2 December 05
Blog Against Racism Day
... was yesterday, but it wasn’t my turn to blog.
Thanks to Chris Clarke of Creek Running North for getting us going on this. I haven’t had a chance to read the 100 or so blog posts linked to on his entry and comments so far; I hope this is not merely duplicating what twenty other people have already said, but if it is, it means it’s a common experience.
Through an accident of history my skin is white. (Well, okay, pink.) People who share my skin color have a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth and power. This is partly an accident of history and partly of our own making. In the United States, being white means having privilege that is CONTINGENT on others not having it. Not having had it historically, not having it now. The rise of this economic superpower would simply not have been possible without slavery.
This is not to say that there are not an awful lot of white people here who are poor and miserable and who will die this winter from cold and malnutrition and a lot of other things that shouldn’t exist in a land with this many resources, but on the whole, being white in the United States means having privilege. Unearned. Unbought. Unperceived.
So: Being white means I can drive a car and not be worried that I’ll be pulled over just because of the color of my skin. I can go in a store and not worry that I’ll be arousing suspicions of security guards. I can apply for a mortgage and be sure that the only thing that might get in my way would be an apparent inability to pay it (though with the housing craziness of the past few years that wouldn’t be much of a barrier either). Being white means I can go where I want and if I get lost I can ask a cop to help without fear. I can do a thousand things I and people who look like me take for granted, every day.
White privilege means I can say things like “anyone can make it in this country” and “why don’t you want to come and live in my nice, white, neighborhood, so we can have a little more diversity” and be completely oblivious to the fact that for people who are not white, just getting out of bed in the morning is a huge ordeal. Dealing with us. With our white world. White privilege is about having the right to continue to be clueless, because after all it’s no skin off our nose.
White privilege is about not noticing that even when well-intentioned, our efforts to help people of other races are patronizing and will not lead to change.
White privilege is about expecting our brothers and sisters of color to explain to us, one more time, the millionth time, why they don’t want our pity or our affirmative action programs or our welfare or our charity. They just want to be treated like people. And the most we can do, the most and the least we can do, is have this conversation.
Not with them. They are sick to death of it, are tired of our good intentions that always somehow leave them where they were. No, with other people who look like us.
Thanks, Chris.
Postscript, Saturday, December 3: It’s not the most we can do, it’s just the least. The most we can do is give up our unearned privilege. We can also speak up when we see a racial slight, a racial injustice, hear a racial joke in a cab. We can demand that our employers treat everyone fairly, even if it’s really hard and costs them money, money that might otherwise make its way into pay raises for us. We can demand a real level playing field, not a cosmetic one.
Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Gandhi’s Way, has said that the way to level the playing field here in the U.S. would be to have 100% inheritance tax.
Now THAT would be giving up some of our privilege. Not all, but it would be a good start…
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And it seems like I’ve been missing a lot, too.
The “Blog Against Racism Day” is certainly an interesting topic and I’ve been reading a number of people’s takes on the subject. And of course it is an important topic that ought to be discussed.
I’ve been pondering for three days now just exactly how I might add something non-cliche and non-bitter to the whole discussion. I haven’t been able to come up with anything to say on my own blog that I would consider worth opening my mouth about. The problem I seem to be having with the discussion is that it feels so “topic of the day”-like. How exactly, if you experience racism every day, all your life, do you take seriously the passion of people who, tomorrow, will have tucked the discussion away for the next Sunday brunch to-do? People like me, as you wrote in your entry, don’t have the option of simply shaking my head and opening my eyes to wake from the bad dream. Just outside my apartment door, four meters away, lives a family who every day go out of their way to remind me of how unwelcome I am here. The only times in my life that I can remember ever feeling that I blended into the surroundings were in Spain and Portugal. I can’t tell you just how surprising it felt; it was as if someone had lifted a huge, invisible boulder off my shoulders.
I’ve had enough discussions with you to know how you feel and how dedicated you are to coming to grips with the whole topic. That is why I can feel safe leaving this comment here. But I daren’t open my mouth elsewhere where indignation would be sure to follow.
The other day a non-Japanese, white acquaintance who lives here in Japan talked about the awfulness of daily being descriminated against by Japanese. He spoke as if back home where he comes from, such attitudes do not exist. He wrote with sense of surprise that people could treat him so in the modern world. I didn’t have the heart to remind him that he was only experiencing something that he never had to worry about before when he was home. I also didn’t tell him that a huge reason the Japanese feel the way they do comes in part out of how they have always been treated by the rest of the world. No matter how you try to dole out the history behind it all, so many white people never seem to grasp the consequences of their hand in the history.
Reading people’s comments has been both reassuring and deeply, deeply painful. And I don’t trust myself to say anything that would be worth recording.
Just imagine if someone had proposed “Blog Against Sexism” day. How many people would have joined the bandwagon? And how many men would have joined the discussion? And wouldn’t a lot of women find the fleeting nature of the discussion somehow distressing? Especially if, in their opinion, the men wouldn’t have a clue as to what the women are going through?
On a very different note, I received your and Numenius’ card. Thank you oh so much!
I have no idea what the experience you’re describing, that of the daily not-right-in-my-skin kind of experience, does to people over the long term. But it can’t be good. And hearing a bunch of us say how wrong this is has just GOT to be tiresome. And, yes, the knowledge that next week it will get submerged again in Christmas shopping or blogging about the weather has got to be absolutely infuriating.
For me, though, it was a reminder that it IS important to keep pushing it to the top. Where I work now is very white compared to where I used to work. It’s just so easy to drift back into cluelessness, oblivion, unawareness. So I am grateful when Chris and others say wait, this was an incredibly racist cartoon (the cannibal one), and we’re not going to just ignore it…
Miguel;
I do understand what you’re saying.
And as the guy who came up with the idea, and as someone who you know at least a little, I trust that you will know I had in fact thought of that beforehand. There will be those who feel they’ve done what they can do because they took the time to write a blog entry. Hell, there are people who think they’d worked to defeat Bush because they insulted Bush in blog comments somewhere. Such people are pandemic.
Most of the Blog Against Racism Day posts I’ve read seem to avoid that error. “I don’t know how to go about approaching the issue” was a very common response. What’s more, a significant number of posts I’ve read seem to come from people who work against racism in their daily lives, who said “well, every day is blog against racism day around here, but I like this idea so here goes.”
Perhaps most important are the posts in resolutely non-political blogs. One example I’ve seen is Mike’s post at 10000 birds, on the racial makeup of people who indulge in birding as a pastime. There are others like Mike’s, which examine how race factors into other pursuits. even if Mike never posts about race again – though I believe that’s unlikely – his post is there for anyone to read for as long as his blog stays up. (And at the top of the Google results for searches on the words “birders” and “racism.”)
To be honest, I feared at the outset that this would be a flavor of the month kind of thing. And sure, there are enough posts that say “I’m not racist, and I sure resent the people who are” or “I sure can’t wait until the NEXT Blog Against Racism Day.” But posts like Mike’s, and Pica’s, and the one my brother left in comments on my blog make it seem worth the very small amount of time I put in to make it happen.
Think of it this way: the whole thing was an idea I had two weeks before it happened. My attempt at publicizing it consisted of posting a note on my blog. A few friends read that and posted pointers on their blogs. within two weeks, more than 200 people were interested enough to write something.
That says to me that there’s a thirst for discussion on the topic. And as in any discussion, some things said will be more irritating than others. But personally I think too many people have left too many things unsaid for too long. And I can only read the interest as good news.
That discussion would benefit from your thoughts, Miguel. I know I would. And do.
Love, Chris