Understanding White Privilege
In order to have a real conversation regarding race participants must first understand how white privilege plays out in our day to day society. This awareness is critical to a real conversation that discusses individual responsibility for creating the world we want to live in.
Some are already poised over their keyboard to disregard this fact, so I might as well dive in.
But slavery ended over 200 years ago, why can't black people just get over it?
-cause slavery was replaced with over a hundred years of Jim Crow Laws, and KKK and court battles with governments, unions, education institutions, etc. in an effort to maintain the status quo.
-cause all the seats of power in education, government, unions, etc. were held by white men who wanted to maintain the status quo.
-cause our fathers, uncles, sisters etc. fought bravely during WWII in totally segregated units and came home to the same Jim Crow Laws they faced in the military.
-cause when the federal government created the Federal Housing Administration the legislation gave extra credit to vets who purchased homes in all white communities, perceived as on their way up, where as vets lost points and received less money for houses in communities with more than 2 black families, which was seen as on its way down.
-cause the education system continues to fail our kids and it is a direct pipeline to the prisons
-cause the state would rather spend limited resources to lock up kids of color rather than educate them.
None of you are personally responsible for creating this reality however we all have a responsibility to right the wrong that we encounter in our world. The benefits received from white privilege is undeniable. Yes all white people are not successful but it does not mitigate the privilege.
Despite these barriers many black people are successful. That is a testament to our resiliency as a people.
What will you do?
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June 22, 2008 |
Jo Ann Bowman | Comments (85 so far)
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Comments
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Jun 22, 2008 12:41:48 PM
Jo Ann, your post reminds me of a passage from Hendrik Hertzberg's column in last week's New Yorker.
Competitions among grievances do not ennoble, and both Clinton and Obama strove to avoid one; but it does not belittle the oppressions of gender to suggest that in America the oppressions of race have cut deeper. Clinton’s supporters would sometimes note that the Constitution did not extend the vote to women until a half century after it extended it to men of color. But there is no gender equivalent of the nightmare of disenfranchisement, lynching, apartheid, and peonage that followed Reconstruction, to say nothing of “the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil” that preceded it. Nor has any feminist leader shared the fate of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Clinton spoke on Saturday of “women in their eighties and nineties, born before women could vote.” But Barack Obama is only in his forties, and he was born before the Voting Rights Act redeemed the broken promise of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Clinton was right to say that from now on it will be “unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States”—and that, in large measure, is her doing. But the Speaker of the House is a woman; and there are, at the moment, sixteen women in the Senate and eight in the nation’s governors’ offices, the pools from which Presidential candidates are usually drawn. There are two African-American governors, only one of whom was elected to that office. There is one African-American senator—and seven months from now that one may have a different job.
It's not a response to your question, because I don't have a good response, but I thought it was relevant.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Jun 22, 2008 12:48:23 PM
I should add, lest anyone mistake my intention in posting that quote, that I don't think women are treated equally by society, either. And while there are more women in offices of leadership, with regard to the Big Office in the West Wing, I think women have a higher hurdle than men. If we were truly color and gender blind, we'd see something on the order of 50 female senators and 25 female governors. And wouldn't think to remark on it. But we'd also see something like a dozen black senators and six or seven black governors (some of whom might also be women).
I think what Hertzberg is pointing to is that while we've made some movement toward redressing the crimes of privilege bestowed on white men, the numbers tell us the tale of the tape. We're a long way from done.
Posted by: amber | Jun 22, 2008 12:52:05 PM
Yesterday's events in Monmouth and hearing "I don't see color" one more time from a well-meaning white guy got me on my soap box and I just popped over here after publishing the entry below in my own blog. Thanks for opening the conversation here, Jo Ann.
I just spent yesterday at the Oregon State Democratic Convention. Chance was running for a spot in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. Although she didn't win a spot, she made the finalists list out of a huge field of worthy candidates. That was great.
What was even better was that the Democratic Party of Oregon set some diversity goals for the slate of delegates, and the goals were met. It's a small step, but an essential piece of reform that makes me happy to be part of the Democratic party again. I can't tell you how many organizations I've seen where the white middle class leadership complains about how much they'd like to have a more diverse organization, but just don't know how.
Coming from a long line of do-gooder liberals, my people are fond of saying, "I don't see color," or "Your sexual orientation doesn't matter to me." Um, yeah. I hate this. And the nicest white anglo-saxon folks are shouting it the loudest. They are honestly trying to make room at the table for people who are different and that's the best they can do.
OK, so think about it. If you don't see color, you don't see what happens to those who are judged by it. If you don't care about my partner's gender, how can you really be my ally? It matters to the people who hate me for it, and it should matter to you. People who say they don't see differences are people who don't suffer for theirs.
Not seeing color, or gender difference, or class, or religion or 'sexual orientation' is a neon sign on your forehead saying you intend to keep your privilege. Talking about race isn't racist. Ignoring race is.
When organizations don't specifically require diversity in their leadership, it's an affirmative action plan for members of the dominant culture. Those of us who are straight middle class WASPs, or who pass for it, will need to let go of our indignation when we're passed over for privilege we've taken for granted.
And guilt is not helpful. Action is. When you have an opportunity to speak up for inclusion, take it. If you don't see 'qualified' candidates in leadership positions, look harder. If you are in a leadership position, mentor candidates who represent minority populations. The loss of privilege you may feel will be far outweighed by the advantages we'll all reap from having representation at the table. We have big problems to solve, and we'll need everyone's ideas to solve them.
Posted by: torridjoe | Jun 22, 2008 1:22:35 PM
Slavery didn't end after the Civil War, unfortunately--the stain remained all the way to WWII, as documented brilliantly by Douglas Blackmon in "Slavery by Another Name." Essentially, local law enforcement simply arrested African Amerian men, charged them fines they knew the men could not pay, and almost literally sold them to businesses (like mines and factories) to be used as captive labor. If that's not slavery I don't know what it is, and it captured tens of thousands of men in this way. Unfortunately for many white folks who would like to say "my family and I had nothing to do with slavery," their family histories may actually include the very thing during a time when they themselves were actually alive.
Nice piece.
Posted by: estarkie | Jun 22, 2008 1:24:57 PM
One small thing I have been trying to do.
I have been working in the south on consulting for redevelopment. One of the very real problems in helping neighborhoods is the way that bank appraisals are done. They look backward and rely on comparables, or what properties in the area have been valued at in the past. The problem for neighborhoods taking pro-active measures to plan for the future is that appraisal guidelines will not allow the loans to families that can afford them to fix their homes, even though the families can afford the loans, and even though the planning undertaken might help to assure an upward rather than downward spiral in values.
While this is not specifically racial in its application, this appraisal custom virtually guarantees that poor black neighborhoods in places like Montgomery, or Memphis, will be unable to reverse the trends and rebuild their communities. In Montgomery, I had a meeting with state legislators and community leaders where i called this de facto redlining, and pointed out that when the site is suburban (with the only comps being of farmland) and the expected occupants white this appraisal format is not applied. In Memphis, affordable housing groups could not get loans sufficient to even fix houses in the area where I was working, even though their costs were significantly lower due to volunteers participating in construction.
