On White Privilege

[Dialectic]

Many themes, subjects, and types of encounters which occur on this forum are cyclical. They repeat themselves every so often, something which administrators, moderators, and long-time members become increasingly inclined to cut off or simply ignore.

This, nevertheless, never makes these debates go away. One major one topic which rears its head every so often is that of White Privilege.

The notion is simple: being white gives you a set of both obvious and subtle privileges in society anywhere in the world which affects the way you act, think, and even perceive (the same goes, by the way, for non-whites, except we're affected by being in subordinate positions). You may know it exists, you may deny it, you may never have even considered it, but it exists. And we will not debate the notion of whether it exists.

Below are a few very well-written and considered articles, most written by white males, one by a white female, one by an Asian female. I have made a few comments on them as well. If you are white, or are a minority but have never really considered racial issues before, reading below is mandatory for participation on this site.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of the existence of the thread itself: that whites are so privileged they get their own thread just for them in our Declarations on the very topic. Please enjoy yourselves.

[Dialectic]

A few Whites, non-Asians, and even some "conservative" Asians have criticized us for speaking out on something which they allege is trivial, doesn't exist, or doesn't affect us.

Rather than recording one of our own responses here (and we've made many), we're posting the thoughts of Tim Wise, a very eloquent and outspoken anti-racism activist.

Special thanks to Kejia Sista for bringing it to our attention.

Race to Our Credit
By Tim Wise (http://www.timwise.org)
Posted Jan 6 2005 here:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-01/06wise.cfm

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.

[Dialectic]

Europe's contempt for other cultures can't be sustained

A continent that inflicted colonial brutality all over the globe for 200 years has little claim to the superiority of its values

Martin Jacques
Friday February 17, 2006
The Guardian

Is the argument over the Danish cartoons really reducible to a matter of free speech? Even if we believe that free speech is a fundamental value, that does not give us carte blanche to say what we like in any context, regardless of consequence or effect. Respect for others, especially in an increasingly interdependent world, is a value of at least equal importance.

Europe has never had to worry too much about context or effect because for around 200 years it dominated and colonised most of the world. Such was Europe's omnipotence that it never needed to take into account the sensibilities, beliefs and attitudes of those that it colonised, however sacred and sensitive they might have been. On the contrary, European countries imposed their rulers, religion, beliefs, language, racial hierarchy and customs on those to whom they were entirely alien. There is a profound hypocrisy - and deep historical ignorance - when Europeans complain about the problems posed by the ethnic and religious minorities in their midst, for that is exactly what European colonial rule meant for peoples around the world. With one crucial difference, of course: the white minorities ruled the roost, whereas Europe's new ethnic minorities are marginalised, excluded and castigated, as recent events have shown.

But it is no longer possible for Europe to ignore the sensibilities of peoples with very different values, cultures and religions. First, western Europe now has sizeable minorities whose origins are very different from the host population and who are connected with their former homelands in diverse ways. If European societies want to live in some kind of domestic peace and harmony - rather than in a state of Balkanisation and repression - then they must find ways of integrating these minorities on rather more equal terms than, for the most part, they have so far achieved. That must mean, among other things, respect for their values. Second, it is patently clear that, globally speaking, Europe matters far less than it used to - and in the future will count for less and less. We must not only learn to share our homelands with people from very different roots, we must also learn to share the world with diverse peoples in a very different kind of way from what has been the European practice.

Europe has little experience of this, and what experience it has is mainly confined to less than half a century. Old attitudes of superiority and disdain - dressed up in terms of free speech, progress or whatever - are still very powerful. Nor - as many liberals like to think - are they necessarily in decline. On the contrary, racial bigotry is on the rise, even in countries that have previously been regarded as tolerant. The Danish government depends for its rule on a racist, far-right party that gained 13% of the seats in the last election. The decision of Jyllands-Posten to publish the cartoons - and papers in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere to reprint them - lay not so much in the tradition of free speech but in European contempt for other cultures and religions: it was a deliberate, calculated insult to the beliefs of others, in this case Muslims.

