This week on White Privilege Digest
Because I recognize that my words live in the public sphere on this blog, I feel like I should elaborate a bit on white privilege and my thoughts on it. This is precipitated by a small dust-up over my quoting of an alumnus from my college, who, you'll recall, did not believe in white privilege. He contacted me and, in the resulting minor dust-up, I was able to articulate more of my feelings about the unearned, often unquestioned, power of whiteness. I'm sharing them here, with the full disclosure that I did not change the mind of my interlocutor and I doubt I would be able to: we were at loggerheads at the end of the discussion, with me believing that white privilege exists and him believing that all inequity could be accounted for by racism, and believing, in fact, that the idea of white privilege itself was racist (because it ascribes a characteristic--power--to a race) and appealed to "some people, most of whom have a sheltered, self-absorbed, self-centered view of the world."
Needless to say, I do not* agree with this at all. (*edited 2/29 for oops of "do/do not")
We spoke specifically about jobs--employment being one of those places where I feel like white privilege is very often in play and very infrequently questioned. Given the whiteness of board rooms, my interlocutor offered, "Perhaps there are more white people applying for a job than their(sic) are non-white people....". I ask: if one asked WHY more white people might apply for a job than would non-white people, what would that answer reflect? The simple racism of a landlord of a building in the area of the job, who did not want to rent to a non-white person, thereby keeping the person less conveniently near the job site? The simple racism of the corporation, putting forth a front (spoken or not--and if it is unspoken, what might lead one to hear it? You know my answer to that last bit...) that non-whites need not apply? The simple racism of an individual college admissions board member who didn't want to let a black student into a school that might have given that student an alumnus connection to someone who works at the corporation? Possibly even the simple racism of a non-white applicant who sees a white possible HR manager, a white possible boss, a coterie of white possible coworkers, and decides not to put in for a job because she doesn't want to work with white people?
My interlocutor offers this defense: that if 3 of 4 candidates for a job are white, all else being equal, there's a 75% chance that the hiree will be white if no acts of racism occur. And I say that "all else" will *not* be equal even if no overt, concerted racism is exercised because white privilege pervades the backstories and operational realities of all of the candidates. Ask the deeper questions, get the deeper answers.
I see an undercurrent that defines WHITE as the default, WHITE as the norm, WHITE as the prevalent racio-cultural experience, WHITE as the assumption in places as varied as the board room and the grocery store (where a another friend reports that a Mexican-American friend once went looking for a brown man's food and the white clerk did not recognize that food).
I do not understand how one can believe that there is racism in the world but deny that whiteness has advantages that are owed only to whiteness. I don't mean to put forth that white privilege is a *special kind* of racism. It's certainly tied up with racism. But my view and experience of the world has white privilege operating alongside racism as a force of continuing, behind-the-scenes empowerment of one group, by its own hand, over others.
So here's my thesis: White privilege is not something that non-white people hand over to white people, it is something that white people (that is to say, those "raced as white," which has not always been the same group it might be today) have had, historically, the luxury of benefiting from through other white peoples' own political, social, and cultural systems that have been--yes--racist. White privilege is the societal child of institutionalized racism let lose in the day care center of a wider world.
In conclusion, there once were three fish. One swam by the other two and said "mornin' y'all, how's the water?" and the other two looked at each other and one said to the other, "what's water?"
Needless to say, I do not* agree with this at all. (*edited 2/29 for oops of "do/do not")
We spoke specifically about jobs--employment being one of those places where I feel like white privilege is very often in play and very infrequently questioned. Given the whiteness of board rooms, my interlocutor offered, "Perhaps there are more white people applying for a job than their(sic) are non-white people....". I ask: if one asked WHY more white people might apply for a job than would non-white people, what would that answer reflect? The simple racism of a landlord of a building in the area of the job, who did not want to rent to a non-white person, thereby keeping the person less conveniently near the job site? The simple racism of the corporation, putting forth a front (spoken or not--and if it is unspoken, what might lead one to hear it? You know my answer to that last bit...) that non-whites need not apply? The simple racism of an individual college admissions board member who didn't want to let a black student into a school that might have given that student an alumnus connection to someone who works at the corporation? Possibly even the simple racism of a non-white applicant who sees a white possible HR manager, a white possible boss, a coterie of white possible coworkers, and decides not to put in for a job because she doesn't want to work with white people?
