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Social justice and the examination of privilege and inequality is not about harshing squee, ruining stories, attacking people, or policing humor and self expression.  These are individual, micro parts of incredibly large and pervasive problems.  Those who take the time to question problematic attitudes and beliefs are not trying to “ruin” it for everyone else. 

It was already ruined, because that’s what privilege and inequality does.  It creates a social context that is damaged, that produces damaged people, damaged narratives, damaged relationships.  In our society as it exists today, men and women cannot have a relationship that isn’t damaged by the kyriarchy, because it creates a social context in which he always, always has power over her.  Even if he examines his privilege, understands it, works against it—it still exists. 

That show you love, that kind of joke you like, the relationships you have, the relationships your parents had—these things are damaged, these things are suffering because of the internal and external systems of inequality and a society in which there is always a group with the most power.  Narratives and economies and people can’t exist in these systems without suffering from their damaging effects.  Being in a group with power over another group, even if you know you have that power, creates a damaging and problematic context for all of your interactions with that group.  Being aware of that fact, thinking before you speak, and being open to criticism and unpacking of your privilege is the best you can do.

And it needs to be done, because as long as the system exists, all of these things are ruined.  All of these things are broken, and the people calling you out and trying to educate you are doing their best to fix what they can—the micro—in an attempt to make people aware of and critical of the system that creates these damaging contexts for human interaction and expression. 

Privilege isn’t something we made up to pin people with when we think they’re wrong, privilege isn’t something you can shake off by explaining how, bad you’ve got it too—privilege isn’t something you can shake off by accepting and being aware of your privilege.  It doesn’t go away until society stops affording it to you, and it doesn’t stop damaging your interactions with the rest of the world.

Refusing to accept your privilege is accepting the fact that society is broken, that you are in a position of power over others and this power negatively affects your attitudes, beliefs, and actions.  Rejecting social justice or crying about reverse-isms is making a conscious decision to preserve a damaged and damaging status quo, to remain broken, to remain married to broken things and perpetuate your broken relationship to the rest of the world because society has decided that you get to benefit from it.  When you reject social justice and reject the fact of your privilege, you are deciding to preserve the broken context our lives play out within because it’s working for you.

But it’s not working for me.  It’s not working for anyone who isn’t considered white, male, middle to upper class, neurotypical, able-bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual, uses English as their first language, has citizenship in the country where they reside, resides in a country where the freedoms democratic nations take for granted don’t exist, doesn’t have access to education, doesn’t have access to enough food to live on.

To us, it is nothing but broken, can never be anything but broken as long as the system works to promote the interests of one group over every other, and that is why we call you out on your privilege.  That is why we make spaces for ourselves, because the broken social context we live in makes every other space your space.  You have a choice to ignore how broken the world is because that is what your privilege affords you: the choice of abstaining, the choice of not believing, the choice of leaving things lie. 

But for me, for people like me: everything is broken, and it needs to be fixed.

“While previous research has demonstrated inconsistencies in racial vital statistics, the processes creating these discrepancies are not well understood. We explored whether seemingly non-racial characteristics of individuals, such as their cause of death, affect how they are perceived racially by others. Our results demonstrate that otherwise similar Americans whose underlying cause of death was chronic liver disease or cirrhosis were more likely to be classified as American Indian on their death certificate than Americans who died of other causes – even if they were not classified as American Indian by their next of kin in a subsequent survey. A similar pattern exists between dying of homicide and the likelihood of being classified as Black. These findings suggest that the racial information recorded in vital statistics may be affected by the same kinds of social processes that shape racial classification more broadly. Research shows that changes in how people are racially classified over their lifetime are related to changes in social status that conform to widely held racial stereotypes [6]. Just as Americans are less likely to be seen as white by a survey interviewer after they have been incarcerated, unemployed or fallen into poverty, we conclude that stereotypes about who is likely to die a particular kind of death may color our official vital statistics.” posted in plosone

This post is inspired by Sarah Scaturro‘s comments to one of my previous posts about the Black Fashion Museum Collection. In her comments, she mentions the Save Our African-American Treasures program, which she describes as “an Antiques Roadshow (minus the price appraisal) type of event” that travels to different cities to discover, preserve, and celebrate the material cultural histories of African Americans.

One of the reasons I was so intrigued by this program is precisely because it doesn’t operate through the heritage capitalist logics of the Antiques Roadshow on PBS. From what I can tell, the Save Our African-American Treasures program is primarily a conservation effort and not a public display of one’s vested interest in the heritage of Americana. It’s the Forest Gump-like display and valorization of what I can only describe as “heritage capitalism” by the predominantly white appraisers and guests that irks me about the Antiques Roadshow. (Why is there so little scholarship on the Antiques Roadshow‘s circuits of commodities, capitalism, and racial citizenship?)

