Race to Our Credit

[Morpheus]

Race to Our Credit
by Tim Wise
Tuesday, 01 February 2005

Sometimes it can be difficult, having a conversation with those whose political views are so diametrically opposed to one's own.

But even more challenging, is having a discussion with someone who simply refuses to accept even the most basic elements of your worldview. At that point, disagreement is less about the specifics of one or another policy option, and more about the nature of social reality itself.

This is what it can be like sometimes, when trying to discuss the issue of white privilege with white people. Despite being an obvious institutionalized phenomenon to people of color and even some of us white folks, white privilege is typically denied, and strongly, by most of us.

Usually, this denial plays out in one of two ways: either we seek to shift the focus of discussion to our status as members of some other group that isn't socially dominant (so, for example, whites who are poor or working class will insist that because of their economic marginalization, they effectively enjoy no racial privilege at all), or we retreat to the tired but popular notion that all have an equal opportunity in this, our colorblind meritocracy.

Denying ones privileges is of course nothing if not logical. To admit that one receives such things is to acknowledge that one is implicated in the process by which others are oppressed or discriminated against. It makes fairly moot the oft-heard defense that "I wasn't around back then, and I never owned slaves, or killed any Indians," or whatever.

If one has reaped the benefits of those past injustices (to say nothing of ongoing discrimination in the present) by being elevated, politically, economically and socially above persons of color, for example--which whites as a group surely have been thanks to enslavement, Indian genocide and Jim Crow--then whether or not one did the deed becomes largely a matter of irrelevance.

Of course, what is ultimately overlooked is that denial of one's privilege itself manifests a form of privilege: namely, the privilege of being able to deny another person's reality (a reality to which they speak regularly) and suffer no social consequence as a result.

Whites pay no price, in other words, for dismissing the claims of racism so regularly launched by persons of color, seeing as how the latter have no power to punish such disbelievers at the polls, or in the office suites, or in the schools in most cases.

On the other hand, people of color who refuse to buy into white reality--the "reality" of the U.S. as a "shining city on a hill," or the "reality" of never-ending progress, or the "reality" of advancement by merit--often pay a heavy toll: they are marginalized, called "professional victims," or accused of playing the race card.

Consider the common charge of conspiratorial paranoia hurled at any person of color, for example, who dared to point out the racially-disparate voter purging that took place in Florida in 2000, or in various places in 2004. White reality is privileged at every turn, so that if whites say something is a problem, it is, and if whites insist it isn't, then it isn't.

Those of us who are white remain thought of as sober-minded, and never as given to underestimating the extent of racism, making a molehill out of what is, in fact, often a mountain, or playing our own race card, the denial card, which far and away trumps whatever pallid alternative people of color may occasionally find in their own decks.

In other words, privilege is not merely about money and wealth. It is not merely something that attaches when one is born with the proverbial silver spoon in one's mouth. Rather it is the daily psychological advantage of knowing that one's perceptions of the world are the ones that stick, that define the norm for everyone else, and that are taken seriously in the mainstream.

Whiteness is so privileged in everyday dialogue that one need look no further than our nation's post-election discourse to see how it operates.

So, for example, one after another commentator in the wake of election night pontificated, without hesitation, that the outcome had been a referendum on "moral values," and the result of high turnout amongst evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly voted for President Bush.

Yet what this analysis ignored is that it was only some evangelicals who overwhelmingly chose to re-elect the President, while others voted to do exactly the opposite. Indeed, black evangelicals voted eight to one against Bush, meaning that the mainstream talking heads, as usual were privileging the white perspective, and universalizing the particular behavior of white folks, as if it were the standard for everyone.

So too with the so-called "red state, blue state" divide. Fact is, the divide is less one of geography than race: a majority of whites in the blue states (including California and New York) voted for Bush on election day, while the vast majority of blacks and the majority of other persons of color in the red states voted against him.

But part of white privilege is never having to examine the peculiarity of white behavior (or even acknowledge that there is such a thing as white group behavior at all), and so naturally, this racial aspect of electoral division remains unexamined, and the more comforting perspective (for whites at least) that there is merely a split based on residence remains largely unchallenged.

But it's more than that. Even more important as an example of white privilege--the kind that adheres to all whites, not just the rich--is the ability to avoid being stigmatized by the actions of others who just so happen to fall within the same racial group as you.

