Why Taking Issue with Racist, Homophobic, Ableist Stereotypes Does Not Equal Being a Member of ISIS and Other Home Truths

Once again, this will be a long post as I try to unpack the problems with a rambling article in the Huffington Post today that responds to the issues that began on HuffPo in an article by Kate Gale several weeks ago. This current article by Carol Muske-Dukes veers from Kate Gale’s original HuffPo article to terrorism (with accusations comparing those opposed to Gale’s article to ISIS) to an article in The Atlantic to free speech and the First Amendment to standup comedians to AWP to Muske-Dukes’s youthful engagement with teaching in the prison system to Stalin to “triggering” warnings to Dorothy Parker to the University of New Hampshire to “enduring” values and rights to censorship and alleged death threats to Straight Outta Compton to the Kurdish women fighters to Mandelstam and on and on. Oh, and of course, “political correctness,” that tired, old canard from the Newt Gingrich/Jesse Helms-era culture wars against writers and intellectuals that has so steadfastly refused to die.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-muskedukes/gale-force_b_8101576.html

First, let’s back up and revisit the original article by Kate Gale for those of you who didn’t see it or have blessedly forgotten it. I wrote a blog post about it and included screen shots of her article, which is important because the article has been deleted and replaced with an abortive apology, which was later supplemented with a fuller, still non-apologetic apology.  I have given a detailed timeline with links of what led up to this article, “AWP Is Us,” and what led from it (at least up to the time I posted this blog). I’ve also posted the screenshots of “AWP Is Us” on this blog  for your convenience.

http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-series-of-unfortunate-eventsawp-david.html

As you may note, in that blog post there is no threat of violence toward Gale. If you go to the link for what was the original article and then became the first “apology,” you can still read the many, many comments.  I haven’t read all of them but have read the first hundred or so. There’s no threat of violence toward Gale. Most of the comments are well-reasoned and articulate commentary on a troublesome piece of writing. If you follow the other links to other blog posts and articles about the controversy, you will find no threats of violence. I’ve read many more blogs and essays about this than are linked in my blog, and all of them have been well-reasoned and articulate without any threat of violence. There may well have been some threat of violence somewhere, but although I’ve read a huge number of internet article comments, blog posts, articles, essays, Facebook posts, and tweets concerning the Gale article, I have seen not one threat of physical violence, not even in the heated discussions of it that have taken place in private Facebook groups for writers of color. I urge my readers to google “AWP Is Us” and “Kate Gale AWP” and read all the various commentary for themselves. Violent threats are obviously not the common tenor of the opposition to Gale’s column, although Muske-Dukes would try to make it seem so.

Unfortunately, Muske-Dukes seems to have particularly conflated Gale’s article, stand-up comedians, and the First Amendment in a most bizarre way. First of all, freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is the constitutional right of a publisher to publish even controversial work without official interference from the government. It does not guarantee that readers will not take issue with the published work. It does not even guarantee the right of an author to be published if a press does not choose to publish her/him. It is narrowly focused around banning official government-supported censorship of publishers and has been expanded to cover the government’s inability to officially stop most kinds of oral speech, even if offensive. No government official made any attempt to prevent the Huffington Post from publishing Gale’s article. Gale is not a stand-up comedian in front of a live audience, so the many odd references to various stand-up comedians and the suggestion that comedy is dead because of the opposition to Gale’s piece make no sense, at all. As a matter of fact, Gale herself, in her later apology, has called her article a failed attempt at humor.

Perhaps one of the most irksome parts of Muske-Dukes’s article is her assumption that Gale’s critics are not activists and are not doing anything for the community.

“But I'm inclined to ask the ‘virtual vigilantes’ if they have ever started a press or a membership organization, if they've gone into the prisons to teach -- or if they've tried to do stand-up? Instead of weeping, why not figure out how to be strong?”

I know many of the people who have articulately opposed Gale’s stereotypes with comments, blog posts, essays, etc. We have started and run presses and membership organizations and reading series. We have gone into prisons and jails and juvenile detention centers to teach—and inner-city schools and domestic-violence shelters and homeless shelters and among migrant workers and on reservations and elsewhere. I have myself done all of those. Most of us still are doing such things. The assumption that only white privileged academics do anything for the community is both false and foolish.

Another assumption she also makes is that no one who opposed Gale’s article opposed the erasing of women and the misogyny of the movie, Outta Compton. Once again, Muske-Dukes is drastically incorrect, apparently not having bothered to research her accusation before making it. The Washington Post had an article by Jamilah Lemieux discussing the fact that all the critical praise for the movie was coming from white male critics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/21/white-critics-and-rap-fans-love-straight-outta-compton-but-theyre-missing-half-the-story/

Kim Trent wrote about it in the Detroit Free Press. http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/08/21/nwa-women/32163613/

Alex Abad-Santos wrote about it in Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/25/9205595/compton-movie-misogyny

And there’s much more that can be easily googled.