The problem is that the denial of opportunity has now been obscured in an apparently neutral methodology that is, in its effect, not neutral at all. I also made the same points in Memphis to an audience of citizens, developers and community activists. As far as I know nothing has changed in either place. One of my fond hopes is that in a new administration, perhaps issues like this can be allowed a hearing and maybe get some action, because changing this could potentially make a very big difference. It is the kind of thing that a caring community can work on to heal some of the glaring disparities in quality of life.
Posted by: LT | Jun 22, 2008 1:25:26 PM
As someone who campaigned and voted to make Jim Hill the first Democrat and first black state rep. from our district (but didn't vote for Jackie Winters who became the first black woman to serve in that position), I didn't do that based on color. I did it based on their politics, and having known them for years.
Some people will always see color (remember when there were people asking Obama if he were "black enough" and he responded with a crack about being black enough to have trouble getting a cab in some cities?). And there are those who will be in favor of a black or white candidate over someone who looks Hispanic because "at least we know you were born in this country" (true story from the mid-1980s about the first Hispanic elected state rep. in our district).
There are also people who look at the "content of their character"---the individual, not the skin color. That should be the ideal.
Posted by: Pat Ryan | Jun 22, 2008 1:55:26 PM
Some are already poised over their keyboard to disregard this fact, so I might as well dive in.
But slavery ended over 200 years ago, why can't black people just get over it?
So Ms. Bowman, do you actually imagine that the regular readers of this blog will lead with that line of thinking?
Also, to your last point, do you really believe that the state, whomever that may be, actually prefers locking up children of color rather than educating them while holding some other view of children with of no discernable color?
All sorts of isms do exist, and do tilt the playing field to the disadvantage of the various Grievance Groups. The fact is indisputable. So-o-o-o-o-o.....
I'd be interested to hear how you imagine this dialogue progressing through this post and future posts, beyond you lecturing, while the rest of us benighted folks acknowledging our collective guilt, and promise to try to do better.
Posted by: Urban Planning Overlord | Jun 22, 2008 1:58:58 PM
Point No. 1: In the litany of infamy Ms. Bowman recites, all but the last two items were history about 40 years ago. They lasted longer than slavery, but we haven't had Jim Crow, an all-white power structure, a segregated military, or a discriminatory FHA scheme since the 1960's.
Point No. 2: The education system is failing young African-Americans. What does Ms. Bowman (or anyone else posting) propose as a CONCRETE way to remedy this problem?
Point No. 3: Is Ms. Bowman suggesting that young African-American criminals shouldn't be put in jail? I hope not, for the sake of all our communities, black and white and in between. If there are discriminatory sentencing rules (e.g. crack cocaine vs. the "regular" stuff), they should be equalized, but I suggest that the equalization be more in the direction of jail time for everyone rather than no one. One of the major reasons our national crime rate has dropped so dramatically in the past 20 years is that more of the people who would be committing the crimes are in jail instead of out.
Point No. 4: Barack Obama gives us, finally, a chance to vote for an African-American presidential candidate that is not either a dangerous demagogue, a hypocrite, a fool, a clown, or all of the above (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Alan Keyes, please step to the front). Perhaps there would still be an African-American woman in the U.S. Senate if Carol Moseley Braun hadn't turned out to be a corrupt nitwit. Tom Bradley's defeat in the 1982 California Gubernatorial race was a case of racism defeating an otherwise qualified candidate, but that was 26 years ago. Harvey Gantt's defeat at the hands of Jesse Helms in 1990 rankles, but that was North Carolina, 18 years ago. Let's see what happens in November 2008 before we start throwing those stones again.
Posted by: Kurt Chapman | Jun 22, 2008 3:15:37 PM
OK, I DID read your post poised over my keyboard. I have to state that with the exception again of your victimhood mentality, that some very important points are brought up.
For context, I was raised in SC as the son of a military officer. I realize and understand that I had lots and lots of positional privelge. I also have seen and understand institutional racism; from chronically under-funded public inner city schools (NYC, Atlanta, Chicago and LA come to mind) to the most undersireable manufacturing jobs being historically staffed with black employees.
How do I go about making things better? Like LT I deal with people based upon the content of their character; as individuals rather than their visual characteristics, their religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation. It makes for a much more interesting interaction and outcome.
Posted by: The Libertarian Guy | Jun 22, 2008 3:16:14 PM
Ms. Bowman may I suggest that we ask about the barriers that keep people of all types down.There is a study on public transportation titled TCRP 49 published by the National Academies in it the authors note "The lack of personal mobility has economic, social and human costs, such as higher unemployment, reduced tax revenue, greater welfare and medical costs and limited social potential". Going to the specifics of ethnicity they note that "Nearly 40% of central city Africa-American hoseholds were without access to an automobile, compared to fewer than one of five white central city households."
In Portland a great deal of effort has been put out to develop Trimet and it is primarily focused on servicing the downtown core.
Five miles from MLK Jr. Blvd and Killingsworth is the Rivergate Industrial Park and probably many excellent opportunities for jobs for many people in North Portland. Unfortunately given the lack of transportation services between the two areas Rivergate might as well be on the moon.
Here's a bit more AC Transit in the Bay area needed to save some funds. To do so they reduced services and saved $4.8 million. Unfortunately the lost services costs the community 10 times that, or $48.1 million. Imagine what the lack of transportation services costs the people of North Portland.
Of course it is against the law or very difficult to own a private transportation company in Portland, or most any other city in America.
A few years ago I wrote to almost every politician in the city and local area about this problem. I received no answer. Not even a courtesy thank you. Frankly I don't think they give a damn.
The Libertarian Guy
Posted by: Harry Kershner | Jun 22, 2008 3:16:37 PM
Jo Ann: I have no trouble agreeing with you that racial discrimination, including state violence, is a serious problem. "White privilege", however, is a term that is likely to provoke those whites who are also getting screwed by the power structure, even if they are doing marginally better than people of color.
It appears to me that the civil rights battles of the past were (partially) successful because there was a growing acknowledgement by whites that black people had been treated despicably and systematically by U.S. society. That hundreds of years of this treatment cannot have been overcome by the advances in race relations since the sixties is a clear argument that I continue to make.
So, please explain to me why "white privilege" is preferable to "black discrimination". Won't the same principles apply, and won't the same actions be required?
Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 22, 2008 3:46:48 PM
UPO, the moral and practical equivalents of what defeated Harvey Gantt are in full circulation this year. If Obama overcomes them, that will be good, but it won't mean that the forces behind them are gone so we can just be "color blind." We are a very long way on anti-black racism from the degree of marginalization that the anti-Catholic positions of John McCain's buddy Pastor Hagee have, relative to the anti-Catholic KKK of the 1920s, which here in Oregon tried to abolish parochial schools. (And even at that, the fact that McCain would elevate Hagee shows that snake not quite dead).
