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Whiteness Studies

 
 
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:43 am
All in the Family is generally remembered for Archie's anti black bias. But it often covered predjudice against Jews and other races and nationalities too. Once it allowed Sammy Davis, Jr., a Jewish convert, onto the show just to afford Davis the opportunity to address Archie's anti Semitism. In the later years of Archie on television, Archie's heart is won by a little Jewish girl (from just one parent, I believe) who is a relative and whom Archie continues to raise even after Edith's death. If memory serves, his partner in the beer parlor was also Jewish. So, Archie grew a little in the end. I don't believe he overcame an inability to view the larger picture; he probably still held the same preconceived notions about "all the other Jews," but he did help that little girl to grow up and be happy.

For myself, I view actions of the sort, such as bombing homes of Jews, the same way I view hate crimes against any part of humanity. In the area of the Middle East, I favor policies that seek security and protection for all the peoples involved. I have at one time or other suggested a multinational coalition to move into the area to stop all the killing and to stay put as long as necessary to end the violence.
0 Replies
 
BillW
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 10:12 am
Sounds like good advice to me. Multinational in the whole of the middle east and Africa sounds good too. Maybe peace will break out all over the world - despite current trends!
0 Replies
 
sweetcomplication
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 11:47 am
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group
Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see on of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women's Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us".

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

I usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure 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.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals,the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.
If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, out numbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
I can choose blemish cover or bandages in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin.
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience which I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these prequisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color. For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the U.S. consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantaging associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective State-ment of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently. One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to be now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Though systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.


Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.


...and so I submit to you this article as well with the comment that I find it very sad that out of the four postings to my recent offering, one simply addressed 1 of the 2 issues that article raised, the next did discuss other racial issues, while the next did touch on anti-Semitism but per usual felt the need to interject the ME situation (why, as a Jew, must I take responsibility for what another country, Israel [as most people on A2K obviously believe there was no anti-Semitism before the ME situation which in actuality directly led to the founding of the State of Israel] - but, y'all aren't going to taunt me into going there!, and the 4th added a simple plea for world peace Rolling Eyes ... and, so, let us (after reading the article above regarding men) begin again with the original kick-off, as follows:


Snood Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2003, 7:12 pm: WHITE STUDIES


Here's something I'm sure will bring out the beast in some A2Kers.

Several Universities are teaching a Course in "White Studies", about how race was a construct of white people, and how they are the unthinking beneficiaries of privilege. Whoo-boy! Baton down the hatches!


http://www.msnbc.com/news/928992.asp?vts=062020031055
0 Replies
 
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 07:08 pm
I guess i'm off of this thread. Too much of a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation for me.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 07:52 pm
I'm otta here too! c.i.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:01 pm
Hmmm- what's interesting about that, CI and EB, is that you could have simply not posted here further., instead of announcing your abandonment of the thread.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:08 pm
snood--
Some people participated here with honest interest in the topic. Many have stopped, largely because of what I will characterize as sweetcomplication's irritating lectures and constant redirection.

I gave up on participation a while ago, but was interested in what others were saying.

I'm glad they stated why they were quitting, because if they hadn't, I fully imagine sweetcomplication would post another diatribe about how people here couldn't face the reality of the subject.

Her control of this thread has been something I have not witnessed on any other thread or in any other community. It seemed impossible for anyone to contribute within her parameters.

I think it's a shame the discussion was thwarted in this manner. At a few points, there was great participation. I nearly posted a congratulation to you on a couple of occasions--but ultimately thought you would turn it into a negative.
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edgarblythe
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:12 pm
Sophia makes some good points. I posted my reason partly as a way of holding out for the possibility someone might give me a reason to stay. So far it is not forthcoming.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:26 pm
"I think it's a shame the discussion was thwarted in this manner. At a few points, there was great participation. I nearly posted a congratulation to you on a couple of occasions--but ultimately thought you would turn it into a negative."

Why did you think I would do that, Sofia?

and just for the record - I have no control about what sc does, and can speak very well for myself.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:28 pm
It is my perception that you second guess, or are suspicious of most everything I say.

I don't think we have had a non-negative interaction.

---------
I didn't hold you responsible for sc's posts--just in case you thought I had.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:33 pm
...and I take it that you take no responsibility for the nature of our interactions? <sigh> In any case sophia, for you to say you "were going to" give me a compliment, but didn't because I would've twisted it, certainly couldn't have been expected to improve relations, now could it?
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:39 pm
snood wrote:
...and I take it that you take no responsibility for the nature of our interactions?


It is almost always a mistake to assume, as you have done here. I was not thinking of blame, but the fact that the interactions are almost always negative.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:41 pm
In any case sophia, for you to say you "were going to" give me a compliment, but didn't because I would've twisted it, certainly couldn't have been expected to improve relations, now could it?
-----------
My goal was not to 'improve relations', but to share a fact.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:45 pm
Sofia wrote:
In any case sophia, for you to say you "were going to" give me a compliment, but didn't because I would've twisted it, certainly couldn't have been expected to improve relations, now could it?
-----------
My goal was not to 'improve relations', but to share a fact.


a "fact", before the fact. Oh sophia, you are gifted.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:50 pm
The fact: I typed out a congratulatory post to you on two different occasions about the success of the thread. I deleted because I didn't believe you would accept them in the spirit they were intended.

