WHAT WILL WHITE CULTURE HAVE TO DO?
JADE MONTSERRAT, PHD UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE. Presented at The What Should White Culture Do? Art, Politics, Race symposium, Royal College of Art, Saturday 11 November 2017, 12:30 pm 1) Dear friends, let us remember Glissants words “Every time an individual or community attempts to define its place in it, even if this place is disputed, it helps blow the usual way of thinking off course, driving out the now weary rules of former classicisms, making new “followthroughs” to chaos-monde possible”. 2) Understanding that the question What Should White Culture Do limits, negates, responsibility and accountability through the word SHOULD, I will speak about iterations of The Rainbow Tribe project, as a project that moves towards giving voice to a more democratic aesthetic, as an affectionate demand to address What Will White Culture Have To Do? I don’t want you thinking that my being here as your white Culture representative (can I have a t-shirt of that?) can alleviate the urgency of action. I want you to change the world. We need to start thinking exceptionally, as Stephanie Baptist said to me on Wednesday. 3) “First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of 78 // PEEKABOO WE SEE YOU: WHITENESS
tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” “Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]” (University of Pennsylvania, 2018) 4) Alcoff in her article “What Should White People do?” is clear, suggesting there must be the “will to make significant sacrifices toward the eradication of white privilege”, adding “Part of white privilege has been precisely white’s ability to ignore the ways white racial identity has benefitted them.” In accordance with that sentiment Junot Diaz asserts that “it’ll take a lot to awaken those that have feasted well on our hegemonic structures.” 5) What collective strategies might we implement in resistance to structural racism and oppression? Morgan Quaintance in his e-flux article suggests refusal. How do we build to ensure our survival for refusal to work? In that case we need to consider collective refusal towards a level of joy. So where are our allies? Sandro Mezzadra suggests that “refusal is the origin of any politics of transformation.” The “No Surprise” letter suggests that we are solid, galvanized feminists, but for the