Differences in formal sentencing guidelines in relatively race-typed equivalent crimes certainly need to be tackled. But increasingly, and especially in Oregon, the issue is not the formal sentencing rules, but the cumulative exercise of "discretion" by police and prosecutors along the way. Start with racial profiling or less systematic differentiation in car stops or other street-level interventions. Let's say a group of kids get stopped for underage drinking (as happened to me & some friends in high school). Do the cops dump out the stuff and let them go, as we were, partly because we happened to be drinking across the town line, though the car was parked in our town? Or that plus the parents get called? Do the kids get brought down to the station, but not charged, just having the parents called instead? Or say it's two different groups and small amounts of pot -- is the discretion equally exercised? Or something more serious -- who more likely gets sympathy as "a good kid ["from a good family" code words] and ends up facing lesser charges or having an opportunity to expunge a record? Or say it's even more serious but borderline Measure 11 -- who gets charged more often on which side of the borderline? More generally, who gets offered the more generous plea-bargain offers, the most common form of arrest resolution in the system?
These are not purely race matters, nor just anti-black. Latinos and Asian/Asian-Americans and Indians fall foul of it too, and so do poor whites -- access to legal representation makes a difference that's class-based, with the racial pattern substantially rooted in race disproportions among classes.
There are other kinds of examples in other sections of life.
Kristin makes an important point that I'd like to put more abstractly -- the long-term patterns Jo Ann points out have given whites life-chance advantages whose effects persist for several generations at least. That gets somewhat murkier within the working classes, in the sense of lots of disadvantaged whites too, but it often sharpens the conflicts and attempts to preserve a relatively minimal skin-privilege because the competition is so fierce and the scale of chances so restricted. In the busing crisis in Boston when I was in high school, the working class white communities who felt threatened certainly resented white suburban liberals, their anger whipped up further by white suburban conservative talk radio hosts (long predating Reagan era Limbaughism) -- but though they made protest caravans to the main judge's house in the suburbs, it was the black kids whose buses got stoned and it was a black man who was stabbed in front of the state house and the memorial to black civil war soldiers by a sharp flagpole bearing the American flag.
Jeff, the problem with what Hertzberg is doing is that the oppressions and repressions are asymmetrical and overlapping. How do you compare the violence of lynching (and of slavery-era whippings) to the violence of rape, and the long-time acceptance of domestic violence and rape within marriage as beyond the law? The coverture doctrine in Anglo-American law that kept women as legal minors and only gradually eroded over 150 years or so isn't exactly slavery, but isn't nothing either -- the constitutional right of women to sit on juries was only established in the same era as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in fact that law has been crucial to ability to enforce things like employment non-discrimination -- it wasn't until about 1970 that it became illegal to restrict jobs to male or female applicants and advertise them that way.
And of course African-American and other "women of color" women are women as well as members of racial/ethnic minorities, the "liberty" of wealthy white men to rape and otherwise abuse women in dominated communities, under slavery and in many later situations, was in fact a key tool of domination.
------
What am I going to do? Well, one thing I want to do is find out more about the politics of school transfers in Portland and how that affects the politics relating to specific high schools, most prominently Jefferson but also Benson and Madison and maybe others, as well as their feeders. If you read certain articles in the press you get one impression about the degree of community support for the subdivision of Jefferson into smaller schools; other sources make it look more controversial within the community. It does seem that there are arguments for making the high schools more neighborhood-based being advanced as a way both to save Jefferson and maybe others from closure, and to take a different kind of crack at the failures of Portland Public Schools to serve minority kids adequately. But I don't know nearly enough about it to have an informed opinion.
Posted by: Ms Mel Harmon | Jun 22, 2008 4:18:51 PM
Amber wrote "talking about race isn't racist. Ignoring race is".
This confuses me. I am white. I have worked with, and for, people that are white and people that are not. When I was in management, I hired based entirely on whether or not someone was qualified for the job, not based on the color of their skin. I've always thought that that fact--the fact that I don't even consider someone's skin color when I'm dealing with them, but rather their attitude, skills, abilites, and how they treat me--that that fact meant I WASN'T racist. But now it sounds like I'm being told that unless I bring a person's race as a factor into my life, my decisions, my relationships, that I'm RACIST?! I don't get it. Either I'm misunderstanding something or I need someone to present this argument another way for me, please.
And JoAnn, what do you want me, as a white person, to do beyond acknowledging that non-whites traditionally have received the short end of the stick and confronting racism when/where I see it? For the record, I was raised in a area of the country where blacks were hung and called horrible things and I've been smacked more than once for standing up and telling people to knock it off. So, what else would you like to see me do, if not simply treat everyone based on their abilities and actions and not on their race as I have been?
Posted by: Buckman Res | Jun 22, 2008 5:38:32 PM
And JoAnn, what do you want me, as a white person, to do beyond acknowledging that non-whites traditionally have received the short end of the stick and confronting racism
when/where I see it?
What Joann and those of her ilk want is to control the discussion of race by perpetuating the myth of white privilege as a way to foster guilt in gullible minds. We can’t have a “real” conversation about race until accepting her premise, however illogical it is on even casual examination which others have already noted.
Challenge the notion of white privilege and see how quickly your opinions are dismissed as racist. The conversation reverts to another lecture from those with a stake in victimhood.
We are all responsible for our own actions, not those of our ancestors or those in the past with whom we might share a skin color. The goal is equality for all people today.
Posted by: doretta | Jun 22, 2008 6:07:38 PM
The Civil War did not end "over 200 years ago".
Even leaving aside all the negative stuff that succeeded it, the official end of slavery was not as long ago as some of us think. A person born as a slave in 1855 could have been a slave for ten years. If that person lived to be 100, they might well have spent ten years with a descendant born in 1945. I think it was Leonard Pitts who once mentioned having had a relative who had been a slave living in his family when he was a child.
For those of us used to thinking of the Civil War as ancient history, realizing that puts things in a little different perspective--at least it did for me.
Posted by: torridjoe | Jun 22, 2008 6:23:04 PM
"Also, to your last point, do you really believe that the state, whomever that may be, actually prefers locking up children of color rather than educating them while holding some other view of children with of no discernable color?"
I do.
Posted by: Steven Maurer | Jun 22, 2008 8:51:05 PM
Racism is alive and well in this "turn of the millennium", but it is hardly the kind of phantom institutional nonsense Ms. Boman complains about. Indeed, institutions today - especially anything governmental - have diversity goals written into their charters and plenty of other places. The words all look very pretty when you look at them printed on paper.
Where racism exists these days is in the recesses of all our souls. As Barack Obama so eloquently stated in his speech on the subject, blacks revert to angry racist framing when they talk about whites around the barbershop, and whites - especially lower class whites - fall into racist patterns when they lash out at special programs to help underrepresented communities (for instance, special loans to black entrepreneurs), in the mistaken belief that economic progress is a zero sum game.
What I would argue, and what I see Barack Obama as doing when he talks about the outbursts of a white grandmother he loves and a black preacher who was in many ways a father figure, is to treat racism not as a mark of utter irredeemable evil, but as a moral trap every human being can all fall into.
