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11 B r e a K i n g t h e s i L e n C e o n r aC i s m t h r o u g h ag e n C Y W i t h i n a C o n f L i C t e d f i e L d Jane Cogie If I understand myself on the model of the human, and if the kinds of grieving that are available to me make clear the norms by which the “human” is constituted for me, then it would seem that I am as much constituted by those I do grieve for as by those whose deaths I disavow, whose nameless and faceless deaths form the melancholic background for my social world, if not my First Worldism. Judith Butler, Precarious Life In our own way, because of what we [as whites] know instinctively about white dominance and power based on skin color, we experience our own double way of being in the world: what we know is right conflicts with how we believe we should act as ethical human beings. We often do not “see” it or “feel” it and can rarely articulate what it is that makes us uneasy. Yet it is there. Julie Landsman, “Being White” The comedy begins with our simplest gestures. They all entail an inevitable awkwardness. Reaching out my hand to pull a chair toward me, I have folded the arm of my jacket, scratched the floor, and dropped my cigarette ash. In doing what I willed to do, I did a thousand and one things I hadn’t willed to do. The act was not pure; I left traces. Wiping away these other traces, I left others. . . . When the awkwardness of the act is turned against the goal pursued, we are in the midst of a tragedy. . . . Thus we are responsible beyond our intentions. . . . That is to say that our consciousness, and our mastery of reality through consciousness , do not exhaust our relationship with reality, in which we are present with all the density of our being. Emmanuel Levinas, “On Thinking of the Other: Entre Nous” Breaking the Silence on Racism through Agency within a Conflicted Field 229 In attempting to foster diversity in my writing center, I, perhaps like many other well-intentioned white writing center directors and tutors, have found it difficult to leave behind the imprint of my First Worldism (Butler 2004, 46). Such an imprint can follow us in our writing center work whether we attempt to avoid racial inequities through remaining race neutral, believing that race need not be an issue if everyone is treated as an individual, or we attempt to actively address those inequities. Yet it can help to know, when deciding between the two approaches, that the consequences of our actions lie beyond our control, as Emmanuel Levinas (1998) suggests. To our discomfort at being unable to shed the markers of race that can complicate our communications across racial lines, Levinas adds the crucial emphasis that “we are responsible beyond our intentions” (3) and thus must partake in the comedy of unintended consequences. If we are part of this comedy whatever we choose to do or not to do, as Levinas suggests, we may as well be willing to act, especially within situations that pose no clear right response, despite the further awkwardness such actions can entail. The route of active involvement, of putting oneself out there, is almost always a better alternative than silence since such involvement, imperfect though it too will be, can at least bring with it the chance for dialogue and change. In this chapter, I focus on my center’s effort to take action on issues of race in a spring 2007 semester-long, classroom-based tutoring project in a section of Black American Studies (BAS) 215: Black American Experience in a Pluralist Society, after years of sporadically offered discussion-based workshops on diversity that left the tutors and myself essentially unchanged, reflecting outwardly rather than inwardly on the problem of institutional racism. In discussing this risky experiment for tackling this problem, I emphasize the significant burdens it placed on some of the project’s players and yet the way in which the very messiness of this project—including our inability to escape our First Worldism— shed light on our own participation in institutional racism and on the necessity of action to prepare us for a more meaningful role in bringing about...

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