Have you seen the movie Watchmen? Let me give you a very brief rundown: There are superheroes. Except they're not heroic. But sometimes they are. Anyhow, it's confusing, but it's supposed to be, and it gives a reason for Who watches the Watchmen? to be mysteriously scrawled on buildings. It's a pretty good movie, really; Roger Ebert gave it four stars. Probably the most frequent comment about it in reviews was that it is violent, but they often skim over—or, like Ebert, just don't mention—the rape that is one of the central plot devices…and is shown in detail in the movie.
Rape is bad.
We all know that, right?
So showing the rape is supposed to cause viewers concerns about the Watchmen. It's the "look, these people, they are Not All Good." We are supposed to sympathize with the rape victim.
I think.
Except…the rape is not shown from the viewpoint of the victim. First, we get the voyeur gaze as the Silk Spectre slowly undresses. Then it becomes clear that that gaze is the viewpoint of the rapist. Then we see the rape alternating between his viewpoint and a third-person camera angle as he beats her, then rapes her. The viewer is colluding with the rapist, not condemning him.
If this were the story of Little Red Riding Hood, then we'd be seeing how yummy poor Red looked to the wolf.
The theme of storytelling in critical race theory has been taken up by several different writers, including Margaret E. Montoya in "Mascaras, Trenzas, y Grenas: Un/masking the Self While Un/braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse," in which she argues that personal narrative from those who are "Outsiders" working within the system can challenge the dominant discourse, and in Anthony V. Alfieri's "Reconstructive Poverty Law Practice: Learning Lessons of Client Narrative," where he discusses the danger that lawyers' storytelling acts to "silence and displace client narratives" (601). Both writers promote the idea that the "outsider" should be heard.
Storytelling is complicated, both in practice and in theory. You've probably noticed by now that my preference is to lead in with a story. This time, it's Neil Gaiman's story, not mine, but it serves the same intended function: It's a heads-up about where I'm going with things, a sort of signpost for where my thoughts are. There's more to it than that, though. It's also a conscious decision grounded in theory.
Just as I agree with Freire's and hooks's assertions that education is never ideologically neutral, I would argue that any coherent arrangement of writing includes a narrative. Whether it's innate or culturally instilled, we work by telling stories, and when we get information, we arrange it into a story that makes sense to us. My goal, then, is to make no pretense of neutrality, on either ideological or narrative grounds. So: these stories, Montoya's and Alfieri's—eventually we'll add in Monica J. Evans's "Stealing Away: Black Women, Outlaw Culture, and the Rhetoric of Rights," along with Robert A. Williams, Jr.'s "Vampires Anonymous and Critical Race Practice," just so you know where this is heading—these stories are what my story is about.
The narrative that Montoya presents is that of the outsider trying to break into the establishment to change it, while Alfieri is telling us about how legal practice and lawyers work. In both stories, Montoya and Alfieri are concerned about making sure that the voice of those who have been marginalized is authentically heard. Williams, on the other hand, tells us a story about how breaking into the establishment can easily and almost imperceptibly slip into becoming broken by the establishment, how a drive to fight injustice becomes absorbed into the system when one listens to those above rather than those below. Cautionary tales, these narratives show us that viewpoint is slippery; maybe more importantly, they show us that good intentions (or good theories) mean very little without praxis.
In the "Issues and Comments" section at the end of part 14, the editors ask whether "bringing…ethnicities and backgrounds to the fore" will "interfere with assimilation, acceptable, and learning," or whether it is "a source of strength and jurisprudential richness" (550). The problem lies in the implication that these things are mutually contradictory. Pointing out that the system is broken will undoubtedly interfere with assimilation into the system—how could it do otherwise? That doesn't mean that it's not a source of strength and richness, though. It just means that people will be mad at you.
The choice being presented here is a false one (perhaps deliberately presented as such by the editors), and Evans's story of black clubwomen feels similarly questionable. Evans argues that the history (and current acts) of black clubwomen who join together in church groups, social groups, and so forth to enact social change indicates an outlaw dialectic, one that plays on dominant culture tropes to build power within an oppressed group. While her initial example of escape songs, "a series of codes embedded in music and sung by slaves to alert each other to the time for escape from bondage to freedom" does represent this dialectic (500), I question whether actively pursuing a stereotypical representation is ever genuinely freeing, or whether it is, in Williams's parlance, simply attempting to join the "vampire club," or, put another way, whether it is Marx's false consciousness (615).
There is no question that many black clubwomen succeeded in making social changes and gaining power. The story that Evans tells is an appealing one, as she demands that "the white male legal establishment…place its sense of cultural and gender superiority aside and…learn how to learn from the (outlaw) cultural practices of African-American women" (509). But there are several problems with this narrative, not least of which is that it is unclear what the legal establishment would be learning. In Evans's view, black clubwomen manage to negotiate and navigate between rights-based and relationship-based (or care ethic based) lines of thinking. However, I found it difficult to understand what that negotiation entailed, and particularly difficult to see how it would fit within current debates about inclusive versus exclusive citizenship or citizens' rights versus governments' responsibilities.
Equally importantly, though, I think that Evans's reference to black clubwomen being engaged in "beating them at their own game" is both telling and worrying (508). You can't beat someone at the game unless you're playing the game—and if the game is oppression, it's a game that nobody wins. It's like winning on slot machines; one win doesn't change the fact that the system remains rigged.
People win all the time.
They have to.
Consider: Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court Justice because he joined the game. Condoleezza Rice played the game so well that George W. Bush appointed her Secretary of State. Has the system changed?
If nobody ever won, then there would be no incentive to try to play; perhaps more significantly for the continuation of the system, the lucky few become examples, as evidenced by the number of people who, upon Obama's election, immediately proclaimed racism to be deader than Milli Vanilli's musical career.
This may come across as though I'm suggesting that there is no way out, that you can't beat them so you might as well join them. I'm not. I'm saying that we cannot genuinely do either, and that a model supporting doing either is fundamentally flawed. For instance, Evans notes that black clubwomen "challenged the prevailing stereotype by presenting themselves as largely de-sexualized…hyper-respectable Victorian ladies" (507). Combating racism does not begin with accepting patriarchy or dividing ourselves into the "good minorities" versus "those people," no matter what Bill Cosby might think; then we're just throwing Red to the wolf in a desperate attempt to save ourselves: a temporary solution that works perfectly until the wolf gets hungry again.
(Angela Harris's discussion of intra-community divisions in "LatCrit Theory and the Sticky Mess of Race" shows how this also keeps communities from joining together.)
Storytelling. It's all about viewpoint.
From one viewpoint, it's about fighting the oppressors.
From mine, it's about fighting the oppression.
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