This kind of mentality - combining Eurocentrism, old colonial attitudes of supremacism, racism, provincialism and sheer ignorance - will serve our continent ill in the future. Europe must learn to live in and with the world, not to dominate it, nor to assume it is superior or more virtuous. Any continent that has inflicted such brutality on the world over a period of 200 years has not too much to be proud of, and much to be modest and humble about - though this is rarely the way our history is presented in Britain, let alone elsewhere. It is worth remembering that while parts of Europe have had free speech (and democracy) for many decades, its colonies were granted neither. But when it comes to our "noble values", our colonial record is always written out of the script.

This attitude of disdain, of assumed superiority, will be increasingly difficult to sustain. We are moving into a world in which the west will no longer be able to call the tune as it once did. China and India will become major global players alongside the US, the EU and Japan. For the first time in modern history the west will no longer be overwhelmingly dominant. By the end of this century Europe is likely to pale into insignificance alongside China and India. In such a world, Europe will be forced to observe and respect the sensibilities of others.

Few in Europe understand or recognise these trends. A small example is the bitter resistance displayed on the continent to the proposed takeover of Arcelor by Mittal Steel: at root the opposition is based on thinly disguised racism. But Europe had better get used to such a phenomenon: takeovers by Indian and Chinese firms are going to become as common as American ones. A profound parochialism grips our continent. When Europe called the global tune it did not matter, because what happened in Europe translated itself into a global trend and a global power. No more: now it is simply provincialism.

When Europe dominated, there were no or few feedback loops. Or, to put it another way, there were few, if any, consequences for its behaviour towards the non-western world: relations were simply too unequal. Now - and increasingly in the future - it will be very different. And the subject of these feedback loops, or consequences, will concern not just present but also past behaviour.

For 200 years the dominant powers have also been the colonial powers: the European countries, the US and Japan. They have never been required to pay their dues for what they did to those whom they possessed and treated with contempt. Europeans have treated this chapter in their history by choosing to forget. So has Japan, except that in its case its neighbours have not only refused to forget but are also increasingly powerful. As a consequence, Japan's present and future is constantly stalked by its history. This future could also lie in wait for Europe. We might think the opium wars are "simply history"; the Chinese (rightly) do not. We might think the Bengal famine belongs in the last century, but Indians do not.

Europe is moving into a very different world. How will it react? If something like the attitude of the Danes prevails - a combination of defensiveness, fear, provincialism and arrogance - then one must fear for Europe's ability to learn to live in this new world. There is another way, but the signs are none too hopeful.

Martin Jacques is a senior visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Martinjacques1@aol.com

[Dialectic]

This third article gives a list of specific examples of white privilege. It's by Paggy McIntosh and is called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Special thanks to Nskripchun for pointing us to this article.

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

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.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. 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.

3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

9. 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.

10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

12. 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.

13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

16. 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 obliviousness.

17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

21. 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.

22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

23. 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.

24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

26. 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.

[Dialectic]

(With regard to the second article, I would also like to add that while Europe's contempt for other cultures is very great, it still does not approach the contempt held by Americans. On the other hand, European countries don't quite know how to deal with minority and immigrant populations as well as America or Canada.)

So that was a pretty cool and specific list, huh?

[Dialectic]

Another very irritating way white privilege manifests is in those minorities who, for whatever pathological reasons, love and revere white people more than John loved Jesus.

In the Asian female manifestation of this phenomenon (and there are many different ones; I just choose this one because it's common among Asian-Americans), these people seem to hold every bad thing an Asian male ever did in history against their Asian-American male peers. Again, this happens in every minority group; I use ours as an example because of its relevance and prevalence.

Here's a great example. In the comments section of a website for a short film depicting an Asian female/ White male romantic pair (by far the most prevalent interracial pairing in Hollywood and on the streets), people were debating how significant the ethnicities of the characters were.