And once you see it this way, you see the way to actually combat racism is not sanctimonious moralizing by people living in their own worldviews of tribal identity, but rather to transcend it. To, in Barack Obama's words, "turn the page".
Trust me, Barack Obama is more than aware of the racists in West Virginia. Yet there was never one word from his mouth or his campaign about it. Instead, he reached out to these people, finding what he had in common with them: faith and promises to help working class people so damaged by Republicans. And while he didn't reach them all, he reached many he would not have had he followed the same old script of outrage - regardless its being justified.
Ms. Bowman seems intent on fighting fire with fire. Her posts on BlueOregon reveal the emotions of someone deeply hurt by whites expressing racism, and much like a soldier experiencing PTSD, she now sees it everywhere. As an Iraq veteran dives under the table at the sound of thunder or gets the shakes seeing a woman wearing a hijab, so she sees a racist conspiracy in a takeout restaurant accidentally burning her food.
Could I fall into easy sanctimony about her broad brush framing of whites, as it seems some here have done. But I reject that. Instead, I intend to follow the approach of the next President of the United States, and instead fight fire with water.
Ms. Bowman, I suppose through my activism in the Democratic party, I'm a tiny part of the American power structure (though as a liberal, I'd call it the good part of the power structure, rather than the white part). Still, I intend to do my best to make sure that all American children have the support needed to reach their dreams, regardless of skin color or any other triviality. This extends to examining how to remove the benefits of wealth inherited from racist, or slave based sources.
It's all I can do.
Posted by: doretta | Jun 22, 2008 9:12:36 PM
Just what is “white privilege”?
Is it the fact that the history of slavery, forced segregation and discrimination has served to disadvantage black people in this country so that even if all race-based discrimination were to disappear today the effects of those things would inevitably still linger for generations?
Is it the fact that white people have the luxury of ignoring a lot of unpleasant reality about ongoing discrimination that people of color don’t get to ignore?
Or is it the notion that white people substantially benefit from today’s discrimination against people of color?
It’s my experience that people use the term to mean any or all of those things.
Despite the fact that it seems to be canon among authors as disparate as Shelby Steele, Tim Wise, Nathan McCall and Jo Ann Bowman--all of whom I have appreciated as sources of insight--I will argue that white people generally do not benefit from discrimination against people of color and, in fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.
Do my educational and employment opportunities hinge on systematically denying educational and employment opportunities to any other set of people or do those things hinge on how much we value education and how effective our economy is and not on whether or not there are a few more people in the candidate pool?
Do I enjoy the privilege of providing subsidies with my tax dollars to people who would be much happier to have a fair chance to support themselves instead? Is it a joy for me to live around more people than I otherwise would who suffer the ills of chronic poverty and hopelessness?
Am I better off because Jo Ann can’t count on unburned dinners, fair calculations by cab drivers or cheerful retail service to the same extent that I can?
The problem with the terminology “white privilege” is that it implies that, fundamentally, white people have something that they should not have and will have to give that something up to make things right. The truth is that we will all be much better off when everyone is afforded basic respect, freedom and opportunity.
Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 22, 2008 9:57:14 PM
Mel Harmon,
Applying uniform standards in hiring decisions is not racist.
But after the hiring decisions, and similar sorts of decisions -- on which, by the way, you will often find persons of color the most desirous of objective measures -- comes a different kind of treating people equally and similarly, which involves a degree of respect for their individuality, an effort to recognize things that matter to them, ane work with those things. Identities of various forms form part of that. I've had friends with Irish surnames for whom that heritage was a huge part of how they saw themselves and understood what they were doing. For me to have ignored that would have been disrespectful, would have kept me from knowing and understanding them, probably would have created conflict. I had a college housemate with an Irish surname who identified primarily with his Jewish mother. You might meet two persons with similar parentage, one of whom identifies as bi-racial, the other as African American or black, in either case probably a deeply meaningful choice. If you were not paying attention to that, you'd not be dealing with the person's full individuality, and would be apt to fall into trouble.
(My impression from what you wrote, Mel, would be that you probably operate on that sort of basis in your continuing relationships -- my observations are sort of floating away from an intitial response specifically to you at this point.)
About 15 years ago when I was teaching First Year Greek and Roman Humanities at Reed's fine college, a year-long course which functions as both a sort of boot-camp for seminar-style "conference" learning and intensive engagement with critical reading and writing, (I also taught a bit of African, African-American and comparative slavery courses, on the side), I had in my Humanities conferences two African-American students from Alaska. I.e. in choosing to come to very white Reed in very white Portland they were not choosing entirely new experiences.
Both were good students. One was a bit more critical of the Eurocentrism of the course curriculum, but dealt with it. He made clear that his African-American identity was something that mattered to him and that he sometimes wanted to talk about (and about things like my being a white guy teaching black history). He was on track to be a psychology major.
The other young woman started out wanting nothing to do with any of that. She was trying resolutely to be post-racial. She was on track to be a Classics major. However, after about a semester and a half, she'd had some experiences in Portland that made her start to think that her post-racial color-blind ambitions had been naive; she was struggling with that and with impulses toward cynicism. I thinking finding people with whom to talk about it was hard for her; I sometimes was a sounding board, though probably less than an ideal one.
For me to have tried to be "color-blind" with either of those students would have been not to treat them equally with other students who were wrestling with different issues in their own individual paths from adolescence into adulthood and in the formation of both their characters and more systematic critical thinking minds, whether it was the guy who was a transfer from a community college in California and thus a bit older, or the advisee who came in to talk about a possibly suicidal housemate to whom he'd promised anonymity and was wrestling with the ethical obligations of that promise vs. the risk to the housemate's life, or later on a Latina student who was very bright and quite at ease about handling her ethnicity at Reed, but had a genuine, documented dyslexia which caused her a great deal of anguish at certain points about the legitimacy of seeking accommodations (e.g. writing one long paper about a very hard book rather than two shorter ones about two easier ones, in once case we worked out). Her identity as a Latina mattered to her -- she's gone on to be a sophisticated historian who operates critically within Latino/a Studies and U.S. history both -- at that juncture, her identity as a bright student and budding intellectual with a learning disability probably mattered more (though the question of whether she might not get a fair shake due to her ethnicity did lurk as a question adding to the complexities she faced).
But then there's another level, in which the treat-everyone-with-equal-respect-as-individuals ideal (which I will use in place of "color blind" because I think it's the heart of what most people of good will really mean if they say "color blind" anyway) runs up against some other issues: 1) not everyone acts or even tries to act that way; 2) there are persistent social-structural inequalities produced by long histories of inclusion, exclusion, violence and exploitation that don't go away even in 40 or 50 years, from which white people do more or less benefit even if, like me, their immigrant ancestors all came after 1875; and 3) there are people who use the rhetoric of "color blindness" to deny the persistence of structural inequalities that interact with unsystematic, fragemented persistent racist forms of consciousness and cultural expression, although that's become enormously protean and kaleidoscopic.
