I had trouble responding to a post by Lauren on Feministe entitled “Consider the Hijab: Blogging Against Racism” - or rather, it wasn’t the article itself I had so much difficulty reacting to, it was the discussion that followed. Part of the reason I found myself tongue-twisted was the framework within which I perceived my reaction. I have begun to react on a conscious level only when there is an audience present (which is worrying, yes), and that requires that reactions be moulded into forms appropriate to their specific audiences. (Postmodernism rears its dreadlocked head.) When it comes to this blog, I can’t picture my (tiny) audience and so I don’t know how to shape my entries (hence the extreme esoterica of some posts and the cold distance of others). So besides a quickfix link, I stayed silent.

After having followed the discussion and let the ideas stew for a while, I decided to mail the link to an old professor of mine, who I thought might be interested in it. (She taught IDIS 302, “Race” and Racism.) I attached a note, and that note will be this entry.

While procrastinating, I came across a blog entry someone had posted on the Net about a girl who’d chosen not to wear her hijab one day as a part of a project. The article itself is pretty interesting, but it’s the ensuing discussion that really fascinates me - even when it unnerves, making me feel, as it does, very much like an experiment, or like an as yet identified life form under severe scrutiny. A potential bomb threat that everyone is careful to walk carefully around.

I thought you might find it interesting, because the opinions expressed in the discussion are pretty diverse - or at least, diversely argued. It’s proof that there is a diversity even among racist viewpoints - and after all, that’s what makes anti-racist initiatives so difficult, isn’t it? For every situation, there a multitude of opinions, and it’s a futile job trying to fit them into boxes: racist or not. There’s a grading, almost, from the one extreme to the next. (Which I remember you talked about.) Recognising that there is no one Racist, I realised from this article, is about as important as recognising that there is no one Minority.

(I often feel, when I read articles about “people like me,” that I’m being lectured to about myself, that I’m being told who I am. And so I don’t often read entries like this one: it’s like looking into a fun house mirror and trying to find the “real” you. But it’s good to see yourself as others see you every so often, given that you’re the only one whoever sees you the way you see you.)

One day I’ll write about my loss of self, about how I can no longer seem to think (in coherent thoughts, as opposed to vague subliminal reactions) to myself, and about how I’m missing (unwillingly) the whole point of the Blogsphere’s anonymity.
But not today. Today I have 15 hours to spew 10 pages worth of Clarrisa.

(This post has exhibited parenthetical overload. Because I’m thinking like that - in contained tangents.)

One final thought: I realise that I could have participated in the discussion and thus lessened the feeling of the being The Observed aka The Other. Again, I didn’t have a feel for the audience and so was wary of participating, just yet.
Where oh where did the blind self-confidence go?

PS: The kids couldn’t let the topic go, and continue the discussion on “Feminism from an Equity Feminist.”

I go.