Here was a response by "Asian Female Viewer" posted on April 29, 2005 08:06 PM.

i do agree that casting an asian guy opposite natalie would have been more interesting. HOWEVER, this is a good movie with a good plot. AND I JUST HAVE TO SAY TO THE ANGRY ASIAN MALE RESPONDERS: Asian women have gotten crap for so long from asian males. do you think it's surprising that our earliest expressions through film would praise asian men? i mean, after all, they bound our feet for 1000 years. there's gotta be some residual pain.

This is the sort of irrational hate which concerns the 44s deeply, whatever its racial guise.

Asian males, to say nothing of Asian-American males, are going to be hated for this? But White males, they get a pass for all that they have done? They get a pass for committing genocide on a continent of people? They get a pass for enslaving and destroying the future of another continent of people? They get a pass for using an entire continent as a penal colony while massacring its aboriginal population? They get a pass for slaughtering and raping and taking land to sell drugs?

(I'm referring to Native Americans, Africans, Aboriginal Australians, and Hong Kong Chinese, in case you need a scorecard, and there are many, many more people I have not mentioned).

They get a pass for all this, and we, who are just as American as an Asian-American female, as a White female, as a White male, we have to be hated by our own people, by our own sisters, for our past patriarchy?

White men formalized the concept of women as chattel. They invented corsets and declared that it was the woman's "fault" for bearing daughters. They institutionalized the notion that women were not meant to think or work.

Yes, there exists Asian patriarchy. There exists Black patriarchy. There exists Latino patriarchy. There exists Indian patriarchy. And above all others, there exists White patriarchy.

Which one has done the most damage to our fragile world?

[Dialectic]

Related to this discussion is the notion of racial privilege in gender issues. I thought it would be appropriate to post Julia Oh's classic article on the effect of white feminism on the Asian-American female's perspective. Essentially, it creates a rift between Asian males and females based on white gender dynamics, something that can't apply to an immigrant minority population in the same way: Asian-American males are lumped into the same group as white males, even though they are clearly not in media, political, or social power positions, something which should be kept in mind in any Asian-American feminism.

Please also note that we at the 44s are NOT against miscegenation; we believe that cross-cultural romances and relationships are a GOOD thing for humanity. At the same time, we do believe that if you were to take a power/ representative position in a race-based organization, your significant lover, the greatest love of your life, ought to be of the same ethnicity as you because it undermines your credibility and the sense of unity you are trying to foster.

http://www.modelminority.com/article745.html

Sister, Can You Lend an Ear?
By Julia Oh
©2002 Julia Oh

Sisters know what I'm talking about. The demeaning terms and images that are associated with Asian women: "Suzie Wong. Geisha girl. Me so horny. Damsel in distress. China Doll. Bound feet. Fucky-sucky." We live in a society where Asian women are forced to battle the the burdens of both sexism and racism, where social hierarchy positions white above Asian, man above woman. For that, there is nothing that makes me prouder than a strong sister. There is a growing collective consciousness among Asian women. Over the past few years, an increasing number of Asian women have taken the initiative to speak out against oppression. Asian women were at the forefront of protests to The Bloodhound Gang's racist lyrics in the song "Yellow Fever", as they were at the forefront of protests against Abercrombie & Fitch's racist caricature T-shirts. Numerous Asian female empowerment sites have sprung up all over the internet, including one of my favorites, bigbadchinesemama.com, an in-your-face webpage that parodies Asian female porn sites designed for white male jerk-off fantasies.

However inspiring it is to know that more of my Asian sisters are decrying and defying the submissive, passive and sexually accommodating stereotype, there is a growing uneasiness among many Asian Americans, particularly among Asian men, that politically active Asian women are harboring unprogressive attitudes. Through my own observations and experiences with other activist Asian women, and through various correspondences with Asian men, I have found that a disproportionate number of activist Asian women are exceedingly hostile towards Asian men. Some would even go so far as to side with a white male before giving an Asian man a fair chance, while others have the tendency to overlook or excuse white males for chauvinistic behavior while holding Asian men to a higher standard. Although some are more extreme than others, the hostility seems to manifest itself in these general forms: these women's propensity to date white or black men, a general aversion towards Asian culture on the back of the notion that Asian culture is endemically patriarchal, and a strong allegiance to white feminist theory.

