I ran across this in my files while working on something else tonight, and thought this concise, 2.5-pg take on the subject might help move the conversation forward a bit farther.... -- Anne Carroll _________________________________
White Privilege Shapes the U.S. by Robert Jensen Affirmative Action for Whites is a Fact of Life Here's what white privilege sounds like: I'm sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college administration, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him if the thinks that being white has advantages in the United States. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege. So, if we live in a world of white privilege - unearned white privilege- how does that affect your notion of a level playing field, I asked. He paused for a moment and said 'That really doesn't matter.' That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge that you have unearned privilege but to ignore what it means. That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us every day in a world of white privilege; some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that come up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege. White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently, depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me. I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant nonwhite population, American Indians. I have struggled to resist that racist training and the racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I 'fix' myself, one thing never changes - I walk through the world with white privilege. What does that mean? Perhaps most important, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me - they are white. The see in me a reflection of themselves - and in a racist world, that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white. My flaws are also more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant that the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt that there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but it's a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology. Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them. I am not a genius - as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full time for six years and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure and some of it, I would argue, is worth reading. I worked hard, and I like to think hat I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in a while I leave the office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty. But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life I have soaked up the benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well funded, virtually all-white public school system, in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people. All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position by the predominantly white University of Texas, headed by a white president in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor. There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women will face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on their white privilege somewhere in their lives. Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work I don't have to believe that 'merit' as defined by white people in a white country alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships. At one time in my life I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid that I wasn't heroic or rugged - that I wasn't special. I let go of some of that fear when I realized that , indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work are stacked to my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate - that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose -then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product of both what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be. White privilege is not something I get to decide whether I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from our society. Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success. ------------------------------------------------------------ Anne R. Carroll Carroll, Franck & Associates Public Involvement, Strategic Planning, Communications 1357 Highland Parkway St. Paul, MN 55116 USA <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 651-690-9162 School Board: 651-690-9156 "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "...You will be more credible and you will be more powerful if you do not separate the lives you live from the words you speak." -- Paul Wellstone "A politician worries about the next election. A true states[wo]man worries about the next generation, and children yet unborn." - e.e. cummings ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
