To Mitch!

7/17/16

To Mitch!

The time has come for me to write a letter that you may have known that I would write, eventually: an ode, a refrain. But not a goodbye. No, certainly not a goodbye.

I have struggled for many years to put words to paper and I know that the gravest sin I could have committed is only to have held back what I can give of myself, which is really about giving back. In so many ways you raised me: kept my chin held high, made sure I had a life outside of books. I still have your mask that you made in high school circumscribed in the words “King at Last.” I would like to think that it has been my anchor and helped me to keep my head on straight. I looked up to you as a carpenter and craftsman, as knowledgeable about cars and engines, of animals and the wilderness. I even taught 8^th grade math for two years and tried to keep kids from doing all the crazy things we used to do at that age! I still think about you all the time. Last week I rode my bike back out on Rosedale, through the part with all the hills that go out to Highway 100 and imagined that I was chasing you the whole time. I couldn’t keep up. I went through Indian Hill Nature Center and could hear Schlicht yelling at us about being good on our field trip, keeping our bug logs, and could see Jerry tackling trees and everyone laughing about it. The bridges are still there and the stream still runs beneath them.

I had always pictured you as Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, dodging mishaps, always sneaking by somehow without a scratch. I guess that’s why I’m angry about things. I wanted you to be here when I finished school in Colorado and I wanted you to be here when I went off to be a teacher so I could tell you all the things my kids said, about all the bike rides I went on. All the skateboarding I’ve been doing. I think that’s what I’ve missed the most is just the thought of how much fun it would’ve been to get into skateboarding together. Snowboarding was awesome and I’ll never forget jumping around on tables in our basements, strapped to a snowboard, balancing on odd pieces of furniture. I’ve heard this tribute in my mind for a  while and this year was the first time I noticed that I couldn’t just let my mind run when I ramble and trust that I would make good things in speech. I don’t know if that’s a fact about me getting old or having my mind on too many things, but right now that’s a fact.

You were the proof for so many of us that you could be young, bright, smart, well-liked – God, everyone in town knew and liked you – adventurous, funny. You were proof that we could have it all, and then some. You were our world.

I can’t tell you about all the things that I’ve learned or all the people I’ve met in the past few years, but I still want to try, to put my mind at ease knowing that I haven’t left you behind. In everything I do, I always know you are with me because I am not going through this alone and you were and are my best friend. I was afraid to come back to Cedar Rapids the year after you left, but now I think it’s time for me to be here and to be happy, and feel young and wild and free like you would want. I know, you’re saying “c’mon Veg, get on with it,” “okay, Reg, we get it. I’m here and I’m never leaving.” I know that’s what you’re saying because I can hear it just as much as I can hear the cicadas outside. Summers in Iowa man, gotta love ‘em. At least I’m not doing corn detassling this summer! Oh man. I was going to go out again for it, but just can’t submit myself to that any longer. Part of me is afraid to be alone with my mind for that long, and that is a new thing. I have never felt that before.  

I have met people that will totally destroy you and tear your entire life apart if you let them, and it’s not because they are bad people. It’s because the same thing happened to them and they do not know how to communicate this to others effectively. I have met the sweetest and brightest children, the wisest parents and grandparents, people who live well with everything handed to them, and others who work really hard for everything they have.

I don’t know why I’m doing this if for no other reason than to be able to trust my own voice again; to have a clearer mind. I want to be able to hear you when you call back to me, and to know that it’s really you there, just as I am sitting in this room. We have friends that are rockstars, friends that are musicians. We have friends in politics and in sports. Friends in law school and in business, friends that are married with children. Friends in music and in medicine. Friends that teach and dream. Friends that love and adore you. Friends that miss you.

It wouldn’t feel right for me to move on in life without writing you, so know this: I’m not writing to say goodbye. I’m writing to say write me back. That I can hear you when you laugh at my bad jokes and that I still chase you in the wind. That I didn’t catch you. That I couldn’t keep up. 

Postscript

1) I am most cogniscent here of circumscription as delineating or marking boundaries, and the closest thing we get to in geometry to overlap: "to construct or be constructed around (a geometrical figure) so as to touch as many points as possible." Circumscription thus gives a sign for how embedded "we are" "in each other." We see this in your work on Mask 1, in bridges over streams, and in friendship. 

2) To "mean," we have to love. It would sound rhetorical to say "you give me meaning," but we certainly don't get it in isolation! Logic and meaning are thus maddening and enriching, embodied and dissolving, solidifying and granulating, and none of these things, and something completely alter to these things. Friendship thus gives us an orientation in time, a project to organize our lives around, sources of authority, and a grounding for our reasons. You have been all of these things and more simply by being a source of love. 

How to Un-Steal a Continent

13 July 2016

Since the social ontology of whiteness is ethically unsound from a historical point of view, we need a political justification for our actions that does not begin "I am white, so therefore I am entitled to these actions that are off limits to everyone else: ..." The speciesist critique might add that the political justification for our arguments also cannot begin "I am a human, so therefore I am entitled to these forms of domination over non-human forms of life..." It is important to note here that the feminist or antiracist feminist critique here would not necessarily be to say that we can't have a political justification for our acts which begin "I am a male, so...," but rather, that we must root all forms of domination from our private, social, public, and political (which ideally are one in the same!) selves. 