I recently heard an Asian male say that activist Asian women who date or marry white men are not helping the cause. Many Asian females involved in interracial relationships will argue that who they date is a personal matter, and that it does not take away from their contribution to the community. I disagree. As I see it, the issue is merely a matter of practicing what you preach. Like most Asian women, my preference to date Asian men comes as second nature- because I click best with Asian men, because I find them attractive, and because I find the most in common with them. However, my reasons are also political. Since I am fighting the system that supports white male hegemony, it would be hypocritical for me to then turn around and date a white man. Since I am fighting a system that characterizes Asian men as being undesirable and weak, it would undermine my own credibility if I were to choose a white male over an Asian male.

Whenever Asian men criticize Asian women for dating white males, the knee-jerk reaction that I hear used by Asian women is that "Asian men do not own Asian women". The implication that Asian men are upset to see Asian women with white men because they feel that Asian women are their property is not only offensive, but short-sighted. Offensive, because if it were as simplistic and as primitive a matter men feeling that they "own" women, then how does that explain my own (and other Asian women's) resentment towards Asian women who are with white (or non-Asian) men? Short-sighted, because in America, where whites have power and privilege over Asians, it is impossible for an Asian man to "own" a woman in the way that a white man can "own" a woman. Let us not forget that not only do white males have a history of being possessive of white women, as manifested through passage of anti-miscegenation laws, but that there is a history of white men owning black women as their maids, field workers and sex slaves, and that there is a history of Asian women being raped as a part of Standard Operating Procedure or being used to serve the sexual needs of soldiers during every war that America has waged in the Pacific. By and large, when Asian Americans criticize AF-WM pairings, it is not a matter of being possessive and controlling. It is because the AF-WM phenomenon supports an oppressive system that places white men above Asian men. If we lived in a perfect world where no one group had power over another, no one would have the right to criticize another's dating choice.

The unfortunate yet undeniable fact is that we live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world where men make the call to launch explosives on neighboring lands when conflicts are not resolved by negotiation. We live in a world where men run politics, control the flow of money and resources, and where men are justified to use women for sexual gratification through coercion, force or through money. It is critical to recognize that patriarchy sees no color. We must stop looking at Asian culture through the white prism that brands patriarchy and chauvinism as traits endemic to Asian culture. While Asian men still bear the flak for foot binding, a cruel practice that has now been outlawed, white males never had to bear the flak for inhumane forms of female body sculpting and punishment, such as corsettes, chastity belts and vanity masks. Furthermore, modern day processes and instruments, such as stiletto heels, silicon and gel breast implants, and liposuction jeopardize thousands of women's health and lives across the world to this day, yet white men are never held in any way culpable. Asian male authors are criticized as being patriarchal when writing works whose theme centers on the relationship between a father and a son. Yet, the vast majority of white male authors' works revolve on male-centered themes, and this goes by without a peep. It was not long ago that women in America were not allowed to vote, nor was it long ago that it was frowned upon for women in America to work outside the home. America has never seen a female President or Vice President. Domestic violence and marital infidelity in America run the highest out of any other industrialized nation. On the other hand, women in China have always been able to own property and businesses, women in China keep their last names even after marriage, many Southeast Asian nations have seen women Presidents, both China and Japan have had women emperors, and women in modern day Japan have complete control over financial matters in their households.

In empowering themselves as women, I have noticed that many Asian women have taken cues from white feminists. However, there is a fundamental flaw for Asian women to follow the exact doctrines of white feminists. One must realize that white women have the luxury to fight sexism because they do not have to deal with racial oppression- white women can afford to antagonize white men, because at the end of the day, it is still white men who are in control. On the other hand, for Asian women, sexism and racism are invariably tied together. "Me so horny" is not used to degrade white women, nor is it used to degrade Asian men. It is impossible for Asian women to separate oppression into the Asian-side and the female-side, and must therefore always keep a racial consciousness when engaging in a battle of the sexes.