The 'gifted' comment is what I am talking about. My comments to you are fact and opinion. I didn't get personal with you; yet, you do this constantly.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:52 pm
yup - you're as pure as the driven snow.....


on a side street in Manhatten.

The weird thing is that you actually believe that "I never get personal with you" thing about yourself. That's nice, sophia - it's good to be pleased with oneself.
the fact is, you don't know what my reaction would've been if you'd said something nice. You shoulda tried it, or at least shut up about not doing it. Your ouija board is broke.
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babsatamelia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:56 pm
**I grew up in a suburban area south of Pittsburgh, Pa. I never
saw a black person until I was in high school. I never
heard the term "nigger" until my last year of high school &
it was used by a boy from another school district. I had
no innate predjudice against black children in our high
school. I never witnessed or even heard of any black child
having the the slightest bit of trouble during the years spent
in our area's school system. I didn't ever witness any type,
manner nor even a hint of racism toward black children in our
schools.
**When I moved to Florida, and my daughters began to attend
public school here in our small town was when I first saw racism
firsthand and I saw it for what it really was.
**BUT...it was not racism against black kids. What it actually
was....was the most flagrant, unacceptable & outright disgusting
racist comments and actions on the part of black kids against
white kids .... I saw MY first dose of racism ( along with my
three young and impressionable daughters ) at both the
elementary AND junior high school levels here in NE Florida.
AND then later in the high school, but my oldest daughter quit
the school here - got her GED. My middle daughter was close
to quitting... she has red hair and the black boys would call her
"carrot ****" - and nothing was being done to stop them. I got
to see it up VERY close and personal.....predjudice?? What I
saw was reverse racism AND from some of the black teachers
as well AND it was all directed at WHITE children by the blacks.
So, has this altered my perception of racial inequities? No.
I hired a black woman to work for me at the pharmacy. Lucky
for me, I documented every single time that she was late to
work, or late coming back from lunch - or just disappeared
and no one knew where she was or what she was doing. Or
sitting on a stool, arranging items on the lower shelves, while
customers were waiting in line and I would have to go out
there and tell her to get up and go take care of customers at
the cash register, and she KNEW that was her job
going to be GOODBYE. It ended up being GOODBYE, of
course - with her attitude and her behavior, she didn't stand
a chance. Several months after she was let go - she tried
to get the NAACP to file a suit against the store, but that was
not possible because her every little indiscretion, lateness,
failing to do her job, had been dated, documented & signed
by her. As for the past issues in this country, I was not here
then and it is not MY BURDEN TO CARRY NOW.
**I KNOW what it is like to be a stranger in a land where I
was a definite minority group...in Mexico. It really IS hard
to deal with people who treat you differently just because of
the color of your skin. But - I can't stop this going on in
Mexico, any more than I could undo any of that civil rights
insanity that happened so many years ago. I was not
there. I did not beat, kill or mistreat anyone in MY lifetime.
And that is all that I can take credit for. Aside from ANY
black/white racial inequities lies a far greater, and hugely
ignored ONGOING racial inequity. The case of the United
States of America vs All tribes of America Indians. What we
did in THIS case is nothing short of a rather largely succesful
genocide campaign against all American Indians. We WERE
the "Hitlers" just cleaning up "our" country of these "inferior
races"
**So - all in all, if you ask me about racism and predjudice
I would have to say these are human conditions and we
are all human beings and every one of us is no doubt doing
the very best job humanly capable to be done. To err is
human.... and we are ALL that.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 09:57 pm
Upon reflection, I see this:
I nearly posted a congratulation to you on a couple of occasions--but ultimately thought you would turn it into a negative....was personal. It began as a positive thought, but it turned out to be negative.
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snood
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 10:07 pm
know what? I think you guys have a point. this thread has run its course.
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sweetcomplication
 
  1  
Sun 6 Jul, 2003 10:18 pm
Sofia wrote:
snood--I'm glad they stated why they were quitting, because if they hadn't, I fully imagine sweetcomplication would post another diatribe about how people here couldn't face the reality of the subject.

Her control of this thread has been something I have not witnessed on any other thread or in any other community. It seemed impossible for anyone to contribute within her parameters.

I think it's a shame the discussion was thwarted in this manner. At a few points, there was great participation. I nearly posted a congratulation to you on a couple of occasions--but ultimately thought you would turn it into a negative.


Okay, I agree, Sofia, it's a shame I drove everyone away. I see more's the shame that those people just couldn't tolerate confronting their own white skin privilege nor the study thereof. My only reason, not to excuse my behavior, but to give an explanation for it, is that I feel so passionately on this issue that I thank you for making me see that the very passion which caused me to keep trying (I hadn't viewed it as "control" until now) has made me see that I have interfered with the natural progression of the thread.

So, if you decide to talk about the colors of chalk because at least that doesn't threaten you, fine, just be sure not dare confront WHITE SKIN PRIVILEGE and the study thereof ... too difficult to deal with, I realize now.

So sorry I upset your gentile sensibilties; oh, sorry, I meant genteel, of course!

Count on this, I release "control" of the thread as I am DEFINITELY out of here Evil or Very Mad Rolling Eyes !!!!
0 Replies
 
 

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