more editorial grumbling ...

I'm reviewing a manuscript that has already been marked up by other editors. It's an analysis of the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review -- so it's about military-related things -- and there's a sentence about how DoD's "adoption of the term 'long ear' represents an improvement over" blah blah blah.

Which, if you paid any attention to military-related rhetoric at all (and, for values of you = people likely to be reading this LJ, you probably don't -- I mean, I wouldn't if it weren't MY JOB to edit things like this), would make you giggle, because he doesn't mean "long ear," he means "long war." Heh. That's a funny typo.

On the other hand, if you were one of the editors who marked this up before I got to it, you might circle the phrase "long ear" and write in the margin, "never heard of this before ..." or "me neither." Because, despite it also being THEIR JOB to edit things like this, they apparently don't pay any more attention to military-related rhetoric than you do.

Big Damn Race Post

International Blog Against Racism Week was last week, and I didn't post anything, but I read some things, and some of them inspired me and some of them made me cranky, so now I'm belatedly posting on the topic.

I get so fed up with white people who seem to think that if they aren't black and they aren't in the Klan, racial injustice doesn't have anything to do with them. In particular, the "my family wasn't even here then" argument (in reference to slavery) sets me off. As it happens, my family *was* here then, in the South no less, and while I don't believe any of'em were plantation owners (and I'm pretty sure grandma would've bragged about it if any of them were, because grandma was an old-school white supremacist), it's a good bet some of my direct ancestors owned people, so my hands are what you might call filthy.

But supposing your grandparents arrived on these shores sometime after the Emancipation Proclamation: Your hands aren't spotless either. Because achieving racial justice is not about making up for the injustices of the past (mighty though they are); it's about doing everything we can to eliminate the ongoing injustices of the present day. And they ARE ongoing, and just because you aren't burning crosses or sipping chablis at the club while Biff plays nine holes, doesn't mean you aren't benefiting from entrenched white privilege.

Now maybe you say, "but I'm a woman [or Jewish, or poor, or whatever]." I don't want to hear it. It's entirely possible you've been a victim of patriarchy or anti-semitism or classism or whatever; that doesn't negate your white privilege. Own it, damn it.

In a (probably misguided) attempted to own my own white privilege, I've compiled ( a list of all the times I can be reasonably certain my skin color has given me an advantage. )

I don’t post this list as some kind of public self-flagellation, but more in the hopes that if there’s any white American reading this who somehow feels like s/he has received no benefit whatsoever from white privilege, s/he will rethink that position right quick.

I don’t spend my days wracked with guilt about my white privilege, nor do I feel that I (or any other white person) should decline job offers or wave away cab drivers or burn YA novels that have white protagonists. But I think we (meaning beneficiaries of white privilege) need to be aware of how we’re benefiting and do what we can to level the playing field.

Here’s ( a partial list of things we can do. )

I wish I could claim I do everything on this list; composing it has made me realise how much more I could and should be doing to combat racism.

Here endeth the lesson.