While people of color bear the burden of disproving negative stereotypes regularly--when interviewing for a job, taking a standardized test, or merely driving in the "wrong" neighborhood, where they are presumed not to belong--whites rarely if ever have to worry that the actions of others like us, no matter how horrible, will stick to us or force us to prove that we are somehow different.

For example, whites can screw up on the job, run entire corporations into the ground, rip off the Savings and Loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, cut corners on occupational safety and health in the workplace, or scam millions from employee pension funds, without the rest of us having to worry that such incompetence or outright dishonesty will result in whites being viewed suspiciously every time we seek to climb to the top of the corporate ladder.

White men in Lexuses (or is it Lexi?) will not need to fear being pulled over by police on suspicion of transporting documents confirming their latest fiscal shenanigans.

When Martha Stewart conspires to cover up a stock dumping scam, white women across America do not cower in fear that somehow they will be viewed as dishonest and predatory as a result. Nor white men thanks to Ken Lay.

If the President of the United States mispronounces every fifth word out of his mouth, none of us white folks have to worry that someone will ascribe his verbal incompetence to some general white illiteracy. But honestly, do we think that if this President were black, or Latino or Asian Pacific American, or indigenous, and mangled the English language with the regularity of the actual President, that no one would make the leap from individual to group defect?

Why is it that when the white President of the University of Tennessee overspends his expense account by millions, using public funds for expensive rugs, home furnishings and lavish chartered plane trips, no one suggests that perhaps it's time for the school to pick a black or brown chief executive, but when the black President of historically black Tennessee State University is seen as mismanaging that school's resources, voices all across my hometown of Nashville began to whisper (or even say quite loudly) that perhaps it was time for TSU to get a white President?

For those reading this who are white, ask yourselves, when was the last time you felt the need to stand up and apologize for a crime committed by another white person? Better yet, when was the last time you felt the need to do this for fear that if you didn't, your community would come to be viewed as inherently violent and dangerous, and perhaps be attacked as a result? And when was the last time someone suggested that our failure to openly condemn white criminals implicated us in their wrongdoing?

Yet what of the recent murders in Wisconsin by a Hmong immigrant, who killed six white hunters when they confronted him in a private deer stand? Not only did bumper stickers crop up within days reading, "Save a deer, shoot a Hmong," implying that the shooter was somehow representative of a larger group evil, but more to the point, the Hmong and larger Southeast Asian communities in Wisconsin and Minnesota (where the shooter was from) rushed to distance themselves from him.

This distancing was, of course, only made necessary because to not do so would put others like them at risk, in a way no white person has ever been put at risk because some of our number occasionally kills folks.

Likewise, nearly a decade ago, when a Hmong woman in the Twin Cities murdered her six children, her status as a racial and ethnic minority was front and center in discussion of the crime--anger on talk radio was pointed at the Hmong as a group, or Asians more broadly, for example--but a few years back, when Andrea Yates killed her five kids in Texas, or when Susan Smith drowned her two boys in a South Carolina lake, no one attacked her as an example of what's wrong with white folks these days.

Even when some white teenager commits a racially-motivated hate crime, as happened recently in Simi Valley, California where four white youths beat two black kids to a pulp, the white response is one that seeks to demonstrate that their town is not racist (as if geography alone ever commits an aggravated assault), rather than hoping to prove that all whites aren't that way. The latter possibility would never enter their minds, and why?

It's why in the aftermath of 9/11, you could hear one after another white person demanding to know, and being treated as reasonable for asking it, "where are the moderate voices in the Arab Muslim community prepared to condemn terrorism," all because nineteen out of 1.5 billion Muslims on Planet Earth flew planes into buildings. Yet one cannot fathom anyone being taken seriously if they were to ask, "where are the moderate white Christians," in the aftermath of Oklahoma City or any of a number of abortion clinic bombings.

It's why whenever this issue is raised, white folks rush to insist that we're "just individuals," and want to be thought of as such, rather than as whites. Indeed, we often believe that to even point out our racial identity is racist, as it groups us unfairly and diminishes our "humanness," or "Americanness."

Of course, the irony in such a position is that it is only members of the dominant group in a society who could ever have the luxury of viewing ourselves, or expecting to be viewed by others as "individuals."

