nothing else rhymes: http://colorblinding.tumblr.com/post/23614589665/stop-trying-to-dig-up-dirt-about-other-people-just#disqus_thread
Stop trying to dig up dirt about other people just because they called you out on your anti-Black racism. It wasn’t just one person it was a shitload of people. You need to stop.— Asked by Anonymous
Where is my anti-black racism exactly? Do you even know what anti-blackness actually means?...
I hope this settles things.
Real talk, colorblinding, I don't appreciate the deployment of me as the black-friend who knows more about anti-blackness than other people on tumblr, let alone jeromeiznice and james-bliss; as much as I know and understand, I'm experientially and textually a novice by comparison--I believe I mentioned this at some point.
At any rate, if you recall, we were talking about the particular post you made in response to someone being concerned about a random follower who claimed to be studying black women. With good intentions, you posted a generic list of suggestions about how to better protect oneself from such situations on the internet, reblogging the original post. What you told me was that the responses were pretty much people yelling anti-blackness at you without explanation; that, essentially, everyone was coming down on your well-intentioned post.
I claimed that independently, there wasn't anything wrong with what you said about internet security but that the claims about you telling her how to use her space were somewhat valid in that you used her post to suggest how people should better protect oneself from privacy violations on the internet. The suggestions themselves are useful, but I remember telling you that given the context of being a black writer, a black woman writer, on tumblr, one who openly speaks on anti-blackness frequently--to be black is pretty much to speak on anti-blackness even without its invocation--the responses, even if they seem reactionary and unjustified, are to be expected when one is perpetually faced with and structured by violence--even in their own space. Part of what you said was that this was a public forum, and that her blog is public, so a follower being random and unwanted is a common occurrence and should be expected; I agreed, but I also made sure to point to the context, and that it's her space to feel threatened in, and it's her space to decide what's threatening and what's not; your post would obviously seem like a problem, it kinda makes her the issue, and doesn't really acknowledge the legitimacy of her fear, her blackness, or her structural existence relative to antiblackness qua the world.
In the way you told me about it (still haven't read the debate/argument/whatever), I said that the deployment of antiblackness was wrong. I didn't mean they didn't know what it was, nor did I mean that they didn't understand how to use it, but that just yelling it at antiblack posts wasn't going to prevent more antiblack posts, nor was it going to foster a discourse that you sought--one that allowed for coalition building between asians and blacks. I don't know if that's possible in this world, and you know my thinking about antiblackness and afro-pessimism in understanding asian-ness and post-colonial identities, but if that's what you seek to do, then these deployments of antiblackness are 'wrong.' The primary reason they're (the deployments, not the people) wrong, though, is that without careful explanation and analysis (which itself is kinda treading the line of anti-blackness since it demands blacks bear the onus of explanation, but it's an onus I don't particularly mind, which is why I said what I said), there is too much room for the other party, in this case you, to retaliate and claim that "it isn't antiblack to do X." This then fosters responses like "yes it is," and yours like, "no it isn't" with intermittent ad hominem attacks on both sides. Obviously, this works counterintuitively to both the black women who feel attacked (since without explanation and analysis, they leave the door open) and to you (since without inquisitiveness and humility, you draw ire and shatter the possibility of any kind of hope for the potential of a black-asian tumblr coalition space--not that I agree with coalition spaces as they occur now (see Sexton, anything).
What I was not saying, and I want to make this clear, is that they don't know how to deploy anti-blackness. I was in the first instance speaking on your particular account of the situation, and on that particular situation--while also venting my general frustration with the almost perpetual arguments a lot of the people with whom you are with odds get involved in, largely because I felt that even I couldn't say anything in them without fearing bringing argumentative wrath on my own head; and in the second, I was suggesting that for the goals of both parties, on the one hand to impossibly eradicate antiblackness (more likely just to point it out and shut it down when it shows up) and on the other to shorten the distance between discourses about Asian-ness and Blackness (again, not that I agree that this is possible--we've discussed my views on this), that kind of deployment was wrong.
If blacks read something as antiblack, the goal isn't to lash out in response and claim it's not; if blacks read something as antiblack without explanation, then accept the onus of inquisition and ask exactly how--even if the field is or seems hostile to you, and even if that hostility seems unjustified to you. It might seem 'unfair' to suggest that, but really the world is structured as antiblack, and this is how these blacks negotiate their blackness in it; that's just how it is, and to engage them from your position, you can only approach them humbly--if you really want to try to achieve the impossible and establish a coalition of asian and black writers on race, on tumblr and beyond, then, unfortunately, the onus is on you. Projecting back onto them is what keeps drawing their ire. I say they because I don't approach things on tumblr that way, but I am they as well.
I must have misspoken or something, but the above is what I meant. I apologize for any misconception.
Edit: Also, the litany of posts on colorblinding does have critical engagements in which analyses are presented on both sides, but they also seem to exemplify some of the above, and I would continue to suggest that, given antiblackness' newness to the academy (see James-bliss, "On Anti-blackness"), and given the lifelong experiences of the black scholars with whom you engage with antiblackness, not even including their excellent academic engagements with the paradigm, the approach be humility--which I hope would be met with something similar, but I wouldn't expect it (structural positionality and all)--because "that's just the way it is."
Which is to say that not engaging directly with anti-blackness as anti-blackness when it's called out is, to by circumvention or inadvertent (or deliberate) evasion, to be complicit with, on the same plane as, and thereby equivalent to being antiblack (intentional or not).