I have heard several progressivist Asian women say they have a problem being described by Asian men as "our women", because it connotates ownership. This mentality has roots in white feminist theory. I have probed many Asian men on their usage of the term "our", and their explanation is that "our" is used as a term to express kinship, and not ownership. "Our" is used to refer to "our" sisters, "our" mothers, "our" daughters. This is similar to the way that people of color will refer to one another as "brother" and "sister" to express kinship, rather than to explain the literal sibling relationship that is applied by whites when using the terms sister and brother.

White feminists often talk of empowering themselves by absolving male privilege. This is another dogma that feminist Asians seem to have picked up out of context. Empowerment comes in many different forms. And with the empowerment of one group comes the inevitable, yet perhaps necessary, disempowerment of another. America will never be a truly equal society for people of color unless white people concede to give up their white privileges, just as women will never be social equals to men unless men acquiesce their male privileges. However, whereas white males have only privileges to give up, Asian men have privileges to gain- and that is why it is so important for Asian feminists/activists to follow a different course from white women.

Just as racism and sexism are invariably tied together for Asian women, race plays a very large role in the sexual hierarchy of Asian men vis-‡-vis the larger society. Asian men are not nearly afforded the same male privileges as white men, simply because of the effects of media emasculation of the Asian male. In fact, in many ways, Asian men are on the same or even lower footing as white women. Asian men less for every dollar that a white man earns, in the same way that white women earn less for every dollar a white man earns. The single largest beneficiaries under Affirmative Action policies in employment are white women. After all, it is white men who do the hiring, and are more likely to undertake a woman who appears less "threatening" than an Asian man.

Another important factor for activist Asian women to consider when battling patriarchy is that whereas white women have the privilege of fighting for a solo cause, racism keeps Asian men and Asian women together. The emasculated demonized Asian man is but the flip side to the same racist coin that portrays Asian women as helpless exotic sexually adroit lotus blossoms. Suzie Wong is Charlie Chan's counterpart, as The Dragon Lady is Fu Man Chu's counterpart. Starting with the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, the Pacific stage of WW2, to the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the images that were imported to America were those of the brutal, cold-hearted ruthless Asian men. Hand-in-hand came the images of Asian prostitutes, the helpless destitute women, mail order brides. It is impossible for Asian women to break away from binding stereotypes, without Asian men also breaking away from dehumanizing stereotypes, and it is thereby most imperative for Asian women and men to work together to battle oppression.

All of this is by no means a call to excuse chauvinism and misogyny within the Asian community. Nor is it an indictment on all Asian women. It is not even a call for Asian women to suppress their angst for the benefit of unity, for the faÁade of solidarity can and will easily crumble. It would be foolish to deny that sexism exists in the Asian American community, or to deny that there are Asian men who degrade, abuse and exploit Asian women. To my sisters who have been victims of misogyny and/or abuse by the hands and minds of Asian men, I hear you. There are indeed issues that we need to confront our brothers with. I only wish for my fellow Asian sisters to rid their biased notions against Asian men, to realize that they are not our enemy. I only wish for my fellow Asian sisters to realize that we are in this fight together, and I ask that more sisters extend both a literal and a metaphorical hand to our Asian brothers.

[Dialectic]

This is a very good article about the unconscious way in which some of the most liberal-minded white people, particularly males, regard themselves with respect to their minority peers. It ain't easy bein' a white male in today's crazy world.

http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=999

The 'Good' White People

By Robert Jensen

June 1, 2004 -- I stepped onto the speakers' platform at the Virginia Festival of Books in Charlottesville with Newsday editor Les Payne to discuss our chapters in his book When Race Becomes Real. Bernestine Singley, the other panelist, had edited the book.

As I walked to my seat, I was well aware of Payne's impressive record. Of the two of us, Payne is the more experienced journalist; has won more prizes; has written more important books; has traveled widely and reported on more complex subjects; is older and has done more in his life; and is a more commanding speaker.