That's the point: no one else has ever been able to assume they would be viewed that way, because at no point have they been, nor do they get to be so viewed today, as the aforementioned examples demonstrate all too clearly.

To even say that our group status is irrelevant or should be is to suggest that one has enjoyed the privilege of experiencing the world that way (or rather, believing that one was). In other words, it is the result of a particular social arrangement, whereby some and not others have been seen as individuals no matter the actions of others within their group. There is, of course a phrase for this arrangement.

White privilege.

And until it is eradicated, dug up and discarded root and branch, there can be no legitimate discussion of "colorblindness" or simple individualism. Nor can we be taken seriously as a nation when we hold ourselves up as an example to other nations of what freedom and democracy are supposed to look like.

Tim Wise is an essayist, activist and father. He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com, and his website is located at www.timwise.org. Hate mail, while neither appreciated nor desired, will be graded for spelling, grammar, style and content.

[Guest]

f one has reaped the benefits of those past injustices (to say nothing of ongoing discrimination in the present) by being elevated, politically, economically and socially above persons of color, for example--which whites as a group surely have been thanks to enslavement, Indian genocide and Jim Crow--then whether or not one did the deed becomes largely a matter of irrelevance.

........

While people of color bear the burden of disproving negative stereotypes regularly--when interviewing for a job, taking a standardized test, or merely driving in the "wrong" neighborhood, where they are presumed not to belong--whites rarely if ever have to worry that the actions of others like us, no matter how horrible, will stick to us or force us to prove that we are somehow different.

For those reading this who are white, ask yourselves, when was the last time you felt the need to stand up and apologize for a crime committed by another white person? Better yet, when was the last time you felt the need to do this for fear that if you didn't, your community would come to be viewed as inherently violent and dangerous, and perhaps be attacked as a result?

daily

[Guest]

No offense to anyone who isn't white, but why should I apologize for what I was born as? I can see where you're coming from, but why should I engage in this kind of self-hate?

[Morpheus]

It's not self-hate, it's anti-racism.

[|Y|]

No it's not. Anti-racism is not acknowleding race. The "anti-racists" are the most fundamental reenforcers of race because they bring these skintone differences to the forefront, without solving the fundamental economic issues that races and minorities in general face every day.

The slaves were never freed, they just changed types of slavery. Women were never freed from oppression, it just changed hands.

Affirmative action and the civil rights movement did not change the economic situation for the vast majority of people.

[Tom]

Liberal anti-racists, perhaps.

Genuine anti-racists seek to destroy white privalidge, which both was caused by and causes the misconception that "race" exists.

[tsihcrana laicos]

This guy (the author) seems like a statist.

What does white priveledge give me?

Racism is making distinctions based on race, which is a social construct based on skin color and ethnicity.

[cat~maxwell]

No offense to anyone who isn't white, but why should I apologize for what I was born as? I can see where you're coming from, but why should I engage in this kind of self-hate?

you should not. i am wary of antiracists, being one myself. often their alleged antiracism is a call to jin the wave of international socialism which goes behind its own back fundng many race-based military movements. no one should eb forced to be ashamed of their race including pale skinned peoples. the errors of the heroes of civil rights was in seeking empowerment for the deeply disenfranchised -- anyoine who looks at the hiphop world can see the aftermath -- a bunch of people doing their damndest to outwhite Whitey n terms of property -- including human property.X and King and others are slain and its almost as if no one has learned anything -- and Natioonalism and Socialism were adopted by aftcan descendants of slavery -- the same tools used by Hitler. the issue is complicated and simple -- there is one race and that is h. sapiens.

with the recen death of Dworkin i believe that a deepissue is teh disenfranchisement and slave status of females internationally -- as women regardless of race are often converted -- 'Finlandized' into advocates for their own second class status.
huMANity. HOMO sapiens. feMALE. these glaring inadequacies were almost addressed by the riot grrl movement -- which was silenced. capitalism is still an adversary of freedom -- and its champons use many tools to undermine movement towardpeace and freedom. socialism will remain an nonanswer -- and antiracistaction has suffered from the pervasiveness of Bolshevik idology -- Bolsevik derived philosophies being famous for their roles in race and cultural wars -- tosay little right now about the dehumanization and 'breeders of warrirs for revolution' status of women in socialist scenes and millieu.
feel free to loathe me you lame ass nazipunks. nobodycares about your tiny hate. these are an anarchists' opinions -- they should be suprsing to your Bolshi drones. drop awake.

