I tried to ignore him and talk to the Lord
Pray for him, cause some fools just love to perform
You know the type loud as a motor bike
But wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight
-Jay-Z, “99 Problems”
A juxtaposition.
There’s an old Cherokee story from my youth that I try to remind myself of whenever I find times of trouble and tribulation. I didn’t realize it was a Cherokee story at first– I thought it was just something my mom said. It turns out a number of things in my life that were chalked up as “from your crazy Mother” are the legacy of my race, the culture that shapes me.
Anyway, I was saying, there’s this Cherokee story. A young man is involved in what we’ll call a “situation,” and he comes to his grandfather to share his displeasure. He asks his grandfather about good and bad, about anger and hatred. The grandfather, after listening, responds as such. “It is difficult, my son. I have two wolves inside me. One is kind, gentle, nurturing and understanding. It guides me on the way to what is right and what is true, is loyal and just. The other is selfish and angry. It revels in negativity and seeks only to destroy. The two wolves fight, constantly, struggling for control. The same fight happens inside you– inside everyone.”
“How do you figure out which one will win?” the boy asks, his full attention on the elder.
“It depends which one you feed,” he says in response.
So what does a Jay-Z song accused of being sexist and a Cherokee story that numerous white people have emblazoned on wood art and tried to sell at kiosks in the mall have to do with anything, right?
I want to tell another story.
As I’ve pointed out here already, I’m mixed-blood Cherokee. When one is Cherokee, one tends to hear about all the other Native Americans in the field just as a point-of-order (it’s similar to how white people talk about their black friends when around black people, or sort of like the glare I give people when I say “we need more non-white voices in technical communication” and people say “there’s Adam Banks.” Note: there IS Adam Banks, and I LOVE the guy. He’s amazing. But when you stop at one you’ve illuminated the problem without me needing to glare at you again). Anyway, people always mention the others of your race to you. And so I was sitting one day not long ago with a few scholars when the name of another Native American scholar came up. I was asked about the person (and, sadly, I didn’t disprove the “we all know each other” stereotype because it was someone I know). I spoke at length about this person’s scholarship. Then the questioner got to the point I believe they (I’m breaking grammar rules to protect the gender and identity of everyone involved) wanted to make: “I heard they’re really mean.”
I took a deep breath.
Those who know me, and who have been reading here on my blog or have seen any of my current work, know that one of the things I’ve particularly interested in researching and discussing with people is how cultural expectations in the academy put some cultural behaviors strange, marked disadvantage. After all, it is an Ivory Tower, and as such the things that upper-to-middle-class-white-dudes do are the “standard.”
I let out the breath.
Inside me, two wolves. The good wolf, calmly says “That’s bait. Be careful. Be gentle. You know how to answer this.” The bad wolf, as if singing along to the same Rage Against the Machine song he is usually singing along to, bellows “FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!” Advantage, good wolf via logic TKO, though points to evil wolf for working an F-bomb into my academic blogging.
I explain, calmly, the situation the Native American scholar is placed in when discussing issues of race in an all-or-mostly-white conversation. It is our nature to listen, to wait for a calm moment, a break, to speak. It is likewise our nature to attempt to find commonalities and create harmony. We don’t pop off in the faces of our elders. It is our nature to approach problems as things we can offer ways to solve. Ergo racist commentaries are teachable moments first and things to shake fists at second.
Unfortunately, this is the moment where I have to be just a little bit insulting. Upper-to-Middle-Class White Men– who I’ve walked among my whole life– at least appear on the surface to love nothing more than interrupting in the middle of an argument to toss in their two cents, often followed by something incredibly sarcastic, sometimes also followed with a high five. This is, consequently, where the use of the word “burn” after someone says something in an argument came from. Poster boys for this behavior which you might know include Rush Limbaugh, Rand Paul, Dane Cook, Sean Hannity… I think you get my point. Now academics, generally, are much better behaved than the list of people I just named. But sometimes they aren’t. I’ve actually been interrupted by someone who wanted to tell me I was a racist, and a fool, because I used a quote from Al Sharpton to respond to a racist mascot. I never did figure out how the Native American using the African American reverend’s quote to refute the white theorist was “racist,” but I didn’t need to because the guy who called me racist, in the same interruption, changed the direction of the conversation. Funny how that happens.
Now imagine the scene when a little bit of white guilt wells up, and suddenly there are twenty or so white men trying to essentially justify racism, talking in this particular situation– where the scholar to which I referred earlier looked “mean”– about the University of Illinois’ famed dancing Chief Illiniwek. If you, my reader, have ever heard a discussion of said Chief, it starts off innocently enough, but along about the three minute mark, someone always says one of two things: 1) “Well, he wasn’t that bad” or 2) “I’ve never met a single Indian who minded him.”
There is only one answer to each of those. I will let my angry wolf handle this one:
1) Yes, he FUCKING IS that FUCKING BAD! He dances like a drunken grandpa from the 1950s while wearing skins, faux warpaint, and a headdress, and he does this only because it makes a bunch of white people laugh and cheer during the moments when a sub-par basketball or football team has taken a break from losing.
2) Have you met ME? Have you met all the people who protested? You know what GOOGLE is? Have you ever, even for a second, thought about the possibility that people exist that you haven’t met?
Do you see what just happened? I look very, very mad, yes? Furious, even. There’s a reason for that. It’s the bind of the Native American in the discussion of race.
This, consequently, is the only way I can truly ever be heard in a group of white people where we got knee-deep in this discussion, sans of course being the moderator. I know, because I’ve faded away in numerous class discussions about “the chief” by following my heart and behaving as I should, trying to create a sense of calm and draw people back to discussion. “well, hold on a second, I’m not sure that everyone realizes how insulting this is…” gets drowned out by the guy who proclaims “He was a tradition here! We love the Chief!” Then there are high fives. During the high five, I might get in a “wait a minute,” but on the one occasion where I did, it was labeled by the professor of that particular class as a “hostile” response. I wish that was me being over-dramatic to make a point, but it isn’t. Another professor, when I tried to explain this double-bind after somehow magically getting control of the discussion for a second, shouted at me –yes, SHOUTED AT ME– “you ARE NOT Cherokee!” repeatedly until I finally said, sarcastically “I’m sorry?” and the professor took it as a statement and shifted the discussion.
So this other scholar… this person appeared “mean” because instead of being what that scholar would normally be (agreeable, polite, logical, collaborative), that scholar said “um, you’re being racist. Here’s why.”
And so I said, to the person asking me, “I think the impression that others get of Native American scholars is shaped in large part by the fact that when we try to talk about issues of race, we have to abandon our usual mode of communication in order to ‘hold our own’ with someone who is louder and less respectful or we have to accept that we will be bowled over in the discussion. I don’t think [person] is mean at all. I think [person] just got tired of a system that attempts to inscribe its whiteness upon everyone and everything without any sort of consent. Instead of accepting the silence, [person] tried to open some eyes. It’s not really our fault that we appear strange when we’re forced to behave in ways that we find culturally abhorrent.”
And the response, so typical, so expected…
“You don’t have to be mean about it, Phill.”
You can imagine for yourself what my bad wolf had to say in response.