Public Comment

This is the story of a coop (as in "cooperative"), of whiteness (as in "supremacy"), and the way they weave together in subtle forms of ostracism (as in segregation), and mendacity (as in blaming the victim). They have been marshalled against the efforts and struggles of a Black woman for both respect and affordable housing. The location of this story is an actual cooperative organization in South Berkeley. The irony of its story is its self-construction by means of non-cooperation. We shall call this Black woman Emma (not her real name). The point of the story is to both outline some of the more subtle structures of racist harassment, while at the same time advocating for a more authentic and principled cooperative endeavor. 

Emma is someone who has figured this society out, and knows what she is looking at when people do things to her. Most of the time, she attempts to turn them into educational experiences, the kind where a person who does not see what they are doing to others can be made aware of what their attitudes do in new ways. However, when those others refuse to expand their self-consciousness about their action, they instead tend to develop hostility against those who attempt to broaden their awareness. In effect, it is a form of “kill the messenger.” And when this lack of self-consciousness occurs within a situation of racial difference, you get an example of racial crisis. 

In this case, Emma understood that she was being treated as a second class citizen, with disrespect, even though those attitudes were to be left behind when one entered a coop. Nevertheless, what she encountered in their white attitudes was that as Black, she would only be good for menial labor (house cleaning), or when she was made a scapegoat for some of the problems between other residents in the house. Her response was to attempt to show others what they are doing, things they may not have seen. Because of this, she was considered to not be a team player. That was a way of disparaging her without reference to race. They saw her as an arrogant person, and sought to blame problems the coop was having on her. 

A coop is a special social environment. It is organized according to certain ideals, and aspires to a more humane and helpful kind of living situation. For instance, in this one, there was to be no hierarchy among the residents. Policies for the house were to be made democratically. There was a structure called "sociocracy," by which the entire socius of the house was to be the primary governing factor. The house had a chore chart, by which people were rotated among the different tasks of keeping house, though there was leeway if someone was ill, or going to be out of town. And decisions were to be made by consensus. That is, 100% consensus. In order for a policy to be passed, and become the way the coop would function, it had to have everyone in agreement. 

This was an organizational procedure that Occupy experimented with. It is difficult to get everyone in agreement right away. Any particular individual could veto a proposal by simply not agreeing to it. So things happen slowly. If a policy is under discussion, and a person or two disagrees with it, they stop the process of decision. Then those in favor enter into discussions with those who disagree, attempting to convince them of the wisdom of the proposal. Or they change the proposal somewhat to accommodate the disagreement of the few. These are really very good procedures since they are based on dialogue, on people seeking to understand each other and move forward together. 

During Occupy, when some decisions needed to be made more quickly, a modified form of consensus was used, requiring either 90% agreement, or 80%. (50% agreement is simply majority rule.) 

Emma understood all this. She entered the coop in 2019. When early 2020 hit, with its pandemic, she tried to get a postponement of rent. The coop decided she should not have that, and voted her down. She lived with that, though others had been given such a postponement. 

When she got into the coop, there was one other Black person living there, a young person who was unmercifully ostracized by the rest of the residents (all white or willing to join the apparent white cabal). For instance, she was given permanent non-rotational chores – in particular, keeping the bathroom and kitchen clean (like living a form of punishment). The other residents told Emma, “oh no, she wants that.” But the other left the coop shortly after Emma got there. 

In March, the area went into lockdown owing to Covid. It was a period when coops all over the country were facing exodus because of the intensity of coop life and the countermanding need to include distance in relating to others. So three residents left the coop at that time. Three more left in August, making six altogether. Though these two exoduses were 5 months apart, the other white residents blamed Emma for their having left, saying that she was to blame. It is the most banal form of supremacist harassment, to blame the person of color for all the problems. And, of course, it keeps happening. Later that year, there were three rooms empty in the house, and Emma was told she would have to pay for them being empty. 

There was a woman in the coop who was wholly obsessed with health, and quite in crisis. Emma brought up the issue of the coop doing something for this woman, while the others ignored the situation. Emma was accused of causing trouble by bringing up the issue of the coop’s possibly taking the woman under its wing. Nothing was done, and the woman got worse, and finally left (in June) – ostensibly under the tutelage of her family. 

