The Bugaboo of White Privilege
I’ve had enough and just can’t keep quiet about this any
longer. I’m sick of hearing people infer that if you are white, you are somehow
privileged. Mitt Romney is, but that’s just one guy and I know he is because I
lived in Michigan
when his father was Governor.
My father kept his
1962 Funk and Wagnalls with him
whenever he read, so he could look up words he didn’t know. I inherited the
dictionary. When I began to hear and read about “white privilege,” I decided to
start at the beginning and looked it up in Dad’s dictionary, but it wasn’t in
there. I could find “white” and “privilege” separately, of course, but not
together. It’s not that dictionaries don’t have compound phrases: White Matter
and White Lie and many others appear.
I could only find a definition in two places: on Wikipedia
and in the Urban Dictionary.
Wikipedia: In critical race theory,
white privilege is a way of
conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that
white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of color
experience.
Urban Dictionary: 1. The racist
idea that simply being white benefits people in some unexplainable way, and
that discriminating against white people is not only okay, but enlightened and
necessary. The excuse some extremists use to justify pretty much any level of
racism, as long as it is coming from people of color. 2. Essentially it’s the
claim that being white affords one access to universal, institutional, or
systematic advantages…” 3. A term used as a blanket condemnation of any success
a white person may have.
Also from Urban Dictionary on white
privilege: You cannot measure it, and it has no specific concrete definition to
provide a basis for proof of its existence, it has not, and can never be proven
to exist, but if you question it, you’re called “ignorant” (in reality you are
a skeptic) and the fact that you questioned it in the first place is further
proof that you have “White privilege.”
I like the Merriam-Webster’s
Student Dictionary definition of plain old privilege the best: “A right or
liberty granted as a favor or benefit especially to some and not others.”
So, we all know what is, is not, that it can never be proved,
and that I’ll be called “ignorant” for bringing it up.
In the last few months, I began to hear more and more about white
privilege in academic writings more and more. Then people would type it in chatrooms
on the Internet. I was doing a blog radio interview when I noticed someone in
the chat room had made a nasty comment about how my references to “we” meant
those of white privilege. I explained that when I say “we,” I’m talking about
Project RACE. I am not the spokesperson for an organization called “Project
White Privileged People.”
I’m quite used to receiving students’ inquiries about
whether I will agree to be interviewed for their middle school paper, masters’
thesis, or PhD. dissertation. Sometimes I can accommodate them, other times I
cannot. We also get requests for multiracial candidates for all kinds of
studies, which we usually post on our website.
One inquiry came in recently that went to the heart of white
privilege. The working title of the dissertation is White Mothers’ Advocacy for their Biracial Sons and Daughters in US Schools:
Colliding with White Privilege. Huh? She went on to explain that the study
is to explore the ways in which white privilege impacts us white mothers while
we are in the school setting with our multiracial kids.
What in the world is this woman talking about? No white
mother I ever knew who advocated for her children ever needed strategies to
deal with white privilege. It doesn’t matter if we are single, non-single,
biological, or adoptive mothers, we are advocating for our multiracial
children, not worrying about how white privilege, if there is such a thing, is
impacting us. Why is academia going there? Are we supposed to be guilt-laden? For what? And by the way, not all
multiracial advocacy moms are white.
Other queries we get are from doctoral students who are
looking for very specific types of people for their studies. One I got recently
I honestly thought was a joke. The writer explained that she was doing a study
on biracial leaders. They have to be exclusively black and white, and have been
in a leadership or supervisory role. Reading the long email, I thought she was
looking for biracial leaders in the biracial or multiracial movement. Those of
us in the movement know that we can count our leadership on one hand. Then I
read it again and realized she just wanted black/white biracial leaders in any
capacity, at work, church, or school. We don’t keep that kind of information
about our members. But what really made me wonder about this one was that these
multiracial subjects have to be living in places like Iowa
and South Dakota.
I wished her the best of luck. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting
people who were dealing with white privilege.