I believe that white people need to have consciousness of race in order to be able to tackle structural features of society that reproduce racial inequality. In my current field of public health, "health disparities" among ethnic groups is a live topic of potent interest, in part because some of the greatest opportunities for improving the overall health of the public, as our population perspective says we should, lie in reducing and ultimately ending those disparities.
This can pose all kinds of problems and complications -- statistical generalizations about disparate patterns of disease between African-Americans and whites (for example) that are suspected to involve different distributions of genetic risk factors in some cases, may be a preliminary diagnostic guide, but may not apply in the same way to someone whose ancestry is "bi-racial" though their cultural identity is black. But dealing with other forms of health disparity that are complexly intertwined with the sociology of race and class inequalities requires paying attention to the category of race, in order to understand the dimensions and dynamics in particular areas and communities of a very real and well-documented phenomenon. Color-blindness would reduce the overall public health in racially and class discriminatory ways.
So I think white people need to take on a kind of double consciousness of our own (to crib a famous phrase from W. E. B. DuBois about (roughly) being black and being American) -- we need to be one way in our interpersonal relationships in treating everyone with a common courtesy kind of general respect when we don't know people (including equal standards in matters like hiring), and with a common attitude of respect for their individuality when we do. I think that over time that doesn't result so much in color blindness as in comfort with a wider range of ways of being in the world, some of which may or may not be influenced by "color."
But at the same time we have to be aware of how things are not all hunky-dory on the race and ethnicity front in social structure and in culture, and that a "color-blind" pretense that they are will not make it true, though it might make it easier for us to evade facing the problems.
On this score, btw, "the content of one's character" includes how one treats inequality and faces issues of justice and injustice, in my book.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jun 22, 2008 10:44:01 PM
A person born as a slave in 1855 could have been a slave for ten years. If that person lived to be 100, they might well have spent ten years with a descendant born in 1945. I think it was Leonard Pitts who once mentioned having had a relative who had been a slave living in his family when he was a child.
And the inverse is true too. Overt racism may have been largely driven underground now, but the attitudes are alive and well throughout this country.
And let's not forget that the largest Klan chapter in the country was once in Oregon -- and there was a time when the Klan controlled the Oregon governor's office.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jun 22, 2008 10:44:22 PM
...and that was in the 20th century.
Posted by: Joanne Rigutto | Jun 22, 2008 10:56:26 PM
Humans and those who aren't human. Those are the individuals I work and interact with. Some humans are caucasian, some are hispanic, some are negro, some are asian, many have family backgrounds - the humans that is - that span two or more 'races'. These are the people - the human ones - who we need to work with and live with.
If we refuse to work and live with our fellow humans, we will all perish.
In my years of working with and living with other humans, I see cause for hope and cause for dispair. I have my fingers crossed that we will all eventually learn to live together....
Please keep in mind that I did not say that we all had to love each other, I just said that we all had to live together... that would be without slitting each other's throughts......
Posted by: Chuck Butcher | Jun 23, 2008 12:49:41 AM
What will I do? The first thing I did was not have "a people." Of course I see color, and I hear accents and I don't give a damn. But my people? They're white and northern European and as far as resilient goes, they've been ass-kickers and so what?
If one creates a culture, say Jim Crow, one reaps the outcomes - schools fail black children? I've been to school and so have you, those people tried to teach me and I was willing or I wasn't and I got to that school from someplace else - like home and neighborhood. I took most of my "stuff" to school, I didn't get it there.
If a person wants to do well in a competitive environment they have to bring willingness and hope and that doesn't start with mandated anythings, it starts at home and neighborhood so what you're talking about accomplishing is cultural change and people don't like that - change.
If a culture encourages or tolerates behavior that is conducive to failure it will continue to fail, outside the exceptions who don't buy into the norms. Cultures are not formed quickly or without cause and neither are they quickly changed or without serious cause. The culture I'm speaking of is not somehow black, it is the disadvantaged who see no hope in their case and the wild success of others with advantage.
If this sounds like an exercise in blaming the victim, it is not, it is a recognition of ills done, but it is also a recognition that now is what must be addressed. There certainly must be opportunities to succeed, but there also must be willingness to do so and that cannot be addressed by talking to me about my privilege as a white. (BTW, I had a very good education, parents who respected such and I work like a pig for my nickle)
Posted by: edison | Jun 23, 2008 1:58:22 AM
"As Husserl would put it, had I had the same
access to the consciousness of the other as I have to my own, the other would cease being an other and instead become a part of myself." That's from a paper called Self and other: The limits of narrative understanding by Dan Zahavi
Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research
University of Copenhagen
The comments so accurately illustrate the limits of narrative understanding.
Jo Ann: Excellent post! Thank you.
Posted by: Peter Bray | Jun 23, 2008 3:20:36 AM
Ms Bowman,
I'm sorry to say, but after reading three out of three of your posts, you seem to have a pretty serious chip on your shoulder. Your three posts have all dealt with race. Okay, no problem. But all three pretty egregiously question non-blacks in rather stereotypical and simplistic ways.
You assume that because you are black you are treated more rudely at a hotel/bus/restaurant than a white person. You make a totally irrational argument that black people will be "sacrificed" during the presidential campaign.
And now this... you ascribe that pretty darn progressive readers of BlueOregon will naturally wonder what race hubbub is about because "slavery ended 200 years ago". Please. This is total bullshit, and it is unjustified and unfair for you to characterize readers of this blog in this infantile way.
What will I do? Stop reading your silly articles, that's what.
Posted by: Admiral Naismith | Jun 23, 2008 8:02:43 AM
Tom Bradley's defeat in the 1982 California Gubernatorial race was a case of racism defeating an otherwise qualified candidate, but that was 26 years ago. Harvey Gantt's defeat at the hands of Jesse Helms in 1990 rankles, but that was North Carolina, 18 years ago.
And Corker's defeat of the better-qualified Harold Ford in Tennessee, due to the "call me" ad? The ONLY close or open-seat Senate race of the year where the Republican won? That was TWO years ago. Ancient history, I know.
Posted by: Admiral Naismith | Jun 23, 2008 8:16:14 AM
Jo Ann: I have no trouble agreeing with you that racial discrimination, including state violence, is a serious problem. "White privilege", however, is a term that is likely to provoke those whites who are also getting screwed by the power structure, even if they are doing marginally better than people of color.
I second this one. It's not as though anyone pays attention to 90% of the whites, either. Or the Asians, Native Americans, etc., for that matter.
It's true that the oppressor class is overwhelmingly white, but the bottom of the heap is very well diversified. Telling an unemployed logger from douglas County that he's "privileged" might not be helpful.
Posted by: joel dan walls | Jun 23, 2008 8:48:57 AM
Barack Obama's speech on Fathers' Day might be pertinent to this thread.
Posted by: Pat Ryan | Jun 23, 2008 9:02:52 AM
OK, I see how this concept of dialogue exists in the mind of Ms. Bowman. She puts up a post, calls for dialogue on her terms, and then does not engage in said dialogue (at least so far).
Ms. Bowman, FYI, dialogue requires your participation.
Otherwise it's just you preaching to the benighted......
