they’ve decided not to stand where we are. So, in effect, they literally self-exclude.
Ask yourself, who do I want in my community and how do I build up the courage to write in such a way that people know exactly who I am and what I believe in? Who is included? What does autonomy look like? Who self-excludes?
Lesson #3: Find out what you’re about and then build that fried chicken stand.
In my hood, I know where to find fried chicken. I can’t even eat fried chicken because I have the curse of a poultry allergy (damn you, colonizers!) but still I know where to find the best fried chicken in my city. And that’s because the owners of those chicken spots know how to make themselves known and they consistently articulate what they believe in — good fried chicken. They advertise family and friends discounts knowing you’ll go in there and buy 100 wings to share with 10 people and those 10 people when they’re ready for the oh so deliciousness of chicken wings will become customers and the cycle will begin again. (If you’re vegan just imagine I’m talking about fried celery wings here.) The connection is writing through a lens of power means before we can build our stand around something that matters to us — which may or may not be fried — we have to know first what we stand for. What do you think about capitalism? What are your thoughts on sexual liberation? How do you feel about women sharing power with each other in intersectional spaces? How do you deal with your implicit biases towards people whose identities you don’t share? Those are just a few questions to get you thinking within the context of subjects you’re drawn to. Once you have a clear idea of what you believe, you have to develop a principle that will guide you in your writing. Principles are longterm. Rules are contextual and for the right now. That’s what makes them different. For example, one of my principles is:
I will use the power I have — the power of satire, culinary themed commentary, and the loud tenor of my voice to dismantle beliefs and ideas that perpetuate emotional abuse.
I carry this principle everywhere I go and it applies to everything I do. When you read it, you understand that it means embracing my talents as a coach, a comedian, a speaker, and a writer. You understand that it means that in order to stop the perpetuation of emotional abuse, I have to actually do something. So it’s not just about what I believe in, it is a principle that requires me to act, and as a principle it covers the specific focus of my work which is race and gender, but also does not restrict me from speaking up and out against emotional abuse in all of its forms. In addition, it means that when I write or edit I am looking for belief systems that perpetuate racism, sexism, or transphobia and when I see those things- I edit them out. A principle is something you live with that you can carry with you into everything that you do.
The second part of this lesson is implicit bias. Every single person in the world carries harmful implicit biases with them in their brains. It is inescapable and is just the reality of living. Implicit biases are the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. So that one time I read a lesson plan about anti-racism and it said “The settelers needed slavery to establish their vision for America,” I knew that I was seeing inside the subconscious mind of the white writer who composed that without seeing it as an argument for the institution of slavery.
Our principles won’t be anywhere near effective if we don’t recognize the fact that we hold implicit biases that move us to say, do, and believe harmful mythologies about identities that we share and identities that we don’t.
When we develop our principles we gotta account for that bias and that means deep introspection that gets to the root of what we think and feel. Not what we’re supposed to think, not what we’re supposed to feel but what we think and believe. It’s our job to do the work of unearthing an understanding of what we’re led to believe and what is actually true. This is critical because when we embrace our fallibility we are more likely to account for our biases and position ourselves to do something about them. We won’t assume that being a good person means that we will always see those biases when they come out of us, because we won’t. We’ll also take the time to invest in learning more about identities across lines of race, gender, sexuality, disability, size, economy that we don’t share — because the reality is we don’t know what we don’t know until we know. Education is critical to awareness and growth.
This is only the beginning but it is a great place to start, and that friends is the end of this first chapter of Lessons From a White Supremacy Detective. Nine more are coming your way.
