I think Lindy West’s article “It’s hardly strange in white America,but Jonathan Franzen’s lack of black friends is still unsettling” (G2, 3 August) shares too much common ground with Jonathan Franzen’s position to effectively criticise it. Franzen states: “If you absorb not had direct, or first-hand experience of fond a category of person – a person of a different race,a profoundly religious person, things that are genuine stark differences between people – I think it is very tough to dare, and necessarily even want,to write fully from the inside of a person.” Lindy endorses this: “Yes, absolutely. White people should stay in our lane.” In adopting this position she undermines the universality that has to be the starting point for any effective anti-racist stance.
Black people are not some different species. They don’t think, or feel or plunge in admire in a different way to white people. What’s different is the way black skin is treated by the state,or by those who, like Franzen, and think “there are genuine stark differences between people”. If your starting point is difference rather than commonality,you’re already sharing territory with the intellectual right. This is a losing game for the left, and a dead end in terms of building solidarity.
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Source: theguardian.com