Complacency as a Moral Goal
Posted by
KTK
Brooklynite, one of our sometime commenters here, has been working on a great essay on white anti-racism - the work that white people are obligated to do to reduce the impact of racism on society, and the difference between that - being actively anti-racist - and being “non-racist”. He’ll be posting it soon, so keep an eye out. But it has prompted some counter-revolutionary thinking on my part, which has caught me predictable amounts of shit over on his blog. Even so, something that occurs to me off and on about the question of the “obligation to activism” - the idea that we are all morally required to put effort into making the world better for the oppressed - has been triggered by that discussion, as well as by the recent furor in the feminist/person-of-color blogosphere over perceived white indifference to POC issues. I never know quite how to express this thought, or what significance it has given the world we actually do live in, but I’ll try it out here in the hope that no one will notice.
What occurs to me is this: anti-oppression activism of all kinds is a kind of contingent undertaking - a reaction to conditions as they are (and should not be) that seeks to achieve conditions as they are not (but should be). It is in a way Utopian, in that it seeks what in practical terms is unlikely, but more to the point in that it is reactive to conditions that simply should not be allowed to exist and conceivably might not if the world were a better place, or if we succeed in making it one in the future. In other words, action against inequality seeks to put itself out of business - to eliminate the conditions that make it necessary. The fact that it is currently necessary is a failure of those living today to undertake the work of eliminating it. To the extent that each of us has not adopted the anti-racist mindset, racism persists; to the extent that we do successfully spread anti-racism, racism will die, and with it the need for and practice of anti-racism. If this is true, the lack of engagement in activism against oppression may be a sign, in some cases, not of anti-progressive attitudes, but of overly optimistic, and progressive, ones.