So, as I sat down at my seat, I did what came naturally; I felt superior to Les Payne. If it seems odd that I would feel superior to someone I knew to be more talented and accomplished than I am, then here is another relevant fact: Les Payne is African American, and I am white.

I didn't recognize that feeling of superiority as I sat down. It wasn't until Payne started speaking that my feeling became so painfully clear to me.

Payne talked about how, as a teenager born in the segregated South who attended high school in the North, he had struggled to overcome the internalized sense of inferiority which grew from the environment in which he had been raised. He talked about how deep that sense of inherent inferiority can be for African Americans.

Eventually, I made the obvious connection: Part of the reason the struggle Payne described is so hard for African Americans is because white behavior is a constant expression of that feeling of superiority, expressed in a fashion both subtle and overt.

I recalled the feeling of superiority I felt as we had taken our seats. I had assumed, despite all that I knew about Les Payne, his record, and his speaking ability, that I would be the highlight of the panel.

Why?

It might be because I'm an egotistical white boy. Maybe I'm a white boy with delusions of grandeur. The former almost certainly is true. The latter may be an exaggeration.

But whatever my own personal weaknesses are, one factor is obvious: I am white and Payne is African American, and that was the basis of my feeling.

The moment that particular feeling hit me, I was left literally speechless, fighting back tears, with a profound sense of sadness. I struggled to focus, but it was difficult.

Payne finished, and Singley started her reading. When the speaking period ended, I did my best to answer questions. But I remained shaken.

Deep sadness, deeply embedded
Why all of this drama? It was because I fancied myself one of the "good" white people, one of the anti-racist white people.

But in that moment, I had to confront that which I had not yet relinquished: the basic psychological features of racism. As Payne talked honestly of struggling with a sense of inferiority, I had to face that I had never really shaken a sense of my superiority.

As I write these words, the feeling of that moment of sadness returns. Do not mistake this for superficial shame or guilt. Do not describe me as a self-indulgent white liberal. The sadness I feel is not for me. The sadness is how deeply embedded in me is that fundamental reality of racism ó the assumption that white people are superior.

That doesn't mean I'm a racist. It doesn't mean my political work or efforts in the classroom don't matter. Instead, it means that what I say to my students about race ó that the dynamics of domination and subordination run deep, affecting us in ways we don't always see clearly ó is true not only in theory. It is also true in my psyche.

Payne's words forced me to feel what I had long known. That wasn't his intention; he was speaking to the audience ó which was primarily African American ó not to me.

Whatever the intent, he did me that service. But I am most grateful to Payne not for that, but for something that happened later.

After the event, I was planning to drive to Washington, D.C. When I mentioned that to Payne, he asked if he could ride with me and catch a flight from D.C. back to New York. I jumped at the chance, in part because I wanted to hear more about his research for his forthcoming book on Malcolm X, but also because I wanted to talk to him about what had happened to me on stage.

Les Payne is a gracious man; he listened to my story, nodding throughout.

After I had finished Payne did something for which I will always be grateful: He didn't forgive me. He made no attempt to make me feel better. He didn't reassure me that I was, in fact, one of the "good" white people. He simply acknowledged what I had told him, said he understood, and continued our discussion about the politics of race in the United States.

During the panel, without knowing it, Payne had given me the gift of feeling uncomfortable.

In the car, perhaps with full knowledge of what he was doing, he gave me the gift of not letting me off the hook.

When I dropped him at the airport, I had no illusions. The day had meant much more to me than to him. He had been willing to teach me something, and then he went on to other things. His personal struggle with internalized inferiority was largely over; his chapter in the book made that clear, as did his interaction with me.

But I was left with the unfinished project of dealing with my internalized sense of superiority. And it was clear to both of us that such a project was my responsibility, not his.

'Good' white men
The story doesn't end there.

On the platform with us was Bernestine Singley, who is every bit as black as Les Payne, and every bit as accomplished a lawyer and writer. Why am I focusing on him and not her? Why did he spark this realization in me and she did not?

