“We need to be clear that there is no such thing as giving up one’s privilege to be ‘outside’ the system. One is always in the system. The only question is whether one is part of the system in a way that challenges or strengthens the status quo.
“Privilege is not something I take and which therefore have the option of not taking. It is something that society gives me, and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they will continue to give it, and I will continue to have it, however noble and equalitarian my intentions.”
– Harry Brod, “Work Clothes and Leisure Suits: The Class Basis and Bias of the Men’s Movement,” in Men’s Lives, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael Messner (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 280
As a 71 year-old White in a rural Republican county (Population of 94.4% White and 70,5% voting Republican in the last Presidential Election), I feel a need to discuss White privilege. Why? I know that this privilege opposes progressive movement through strong ties of White nationalism, and it also perpetuates aversive racism and inequality. As a lifelong resident, I feel qualified to write about the subject.
Disclaimer:
I speak for myself as a member of the White race. I do not claim to be the voice of any minority, neither do I claim to be so presumptuous that these minorities support my ideas. My opinions are based on my own experiences and reflect a representation of one person – me. I do not wish to make reference to any particular people, so if you are of a particular political persuasion and understand White privilege, I am not purposely “picking on you” or stereotyping you as prejudiced. I hope this blog entry raises consciousness. That, in itself, is a tall order. By the way, I am not “bad mouthing” Scioto County. Instead, I want to advance needed change and support causes I know are noble. Thanks to all of you who read the entry in its entirety.
Opening up this topic in Scioto County automatically makes me a target for criticism as tradition and history hold powerful, emotional ties with Appalachian residents. I see a general denial of such privilege here, largely I suspect, due to a long stereotypical bias against poor Whites in the region. In other words, many Whites fail to see privilege as they, themselves, are used to struggling against their own preconceived unreasonable judgments.
Also, many of the privileges Whites take for granted here are so deeply rooted that they cannot imagine why anyone would question them. They view their societal privileges as part of their White identity and deny any harmful effects. With the percentage of minority population being so low, the prevalent group of Whites have little reason to confront their own advantages.
In a place like this, the overwhelmingly White majority has old structures that seldom, if ever, have been challenged. The majority “consumes” the world in a specific manner – within a White racial frame – a view in which they process new information, sift through the data, and sort the important from the unimportant largely though only their own narrow perspective. To them, privilege is both natural and invisible.
An example of how Whites view their privilege as natural and invisible appears in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s book Strangers in Their Own Land (2017). She interviews working-class and middle-class white people in Louisiana and learns they’re disenchanted with their government and no longer recognize their country. They feel as if black folk, other minorities, immigrants and refugees have cut ahead of them in line, meaning the government caters to others before them. The line-cutting angers them, although they never question why they should occupy the first position. That implicit assumption – “I should be tended to before all others” – encapsulates how they view white privilege as natural and invisible.
(Brando Simeo Starkey. “Why do so many white people deny the existence of white privilege?” Andscape. March 01, 2017.)
So, Here I Go Again
If you were born with access to power and resources, privilege – particularly White and male – is difficult to see and talk about. Why? Because so many people do not feel powerful with those privileges. To those who have privileges based on race or gender or class or physical ability or sexual orientation or age, it just is – it’s normal.
In the case of White privilege, many people feel these conditions are not only normal, but also universally available. And, much of the reason for this strong adherence to privilege is that White people’s privileges are bestowed prenatally. We can’t “not get them,” and we cannot “give them away,” no matter how much we do not want them. These assets invisible and unearned. Unfortunately, this White privilege is both a legacy and a cause of racism.
(Francis E. Kendall, Ph.D. “Understand White Privilege.” https://www.american.edu/ocl/counseling/upload/understanding-white-privilege.pdf. 2002.)
Examples of White privilege exist in housing discrimination, job interview discrimination, police harassment, textbook portrayals of races, lack of medical care, and other extremely harmful institutionalized policies.
Just consider these daily effects of White privilege:
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
(Peggie McIntosh in Jim Buie. “50 Examples of White Privilege in Daily Life.” https://exploringeconomicscivilrightspovertyrace.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/50-examples-of-white-privilege-in-daily-life/. 2022)
“To be
given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over
another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is
a wicked thing.”
– Toni Morrison
Cultural Racism
Cultural
racism is how the dominant culture is founded upon and then shapes
the society's norms, values, beliefs and standards to validate and
advantage white people while oppressing People of Color.
Cultural
racism is how the dominant culture defines reality to validate and
advantage White people while oppressing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous,
(and) People of Color) communities and people.
Cultural
racism uses cultural differences to overtly and covertly assign value
and normality to White people and whiteness in order to rationalize
the unequal status and degrading treatment of Black, Indigenous, and
People of Color.
“Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the
exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them;
and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or
blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the
endurance of those whom they oppress.”
– Frederick
Douglass in a letter to an abolitionist associate, 1848
From White Privilege To Cultural Racism To White Supremacy
What can White privilege ultimately influence oppressors to do? Unspeakable things.
It can lead to a White supremacy culture that trains people to internalize attitudes and behaviors that do not serve any of us. We see these extremists and often wonder how such hatred exists. We must understand it is generated by White fragility and often escalates to acts of violence and terrorism.
Dr. Tema Okun, North Carolina activist and author who has spent over 30 years dismantling racism and oppression of all forms, writes …
“White supremacy culture is inextricably linked to all the other oppressions – capitalism, sexism, class and gender oppression, ableism, ageism, Christian hegemony – these and more are all interconnected and intersected and stirred together in a toxic brew that is reflected in our devastation of the air and water and land and living beings we have and are destroying and disregarding in the name of profit and power.