I actually found, in my non-academic research for this
piece, a “White Privilege Checklist” by Peggy McIntosh, Associate Director of
the Wellesley College Center
for Research on Women. McIntosh describes white privilege as “an invisible
package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about
which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.” Whoa, wait a minute. I decided to
check into just a few of those items on her checklist to see how it relates to
me, a white woman. Here we go:
#6: I can go into a music shop and
count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find
the food I grew up with, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can
deal with my hair.
#6 RESPONSE: Music shops and video
stores have gone away, unable to compete price-wise with the big chain stores.
I can’t find any of the food I grew up
with at any local supermarket, and I have to drive an hour to my hairdresser,
but he’s worth the drive.
#14: I can be pretty sure that if I ask
to talk with the “person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
#14 RESPONSE: Most of my business is
conducted online or via cell or landline phone. I have no idea what race the
person is who I talk to. Some have more ethnic sounding names than others, but
I never assume anyone is anything.
#16: I can easily by(sic) posters,
postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines
featuring people of my race.
#16 RESPONSE: Why would I want to?
Mostly I buy those things that have pictures of my dog’s breed on them. Yes,
he’s white and lives a very nice life.
Where you find talk about white
privilege, you often also unfortunately find references to white supremacy. I
could find a lot of references on the subject, but this is not an academic
paper and I don’t have to cite anyone. I will add a few juicy quotes just so
all the professors know I really have been paying attention.
Quote #1:
Stephanie M. Wildman (in her book Privilege
Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America), “Many Americans rely on a social or financial inheritance from
previous generations, an inheritance unlikely to be forthcoming if one’s
ancestors were slaves.
Quote #1
Response: No way! I can honestly say I do not know one white person who
received an inheritance. I do know one black person who did and it was a
whopper. It’s ridiculous to think we (white people in this case) get fabulous
inheritances from our families.
Quote #2: Thomas
Shapiro argues that wealth is passed along from generation to generation,
giving whites a better “starting point” in life than other races.
Quote #2
Response: See Quote #1 response plus you wouldn’t believe the number of white
babies on WIC.
Quote #3: Deidre
A. Royster in Race and the Invisible
Hand,” Racialized employment networks can benefit whites at the expense of
blacks.”
Quote #3 Response:
The reverse is often said about affirmative action and quota systems
for minorities.
Quote #4:
Patricia J. Williams wrote in The Alchemy
of Race and Rights that “The Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood are the
major unions among prison guards.”
Quote #4: All
this time I was sure it was the drug lords. Who would know something like that,
anyway? It’s hardly a Trivial Pursuit question.
Quote #5: Shelby
Steele thinks that the effects of white privilege are exaggerated and that
irresponsibility is a larger problem for blacks, who may incorrectly blame
their personal failures on white oppression.
Quote #5
Response: Oh that Shelby.
He was just sayin’….
Quote #6: Michael
Davis wrote, “In about 30 years, whites will no longer make up the majority of
the American population. Racial Supremacy or racial dominance is a social and systemic phenomenon; and is not based on relative population…So,
when some white people begin to classify themselves as a ‘racial minority,’
given the pending demographic shift, we must be ready to have an open and
honest dialogue about that topic.”
Quote #6: I hope
he’s right.
One of my favorite sayings, and I
wish I knew who originally said it, is this: Really, it all comes down to the
bugaboo called money.
Academia has tried to discredit advocates for the past 22
years or longer. Are they really so insecure that they have to pick on the
activists who get the jobs done so they can write their papers about us? I
don’t know why they have to do so much academic posturing, anyway. One such
academic was recently given an award for his lifetime of service to the
multiracial community. The problem is that his “lifetime of service” consisted
of writing one letter to one Congressional subcommittee back in 1993.
Academia ain’t always right. One academician tried to
discredit me by publishing in her dissertation/subsequent book that I have a
picture of myself with Newt Gingrich in my living room. Wow. For the record, no
such picture ever existed in my home and I’m not a Republican—and never have
been.
If the goal of some of the academics is to make us white
folks feel discriminated against, maybe it’s working, but that’s different from
making us feel guilty for being white. No one will ever make me feel guilty
about being a white woman leader in the multiracial advocacy movement.
I think there is room for everyone to make a difference in
the lives of multiracial children, but not by putting advocates down. Some
people teach and some people do. We need more of those who do both. Come on in.
-Susan Graham
