I come across many people almost
every day who all show skepticism of what is known as “white privilege.” There
are certain ideas that escape most white people. On the most basic line, most
white people are not “individually” responsible for the actions of their
parents, or forefathers. But we can’t ignore what our forefathers did. That is
not to say that we must be punished for what we did not do. But we do owe those
whose ancestors our ancestors ripped off. We do need to make sure that we do
not continue the mistakes of our ancestors.
We did not institute slavery. But
we don’t want to be responsible for the mistakes our ancestors have made. We
are not those people and we are not the ass holes who came up with those rotten
ideas.
So we can take responsibility for
what our white ancestors did to those black ancestors. Not because we are
guilty of anything, but we have benefited from the position society gave us. We
did not ask for it, but we have it and we benefited from it. So here is an
article explaining white privilege:
-SJ Otto
From Our Human Family:
I had a conversation with a person the
other day who told me the term white privilege made him think about sin. “It’s
kind of a Calvinist idea,” he said. “It’s something you’re born with, and you
can’t really get rid of, and you’re supposed to spend all this time repenting
for it.”
A few days later, I saw a column by
David Brooks that made almost the same point. Lamenting the five “epic crises”
upon our current culture: the other four of which were quite vast—COVID-19,
racism against African Americans, the public’s rejection of Republicans, and an
economic depression — Brooks also included
“Social Justice,” (his capitalization) in the list, which he called a “quasi-religion.” There it was again. This
characterization of what is largely a social movement against violence, and
particularly violence targeted at Black people, as instead a fundamentalist
religion, bent on creating zealots who fervently root out illusory “sins” among
the flock.
I thought back to some of the less
skillful diversity trainings I’ve attended over the years, in which
participants are asked to verbally “acknowledge” or “admit” to “having” white
privilege. They couldn’t see
it; they didn’t ask for it; they didn’t want
it; and yet, somehow, they were supposed to own it.
And if white privilege is something you
“have” — well, then, it’s part of you. It indicates something about your
character. When white privilege is framed this way, it sounds like an aspect of
the self, like sexuality. It’s not a thing we can see, or objectify, but it’s
something that permeates us and is expressed in our behavior. It can be lauded
or labeled or judged or celebrated.
There’s something in the grammar of how
the concept of white privilege is introduced and discussed, that is, that
virtually guarantees the actual meaning of the term will be misunderstood and
its purpose as an idea obscured.
Often, white privilege is introduced in
relation to the history of white racism and violence against Black communities.
When white people who may never have heard the term before, and who are trying
at the same time to metabolize horrifying historical data about racial
violence, the enslavement of Black people, and oppression — information that is
largely suppressed from school curriculums, media representation, and everyday
conversation — and then are asked to “admit” their “privilege,” they’re likely
to protest, or emotionally freeze up, or respond with shame and rage.
And if that shame and rage is then
received as more evidence the person does, indeed, “have it,” then they’re
trapped in what feels like circular reasoning, with punishment and humiliation
as the end goal. It’s this perception of social justice practitioners as intent
on shaming and exhorting white people to change that I think has fed this false
narrative that white privilege is akin to a modern-day sin.
In actuality, there is virtually nothing
about the concept of white privilege that pertains to individuals — their
morals, their characters, their personalities, their feelings.
The reason white privilege is nothing like
sin, is because sin is based on behavior. It’s something you can acknowledge,
repent of, and change. The point of sin is to inspire the sinner to emulate the
Divine, and in doing so, to treat others with the mercy, compassion, love, and
generosity of the Divine. The presence of sin is to inspire the individual to
change the way they act in
the world.
There is no atonement for white privilege,
because white privilege isn’t an aspect of the individual self. And that’s part
of why — at first — it’s so difficult to understand. The dominant culture
addresses all of us as individuals. We view advertisements, telling us how to
be better people by buying certain products. We read self-help books, telling
us how to be better people by changing our behavior. We get report cards in
school, telling us how to be better students. Then we get evaluations at our
jobs, telling us how to be better workers by learning new skills and working
late. The dominant culture reinforces the idea that if we work hard, we will
succeed, and if we fail — well, then, we need to work harder, smarter, to keep
up.
Americans are not taught to “see”
structures. We are taught to see everyone as individuals, and that the best way
to address others is as if we are all equals. In fact, we are taught that it is
borderline rude to talk about people as members of groups, because it flattens
and obscures what is special and unique about each person.
The term white privilege flies in the face
of all this training in individualism. It’s a kind of shorthand. Like its
cousin, class privilege, it indicates something about the way groups of people
are placed in relation to one another in the social order. The “white” in white
privilege is not meant to refer to individual people, each who happens to be white. Instead, the
“white” in white privilege refers to the ways race, as a category, is a carrier of social
codes, and is saturated with meaning and power.
The racial phenotype — that is, the series
of physical characteristics, such as skeletal structure, height, hair texture,
eye color, and skin tone — that is coded as “white” in a social order that is
white supremacist is granted certain structural privileges, such as access to
resources, economic capital, freedom of movement, and protection by the law,
regardless of their individual merit
or hard work. This is not to say that white people, per se, cannot have
experiences of economic hardship, personal suffering at the hands of other
people, such as interpersonal violence, trauma, and abuse, mental health
conditions, or other experiences that make it difficult to survive. White
privilege is about social location in a hierarchy, not individual history. It
is based upon a broad, historical narrative about what “whiteness”
means, as a way of being and a system of organizing culture.
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