white privilege! on a Wednesday.
My friend sent me this article - written in 1990, but I really enjoyed it. My apologies if it's been posted and discussed ad nauseam.
"I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks."
This in particular resonated with me - not as an excuse for any action or inaction on my part, but as a summation of my experience brought up as a middle-class white American before I began to "notice" race relations in any real way:
"My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will."
Discussion? Play nice!
"Macaroni - let me finish! - salad."
- 733t sewz0r's blog
- Login or register to post comments
It wasn't until I joined a white allies group at a martial arts center that had a women of color group, that I thought about the advantages I have. I mean, I've had it rough, but I know that I've skated through a number of things based on my skin color.
Just yesterday, I was driving through a very sketchy neighborhood, in my sketchy-looking beater car. (Everything about it is legal, but it looks like a piece of crap.) A cop pulled up behind me, and I asked the Universe that he not pull me over. I KNOW that he moved on when he realized I'm white. Driving while black is not a joke.
Sadly, I'm seeing how this affects my Amerasian kids. I think my darker skinned kid will have a harder time, even though she is more "together" than the one who can pass for white. I have to face this because my kids have to face this, but, honestly, well-intentioned as I am, and even though I've chosen to look at race relations A LOT, ever since I was a teen, I'm not sure that I ever would have looked at how my own "getting away with stuff" thing is part of the oppressive system.
And I'm not sure what to do about it.
All little girls should be told they're pretty--even if they aren't.
--Marilyn Monroe
i heart peggy mcintosh's essay, and i'm trying to get the hr person at my job to share the url to it along with some other urls on various aspects of diversity with the whole company. we had a diversity training yesterday, and boy-howdy, do i think those resources could be of use to folks! this organization is mostly non-white and includes a large percentage of legal immigrants, but there was everything from xenophobia to horizontal hostility to classism to a white senior staff member getting pissed when i disagreed with her assertion that miscegenation will eventually cure racism. bleh.
i think mostly folks are resistant to concepts that are new to them, especially if they require them to do work, recognize their privilege, or even acknowledge that they have been negatively effected. i know i was. back in the day, i was a reactionary unwilling to fully, really SEE any system of oppression, even the ones grinding into my own neck. i wish i knew what made me start opening up and being able to SEE and wrestle with this stuff, but whatever it was, i'm glad of it.
thanks for this thread.
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
reminded me of this (which i know i have posted but it is good and deserves to be posted again)
" * I WORKED HARD FOR WHAT I HAVE. *"
this was sort of a painful thing for me at one time. I am so proud of some of my 'accomplishments' in life and realizing that I had 'help' in these things altered my self-perception of who I was. Understanding that hard work alone is not a guarantee to success, that there are a number of other things that determine who has and who doesn't and that I happen to 'have' many advantages with my skin color and class priviledge. Also that those advantages come at a cost for other people. Painful.
* I'm all fight and no flight *
also the feeling that "all my hard work" is less compared with the work that someone from a less-advantaged background would have had to do in order to get to the same place, education and career wise. And then in addition the feeling that geez, I had/have it all, why am I such a slacker and have only gotten to this place?
I think of one of my college roommates, R, whose parents did not speak English (they are Mexican) and did not read and write in their native language or in English and what she has had to overcome (extreme poverty, otherness, language barrier, plus the experience of being "brown" in California, where there is extreme prejudice toward Latinos) -- whereas I grew up in a house (first of all) where both parents had gone through college and where education was a given, not a privilege.
'cuz it implies that folks who have less don't work as hard, and i know for a fact that my ma and most of my hometown folks have worked way fuckin' harder than my overeducated ass at jobs that broke their bodies and weighted their spirits without getting half the societal approval or economic benefit i have since moving into white collar fields.
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
First of all, you are so right. I am sick of the anti PC stuff. Period.
Second, PC was a very specific movement about a very specific thing. Language. Not saying the n-word and "spic" and other terms like that. Not calling a woman a "fireman" when "fire fighter" is much more accurate, and not that fucking hard, you morons. Sorry. Bitter. It is NOT about general discussions of white privilege not involving language, even though they are related, and I am sick of people grouping almost any liberal cause involving not treating groups of people like shit as "PC", making it a straw man, and burning it down.
They are using as an excuse and a diversion. Personal pet peeve of mine.
Sunflower the unflower
Mom's Tinfoil Hat
Foodie loves Picky
Sunflower the unflower
the thing that really, really gripes my ass about it is the baseline assertion that there was something wrong with the original impetus in the first place. as in, "use language that respectfully considers the self-definition of people unlike myself?! ohmigod, what an outrageous imposition on MYMEMINEMINEMINE right to say whatever the fuck i want to without giving any thought or consideration to anyone who isn't MEMEMEME!"
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
since moving to the sf bay area, i have often said that i much prefer the direct, unapologetic midwestern benightedness to the self-satisfied, hypocritical "liberalism" out here.
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
I had a conversation at the bar with a white friend recently, and it went pretty well, all in all...but here's the one:
"I grew up in a mostly *black* neighborhood, and I know what it's like to be on the opposite end of racism. I'm not a racist because I know what it's like and I don't like people giving me shit about it. I'M DIFFERENT THAN OTHER WHITE PEOPLE."
"The Universe Molds Itself To Prove Your Beliefs"
"Fundamentally the markswoman aims at herself" DT Suzuki
I have Stevie Wonder / Bob Marley / 50 Cent in my iPod! I'm down!!
Sunflower the unflower
i bet you handled it really well though 
hehe. I didn't pitch a big fit, cause I'm working on that. haha. I treated her like I would have treated ds. I basically commended her on the stuff that she was able to see, and I sort of made pretty benign comments about the other stuff...cause what I've noticed (from my own racist bullshit) is that we tend to be very defensive of our racism, and once it's attacked, we close ourselves off. I think we are going to continue the conversation for quite some time.