In part it was because of what Payne talked about on stage; his words had pushed my buttons. Also, I have known Singley longer and have a more established relationship with her. We live in different cities and are not friends in a conventional sense, but I consider her (and I hope she considers me) a trustworthy ally and comrade in the struggle, and a friend in that context. Singley and I also have very different styles, and when we appear on panels together we clearly are not competing.

With all that said, it's also difficult to miss the fact that Singley is a woman and Payne is a man. There was not only a race dynamic on stage, but also a gender dynamic. It's likely that I was, in classic male fashion, focusing on the struggle for dominance with the other man on the panel.

This perception also is hard to face: In addition to being a good white person, you see, I'm also a good man. I'm one of the men on the right side. But I also am one of the men who, whatever side he is on, struggles with the reality of living in a male-supremacist society.

Introspection on these matters is difficult; those of us in privileged positions often are not in the best position to evaluate our own behavior. But looking back on that day, it appears to me I walked onto that platform with an assumption of my inherent superiority ó so deeply woven into me that I could not in the moment see it ó that had something to do with race and gender.

From those assumptions, it is hard to reach a conclusion other than: I was a fool.

I use that term consciously, because throughout history white people have often cast blacks as the fool to shore up our sense of superiority. But in that game, it is white people who are the fools, and it is difficult and painful to confront that.

Somehow, I had allowed myself to believe the story that a racist and sexist society still tells. Yes, I know that Jim Crow segregation is gone and the overt ideology that supported it is mostly gone.

But in the struggle to change the world, what matters is not only what law is, or what polite people say in public. What matters just as much, if not more, is what we really are, deep down.

Playing for keeps
All this matters not just because white people should learn to be better or nicer, but because as long as we whites believe we are better ó deep down, in places most of us have learned to hide ó we will not feel compelled to change a society in which black unemployment is twice the white rate. And in which, as a recent study has found, a white man with a criminal record is more likely to be called back for a job interview than a black man with no record.

In the United States, the typical black family has 58% as much income as a typical white family. And at the slow rate the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it will take 150 years to close. At the current rate, blacks and whites won't reach high school graduation parity until 2013, nearly 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

That is an ugly society.

The first step for white people is to face that ugliness, to tell the truth about the system we live in and tell the truth about ourselves. But that means nothing if we do not commit to change, not just to change ourselves, but to change the system. We have to face the ways in which white supremacy makes white people foolish but forces others to pay a much greater price.

We have to stop playing the fool and start playing for keeps.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights Books).

[Dialectic]

Now, just so we don't leave you with the wrong impression, we wish to state unequivocally that we DO NOT HATE white people. We in fact find many of them downright adorable.

To leave this thread on a positive note, I'd like to present a list of some white people who we love. Here, in no particular order are a few white people with whom we would love to have a drink, whether alive or dead, real or fictitious, human or mutant, biological or robotic. This list is by no means exhaustive, but we hope it is demonstrative of our love for the descendants of the Caucasus tribes.

Ken Wilber
Alan Moore
Grant Morrison
Neil Gaiman
Louis de Bernieres
J.K. Rowling
Albus Dumbledore
Maggie Smith
Minerva McGonagall
W. Somerset Maugham
Shakespeare
Plato
Plotinus
Optimus Prime
Macgyver
Batman
Spiderman
Ian McKellen
Gandalf the Grey
Gandalf the White
Michael Caine
Every white and Jewish person associated with the production of Harold and Kumar
Neils Bohr
Holly M. Kirby, the Dissenting Opinion in the Anna Mae He appeal
William M. Barker, Janice M. Holder, Cornelia A. Clark, Gary R. Wade, and Adolpho A. Birth, the current members of the Tennessee Supreme Court (January 2007), who overturned the decisions of the two previous courts in the case of Anna Mae He.
Abraham Lincoln
Eminem
Captain Kirk
William Shatner
Captain Picard
Spock
Patrick Stewart
Professor X
C3PO (original trilogy)
R2-D2 (original trilogy)
Joss Whedon (and he's got a Chinese wife!)
Veronica Mars
Homer Simpson