"The History of White People": What it means to be white

[BrazenMuse]

Well I believe justice (when no none is mistreated, and the people that need the most help (nonwhites) recieve it ) DOESNT exist, hasn't ever existed.

People that need the most help are all nonwhite (whatever the heck "white" is)?

[rhodey]

While that may qualify as a functional analysis, it's not a definition. You are using the term to define itself if you try to read this as a definition.

I ask again, define "white"? The terms above tell us how this thing called "white" works...it doesn't tell us what "white" IS.

You will need to ask a white person that, however my guess is it IS whatever the white supremacists SAY it IS. I suspect that whatever it IS may be chnge at their WHIM. Of course I could be incorrect.

[rhodey]

People that need the most help are all nonwhite (whatever the heck "white" is)?

Sure do. BrazenMuse are you white?

[BrazenMuse]

Sure do. BrazenMuse are you white?

Like many Americans, nosey rhodey, I am a mixture of ethnic backgrounds and of several "races" - but I refuse to be reduced to any single one of them. There still is no definition, no concrete definition, here. If this is a key term of your argument, you must set the parameters for it, not just for someone else, but in order to clarify your own thinking.

[rhodey]

Like many Americans, nosey rhodey, I am a mixture of ethnic backgrounds and of several "races" - but I refuse to be reduced to any single one of them. There still is no definition, no concrete definition, here. If this is a key term of your argument, you must set the parameters for it, not just for someone else, but in order to clarify your own thinking.

BrazenMuse, there is no reason to be rude, I never called you out of your name. I asked a direct question, if you chose not to answer it I can move on. I'm not interested in arguments, only learning and replacing the system of whites supremacy/racism with a system of justice.


As far as a definition I gave you mine as it pertains to how I believe a white person functions. Why? Because if I understand how a "white" person function perhaps I can understand it's purpose. For me what something IS, it's FUNCTION, is it's definition. Why? Because logically speaking EVERYTHING has a purpose. For example, I believe a chair is something to sit in. Now if you need to go further than that you might want to consult Ikea.

[Nay Sayer]

Well, we invented the idea of race, why should we stop using it.

Because the idea of "race" makes as much sense as the idea of a "flat earth." The more you propagate it the more you look like a drooling retard.

White being the absence of color, or the result of all colors, we know we own every aspect of the world. If a color was to be alone, it would be white, or wouldn't be pure.

Actually, the result of an absence of color is Black.

Our ancestors (Hail Thor and Odin) have been visiting the places you now call the United States of America, long before the Portguese.

That's nice and all but your ancestors weren't the first people to cross the Atlantic.

Our ancestors the Vikings did put the whole Europe in terror during many centuries. When our wise leaders decided that they would stop, they did.

Sorry but "wise" and "Viking" are two words that don't belong in the same sentence.

[Armento]

Can somebody define "white" for me here?

see dj el mayimbe.. griiiiingo!

[BrazenMuse]

BrazenMuse, there is no reason to be rude, I never called you out of your name. I asked a direct question, if you chose not to answer it I can move on. I'm not interested in arguments, only learning and replacing the system of whites supremacy/racism with a system of justice.


As far as a definition I gave you mine as it pertains to how I believe a white person functions. Why? Because if I understand how a "white" person function perhaps I can understand it's purpose. For me what something IS, it's FUNCTION, is it's definition. Why? Because logically speaking EVERYTHING has a purpose. For example, I believe a chair is something to sit in. Now if you need to go further than that you might want to consult Ikea.

I am not being rude. I answered your question directly. I find it interesting and a bit troubling that you keep asking people if they are "white" - and troubled by the reductionism implicit in such a question, unless it's mitigated by your reason for wanting that information. As of right now, I don't see any purpose to asking me, asking Ngeso or anyone else if they are "white." Please clarify.

I'm not clear on the terms of your argument. Nothing has a definition that isn't centered on function? I don't buy that either. If this thing you call "white" is deployed in a manner that erases the experiences and lives of those who might visually be "white" but who do not have access to the privileges that are claimed for those who deploy the functionality of "whiteness," then your definition is seriously flawed. The label is too slippery to be meaningful until you begin to apply something else to refine your sense of "function."

