The Ingredients of Silence

This is not how I intended to come back to a prior post about the power of naming. I wonder if this means there's a third post in this somewhere? But tonight I had the experience of calling out someone who used a term that's usually a racist slur. In the course of conversation I got told that:

a) The person using the slur was biracial

b) Her feelings were more important than my defending a fictional character from a possible slur

c) Her white friend uses that term to describe herself all the time. So the only racist is me, who sees the term and thinks woman of colour.

These things have all led me to think about the power of naming. Did the individual interacting with me know that I too am a woman of colour? It's possible. But somehow I doubt it. The way the card was played, and yes, I'm calling it a card quite on purpose, I could tell this was meant to silence me. She's a woman of colour therefore she has more right than I to decide what is racist and what isn't. And usually that card's only trumped on the assumption that the other person is a 'well meaning white person making things uncomfortable'.

And right then it occured to me that race is a name of power. Not calling someone by their name, is name power. Not calling them by the right name, is name power. Mocking their name, is name power (which is the third essay that'll come about at some point in time). But self labeling is also name power.

Perhaps it's my fanciful mind. But I could so clearly see her drawing a circle about herself, sticking in some zodiac signs, lighting a few candles, exhaling and then going, all Pokemon style. "I choose you! My non-White side! Go forth and battle this bitch who's getting on my last nerve with her insistence that feelings have been hurt by a mere word! SILENCE HER!"

And even as I describe that, I can so easily see another circle, with another individual drawing up power from somewhere, symbols glowing in yellow candle flame. "I choose you! My 1/16th Cherokee/Souix/Cree/Apache/Insert First Nations Tribe Here - Heritage. Go forth and SILENCE my accusers. Manifest as a Princess, oh great, great, great, great, great, great, great grand-mother and repulse those that would label me insensitive, racist, or ignorant!"

I haven't gotten any further in my thoughts that that, however. Because obviously the self-naming/self-labeling spell gets bounced off someone who also is a minority, or who perhaps is listed on their Tribe's rolls, or their parents are. Or better yet, the spell bounces off knowledge, rightenousness and history. But all too often, I'm sure, someone is silenced. Someone does get confused because they were certain they saw what they saw, but now...

And I haven't thought of a spell that'll counteract that. How do you tell the budding anti-racists they need yet more knowledge? Doesn't it seem daunting to them that they need it, not in a general way to understand more or learn more but as a shield against this kind of crap?

Is there a way to stop people pulling out their bag of tricks and glitter? Is that a better use of time and energy? And what about people who have dual or more heritages? What about people with colonial history in their past where various tribes of the oppressed intermingled? I've seen quite a few heads come near to exploding when they realized the person they were trying to silence was South Asian, Black and Chinese.

Any thoughts?