permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

Hi Kelda,
I think you misunderstood my comments. I'm simply asking for greater depth
than boilerplate anti-racism lingo. At some point we have to go deeper than
political correctness and anti-racism training, of which I've been part of
many, and even hosted during my PDC's, and for the record not a whole lot
of social justice activists I meet these days, myself included, think that
anti-racism training is the be all end all to ending oppression. I'm simply
looking for results, not more talk. I find white people that go out of
their way to constantly criticize other white people they deem less
enlightened are actually not doing much other than talking themselves. I
can criticize their criticisms without it being because I was
uncomfortable, but rather because I find their statements to be lacking a
certain intelligence.

I do find myself uncomfortable all the time, the life I live and the
situations I find myself in demands such. I am white (actually Austrian,
Irish, and Swedish since "white" is a term created to reinforce division),
male, heterosexual, and recognize the privileges my characteristics
unfairly afford me, as well as the inherent levels of racism that come with
these privileges, which is why I've actively striven to make my life about
the third ethic. I won't be admitting to things that I don't do, and found
Tobias' article to be a criticism I don't find to be so generally true in
the permaculture field. If that looks like I'm saying I'm not that kind of
gringo, that might be because I've been working for most of my life to not
be that kind of gringo.

Best,
Jason



On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 6:23 PM, Kelda Lorax <kelda@riseup.net> wrote:

> I love that he wrote this article, and the last one. I put a link to it on
> my (permaculture design) website along with the positionality perspectives
> I wish other permaculture practitioners can articulate.
> http://divinearthgp.com/positionality.
>
> Getting called out on our stuff sucks, but feels good, because we become
> better people and it makes our movement better. Both Jason and Chris sound
> like you're listing to us all the reasons you're not that kind of gringo.
> Okay, but I'm happy to say I AM the kind of gringo that thought all of his
> complaints were okay until I was called out for not having a better social
> justice lens, and now I think they're not okay. (One of the first steps in
> anti-racism trainings is to realize that all white people are racist
> because we've been trained to be that way. To deny our training is just to
> delay our inner work that could actually help to fix the problem).
>
> About cultural appropriation specifically, I think PDCs (which do
> admittedly work well for certain parts of the world and people) need very
> much an acknowledgement of where our techniques come from. Additionally we
> need a fundraising 'pass the hat' with each module (or as a percentage of
> the course) to help those communities that developed awesome techniques
> self-actualize with whatever negative impacts they're currently facing
> under colonization. I want my students to be just as well-versed with the
> struggles of those communities now as they are with how the technique can
> work in their garden. And because I'm white, I go through every module
> thinking of who in my community, that has experience of being a person of
> color, could teach the module better than me, and I 'step back' as much as
> possible.
>
> We white permies need to be okay getting called out, and I daresay, like
> it, if we want other white communities/regions/political parties to be able
> to do it too. Otherwise it's just an irrelevant garden and another white
> person causing trauma to brown people.
>
> Kelda Lorax
>
>
>
> On 2017-04-27 13:57, Jason Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> Christopher, thank you for responding to this. I thought of your work
>> immediately, though I was unaware of your history with the author. He has
>> done zero research, as you point out, other than surface scans of things.
>> He seems more trying to act out the popular social justice angst of the
>> times so he could get whatever little fee Huff Po paid him for this
>> article. His title is also extremely broad and his article extremely
>> limited, and the whole thing does damage to permaculture, which does an
>> incredible amount of good on the earth.
>>
>> Things I question from this article:
>>
>> On Cultural Appropriation. Where do we draw the line between cultural
>> appropriation and cultural exchange? I was once criticized by a white
>> woman
>> for using clay ollas in my university greenhouse as cultural
>> appropriation.
>> She said it was an indigenous  technique and I shouldn't use them without
>> crediting the Hopi with a sign (why she settled on Hopi people I don't
>> know). When I asked her if I shouldn't also credit North African's and the
>> Spanish, who brought the technique to the US Southwest, she had no answer.
>> People live on the surface, especially nowadays with social media and
>> character limits/attention span limits. It's disappointing.
>> Permaculturists
>> probably haven't given enough credit to traditional peoples for some of
>> the
>> techniques we recommend, or for the paradigm, but even that credit seems
>> like a general form at best. This is a tricky subject when applied with a
>> deep look.
>>
>> Permaculture Demographics. Are we sure it's predominately white male?
>> Permaculture authors, it seems that's true, and surely it's true for
>> youtube permaculture, but that's not the claim he made, nor representative
>> of the global demographic of practitioners. Personally speaking, I've had
>> the same amount of female permaculture mentors, teachers, and co-teachers
>> in my nearly 15 years in the field as I've had male, and while that may
>> not
>> be representative, it's my experience nonetheless. I can also say I've had
>> far more female students than men. The white part of this claim is
>> probably
>> true, but globally I'd be curious to see data before making that claim,
>> and
>> regardless, his article does absolutely nothing to address the real
>> injustices that exist.
>>
>> On making a living as a teacher. Well, I'm glad I don't, but not for the
>> reasons he suggests. I don't see how I could be a teacher only without
>> also
>> being a designer and agriculturist, and for that matter a social activist.
>> However, his claim is that courses cost too much, the PDC should be
>> abandoned (I'm not even gonna address this), and only white people take
>> them. The last claim is just rubbish, and demeaning to many of my students
>> of color. That said, I took exception to the cost issue because judging by
>> the date of the article a course I taught in Costa Rica was probably in
>> his
>> sample size. I think he should go to the campesino refugee camp of
>> Salvadorans and Nicaraguans this course was taught in, at their request,
>> and tell them that the nearly $15k we left in the community shouldn't have
>> happened, and that the international students who brought in that money
>> should feel bad about their privilege.
>>
>> On pedagogy. He claims traditional people can't learn from power point and
>> lecture. LMFAO. He should keep telling people what they can and can't do,
>> it looks excellent.
>>
>> In short, popular culture is lost. Don't trust everything you read and
>> hear. Dig deeper than the surface.
>>
>> Two recommendations for decolonizing your mind (which is actually the
>> culprit here, not permaculture): Raoul Peck's film I Am Not Your Negro
>> based upon James Baldwin's work, and Wendell Berry's book The Art of the
>> Commonplace.
>>
>> Please, please, please dig deep in this life,
>> Jason
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