Be advised that most liberals and progressives reject the concept of blindly accepting premises and arguments without careful deconstruction and debate.
I'll be with Peter Bray unless and until you find it useful to defend your points on the comment thread that you generated.
See ya.........
Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 23, 2008 11:55:18 AM
"There certainly must be opportunities to succeed, but there also must be willingness to do so"
Chuck, I'm afraid that the assumption that there is no such willingness is exactly blaming the victim. There is a huge amount of such willingness in minority communities. The whole point of Jim Crow was to prevent the energy being put into building up from succeeding.
Your comments were on your family. I can find you loads and loads of black or Hispanic or Native families that can tell the same story.
Jo Ann Bowman herself is no slouch, though I know nothing of her family history.
A great deal of white historical "ethnic uplift" was accomplished through political patronage, closed and racially exclusive trade apprenticeship in the craft unions.
There is also in these remarks a lurking double standard, that blacks and other people of color have to put their communities entirely and perfectly in order, according to someone's unspecified and shifting target standards, before their claims deserve any attention.
The same standard is not applied to white working class and poor communities.
Posted by: Chuck Butcher | Jun 23, 2008 12:44:43 PM
I don't believe I put the onus for change on any specific group; the creation of the conditions for the erection of those cultures falls on all of us as does a correction of it. Jo Ann stops with accusations, I take the arguement farther. You focus on the final closing of willingness and ignore the link of willingness and hope at the beginning. Willingness and hope are linked, people are willing to do the work if there is hope it will pay off in some respect. This is the fight that accusations of this sort does't address, accusations of this sort perpetuate the mindset that hope does not exist.
There are perfectly good reasons to see more hope on the basis of racism, etc now than at any time. The plutocratic mindset of the power structure is a definite road block, for all. Jo Ann wants to get bogged down in a fight that is largely won and ignore that fight that is being lost.
As for the lurking bullshit:
"The culture I'm speaking of is not somehow black, it is the disadvantaged who see no hope in their case and the wild success of others with advantage."
You have on several occasions fallaciously imputed racism to me, let me be very clear - you are an ass who mangles what I write to get there. I have no idea what it is that prompts your dishonest behavior, but I'll call you out on it.
Posted by: torridjoe | Jun 23, 2008 12:56:01 PM
"You have on several occasions fallaciously imputed racism to me, let me be very clear - you are an ass who mangles what I write to get there. I have no idea what it is that prompts your dishonest behavior, but I'll call you out on it."
Man, the honeymoon sure ended quickly for ol' Chris, didn't it?
Posted by: Dan Petegorsky | Jun 23, 2008 1:45:15 PM
This thread is a perfect illustration of a dynamic that Marcus Mabry discussed in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. Mabry described Obama's success while asking, "How black is too black?"
As he put it, "Social observers say a common hallmark of African-Americans who have achieved the greatest success, whether in business, entertainment or politics - Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson and Mr. Obama - is that they do not convey a sense of black grievance."
Mabry cited a blunter statement from Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter on this point: “White people are weary of the kinds of black people who are dedicated to indicting whites as racists. So, to be ‘too black’ is to carry an air about you that whites have something to answer for.”
So - does that mean some here find Jo Ann's style "too black"? Since I know that most everyone here really does share a common commitment to racial and economic justice, I'd hope we could get beyond the ad hominen attacks and agree that poverty and racism are different but intertwined phenomena.
john powell of the Kirwan Institute is one of the country's most innovative thinkers and organizers on developing strategies to deal with the effects of concentrated poverty, which affect people of color disproportionately. His recent work on developing Communities of Opportunity is especially relevant to discussions here about race, poverty and gentrification.
Posted by: Aaron V. | Jun 23, 2008 3:10:09 PM
Knowing Jo Ann and knowing the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest, I don't think she's being "too black" as much as being too "East Coast" - that is, too direct and not willing to go through the passive-aggressive hamster wheel that is discourse in this area of the country.
And it's the same "problem" that Randy Leonard has...trying to move the immovable object in Portland that manifests itself in various ways - and white privilege is part of it, whether it's trying to get money out of the Pearl to help other sections of the city or keeping the cops in line, a specific section of people (who are usually, but not exclusively, white) will not want to budge an inch.
Posted by: Aaron V. | Jun 23, 2008 3:10:48 PM
Knowing Jo Ann and knowing the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest, I don't think she's being "too black" as much as being too "East Coast" - that is, too direct and not willing to go through the passive-aggressive hamster wheel that is discourse in this area of the country.
And it's the same "problem" that Randy Leonard has...trying to move the immovable object in Portland that manifests itself in various ways - and white privilege is part of it, whether it's trying to get money out of the Pearl to help other sections of the city or keeping the cops in line, a specific section of people (who are usually, but not exclusively, white) will not want to budge an inch.
Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 23, 2008 3:43:42 PM
TJ, it's not like I haven't had more than my share of words here over the past some months. The things I've said to which Chuck objects were all said in comments.
Chuck thinks them unfair, which they may be, in two senses: 1) I don't know him except through blog posts, and maybe if I knew him better I'd read some of the things he writes differently (I like a lot of what he writes); and 2) perhaps relatedly, I may be misreading him.
Misreading always has two sides, the reader's and the writer's.
As to dishonesty, if it means deliberate misrepresentation, or stating an interpretation of what he's written that I don't actually hold, I reject the charge.
----
Chuck, the "victim" in blaming the victim isn't racially specific either. I accept that you specifically reject the idea that the "culture of despair" among the "disadvantaged" is not a racial culture, black or otherwise.
I apologize for not giving the sentence you cite explicit recognition to make clear that I understood it.
I don't think I've ever accused you of personal racism. The other context where this has come up is around anti-immigration and anti-illegal immigration politics and whether there is racism and ethnocentrism in those movements. I may have unfairly projected on you your denials that racism is a personal motive in you illegal immigration views a denial that it's a factor in the movement. If you don't make such a denial, I apologize for the projection.
Let me state clearly that I don't think you are "a racist," nor racist except in ways that none of us can avoid because of the culture, including me. I think those cultural aspects do exist though you may disagree.
Actually my perception of you from the totality of stuff you've written is that you oppose racism as thinker, try to avoid it in your own actions, and probably stand up against it in interpersonal situations where you see it going on.
In saying that I think aspects of what you argue do "blame the victim," I wasn't accusing you of racism.
You're making a version of a "culture of poverty" argument, a phrase that goes back to the anthropologist Oscar Lewis in ethnography he did about a village in rural Mexico, but since has been applied to all kinds of communities and faced related criticisms. Its popularity waxes and wanes.
Fifteen years ago the "underclass theory" version of it was all the rage. It has been applied specifically to black communities, in the "underclass" context mostly was. Again, I accept that you were making the point as applying to disadvantage, at least potentially, across whatever racial or ethnic categories we use.
"Culture of poverty" arguments typically aren't racist, in the sense of racism that treats purported group characteristics as inherent and unchangeable. Since the mid-19th century such putative inherent group characteristics often have been attributed to "biology" or "genetics" among intellectuals and those they influence.
