I love this angle on the Polanski case — it’s the best I’ve heard yet. In part because it reminds me that when each one of us takes the time to really reflect on our own reactions to instability, noticing the helpful and unhelpful ways we respond to it, we are actually doing a tremendous service to our family, friends, and communities — not just to ourselves. Because in striving to remain conscious of our reactions to instability, in creating spaciousness around uncertainty, fostering openness to alternative possibilities, we help lessen the odds that the next time the rug gets pulled out from under us, we’ll cling to the same old harmful habits — the ones that reinforce patriarchy, racism, classism, instilled in us since childhood and always luring us with empty promises of self-protection.

I think each one of us has the power, even if it seems tiny, to examine and mend our own relationships with stability and instability. We can strive to change and train our own minds to respond to uncertainty or “threats” not with too much fear, but with clarity, compassion, and responsibility for the consequences of our actions in those groundless moments.

Maybe I’m off-base somehow, but that’s what I’m getting as the positive side to what you’re saying. Unless you mean that our desire for stability is fixed and can’t be changed? I can certainly see how in some situations with PTSD and survivors’ radical loss of control, re-establishing some sort of groundedness and control is essential. But again, that’s why someone might practice training the mind on a regular basis to accept instability: so that if and when a crisis arises, we’ll be better equipped to cope and respond. Does that make sense? Hopefully. In any case, I’m sending you abrazos from California and feeling blessed anew to be sharing your online company. Cuidate!

I have a few Polanski-apologists showing up in the thread. I see you do, too. (sigh) No end to it, I fear.

polanski later while in exile for raping a 13 year old girl also had a relationship with a 15 year old girl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastassja_Kinski

If I start with that YOU SELL OUT, YOU THIS, YOU THAT, YOU RACE TRAITOR that’s not really community with other people of colour, that’s just being a straight up asshole.

As I was saying up above–the assumed naturalness of “liberal/progressive/radical” politics in the “internalized racism” argument–it is imposing a really rather harsh understanding of what marginalized communities can look like. that there is no such thing as a ‘naturally occuring’ conservative person of color, in other words. it is imposing an ideology (or: using power to control) people within marginalized communities.

But–having said all this–I *do* actually believe that internalized racism/self hate exists. An example: I remember sitting on my bed as a small kid, looking at a book that had pictures of mexican art in it. And i was crying and crying and crying–physically *crying*–because that was not the kind of art I wanted to be from. I wanted to be an artist–with every breath in my body I wanted to be an artist–and I thought that if I was mexican, i had to make “mexican art.” And I didnt’ want to. because I thought it was ugly. Compared to that wonderful amazing FINE art (i.e. western art) I’d seen in museums. It was so primative. And unnuanced. And ugly. And….UGLY.

There’s not many other ways for me to explain that feeling I had except by saying it was internalized racism. I had learned what was beautiful at institutions like school, museums, books–and what was beautiful was certainly not where I came from.

BUT….at the same time…I have to *also* say that the power behind the “art”–the “good” art–was not lost on me. Not only did I think that MExican art was ugly–but I ALSO was attracted to the power the institutions offered “good” art. As a kid–I formed the dream in my head–I wanted to write a story that was so good it became a part of the stories that kids had to read in school. Like catcher in the rye. Or Wuthering heights. I knew. I knew without being told–*that* was when you made it as an author. When you’d been brought into the cannon. I was attracted to the idea of kids being required to read my work. I’ve always focused on “because then I could help them” part of that equation (because I was a young naive kid, and thought that if kids were forced to read me, I would change their worlds.)–I wanted to help other sad lonlely kids. I wanted to let them know they weren’t alone. I had such good intentions. But I wanted to use the *power of the institution* to play out my good intentions. And I only recognized the *first* half of the equation–the *power* part of the equation–after I’d been to university.