My interlocutor offers this defense: that if 3 of 4 candidates for a job are white, all else being equal, there's a 75% chance that the hiree will be white if no acts of racism occur. And I say that "all else" will *not* be equal even if no overt, concerted racism is exercised because white privilege pervades the backstories and operational realities of all of the candidates. Ask the deeper questions, get the deeper answers.
I see an undercurrent that defines WHITE as the default, WHITE as the norm, WHITE as the prevalent racio-cultural experience, WHITE as the assumption in places as varied as the board room and the grocery store (where a another friend reports that a Mexican-American friend once went looking for a brown man's food and the white clerk did not recognize that food).
I do not understand how one can believe that there is racism in the world but deny that whiteness has advantages that are owed only to whiteness. I don't mean to put forth that white privilege is a *special kind* of racism. It's certainly tied up with racism. But my view and experience of the world has white privilege operating alongside racism as a force of continuing, behind-the-scenes empowerment of one group, by its own hand, over others.
So here's my thesis: White privilege is not something that non-white people hand over to white people, it is something that white people (that is to say, those "raced as white," which has not always been the same group it might be today) have had, historically, the luxury of benefiting from through other white peoples' own political, social, and cultural systems that have been--yes--racist. White privilege is the societal child of institutionalized racism let lose in the day care center of a wider world.
In conclusion, there once were three fish. One swam by the other two and said "mornin' y'all, how's the water?" and the other two looked at each other and one said to the other, "what's water?"
Labels: white privilege
posted by Nora Rocket at 7:25 PM
4 Comments:
Well put. I think that white privilege is also embedded in language. You can see it reflected on SATs and anywhere else where it is important to speak "proper" English. Lisa Delpit calls it the "dialect of power" and it is the one that white middle class kids grow up learning. It is classed and raced, no doubt. I wonder what your fellow alum would say about certain ways of speaking being more highly regarded than others. Why do people code switch or struggle to lose an accent?
Hey. Its your friendly interlocutor.
Wow. This is quite an interesting interpretation of the discussion on Grinnell Notes.
I don't think the above in a accurate representation of the discussion.
(also, R, don't you mean "Needless to say, I do NOT agree with this at all." as opposed to "Needless to say, I do NOT agree with this at all"?)
The following may be wasted on the readership (and author) of this blog, but I think that it isn't too complex (or nuty) and that people will understand where I am coming from:
Nope, still don't believe in 'white privilege' because I don't believe that being white *always* means having power. I do believe in social and economic (and several other forms of privilige) where power in group/community/national situation is given to people based on the race/gender/economic status/education/employment/training/etc. But I do not believe that white people *always* have the the power in any situation where there are white and non-white people.
That's my entire statement in a nutshell.
R, your analysis of the purely hypothetical example posed by another person on the board (is it racist if four people who are equally qualified apply for a job and one of them in african american and the job goes to one of the white people) is again, interesting, especially with the back stories you establish that did not exist in the original question.
I expanded on the answer you presented me as having in notes, but you did not include that additional information here.
Anyway, converse on. I'm out.
D. aka, the interlocutor
Hey D:
First of all, thanks for my "do/do not" catch. Blogging late at night? Not always a guarantee of accuracy!
Now.
I didn't interpret what was said on Notes. I interpreted what was said on your Plan, and the above is almost exactly what was on my Plan for days. I never spoke to the Notes discussion but to pull your ultimate conclusion out of it, and I never claimed to talk about the Notes conversation. I don't like Notes so I spend no time there.
As for your comments being "wasted on the readership (and author) of this blog." Watch your mouth when you're talking about my readers.
R- you're right. It was posted in the regular plans area, not in notes. But you still did not respond to the fact the you have expanded the example far beyond what the poster actually said, nor did you include what I actually said.
Maybe this is just because you are posting late at night?
Anyway, happy weekend.
D
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