The Radical South
April 19th, 2017
Good Afternoon and thank you for coming today. I would first like to thank Professor Jaime Harker and the folks at Isom for hosting the Radical South conference. Since Dr. Harker conceptualized the idea and gathered folks from across the campus and beyond, I have been mulling over the term “radical.” I understand and fully support the thrust of this month-long conference as an antidote, a series of counter and resistance narratives to the celebration of the Confederacy. Deadlines for submissions and descriptions for this conference passed and I simply could not figure out if anything the Winter Institute did or more directly proximal, whether anything I did could actually fall under the term “radical.” I was troubled and confounded. As someone whose entire life has consisted of holding radical positions and performing radical actions, this conference caused me a small existential crisis as I mulled this possibility: “Am I no longer radical and what does that mean?” Perhaps as a rationalization, I will let you decide, I had two epiphanies that answered the question as to whether the Institute or myself are doing are radical in the affirmative.
The first related to my actual self– my mere insistence at being on these southern stages in my body, with my voice, living out loud in ways that are foreign and frightening, exist as radical actions. Exactly this–my presence, my demand to be seen and heard shift paradigms of normalcy for the southerners I encounter. As an outsider and as someone who will forever be an outsider in this mysterious, challenging, and at times frightening state, my mere presence in this state is in some manner “radical.” Am I not an “outside agitator?” Every identity or series of identities that I present or represent is radical to southern norms and hegemonies. Having been in this state continuously for only five years, I have never felt terribly comfortable. At every turn, I have been reminded that “I am not from here.” I have understood that professionally and privately, I exist on the peripheries, that because of my differences, I will forever be a curiosity. I am not blind nor deaf nor sensorially (made up word) deficient to the ways in which others process me. Their mouths, bodies, and spirits do not secret their confusion, fears, or discomfort. In each circle, auditorium, workshop, or dialogue I find myself in requires that I puncture this “southern comfort.” And I have done so during hundreds of times on this campus and in this region.
My second epiphany involved the fact that I utilize radically affirmative tools and techniques to effect change. My good colleagues across the hall and the campus are doing excellent work conducting resistance and research. They sharpen their pens and raise their voices to challenge the status quo. Truly, I am in awe of what has been accomplished in just my short time here. The campus self-reflection, the researching and reconciling with our history, the protests against oppression, and the systemic changes brought by radical thoughts and actions would have been unimaginable to me when I worked here over a decade ago. As I reviewed my own work, I suddenly realized that the Institute and in particular our work was also quite radical in the south and in this particular historical moment. At the Winter Institute, we rely on methods, techniques, and motives that in the cognitive dissonance of our southern minds would be considered normal and ordinary yet in this historical moment are ostensibly aspirational and reserved for our own “tribes.” This is what makes our work and the work conducted by Winter Institute community members and participants so radical. This second epiphany began with this exclamation and question: “My God, I thought, how did we arrive at spaces where love, anti-deficit approaches, compassion, education, listening, acknowledging trauma and fears, and empathy would be considered radical?” Yet, here we are.
Permit me to tip the premise of this conference on a point for I imagine this conference much like a geodesic dome with many frames and facets designed to confront the many systems, structures, ways of knowing, and relating which underscore racism. Frankly, the titles and presentations for this month are in service to countering the stereotyped and real south which takes as axiomatic that difference is fearful and bad, supports inequity, and inhales the painful legacies of it’s own history like carbon monoxide. I cannot dispute this conference’s theoretical and empirical underpinning. Many folks fetishize the “imagined South,” accept no responsibility for past and current gashes of racism, retreat into affinity groups, and refuse to allow themselves and others to recover. They do so with their emblems, culture, and revisionist histories. They do so with their blindness, deafness, and quick-to-trigger responses. Yup, that is all true and yet, there is something else going on in this South. I argue it is a radical shift and it is coming from within and not the outside.
Here is where I ask you to allow me to tip the dome a bit and see this from a different and maybe fresh and hopefully useful perspective. The South and its members perform their “southernness” in many ways. As in other identities, our fiercest ones emerge when we are under threat–be it attempts to compromise our bodies, perceived losses of resources, and fears of disempowerment. We see this bumper stickered on truck and cars, ironed on t-shirts, hanging in windows and lighting up our computer screens through social media and commentary masked as news. These are the performances that appear most visible–they may even be the majority. But I would like to alert ourselves to the southerners that we at the Winter Institute have the privilege of collaborating with. These are not different southerners, in fact I believe they are similar if the not the same people. You cannot exist in this South and be immune to its expectations and ideas. Accepting this as fact, I would submit that through careful attention to and collaboration with the very people we assume cannot work together, we can and have radically shifted the ways in which they think about and act in concert with people who possess different perspectives and life experiences.
It begins with creating quiet spaces. In this world where we are bombarded with cacophonies, creating a space like this is a crucial and monumentally radical act. Issues so personal and painful as racism cannot always be discussed and solved through large community events or town halls. Racism is individually focused, experienced, and deployed and therefore, eliminating it must have its accompanying processes. In all Winter Institute encounters, we work with people in private spaces and we find that while stereotypical southern identities may initially be performed, over time and by using and teaching affirming and compassionate techniques, these performances and the people who perform them are radically transformed. Consequently, new and compassionate southern identities are created and performed. What a strange flip when the radical selves are in the private spaces instead of the other way around! Strange also is the fact that the same bodies can inhabit the rabid and the radically compassionate and empathetic; and they do. Through our work at the Institute, the radical actions are that Winter Institute community members learn to completely rethink, retrain, and re-spirit themselves.