Now, we come to the really foolish hyperbole. Some of it lies in the above quote from the article—“virtual vigilantes.” But it gets much worse.

“What, I asked myself, had Kate Gale done to piss off Isis?

Here's how she pissed off (if not Isis itself) those unwittingly willing to take ideological instruction (in the cause of self-righteousness) from the M.O. of extremism. “

“I'm talking about women who actually fight and kill members of Isis! Though they live in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan -- an area beset by tragedy and oppression -- these women use Isis' misogyny against them. They are the Kurdish women fighters who fashion a military strategy on the belief of these Muslim extremists that if they are killed by a woman they cannot go to heaven (so forget the 72 virgins!) -- so if they see a female fighter coming at them, they run like hell. This is a desperate situation but it is also funny -- unless perhaps you're too P.C. to laugh. Instead of weeping, why not recruit yourself to go over there and join forces with women who really know the meaning of the comedy term, ‘to kill’?”

So, if we have issues with Gale’s use of racist stereotypes for “humor,” we are terrorists, members of ISIS, “willing to take ideological instruction… from the M.O. of extremism”? I would like to note that, to my knowledge, no one tried to even imply that Kate Gale was a terrorist, a member of ISIS, or taking ideological instruction from terrorists. But that is the accusation Muske-Dukes levies against anyone who has problems with Gale using the genocide of our ancestors as a joke to hold us up for ridicule. As Kimberly Gail Wieser comments on Muske-Dukes’s article, “. . . and there's just a little historical irony in making jokes about the American Holocaust and then calling us terrorists if we defend ourselves when other people were the ones utilizing violent language. Just saying.”

Also, to suggest that we must somehow prove our genuineness, non-terrorist-ness, and non-PC-ness by volunteering to go over to the Middle East and join up with the Kurd women warriors who are fighting against Turkey and ISIS is so bogus that it’s truly laughable. It’s as if Muske-Dukes believes that only those with white privilege are allowed to criticize anything in this society without making some extraordinary effort to “deserve” that right. How dare we people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities even open our mouths, right? Well, we dare. And we shall go right on speaking out when we see people employing racist, homophobic, ableist stereotypes.

The sad thing is that many people within AWP’s diversity communities were so disgusted with the whole situation before that they wanted to withdraw from AWP. There have been calls that we should break away and form our own organization or go to another organization that’s more welcoming of diversity. Along with many others, I’ve been trying to persuade people not to run away but to stay and work with AWP to make things better. We’ve pulled together all the diversity caucuses to try to work things out and keep people from bolting in large numbers. A piece like Muske-Dukes’s undoes a lot of that work and causes us to start all over again.

How often must we go through this? If this keeps up, soon enough, even those of us who keep saying, “Not all of the white lit hierarchy thinks that way—we need to stay and work things out,” will have to agree that “yes, they just want us to shut up and take whatever they dish out.”
 

“A Series of Unfortunate Events”—AWP, David Fenza, and Kate Gale’s “AWP Is Us”

LATEST NEWS: AWP director Fenza defends Kate Gale's piece.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/67908-red-hen-press-kate-gale-apologizes-for-commentary-awp-defends-her.html

This is a long post because I’m trying to give a timeline of events in a situation that bodes ill for #diverselit writers and some background for my readers who are not familiar with the situation or even with the organization and players. This series of events begins with the announcement of panel acceptances for The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the nation’s largest national organization for writers and academic programs that teach writing. There is always fierce competition for representation on such panels—by individuals because travel funding from their institution to even attend AWP (which is an expensive, huge conference) often depends on them being named to a panel and by AWP’s various communities because, as with so many large national organizations, the default tends to white male. This last, I want to point out is something that AWP has been working on in recent years. They still have a long way to go, but they have made real progress from the early days when AWP was primarily white and male. The panel representation has diversified remarkably from those days, although it is still problematic, and the establishment of caucuses for marginalized communities within AWP has been a major step forward.

