Black Lives and Bathrooms by J. E. Sumerau and Eric Anthony Grollman

Author:J. E. Sumerau and Eric Anthony Grollman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: undefined
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

This respondent—and all but one of the other respondents—talked about education and awareness as the proper methods for minorities to interact with the rest of society. The assumption, as in the quote above, was that education wasn’t political and political wasn’t good. Further, the implication from this and other respondents was that if privileged people were more aware of the minority groups, then things might somehow get better without any political activity or fighting. Although this is a viewpoint that almost all of history contradicts (see Foucault 1977; Gates 2013; Loewen 1995, 2005; Samuels 2014 for examples), it fits with cultural narratives that position awareness and education as the only necessary ingredients for a better world.

As suggested in some earlier quotes in this book, the emphasis on education also went in another direction during the interviews. Specifically, our respondents often suggested that the movements would not exist if the people in them were better educated. As noted in earlier chapters, there was nothing to suggest the assumptions about the educational levels of the movement members were in any way different, much less below, those of our white cisgender respondents, but the assumption arose from our respondents regularly. In such cases, as a cisgender white woman noted, respondents argued that:

The thing is the activism stuff is not a good plan. I just don’t think it’s very smart. They probably don’t know any better, but they would do better if they got involved with voting and that kind of stuff instead of the protest stuff. The thing is that America is a democracy so they just need to get involved in that.

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