I am not writing to suggest that colonization is the only historically relevant fact to say that the moral grounds of whiteness are unsound; I am suggesting that if our political justification for our actions does not respond to colonization, then we are participating in the act of forgetting white supremacy. 

Who loses out from that act of forgetting? Who benefits? 

The fact that it still needs to be said that whiteness is not an ethically sound source of authority is part of the issue.

To me, the question "What would it mean to socially mitigate white privilege in the US?" is equivalent to the question "What would it look like to seriously un-steal the continent, the economy, the education system, the political system, our religious systems, and "the criminal justice system?" We cannot undo history, but we can continually grapple with it in a way that gives us an ethically sound control of our future. 

The fact that there were people living on this continent for tens of thousands of years before colonizers and settlers came to this continent coupled with the fact that we have drastically low levels of representation of Native Americans in "American political institutions" means that the only way you can say that this representation was taken away from Natives are (listed in increasing amounts of colorblindness):

1) Natives did not have education and politicality/political modes of being prior to the arrival of whites to the continent

2) White representation was formed in socio-educational and political institutions without an act of violence

3) Said violence was justified because of white supremacy 

I think that all three claims are logically untenable and that if there are people here whose roots on this continent extend back for tens of thousands of years, their voices should take priority in forming our social and political institutions. This is not a radical claim; this derives political authority in something outside the promise of violence (i.e., duration and lived tenure on this continent) in a way that responds to the historically ethical unsoundness in the foundation of whiteness on this continent. 

The Eradication of -W-h-i-t-e- -S-u-p-r-e-m-a-c-y-

9 JULY 2016

Reginald Anderson

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

9 July 2016

OPINION OF THE WEEK

Conclusion 1: Whiteness is contingent

                How do we know this? Whiteness and relevant (meaning colonized[1]) racial identities were racialized through white supremacy. Mills’ account of the historical project of racial domination in The Racial Contract gives a suitable outline of the way in which whiteness and colonized racial identities are founded on white supremacy. The symptoms of the historical project of racial domination leave us with a material basis[2] for whiteness which has been used post hoc ergo propter hoc to fallaciously defend white supremacy because this is the only way in which white supremacy can logically be defended. Tone policing[3] is also often offered as pseudo-support for white supremacy. Since racialized identities are performed by humans within human societies, white supremacy is not separate from the ideologies and worldviews that human beings hold.

Conclusion 2: Whiteness can be leveraged for just means

                Given the fact that colonized racial identities are performed and reinforced through human beings, attacks on post hoc ergo propter hoc logically fallacious moral defenses of white supremacy and calling out tone policing are an attack on white supremacy itself. The question is thus not whether whiteness is a good or bad thing and whether you should feel guilty about colonized racial identities; it’s what you do with it that counts. The question is whether your whiteness is rooted in liberating others and eradicating white supremacy through an active grappling and wrestling with the origin of the historical project of racial domination in the Hegelian master self that fuels western expansion, black exclusion from the dialectic of recognition which produces self-consciousness (including missing a turning signal, even if that was the issue in why we lost Sandra Bland; reaching for an ID or wallet during a traffic stop by a cop, even if that was the issue in why we lost Philando Castile; or freedom of expression in wearing a hooded sweatshirt, even if that was the issue in why we lost Trayvon Martin), and asking yourself whether the world we live in is safe for human beings who are not like you. If we were to take seriously the notion that Leonard Peltier should and could be removed from jail, how many people would have to speak up about it to free him? Where would those voices have to speak from to register as a valid questioning of his criminality?

Conclusion 3: Black Lives Matter Given the fact that eradicating white supremacy is not done by questioning whether white people should feel good or bad about colonized racial identities, the eradication of white supremacy is to be prioritized over the protection of the white fragility complex. To say that my work is dedicated to the eradication of white supremacy is to say that Black Lives Matter more than job security, materialism, militarism, living out your dreams, how much money I will make this week, and how much money I will make next week. To say that my work is dedicated to the eradication of white supremacy is to say that Black Lives Matter more than for-profit prisons and the American Criminal Justice System. In my opinion, to say my work is dedicated to the eradication of white supremacy is to say that Black Lives Matter more than the American education, judicial, and economic systems, and that Black Lives Matter more than American Christianity[4] or the perpetuation of whiteness as a colonized racial identity.

Sometimes if you leave the candle behind you find that the sun was out the whole time…

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[1] The moment of biting one’s tongue occurs as a result of “whiteness,” “white supremacy,” and “colonized” being colonized terms

[2] Youtube: “Charles Mills on Materializing Race,” Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtU5TjPiyO0. 9 July 2016.

[3] http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/tone-policing-and-privilege/

[4] This is where I will be thrown away. I am here referring to American Christianity as a tax-deductible, state-run religion (following Vine Deloria, Jr.’s God is Red) which was imposed on this continent through violence during the conquest of North America and South America. Also, since Jesus was Jewish, it would be anti-Semitic to oppose his followers. This is where I differ from Nietzsche’s self-identifying as the Antichrist and Osho’s making jokes at Jesus’ expense.