Exactly because culture can change, as is one of your central points, culture of poverty arguments often have been advanced against racialism and racists.
(There can be racist culture of poverty arguments in that sense of racism. E.g. the slavery-apologist southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips believed black people to be inherently inferior to whites, and also that their culture and poverty both were tied to that inherent inferiority. Clearly that's not your view.)
Prominent anti-racist black intellectuals, and not just on the right, have made versions of culture of poverty arguments. They include E. Franklin Frazier, largely before the phrase was coined, but the form of the argument was similar -- he influenced Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They include William Julius Wilson, whose book title The Declining Significance of Race resembles something you say, I think, & who was for a long time and may still be active in Democratic Socialists of America. They include Orlando Patterson and others. In a way W. E. B. DuBois' "talented tenth" idea in his early sociological work on Philadelphia in the 1890s is a version -- he later repudiated that idea.
Which is to say that you have good company, and also that in being critical, I wasn't assuming, imputing or criticizing racism. I understand the distinction between culture and race descriptively and analytically (although I think race is a cultural and sociological phenomenon).
Lewis' version of "culture of poverty" refers to poverty, i.e. economics, yours to disadvantage. In what you wrote, disadvantage probably is partly economic, because I know you think in class terms a lot, & clearly can be political/legal, insofar as you refer to Jim Crow. (BTW you might consider that reference to Jim Crow as a reason I might have thought your remarks had more of a black focus than you intended.)
In your version, such matters are mediated by crushed hope, which you treat as the defining characteristic of the culture to which you refer, I believe.
If I've made is sufficiently clear that I wasn't and am not accusing you of being racist, and don't believe you are a racist, that you're willing to discuss further, and if I haven't gone wrong in reading you above, I'll come back and write about how culture of poverty arguments IMO tend to fall into blaming the victim, and some other problems they pose. If I have gone wrong, please help me understand better so I don't misattribute things to you.
Posted by: torridjoe | Jun 23, 2008 3:49:05 PM
"TJ, it's not like I haven't had more than my share of words here over the past some months. The things I've said to which Chuck objects were all said in comments."
No argument, certainly. It just seems very recent that the comments were full of "Great choice! Chris is my favorite commenter" type entries. It's only in the last week or so that I've seen anyone start taking shots at you.
Don't mind me, I'm just munching popcorn over here...
Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jun 23, 2008 4:13:10 PM
Chuck, to clarify the result of bad editing of revision:
"I may have unfairly projected on you your denials that racism is a personal motive in you illegal immigration views a denial that it's a factor in the movement. If you don't make such a denial, I apologize for the projection."
should be
I may have unfairly projected your denials that racism/ethnocentrism is a personal motive in your illegal immigration views into a denial that it's a factor in the movement (a denial others make, but that doesn't mean you do.) If you don't make such a denial about the movement, I apologize for the projection.
Posted by: Chuck Butcher | Jun 23, 2008 9:26:20 PM
I impute no motives to people that they don't make, there certainly are racists in any environment and racists and xenophobes have a lot to do with illegal immigration. This is a repeat of the last time you threw this crap at me. I don't (as I've said before)answer for any damn body except me or those I indicate approval of, by name.
If you'd like to kick me for my approval of Jeff Merkley you are welcome to, but don't kick me for approving of all politicians because I approve of Merkley.
As for the culture of poverty that is a simplistic model, it is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. But a failing culture does exist. When a group creates its own music, slang (language), myths, and behavioral norms it meets the definition of culture. I will not do chicken and egg on this, conditions obtained to create this culture and this culture created its own conditions and perpetuated others. If we wish to break the cycle of incarceration, ignorance, substance abuse, domestic abuse, etc, etc we have to change the culture it exists in and the external conditions which encourage or dictate it. If you wish to change the conditions you must come at them from every direction. That is my essential disagreement with Jo Ann, every damn direction not her one dimensional BS. I want to fight the now fight.
Education is sometimes bruited about as a cure, you can put the best teachers with the best books in the best buildings and not trump the daily life lesson, it takes much more than that on a much wider basis. For cripes sake we've got 250 years of creation to undo.
Posted by: Israel Bayer | Jun 23, 2008 10:17:18 PM
Laws still exist and are enforced every day on Portland's streets that target segments of our population - those of color and those who are poor - mostly homeless
The sidewalk laws, park exclusions, camping, and programs like the Service Coordination Team targets individuals who are either overwhelmingly homeless and/or people of color. Until recently the Drug Free Zones also fell into this category.
While we may not have Jim Crow laws by strict definition, we still have laws that result in the same end game. And it plays out on America's streets everyday. In some cities to a much more deadly beat...
Posted by: Jo Ann Bowman | Jun 23, 2008 10:26:55 PM
The term white privilege is a loaded term that accurately reflects how people enter conversations on race based on their own race. Why start from the privilege that was bestowed simply because you were born white?
Why? Because that is where and when the person of color can determine if you have participated in any internal dialog around the issue. They know whether you have ever considered what would be different in your own life if you had been born with a darker hue.
Acknowledging white privilege does not minimize how hard you work in school, on the job or in your community. It simply understands that there were factors at play that stacked the deck in your favor and gave you an advantage.
Clearly the concept makes some liberals nervous as Chuck, Pat, Harry, Steve, Buck Res & others have stated over and over. I'm okay with that. I don't see my role to make them comfortable, in fact, its the opposite.
Only with a share analysis of the impact that racism and racist policy has on all members of the community can we work together to correct this injustice. Yes, I suppose I could pretty up my language so that Chuck, Pat, Harry, Steve, Buck Res. aren't offended but isn't that what white privilege is all about.
People who know me know that I work well with people of all races, incomes and skill sets. I spend my days helping people find their voice so they can advocate for the things they believe in.
I talk with progressive white allies regularly who want to have an honest conversation about race but they cannot find people of color willing to dig into that place to participate in a conversation like that.
Why, fear. Fear of being identify as the angry black woman, fear of being told she has a chip on her shoulder, fear of making people uncomfortable.
Well, I'm old enough where those fears don't impact my voice. I will continue to share my perspective for those who know we can and should do so better and are willing to have the hard conversations that gets to real solutions.
As Dr Phil says, "You have to acknowledge a problem exist before you can change it".
Posted by: Pat Malach | Jun 24, 2008 8:08:05 AM
You don't know anything about how people were raised, what there life story is or the circumstances that have led them to where they are now, but you rail about their WHITE privilege.
Jo Ann, you assume things about people based on the color of their skin. You are a racist.
Posted by: Pat Ryan | Jun 24, 2008 9:16:51 AM
Clearly the concept makes some liberals nervous as Chuck, Pat, Harry, Steve, Buck Res & others have stated over and over. I'm okay with that. I don't see my role to make them comfortable, in fact, its the opposite.
Only with a share analysis of the impact that racism and racist policy has on all members of the community can we work together to correct this injustice. Yes, I suppose I could pretty up my language so that Chuck, Pat, Harry, Steve, Buck Res. aren't offended but isn't that what white privilege is all about.