Let me quickly run down the “radical” techniques Winter Institute staffers use to engage, facilitate, and share with others. And to great success. First radical action–we welcome everyone to the table. Yes—if they want in, they are invited. We do no political vetting nor vetting of any sort. If anyone is interested in ending their own or societal discrimination, becoming change agents, or improving relations across their communities, the door is open and it remains wide open. Tilted head– when did being welcoming become radical? Next and radically, we understand that in a historical and contemporary world where deceit and mistrust reign, we demand that we build trust. We understand that the scars and open wounds of racism and other forms of oppression are not healed by focusing solely on the academic, the economic, or topical issues. Bravely and with compassion (this combination is entirely radical), we move in real, real close. To achieve the radical aim of valuing each other, reconciling our pasts and presents, and moving toward compassionate futures, we must know each other and we must know each other beyond the margins of perceived identity groups. Staffers at the Institute understand that we must take the radical step of moving outside of our implicit biases and fraught perceptions and ask the difficult but liberating questions that allow us to learn about and from each other. We understand that we will eventually learn about people’s positions on racism but we must first go back to the basics—learning people’s names, where they are from, who and what grew them, and how they navigate this great and challenging world. What makes this so radical? It is radical because we must summon our strength to trust. We do not waste precious energy creating defenses or taking offense—no, these southerners open up to become both vulnerable and empowered. To be radical is to be brave and honest and there can be no action reflecting these twin attributes than sharing their true selves with strangers from across the spectrum. In addition to conducting the radical action of sharing our personal stories, Institute participants learn how to do something difficult but crucial—meaningful listening. Maybe this does not sound radical but if we consider it, we are a nation of individuals who cannot wait to have ourselves heard but ironically, cannot hear others; thereby preventing the initial goal of being heard, right? What a convoluted and useless storm.
Next radical method is that staffers and participants meet people where they are. We do not weaponize knowledge gaps. We make no assumptions about individuals except two things, we are in these spaces striving to be better community members and that we all carry biases. You cannot heal the community by creating fresh injuries and so we must take the radical step of not slicing back when hacked by someone’s ignorance. Society created this mess and it will be the communities who will clean it up. If we knew it all we would not be in this predicament and so we understand that at one time or another, we will individually fall, commit gut-punching errors, and rely on the community to pull us back from our knees. Consequently, we strictly adhere to an anti-deficit approach. It is cheap to injure those who wish to heal and be healed and yet, most conversations about race devolve into accusations of purposeful ignorance. What success comes from that? The winners’ prize of being right does not change the larger racist situation and the loser licks their wounds by deepening their hate and misunderstanding. Radically and instead, we train people through our conversational guideposts to “to turn to wonder.” Radically, we ask folks to resist powerful limbic leaps and instead to “take a beat and a breath.”
We also do something that in other spaces and places would not seem so radical but in this day and age of commentary, we make sure that folks are educated about the issues that sustain and undo oppression. We make sure that community members are in possession of the latest theories and strategies from academe and community organizing. We understand that so much of today’s so called “learning” isn’t learning at all. In this anti-intellectual moment, anxious people often seek out information which support their stereotypes, fail to challenge their reductive ideas–even in the simplest ways–and consequently not only inadequately cauterizes, but further infects their wounds born from being the purveyors or victims of racism. Finally, and equally radical, we teach folks how to work with people. I won’t comment on differences because this word seems inadequate when, in fact, throughout this process, the word “difference” no longer connotes divides.
So these are the radical but successful techniques deployed by the Winter Institute as they work alongside southerners. We at the Winter Institute understand that folks are more than one singular regional or racial or other identity presentation and that, these oft-discussed and viewed aggressive, intentional or unintentional marginalizing presentations are actually the displays of past and continued trauma. We must believe that even the most “shut off” southerner can radically change themselves in pursuit of community and equity if an equally radical space of safety and security is created and if they are taught how they can radically shift their paradigms, actions, and responses.
I would also like to briefly pivot to challenge the term “radical” as it relates to dispositions. When we think of “radical,” we might summon ideas of aggression, argument, contention, challenge, and violence. In a space where these feelings or actions are quotidian, I submit that lifting up love, compassion, effectively and respectfully deploying humor, avoiding being triggered, embracing the unknown, remembering our moral compasses and the best of our values exist as radical responses. And let me be clear—they work. I, along with my colleagues have witnessed this in every session.
So let me summarize the different radicals brought to this practice. First we have the radical bodies and minds that are willing to conduct this work. Life affirming, compassionate, and empathetic approaches and methods which used to be considered common and decent behavior among human beings (maybe just aspirations) are now considered radical. Second, and most importantly, we must consider the radical potential of all southerners to conduct this work. We cannot expect the oppressors and the traumatized to fix themselves alone and without interaction. We cannot expect that the production of more nuanced histories, effective but exhausting protests, and endless community events will end racism and heal the weeping scars of racism. Why? Because racism is and has always been deeply personal. Its injuries cut deep and wide and across generations. The only way out is through deep personal interactions. The radical actions are each southerner’s self reflection and transformation of self. We believe that this can be done only through the radical action of reaching across the historical and current chasms. In spaces that silence and marginalize the following actions: bravely bridging differences, being inviting and welcoming, building trust, deeply sharing stories, meaningfully listening, creating empathy, avoiding being hyper triggered, and becoming change agents are magnificently radical acts and ensure that the impacts of such radical behavior are sustainable and capable of moving us out of the never-ending triage approach to racism.