[Din]

What does white priveledge give me?

Privilege or the lack thereof.

[tsihcrana laicos]

Privilege or the lack thereof.

I am white, as in skin color, so what privilege does that give me?

[|Y|]

Genuine anti-racists seek to destroy white privalidge, which both was caused by and causes the misconception that "race" exists.

That statement says absolutely nothing about creating economic and social equality, it says "make it so that whites aren't so powerful." It doesn't say "make it so that all people are equal."

In other parts of the world whites are not the "superior" race, and indeed, you will find racism against whites in those parts of the world.

[Morpheus]

Privilege or the lack thereof.

I am white, as in skin color, so what privilege does that give me?

All other things being equal: Your'e less likely to be born poor. Your'e less likely to be subjected to police brutality and/or jailed. Your'e more likely to be given a better education. On average, your'e more likly to be treated better. Businesses tend to treat you better. You have an easier time finding employment and an easier time staying employed. Your'e more likely to have a better (higher pay, more prestige, less alienating, etc.) job. And probably other things I don't remember off the top of my head.

[Post_industrial]

Privilege or the lack thereof.

I am white, as in skin color, so what privilege does that give me?

All other things being equal: Your'e less likely to be born poor. Your'e less likely to be subjected to police brutality and/or jailed. Your'e more likely to be given a better education. On average, your'e more likly to be treated better. Businesses tend to treat you better. You have an easier time finding employment and an easier time staying employed. Your'e more likely to have a better (higher pay, more prestige, less alienating, etc.) job. And probably other things I don't remember off the top of my head.

That is a tendency, but by no means a rule.

[|Y|]

The sad thing is that this sort of behavior is impossible to irradicate by "programming" people to "be a certain way." It is a known fact that animals "hang out" with animals with similarities to themselves. There are countless studies of, say, people putting on certain colored jumpsuits and banding with other people who wear similiarily colored jump suits (without any conscious reason to do so). I'd be prone to suggest that this is an evolutionary tendency, because gazelles that hang with other gazelles and not tigers tend to live a bit longer.

Of course, race in and of itself shouldn't be a determining factor for socialization, and we should make efforts to socialize with others of another race, because the diversity alone would make for a better life experience, but this is not an overnight thing, and it will have to start with fixing the symptom, and not the problem. Racism is bad, currently, because it paralells an unequal distribution of wealth (racism is not the sole cause, mind you, which is important to point out), that's the symptom. The problem is that racism reenforces negative social behavior. If the wealth problem is fixed, what then would be the impact of negative social behavior? Quite insignificant.

BTW, a very large number of the worlds whites are comparatively poor (Argentina and other S.A. states, Russia, and some others I cannot recollect at the moment), and the US is verging on a white minority in the coming decades. Not too significant of an observation, but it does bring in the well needed shades of grey.

[Din]

The sad thing is that this sort of behavior is impossible to irradicate by "programming" people to "be a certain way." It is a known fact that animals "hang out" with animals with similarities to themselves. There are countless studies of, say, people putting on certain colored jumpsuits and banding with other people who wear similiarily colored jump suits (without any conscious reason to do so). I'd be prone to suggest that this is an evolutionary tendency, because gazelles that hang with other gazelles and not tigers tend to live a bit longer.

Of course, race in and of itself shouldn't be a determining factor for socialization, and we should make efforts to socialize with others of another race, because the diversity alone would make for a better life experience, but this is not an overnight thing, and it will have to start with fixing the symptom, and not the problem. Racism is bad, currently, because it paralells an unequal distribution of wealth (racism is not the sole cause, mind you, which is important to point out), that's the symptom. The problem is that racism reenforces negative social behavior. If the wealth problem is fixed, what then would be the impact of negative social behavior? Quite insignificant.

BTW, a very large number of the worlds whites are comparatively poor (Argentina and other S.A. states, Russia, and some others I cannot recollect at the moment), and the US is verging on a white minority in the coming decades. Not too significant of an observation, but it does bring in the well needed shades of grey.

No wonder others have been calling you a racist.

What else have I missed out on during my absence ...?