So the bottom line here is not at all about race, but about whether progress can be achieved through mutual respect and the exchange of ideas or whether the only way forward is for you to school me, while I humbly accept your given wisdom without question.
Is that a fair encapsulation of your point of view? If not, how have I gone astray in my analysis?
**************
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Jun 24, 2008 9:24:08 AM
Jo Ann, I was with you right until you individualized your analysis in comments like this one:
Acknowledging white privilege does not minimize how hard you work in school, on the job or in your community. It simply understands that there were factors at play that stacked the deck in your favor and gave you an advantage.
Whites have enjoyed a position of privilege in the US since a bunch of aristocrats wrote that 3/5s of a man thing into the constitution. Way upthread I quoted from Hertzberg, who put some numbers to the continued dominance of white men in positions of power in the US. I don't think anyone who has commented here would dispute that.
It's when you personalize the analysis that you go wrong. In the aggregate, whites have an advantage. But in the particular, many don't. I do research of the Child Welfare system in Oregon, and the kids we see come into the system almost uniformly don't have any decks stacked in their favor. They have enormous barriers to overcome--and in most cases, these put them in huge disadvantages throughout their childhood and early adulthood. This being Oregon, they're mostly white.
Race is a problem of society. When you point fingers at individuals, you particularize the discussion and lose a great deal of your authority. The honesty you call for becomes lost in accusations. You can set the discussion, but if you want people to "dig into that place," you have to be willing to acknowledge that you can't know what "that place" feels like from their side.
If we are going to have the serious discussion we desperately need to have, it can only start from the place of honoring where we as individuals start from. The second we start boxing each other up and label ourselves, the discussion is over.
Posted by: Buckman Res | Jun 24, 2008 10:17:59 AM
If Jo Ann were just another BO ranter, like the rest of us, or just another person espousing ignorant, bigoted views online, that would be fine. But with her postings at BO we’ve been given a glimpse into the mind of someone who finagled an appointment to the Racial Profiling
Committee, thus giving her a platform that directly effects Portland Police Bureau policy.
In that position she has displayed the same intransigent, unrealistic views shown here, refusing to reconsider her assumptions by disregarding evidence questioning the supposed practice of racial profiling.
That someone with her slanted views, hectoring attitude, and complete lack of objectivity has a voice in public safety should scare every thinking person out there.
Posted by: Tom Civiletti | Jun 24, 2008 10:25:55 AM
The fact that many whites face difficult circumstances and are treated poorly does not mean there is no "white privilege." This is all about relativity. When one group faces unfair institutionalized barriers to success, those not of that group gain a relative advantage. It's a simple mathematical relationship. Jo Ann suggests it is serious and longstanding enough that those of good conscience should do something to even the playing field.
When more whites are feeling the pressure of decreased economic opportunity in our post-industrial, imperial kleptocracy, this is a difficult message to get through to the general public. That is not Jo Ann's audience here, though. Has the right wing noise machine succeeded in selling the idea that affirmative action has made African Americans the real privileged class in America?
Posted by: Tom Civiletti | Jun 24, 2008 11:01:12 AM
One of the issues Jo Ann raises is the balance between spending on education and incarceration:
-cause the education system continues to fail our kids and it is a direct pipeline to the prisons
-cause the state would rather spend limited resources to lock up kids of color rather than educate them.
If you do not understand the problems African Americans face in our schools, read some Jonathan Kozol. Good schools cost money, and most African American children attend schools that are extremely underfunded, because most education funding is based on local tax base, and most minority communities are relatively poor. It is simple fact that a huge proportion of African Americans are in prison, and that the voting public [dominated by whites] are more willing to support tough penalties that lead to high rates of incarceration and huge budgets for prisons. Those voters are much less likely to support state or federal funding for schools that have a weak tax base.
It's easy to dismiss this as something other than racism, but I believe that would be a mistake. The atrocious conditions in many schools with majority African American students are well known. The over-representation of minorities in prison is well known. If the general public cared about African American children and families as they care about children and families in general, the general public would demand change. It is clearly a deplorable, unjust, wretched situation about which little is even contemplated being done. Indeed, the corrections-industrial complex has growing influence and is often a key supporter of new get-tough-on-crime legislation.
Ironically, just as demonization of a minority [communists, Islamists] can be pretext for erosion of civil liberties, dehumanization of an underclass can lead to a social brutalism that entraps poor and disadvantaged people of all colors and classes.
And then . . . they came for me . . .
Posted by: Aaron V. | Jun 24, 2008 1:15:25 PM
Responding to Tom Civiletti: of course, most white people don't have an easy life. There's an interlocking web of privilege that's not easy to quantify, unless you're a whiz at sociology.
White privilege is probably one of the strongest, in that race is an easily identifiable suspect class with a long history of de facto (and often, de jure) supremacy.
Unless you're, say, a Bush, you don't get flat-out privilege because you're white, but you will get benefits of the doubt in certain situations. (That goes the same for the interactions of all kinds of societal privilege.)
When two white people are in competition or confrontation, other privileges come to the fore.
Posted by: doretta | Jun 24, 2008 2:07:44 PM
This is all about relativity. When one group faces unfair institutionalized barriers to success, those not of that group gain a relative advantage.
Yes, but therein also lies the problem with the notion of "white privilege" as we've been using it here. I think that for most white people in Oregon at this point, the advantage is *only* relative. When the "advantage" that accrues to any given white person is personally insignificant to them it's hard to get them to focus on the tremendous disadvantage to a large proportion of black people by using the framing "white privilege".
For example, say 100 qualified people are competing for a job, five of them are black and the white person hiring for the job is a flaming racist who will never hire a black person. That's a horrific disadvantage for the five black people. The advantage to any given white person, however, is miniscule. They are still competing with 94 other qualified people for the job. It's perfectly predictable and understandable that they find their "privilege" a meaningless construct. I think that's a reasonably good analogy to the position most white people here find themselves in almost all the time. That's the point I made in my last comment and I still haven't heard a good argument that white people in Oregon actually see a net gain from the discrimination faced by black people.
Of course, "privilege" works differently when a group of people are being directly exploited as in the institution of slavery or paying artificially low wages to undocumented immigrants. The people with the "privilege" there though are the slave owners and the factory owners, not "white people". White wage earners are disadvantaged by those circumstances too. They are perfectly right in not feeling "privileged" just because they are not being exploited to nearly the extent that a slave or a person working for half of minimum wage is being exploited.
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Posted by: Kristin | Jun 22, 2008 12:25:31 PM
Thanks, Jo Ann...
What will I do? I will work as hard as I can to recognize and re-construct the power relationships that have always favored white people.
As a white person, I had parents who had little difficulty getting jobs (one of the few times my mother's job was threatened was when she hired the first African American person in the company's history -- and this was in the 1980's). These jobs resulted in me being able to get a great education. This great education resulted in a series of stable jobs for myself. I worked hard to be sure, but if my parents had faced discrimination and had little job stability, I would not be where I am today. It's about a cycle, a history, not the bootstraps of one individual.