I began watching the Antiques Roadshow on and off just a couple of months ago. What I found amusing about the show is the guests’ reactions to the appraisals of their family heirlooms – you can tell when someone is genuinely surprised or disappointed with the estimate and when they’re feigning surprise. Also funny (to me, at least) are the various stories guests tell about how they or their families acquired these objects. Most are pretty quotidian stories about unexpected discoveries at yard sales, thrift stores, and estate sales but some are really grand narratives about their genetic linkages to American founding fathers, European royalty, and a motley crew of adventure-seeking, risk-taking, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, off-the-beaten-path family relatives who acquired Persian rugs, Chinese Ming vases (always Ming era), French antique jewelry, and Native American dolls in their world adventures. I have to admit that I get a little giddy when the appraisers myth-bust these stories. There was an episode devoted to family myth-busting, if I remember correctly.  Actually, Marie Antoinette never owned this hair comb set you inherited from your great-aunt. It’s likely a reproduction made in the 1940s in Watertown, New York.

Other than the human interest aspects of the show, I never found it that interesting. (It’s probably because I wouldn’t know a Biedermeier from an Oscar Meyer, as Martin Crane put it in the Frasier episode featuring the Antiques Roadshow called “A Tsar is Born”.) But my casual disinterest turned into a serious criticism of the show when I caught this recent appraisal of a Tlingit (indigenous people of Alaska) bowl and ladle.

The guest narrates a valiant story about Colonel Charles Erskine Scott Wood (the great-great-grandfather of the guest),who was on a “scientific expedition” to the Sitka area of Alaska in the spring of 1877 when he somehow came upon this bowl and ladle. The guest is unclear on the details: “And I don’t know specifically if he was given these or if he may have bartered something.” (That these objects might have been stolen is not a possibility imagined by the guest but one that I immediately considered.)

Note the partial image of Colonel Charles Erskine Scott Wood decked out in classic imperialist garb.

After her story, the appraiser fills in the details about the history of the bowl and ladle telling her and viewers, “These would have been considered family heirlooms of the Tlingit people.” “These objects are alive in the Native consciousness.” “It’s as rare as can be. It’s a Native American masterpiece.” The guest nods and utters a few “wow”s while she listens. (Meanwhile, I’m screaming, Give them back! Give them back!)

The excitement builds, reaching the climactic event: the actual appraisal. “The mountain sheep horn ladle at auction would sell in the range of about $75,000 … at auction this bowl would realize easily in the $175,000 to $225,000 range.”  Overcome with emotion about her cultural-capital inheritance of the spoils of history, she responds thusly:

The guest’s facial gesture projects a self-satisfied smugness that exemplifies the privileges of heritage capitalism. Hardly concerned about verifying how someone else‘s rare “family heirlooms” and “masterpieces” came into her family’s possession, she’s simply thrilled to have them.

More important than the monetary value of these objects, is the wealth they materially signify: the wealth that comes from centuries’ long and continuous accumulation of property and assets, the emotional and physical security and entitlements such property and assets enable, and the ability to pass down to future generations the socioeconomic status that inheres to such property and assets. This wealth secures and reproduces, as George Lipsitz explains in his book with the same name, “the possessive investment in whiteness.”

Whiteness is more than a racial identification; it’s a racial inheritance of a history of privilege, property, and opportunity secured by and through heritage capitalism. More still, “the advantages of whiteness,” as Lipsitz asserts, “[are] carved out of other people’s disadvantages.” In situating the bowl and ladle within her family history in the context of a public television show, these objects become public objects of a particular heritage of whiteness. Their public display publicly recognizes and reaffirms this racial narrative of American heritage – one that depends on the historical and ongoing disadvantaging of Tlingit people and their descendants. The significance of the bowl and ladle to the Tlingit are contained and limited to the ways their exotica adds to the wealth of the guest’s inheritance, to the way they help to accumulate further the possessive investment in whiteness. Through the  Antiques Roadshow, “the structural and cultural forces that racialize rights, opportunities, and life chances in [the U.S.]” are sentimentalized as heritage and secured as natural (Lipsitz).

Such appropriations are not external to fashion. Mimi’s compilation of blog posts addressing “native appropriations” in so-called hipster fashions as well as the numerous comments we received about this issue bear this out well. The bowl and the ladle at the Antiques Roadshow, like the feather headdress at Urban Outfitters, are put into the service of  “materializing,” in Philip Deloria’s words, “a romantic past” forged by a long and persistent tradition in America of “playing Indian.” This tradition, Deloria reminds, “clings tightly to the contours of power” to create a national subjectivity of whiteness constituted through racially gendered and classed “contrasts.”

The recent addition of clothes as a category of antiques explored on the Antiques Roadshow makes alternative programs like the Save Our African-American Treasures program all the more important for materializing non-dominant histories and for articulating a radical politics of vintage. (Mimi’s already begun this project in her series of posts organized under the category “Vintage Politics!)

If you’re interested in watching the fashion appraisals on Antique Roadshow, look for episodes in which appraiser of antique clothing, lace, and textiles Karen Augusta appears.