After a disastrous earlier mix-up which inadvertently made some unofficial decisions public and caused dissatisfied speculation and murmurings even before the official list came out, the list of official panel acceptances was announced on Twitter. An AWP member named Laura Mullen tweeted in reply (from her personal account), asking if they would furnish demographics on the panel selections. AWP director David Fenza then sent her an email chiding her for “casting aspersions” on AWP and copied both her department chair and associate chair.  For someone on tenure track or non-tenured or adjunct, as many AWP members in the marginalized communities are, this would have been an effective silencing tactic, threatening their employment. In Mullen’s case, she is an endowed professor and tenured, as well as director of LSU’s writing program, so she was not silenced. She wrote about it on her blog and posted Fenza’s letter, and the whole situation blew up on social media.

http://afteriwasdead.blogspot.com/?view=classic

Soon, a petition was posted at Change.org, focused on the lack of disability panels and asking for increased transparency and for Fenza to apologize to Mullen and for the AWP Board to officially underscore that intimidation tactics by Board or staff of AWP against members would not be tolerated.

https://www.change.org/p/awp-board-of-trustees-david-fenza-awp-executive-director-call-for-increased-diversity-accessibility-and-transparency-from-awp?recruiter=1248188&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-md-share_petition-no_msg&fb_ref=Default#petition-letter

At that time, AWP should have risen to the occasion. Fenza should have publicly apologized. The Board should have issued a statement disavowing such intimidation tactics and stating they would not be tolerated. AWP should have agreed to more transparency and entered discussions as to how this could be accomplished. If this had happened, AWP would have been seen as a responsive and responsible organization. But, of course, it didn’t. The Board members are located all over the U.S., the leader of the staff was the person (Fenza) with the most to lose, and institutions in general move slowly in making decisions and dealing with crises. But finally AWP began to release some stats on panel selection and talk about the possibility of more transparency in the future—without, unfortunately, addressing the issues raised around disability or Fenza’s letter.

Next in this unfortunate sequence of events, we come to founder and CEO of Red Hen Press, member of the AWP 2016 conference committee, juror for panel selection for AWP 2016, Kate Gale, and her Huffington Post piece, “AWP Is Us.” (She has been scrubbing all evidence of this from the internet, so I have included screenshots of her actual original article as graphics on this post.) Also, here’s a link to a PDF of the original article.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvrwq6ofzdrgkvx/AWP%20Is%20Us%C2%A0|%C2%A0Kate%20Gale.pdf?dl=0

There is so much wrong with this article that it’s hard to know where to start, the offensive, insulting stereotypes of so many groups—could she have packed more stereotypes into one short piece?—the chiding tone, the “you people” right up front in her first paragraph. I’m going to focus on the second and third paragraphs for purely personal reasons—because she used those paragraphs to insult and offend me and mine and because I believe she used me and mine as a stalking horse since she didn’t have the nerve to write a piece ridiculing and insulting people with disabilities (who were the originators of the petition). A lot of folks are fine with ignoring people with disabilities and treating them as invisible, but then worry about being seen as cruel if they publicly make fun of people with wheelchairs, canes, braces, and walkers. (I say this with more than a hint of personal bitterness, since I’m one of those people on canes.)

But Indians, hey, everyone makes fun of Indians. It’s a national pastime. In Washington, D.C., people make themselves up as caricatures of Indians to go to ballgames in big groups and ridicule us. At music festivals, hip young things don our sacred regalia or perversions of it to dance around half-naked.  America’s been insulting us and underestimating us for centuries.

“One of the complaints lobbed at AWP is for not enough inclusion of different groups, another is for more transparency. This summer I was at a dinner and someone leaned across to me and confided, ‘AWP hates Native Americans.’

‘Really now?’ I said, ‘I'm going to be in Washington this summer and I'd love to discuss this with them.’ I took out a pen and paper. ‘Who hates Indians at the office there? Is it Fenza?’ I pictured David Fenza saddling up a horse, Stetson in place, going out to shoot Indians. It was an unlikely image. The woman began fumbling around; she couldn't tell me who the Indian hater was.”

 

Yes, let’s look at that image of David Fenza shooting Indians. How nineteenth century for such a twenty-first century woman? Perhaps she doesn’t know any of us survived the Removals and Indian Wars? No, that can’t be. She has prominent Native writers on her board and has published Native writers (none of whom I will name here because I know they must be cringing over this debacle already). So, it’s not ignorance. It must be a deliberate attempt to bring in a reminder of the genocidal Indian Wars, a reminder to us that we should be careful and not challenge powerful white people. I don’t think David Fenza hates Indians, but her own words make me think Kate Gale does.

I don’t believe for a second that this conversation took place, or if it did, it was not in those words. I know a large number of the Native writers who attend AWP, and I know of not one who would say, “AWP hates Native Americans.” Frankly, I know a hell of a lot of writers from many marginalized communities at AWP, some of whom have been quite angry with AWP for a while, but no one I know would say the organization hates Latinos/African Americans/LGTBQ people/whatever. I suspect this is more what a privileged white person thinks a person from a marginalized community would say. It’s basically Tea Party rhetoric in an environment where that kind of discourse is the last thing I would expect.