And Sunflower...yes, she actually told me that her best friend in school was a "black girl" and that she could never believe that the other black kids would treat her like shit when they saw that this one girl really knew her and knew that she "wasn't a racist." I pretty much proceeded to tell her what a racist asshole I AM, and how I've been working on my own racism, but that I know that I will never get rid of it. I think she sort of opened up after that, but it was still a pretty painful conversation...especially considering that I really like her and I never knew that such things would come out of her mouth.
"The Universe Molds Itself To Prove Your Beliefs"
I would love to see the email you come up with, Kelly. This is one of my favorite essays, and I am trying to think of an opener to distribute it to some folks I know, too.
"Step off my big ass."
- Anthromom
i can't play now but i will try and come back to discuss and offer some other similar articles.
thanks to kelly for posting...I will weigh in when I get a chance...
the invisible knapsack sounds really familiar. i respect anyone who takes the effort and/or time to pay attention to things that they take for granted in life. what can the conditions you come up with be attributed to? when you start to really pay attention, you can see that you can attribute factors to things other than race, whereas for non white people they can't attribute as many conditions to factors other than race. so, although i don't share a good number of the privileges the author lists from her life, the fact remains that race is less of a factor for me in most ways than it is for non white people.
"All persons, whether living or dead, are entirely coincidental." Kurt Vonnegut
I remember it being suggested by someone (lucy p?) a lot earlier that we start an ongoing anti-racist mamas thread. Could this be the beginning of that, maybe?
but i don't have time to do it myself every day.
i could partner with one, two or three mamas to make it happen if we wanted.
i'd probably have an easier time coming up with topics for that than i have had for sex-positive mamas {which is languishing in huck's absence - anyone?},but maybe weekly instead of daily? that'd give us more time/space to discuss each topic, i'm thinking, but i could be wrong.
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
i've been struggling with the concept of white privelege and honestly, embarrasingly, come up with some of the same responses you mentioned in your suppliment.
This essay really helped me understand the concept a bit better, and i am more able to wrap my mind around the whole thing (and let go of those responses mentioned above).
i appriciate this contribution to my growth - you are awesome for bringing this to my attention, thanks!
hipmama rocks!!
Seriously, it takes a lot to examine yourself. I was raised in a house with a lot of complaints about "reverse racism". Ironic, considering I lived in quite a well-to-do exclusive (read:no blacks, no Jews, no hispanics allowed, yes they still existed in the 70s) neighborhood and my parents really didn't have anything to be resentful about, considering we were the poster children for white privilege. Somehow it never rang true to me, maybe because things were so stark. Black and white, if you will.
The way I look at it, when a white person doesn't want to acknowledge white privilege or wants to claim some sort of victimization when it is discussed, it is like a man feeling hurt about domestic violence issues. Even if a man is not a perpetrator of sexism or domestic and other man on woman violence (sorry about the binary language, queerfolk, I'm working on it but this is a largely binary issue - queer violence is a big deal too), he should be able to admit it is a pervasive problem and he does benefit from being able to do things like go get drunk at a bar alone without worrying for his safety, etc.
Sunflower the unflower
Well, I try to think I was always aware, being a child of the idealistic 70s. But, a few things drove white privilege home to me.
My parents lived in an exclusive neighborhood and belonged to two exclusive country clubs. Not exclusive in the euphemistic way, but in the original, Mame way. No blacks, no Jews, no one who isn't good enough. You had to belong to one of the country clubs to be able to move in. White privilege doesn't mean MY parents belonged, it means it existed. Even today the country clubs are still like that. If any white person has enough money, he or she can go, apply, and most likely will be able to join. Even if one of us white people wouldn't want to join, we still can. There is no pretty place in our neighborhood that, even if we won the lottery, would still pretty much say - "We don't serve your kind." Without having to find out anything about us other than looking at us, no matter what we were wearing, no matter how much we "cleaned up". It's not a class thing.
I had a pretty piece of shit car at one point in high school. It was a little "hoopty" too (is that a racist term? I hope not). When I reached my exclusive neighborhood, going the speed limit, I got pulled over. Three nights in a row after getting the car. Each time they saw I was white and had a local ID, they let me go. I think once the night staff of the small police force got to know my car, they stopped stopping me.
When I lived in Tallahassee, I saw my then boyfriend get targeted for being Latin and darker skinned. Real fun when it involves the police. I had them try to convince me to say that something I did, he did. "We know it was his." Right. Same cops I heard referring to someone else with the N-word.
I also saw what happened when I chose to alter my appearance and become "threatening" or "other". If I thought I was being targeted, followed in stores because I looked too "punk", then what happened to the people who couldn't take off their version of ripped clothing and dyed hair?
Sunflower the unflower
Navigation
Who's online
Who's New
- BeachBunny
- gayle.mallinger
- Mamapocket
- mjcwriter
- addie smith
is retroactively engage my older generation family - my aunts and uncles, namely. They still have their flat, wide asses planted in the anti-PC backlash (soooo nineties!
). "We count too," my aunt angrily said when her "Irish heritage" was ignored in a discussion on race. I'm drafting an email to send to them.
I related a discussion about hair-touching to my mom and after several minutes she "got it" in some way she hadn't thought of before. She keeps bringing it up. Incidentally, she often "casually" mentions my brother's girlfriend's race (non-white) and I'm facing up to the fact I'm going to have to call her on it. I hate nailing my mom on so much stuff but then, she's the adult I spend the most time with these days.
Anyway, that's just one thing I've been thinking about.
"Macaroni - let me finish! - salad."