Let me do a bit of reducing myself: Race and class are smoke and mirrors. The bottom line is always economic.

[DeesKo]

If this thing you call "white" is deployed in a manner that erases the experiences and lives of those who might visually be "white" but who do not have access to the privileges that are claimed for those who deploy the functionality of "whiteness," then your definition is seriously flawed. The label is too slippery to be meaningful until you begin to apply something else to refine your sense of "function."

The arguement would be that by virtue of their whiteness, they will ALWAYS have access to the privledges assigned to whites.

Its an interesting balance as I can not argue there are certain benefits to my white skin, whether I intend or accept them or not. I also can't argue that great harm has been, and continues to be done to people who are not white.

However, the absolutist aspect of rhodey's theory bother me as they seem to only assign blame and place anyone who isn't white in a consistent position of inferiority.

ie. the statement "white supremists control everything" would also mean "I control nothing". The absoluteness of the original statement requires it to mean the exact opposite.

If whites control everything, you do not even control the ability to change that control, as that would also be controlled by whites.

In the end, I agree with you that economics is at the root of it all and while eradicating racism would end the mistreatment of folks because of skin color, it would not end the injustices of how we treat one another.

[djmarbll]

I am not being rude. I answered your question directly. I find it interesting and a bit troubling that you keep asking people if they are "white" - and troubled by the reductionism implicit in such a question, unless it's mitigated by your reason for wanting that information. As of right now, I don't see any purpose to asking me, asking Ngeso or anyone else if they are "white." Please clarify.

I'm not clear on the terms of your argument. Nothing has a definition that isn't centered on function? I don't buy that either. If this thing you call "white" is deployed in a manner that erases the experiences and lives of those who might visually be "white" but who do not have access to the privileges that are claimed for those who deploy the functionality of "whiteness," then your definition is seriously flawed. The label is too slippery to be meaningful until you begin to apply something else to refine your sense of "function."

Let me do a bit of reducing myself: Race and class are smoke and mirrors. The bottom line is always economic.

You say race and class are smoke and mirrors, but class is tied to economics. Race itself is considered a manufactured social construct in order to validate the subjugation of people kidnapped from their homeland and used for free labor. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, the invention of race (particularly whiteness and "otherness") and the psuedo-science that followed can be easily disproven based on science today. However, the suffering of non-whites in America, particularly those labeled as black, has been real.

Now we can say race itself is smoke and mirrors, but that doesn't erase those who've suffered from it. The biggest problem I have when it comes to the discussion of race is that we usually don't talk about it honestly. In fact, the denial of the discussion of race and racism by those classified as white has been a large part of the problem. For example, in 2008 Gallup did a poll and found that 80% of the whites polled felt that black children have as good a chance as white children in their community to get a good education. That sounds reasonable, imo. However in 1962, Gallup did the same poll and 87% of whites felt black children had the same opportunities for education as whites in their community. Mind you, this is before the the Civil Rights Act, before the Fair Housing Act, before affirmative action. So an honest discussion of racism has been needed for decades. Another thing is that we can't deny the impact racism has had above and beyond the economic system. When cops pull you over, they're not wondering what class you are, but they can see your complexion immediately. So when Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, Yusef Hawkins, Sean Bell, and countless other black men are harassed by police, class and economics has nothing to do with that.

[Bill Blake]

Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the Out of Africa theory. Get back to me when you've done so...

I’m not concerned with any theory here. I’m concerned with the internal logic of your statement. Is it figurative, illogical, both?

Or would you just prefer to keep on evading or addressing your statement? Responsible for what you type or not?

[Bill Blake]

Jamie, I've been pushing the point because the sort of argument you've been pushing is the sort of bad argument employed to try to show that all truth is relative etc. - the sort of bad argument that gives continental philosophy a bad name. (Which is not to say I think it's the sort of bad argument that the better continental philosophers employ.) You can do better.