“This brew is a cancer, a disease, an addiction, an infliction and it infects everything with and without our awareness. The miracle is that we have survived as well as we have, the miracle is our ancestors who have fought to remember who we really are, the miracle is the earth and wind and water that restores itself in soft and fierce determination to keep us all whole.
“And we are all impacted. And we are all impacted uniquely. And we are all impacted collectively. And we are all impacted differently.”
(Tema Okun. “(divorcing) White Supremacy Culture: Coming Home to Who We Really Are.” White Supremacy Culture. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/. 2021)
Lingering White Privilege
Some people take White privilege as a moral accusation against them personally. They say, “My family wasn’t even here during slavery, and they went through all kinds of hardships to overcome them.” Defensiveness can make them even want to attack people who make them feel uncomfortable.
The existence of White privilege does not reflect on the morality of any one of us. Our individual responses to white privilege, however, do. To simply ignore privilege or reject it is to refuse to accept the responsibility of the dominate group to fix it.
Of course, I am not implying that all White people are racists. I simply want them to address their racial privilege – even though it is a social construct – and actively fight against it.
Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cris Mayo wrote, “Moving the burden of discomfort and uncertainty onto white people is a better strategy for confronting the problems of racism than concentrating on making white people comfortable in the struggle against racism.”
Mayo continued to explain
that a tenant of white privilege was the fact that Whites
did not
have to think about race in any situation, He also explained that
whites did not have to worry about being unwelcome in certain areas
or having their knowledge questioned by their peers in accordance
with their race. Psychologically, this strengthened a white person’s
ego and perpetuated any beliefs in society that whites were
intellectually superior to other races.
(Cris Mayo. “Certain Privilege: Rethinking White Agency.” Philosophy of Education Yearbook. January 1, 2004, p. 308.)
National Catholic Reporter's Executive Editor Heidi Schlumpf wrote …
“The reality is that in this era of so-called ‘colorblindness,’ racism still exists, more subtle, institutional and covert than before. According to sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University. What we have, he said, is create ‘racism without racists.’”
(Heidi Schlumpf. “Owning Unearned White Privilege.” National Catholic Reporter, Cover Story. May 26, 2006.)
This quote shows us a few different things about the understanding of White privilege in 2006 religious views that connected the views of others in academics and popular sources.
First, the belief that
discrimination and racism had ended in the United States after the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 made structural privilege illegal was false:
racism in the United States was actually perpetuated by white
citizen’s subconscious. The institutions
that had now been
created to perpetuate racism were not systems such as governmental
segregation, but a mindset being taught to generation after
generation by teachers who more than likely were unaware school was
in session.
Second, the fact that Schlumpf was quoting a sociologist showed that the understanding of white privilege as being a psychological form of racism had spread from the world of Women’s Studies in which it was developed to other disciplines in academia.
“Racism without racists” – can you see it? It is the Truth of Inequality today: We all want to believe that we’ve earned what we have, but true equality begins when we’re willing to see how the circumstances of our birth have helped us along.
“Most whites are blind to the existence of racial privilege,” says psychologist Taylor Phillips of New York University. “They deny it exists.” In fact, 55% of white people in the US claim they suffer racial discrimination and that racial minorities enjoy privileges, according to a 2018 analysis by researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
(“Executive Summary: Discrimination In America.” NPR. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2018.)
Racial preference and affirmative action programs, aimed at improving minority access to education and jobs, do exist. But, so many studies have connected accidents of birth, especially race but also sex, to life’s outcomes. Some factors are measurable – think parental education and income (both of which usually favor white people) and neighborhood quality. Others are less so – for example, the ability to tap into networks of people (mom and dad’s friends, neighbors, parents of schoolmates) who can offer an edge and an in.
Here in Scioto County, most people “freak out” at the slightest reminders of racism and White fragility. They buy into “Make America Great Again” – a desire to return to conservative practices that glorify White nationalism. They claim they no longer want to follow “subversive measures that lead to socialism.” In their disgust, they – consciously or unconsciously – seek to eliminate all reminders of racism and withdraw from any such stress-inducing situations. They claim to be color-blind when, in truth, they need to support the existence of all minorities and their cultures. They should recognize and raise the cultural freedom of colors, not be indifferent to them.
People should cast off their blinders and be mindful of the existence of White privilege, but simple recognition and mindfulness extends past merely correctly perceiving reality: it should facilitate introspection, causing White people to question why recognizing their racial privilege is so threatening to them – those who benefit from it.
At the risk of being repetitive, allow me to state that once more so that it might sink in: White people need to question why recognizing privilege is so threatening. Why? I want to leave that to the reader to answer. I think it is evident; however, I would love to hear comments from locals concerning the existence of White privilege.
I'll end with a fact: the U.S. presents a minority and indigenous situation of unusual diversity and complexity. There are seven key minority and indigenous groupings: Latinos (including Puerto Ricans), African Americans, Asian Americans, Arab and other Middle Eastern Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawai’ians and other Pacific Islanders, and Alaska Natives. They all make up the beautiful, multi-colored fabric of culture in our nation. All deserve equal respect, equality, and justice. These are the most wonderful gifts afforded to all citizens.
It is a messy, lifelong process for any White person who honestly deals with his/her privilege, but one that is necessary to align my professed values with my real actions. It is also deeply compelling and transformative. Consider the change in perspective.
“If a person is standing too close to the cage, they might not have a full view of the cage and might believe that taken individually, the bars do not actually impede the bird. But stepping back, a person can see that the bird cannot escape the cage.
“If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view, you may not understand why the bird doesn't just go around the single wire and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place in the cage.”
– Robin DiAngelo. White Fragility. 2018
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