race, privilege, identity

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RACE, PRIVILEGE, IDENTITY: CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Race, privilege and identity is a gathering taking place in Bristol, UK, 24-26th April 2009.

Its aim is to engage with issues of race, privilege and identity in DIY queer-feminist communities through building dialogue, coalitions and resources.

The gathering will be both practical and issue based - we aim to provide a skill-base so people can feel empowered to constructively tackle multiple forms of exclusion that are silenced through the hidden normativities of radical queer and feminist communities.

We are looking for contributions:
* Workshop facilitators
* Artwork
* Resource ideas (films, written documents)
* Safe space monitors
* Performances
* DIY Creche/ children's crew
Please contact us to discuss your ideas.

Confirmed workshops so far include
* anti-racist space audit,
* introduction to supporting disABLED people in activist spaces
* Race & feminism: learning from history.

We would very much like workshops that examine issues of class & economic privilege & the specificity of racism in the 21st century, so please contact us if you feel inspired.

raceprivilegeidentity@riseup.net & please check the blog for updates(accomodation, maps, workshop update and reading lists) - http://raceprivilegeidentity.wordpress.com/

Why RACE?
Discussions to do with race have been growing within feminist, queer and d.i.y communities in the past 2/3 years, intensifying through forums such as the zine Race Revolt www.racerevolt.org.uk and queers of colour only e-list/ group, Blackfist: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/blackfist
Why are we still having conversations that feminists were having in the 1980s relating to anti-racism?
What are the particular inflections of racism that people contend with in the 21st century?
Are we building an alternative to homo-normative, imperialist, patriarchal cultures or merely ignoring the issues?

Why PRIVILEGE?
Privilege is something most of us carry into social spaces whether we like to acknowledge it or not. Whether it is because of the skin colour or type of body we have, our financial situation and access to resources,jobs and opportunities; privilege can be an issue that generates defensiveness and shame when it is broached.

Why IDENTITY?
Didn’t identity politics kill feminism? Isn’t queer supposed to be anti-identity? While most discussion of identity within feminist, queer andanti-capitalist communities is met with shudder (and rightly so with the advent of ID cards and the police state), it seems that the ‘identity’ which is normatively privileged in feminist and queer spaces remains white and able-bodied. While imposed, structural and identitarian categories may not be chosen identities per se, the politics of where we are multiply located does have an impact on who we are and how we feel within community spaces. It has an impact on the type of politics we do and the type of spaces we can go to. If radical queer and feminist spaces are, in reality, only speaking to the concerns of upwardly mobile, able-bodied white folks, then ‘our’ politics will be radically circumscribed in the effectiveness by serving the interests of the activist elite.
We bring the issue of identity to the table of gathering to ask:
how do we find ways to honour and make more visible the different identities or locations in our communities? Why should we be ashamed of talking about identity & location and mobilising this as a political tool – the personal is the political after all…