How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
One hundred and twenty years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois described interactions with the whites in his circle of intellectuals, writers, politicians, activists, and business and religious leaders. At various political events and soirees, white people would ask him questions—what does he feel about the outrages in the South?—or proffer their acquaintances with Black people or their anti-racism bona fides. Du Bois pithily summarized these interactions into one underlying question that was never directly asked: “Mr. Du Bois, sir, how does it feel to be a problem?” A Black man in the United States, no matter how conventionally successful, was (and many would argue, still is) a walking, talking problem, a question mark that in fact poses a question to white supremacy but, in white supremacy’s maddening ignor(ing)ance, is not recognized as such.
Because what is centrally ignored is that the people on the margins are not the origin of the problem. They reveal the problem of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of colonialism, of discriminatory hierarchies. So, if white people are committed to anti-racism and if men are committed to overturning patriarchy, the action to do is to (accurately) take on the burden of being the problem rather than let the problem continue to be off-loaded to women and people of color.
There are many ways to do this. To bring it back to the hill I’ve chosen to die on: the jazz scene in Maine/New Hampshire is virtually all white men. This is the result of the inequalities that have preceded and produced this moment. To acknowledge that this land is the unceded homeland of the Wabanaki Confederacy, that a genocide has occurred at the hands of settler colonialism, is a way to help white people feel (accurately) the burden of the problem. That explains the whites, but how did jazz get here? College jazz programs started, at best, in predominantly white institutions (and at worst in all-white ones) and have passed on the values of European American patriarchy to their students. Naming the problem: “hello, we’re Just White Men,” is a way to claim the burden of the problem. Another way is to offer discounted $5 ticket prices to women and people of color when the band is only white men. This shoulders some of the price of the problem and is a change we can make today to lead into a better future: a world of more voices and interchange rather than everyone being crushed under the thumb of only one perspective that demonstrably lacks wisdom and courage.
This is a shift of the problem from those who must explain themselves at all times because they are not the norm, to those who are centered as the norm every day.
This is not about fault and blame. It is about honesty, awareness, and taking care of ourselves. Because ultimately, there is a grave cost for ignorance, and it’s not paid by others. We need to ignore in order to do harm. If we really look and listen, if we really see and hear, we cannot intentionally do harm. I will elaborate on this in the next post.