Indigenous writers at AWP have been working with the Board and the staff to increase Indigenous representation and participation, and while AWP is slow in implementing desired changes (as one learns to expect from big organizations), the staff and Board have been basically supportive. We keep pushing, and they slowly respond with greater representation and participation. We wish they were faster to change, and they wish we would stop asking for more, but our conversations and relationship have never been marked with hostility on either side. As I said earlier, I suspect Gale didn’t want to say something as openly and pointedly ridiculing and offensive about people with disabilities, so she chose our community as a safe and acceptable stalking horse. This was a mistake, of course, but then the whole piece was a massive mistake, insulting people of color, LGBTQ folks—and people with disabilities were not fooled, anyway.

Immediately, the comments section at Huffington Post began accreting negative comments, some of it quite thoughtful and excellent feedback for Gale if she bothered to read it. A stream of even more hostile comments began on Twitter. Facebook, especially in groups dedicated to traditionally marginalized writers, developed long, multi-faceted conversations around “AWP Is Us.” Thoughtful blog posts sprang up, and Higher Education Inside and Publishers Weekly published articles about it.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/26/article-defending-writing-program-association-infuriates-many-its-members#.Vd33OWvpsPg.twitter

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/67901-charges-of-discrimination-lack-of-diversity-leveled-against-awp.html

With all the negative feedback swarming around, AWP finally made a limited comment. In a tweet from the official AWP Twitter feed, they said: “AWP board and staff were unaware of Kate Gale’s Huffington Post article until it was posted. AWP did not and does not endorse the article.” Many people felt this was too little, too late, especially as the chair of the AWP 2016 conference committee, a Board member, initially “LIKED” this article when first posted, only to remove that later when all the negative publicity arose.

Then Gale took down her article on Huffington Post and posted the following non-apology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-gale/awp-is-us_b_8029224.html

Other than the first sentence—“I apologize for this post and the hurt it caused.”—the rest of the post is basically the Red Hen Press mission statement and an ad for the press. Apparently, she had become aware of the way her article was adversely affecting Red Hen Press. There had been suggestions that it be boycotted. Along with others, I cautioned that such a boycott would harm the writers of RHP, who were probably in pain already from the piece their publisher had posted in such a huge public forum.  I do have great sympathy for RHP’s authors and its board members, who were almost certainly not consulted before this blog was posted and who must have felt it as a great betrayal from someone whom they trusted.

As this post is going up, the most recent media coverage is an article in the Los Angeles Times, which also criticizes her portrayal of Los Angeles as not welcoming to literary culture.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-diversity-at-awp-20150826-htmlstory.html

Gale is reaping the whirlwind that she sowed, and my final word on her aspect of this huge fiasco is a suggestion that people look up her resume. She is woven through the warp and weft of national literary culture, sitting on the boards or in leadership positions of many of our largest and most influential organizations that give awards and grants and publication. Ask yourself how little confidence writers of color, writers with disabilities, LGBTQ writers, and other marginalized communities can have that their work or the work of the best people in their communities will have a real chance at any of these awards, grants, panels, or other opportunities when someone who thinks this way is in power. Ask yourself how this is fair or just.

To me, however, the most important part of this disaster is the organization, AWP. This organization is a vital one for writers, academic programs, and literary culture in this country. It has made some real progress, after initially being dragged with a little screaming into the diversity of the twenty-first century. I hate to see its forward momentum blocked. I think establishment folks don’t actually realize that many writers in marginalized communities, who are fighting for every tiny scrap of representation in the larger community they can get, fear that those people in charge of all these large organizations feel the way Gale writes about their communities. I think it’s a subtler thing than that, a more institutional and unconscious bias in favor of the familiar, but those in leadership positions at AWP need to understand that many will read Gale’s piece and say, “Wow! What I was always afraid of is true!” It is imperative that AWP make absolutely clear, not just that they disavow any hint of approval for this piece, but that they will take concrete steps immediately to move toward greater transparency and make a strong formal statement that tactics of intimidation by AWP Board or staff toward members are unacceptable and will face serious consequences. And I think AWP must ask itself honestly whether it can continue to enjoy any confidence from its membership if David Fenza remains as its leader without formal reprimand to Fenza or apology to Mullen.

I have been so pleased to see the transformation over the years of AWP into a much more diverse organization and conference. I have so enjoyed seeing my fellow writers from marginalized communities begin to show up in greater and greater numbers every year. I would hate to see a reversal of all the very real good work that hard-working people on that board and on that staff have put in through the years to make this happen. I hope AWP will meet the challenge it is currently facing and, for once, do the right thing fully when it needs to be done and not much, much too little too late.