But the die was already cast. In May of 2020, Emma received an anonymous email, for which no one would take responsibility. Though unsigned, it was nevertheless co-signed by 7 of the residents. It said that they all wanted Emma to leave. No reasons was given. It was like a cabal of white people in the house putting themselves together in some form of electronic posse, and expelling Emma from the house (unofficially, since they did not have that power under the By-laws. 

The next level of harassment was the silent treatment. White people know about the tactics of "passive aggression." But then, for some reason, they were conscience-stricken, and apologized for the anonymous expulsion note. In the wake of that, Emma attempted to break through their white ignorance with respect to racism and black life, and gave a presentation on the conditions of Black people in the US and how they are traditionally treated by white people because Black. She actually provided references -- a number of books and articles -- by which white people could educate themselves to the racial situation in which they live as white. But no one in the coop saw fit to look at those citations, or organize a reading group on them. (This author has written a series of articles on why it is so difficult for white people to talk about race, which has been published in the Berkeley Daily Planet, and continuing for the next 3 issues: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2020-08-28/article/48668?headline=Why-White-People-find-it-Difficult-to-Talk-about-Race--Steve-Martinot) 

After this, there was nothing but harassment. Others in the coop would push her out of the way if passing her in a narrow space. Some would leave a door open to the outside, filling the house with cold air, knowing that she needed it closed in order to warm her space. When she went to close a door that had been left open, there was yelling, with name-calling and denigration, along with allegations of having slammed the door shut. Others would leave a mess in the kitchen and demand that she clean it up, blaming her for the mess. 

It is interesting to itemize some of these aspects of their harassment of Emma, since they allow us to specify some of the ways that white people harass people of color, without it seeming to be based on racism. These white people can simply decide the Black person is “not a good fit,” and all kinds of things get thrown on their shoulders. 

It is somewhat tragic that, in this day and age, you have white people acting negatively as white toward a single Black woman, and thinking that everything they were doing was okay. The truly tragic part is that you have a Black woman who is prepared to try to educate some white folks about what they were really doing racially, and they don’t want to hear it. 

When white people treat people of color as "other," it necessarily involves their speaking for the other. That "othering" of the person of color is an objectification, turning the other into a thing – a menial, a servant, a factotum, an object found in the environment. As no longer an autonomous human being, they can’t speak for themselves, and those who objectify them then can carry on both sides of the conversation. One can’t miss the narcissism in that one. 

But to speak for another is an ultimate form of disrespect. So, a self-respecting Black person will resist being spoken for, and resist being objectified. But when they do not conform to the scenario that the white people have established for this Black person, it is the Black person that is blamed for being divisive. 

What the coop framework provided was a perfect stage on which such questions could be broached and learned from. As a sociocratic system, in which each member had the same power to veto what was being proposed, each would have the same power to insist on speaking for themselves. And here would be a good opportunity for white people to confront what they do not see (because they assume) about how they approach Black people. And this Black person (Emma) was interested in setting up certain educational processes. In the event that the white people did not want to learn about it, did not want to corrupt the "purity" of their white approaches to Black people (as menials, etc.), then a case could be made that they shouldn’t belong in this coop in the first place. By belonging, they are pretending to be pro-democracy, but they are doing it in bad faith. They wanted to maintain their position of hegemony and dominance as white, while seeming to be progressive by belonging to a coop. Coops base themselves on human equality and dignity (speaking only for oneself), with equal power in governance. 

It was to destroy Emma’s equal power in the coop that she received emails expelling her, or removing her from membership, etc. – all without a hearing. At each stage of a racist situation, there is a similar kind of thing – outlawing one’s status, outlawing one’s language, being spoken for by others, losing autonomy as a form of captivity, etc. Ultimately, it breaks down to systemic contempt and violence. 

Berkeley needs coops. It needs greater democracy at every level. After all, when we only get an opportunity for "input" rather than participation, we are being reduced to non-participants. Let me ask, which is the template for which, our elitist structure of governance as the template for white supremacy, or white supremacy as the template for a political autocracy?