As for the “ways of knowing”, I don’t find value in non-quantifiable assumptions, especially when what people have to say is at conflict with the scientific data.

I hope you’ll get involved with the project that a few of us bloggers (including Rachel) are working on called Ally Work. These are conversations that are very needed in the blogosphere and beyond.

poorboy - originally i wasn’t going to respond to your comment because i was afraid it would detract from eric’s persynal story, but i can’t resist. I wanted to address the idea of anti-racism as self-hatred. I don’t agree that recognizing and challenging Whiteness, White Supremacy, and unearned privilege is self-hatred. If anything, i think it takes a lot of self-love and self-actualization to step outside of the role we’ve been taught to play and to think of ourselves and confident, powerful, individuals who are capable of compassion and justice. Where i think that self-hatred often manifests itself in terms of racism and Whiteness is when people refuse to acknowledge and work against unearned privilege and continue to live a life of subconscious guilt. I think that guilt is a healthy response in terms of being an internal check system (if you are feeling guilty, then there is obviously a disconnect between your priniciples and your actions). But i think it is very unhealthy to act or not act from a place of guilt.

I don’t feel that Eric is acting or speaking from a place of guilt ro self-hatred. My impression is that he is doing so from a place of compassion. But perhaps you and i don’t need to project our own feelings on to Eric and, instead, need to allow him to be who he is and work the way he works while recognizing the inherent value in his words.

I also want to touch upon Buck O’Neil. I don’t know this persyn or know of them, but if heard similar things from other people of color. I recently wrote on my blog about my own choosing not to be a victim in terms of my own experience with sexual assault. So i hear where you are coming from. But i don’t think that what Buck is saying is all that divergent from what Eric is saying. Eric speaks as a White persyn about equalizing power and priviliege, Buck speaks as a Black persyn about equalizing power and privilege. That are inherently different in that Eric talks about liberation through hacking away at his own unearned privilege while Buck talks about creating power from a liberatory standpoint. We cannot have creation without destruction (life without death) and vice versa or nothing will ever really change.

And i liked to say that i didn’t like the jab you made about intellect and facts. Are you setting yourself up as the Male voice of Reason and Logic whie shunning all dissenting voices as the Other/Female voice of Emotion? When talking about identity and oppression, there are a lot of emotions that cannot be expressed through US Census data and APA research papers. There is a place for intellect and facts, but it is not above emotion, compassion, and humyn understanding. Besides, i don’t think that, as the comment seems to imply, Eric is writing from a place of unintellectual heresay. He just happens to be writing from a very persynal viewpoint, which is to be expected in a persynal blog. I don’t mean to attack, but i want to make aware the ways that such words can be perceived.