I'm not implying that all truth is relative. I'm not quite sure that my hypothesis: all scientific constructs are social constructs is even "true." Which, let's assume that it is, wouldn't be relativism, right? I'm pushing the hypothesis as an excercise to see how problematic the argument or the constructs it entails can get.

I was bored too, but not now. Back to my friggin 9 pager I have to write for literary theory.

[Nay Sayer]

I’m not concerned with any theory here.

Are we being closed minded?

I’m concerned with the internal logic of your statement. Is it figurative, illogical, both?

If you're really concerned with the "internal logic" of my statement then you will acquaint yourself with the Out of Africa theory.

[BrazenMuse]

You say race and class are smoke and mirrors, but class is tied to economics. Race itself is considered a manufactured social construct in order to validate the subjugation of people kidnapped from their homeland and used for free labor. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, the invention of race (particularly whiteness and "otherness") and the psuedo-science that followed can be easily disproven based on science today. However, the suffering of non-whites in America, particularly those labeled as black, has been real.

Now we can say race itself is smoke and mirrors, but that doesn't erase those who've suffered from it. The biggest problem I have when it comes to the discussion of race is that we usually don't talk about it honestly. In fact, the denial of the discussion of race and racism by those classified as white has been a large part of the problem. For example, in 2008 Gallup did a poll and found that 80% of the whites polled felt that black children have as good a chance as white children in their community to get a good education. That sounds reasonable, imo. However in 1962, Gallup did the same poll and 87% of whites felt black children had the same opportunities for education as whites in their community. Mind you, this is before the the Civil Rights Act, before the Fair Housing Act, before affirmative action. So an honest discussion of racism has been needed for decades. Another thing is that we can't deny the impact racism has had above and beyond the economic system. When cops pull you over, they're not wondering what class you are, but they can see your complexion immediately. So when Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, Yusef Hawkins, Sean Bell, and countless other black men are harassed by police, class and economics has nothing to do with that.

The deployment of race in class politics is exactly what the smoke and mirrors comment is about. I agree, the discussion of race in America has long been made to seem non-existent...it's there, but it doesn't garner much attention... race and gender, each with their own social "value," become devices by which individuals are situated within the web of the economic system. The fact that you got stopped by someone who could see your complexion immediately is a demonstration, in some ways, of the values placed on that visual. Class and race, to varying degrees, do have something to do with that stop. Socioeconomics...that's the nexus of both domains. We can't take them separately and not account for their influence on each other.

Example from the South - to whose advantage would it be to have the lower class "whites" and "blacks" at each other's throats? To whose advantage, within local economies and the larger economies, is it to have "whites" believing that they might be poor but at least they weren't "black." Never get your own hands dirty...use the lower classes as troops. Call me a local land owner and suppose I'm interested in getting and keeping cheap local labor to work my land. If they are after each other, they won't have time to come for me. I trust that scenario isn't too much to imagine? One of the functions of poverty is to provide cheap labor by making people, whenever possible, unable to be unwilling to work (there are, of course, resistors).

[rhodey]

- and troubled by the reductionism implicit in such a question, unless it's mitigated by your reason for wanting that information. As of right now, I don't see any purpose to asking me, asking Ngeso or anyone else if they are "white."

Observed Phenomena
People who classify themselves as White are reluctant to disclose whether or not they are White when questioned by a non-white person.

Hypothesis
Racism is White Supremacy and the people who classify themselves as white are aware of its existence.

A white person’s reluctance to answer the question speaks to the white person’s knowledge of the existence of White Supremacy as a system while their denial and/or dismissal of their ability to function as White People is an expression of Racism in an of itself.

I personally have no problems identifying myself. I am non white. Why do I do it , it helps me gather information about how the person functions under the system of racism/whitesupremacy. Why do I gather information? To learn more about the system of racism/white supremacy. Why do I do that? I do it in an effort to replace the system of racism/white supremacy with a system of justice.

I'm not clear on the terms of your argument. Nothing has a definition that isn't centered on function? I don't buy that either.

As I said (I thought clearly) before, I'm not here to present arguments. In MY OPINION that logic dictates that all things have a FUNCTION, I use this FUNCTION as a definition, you apparently don't agree. That's ok. I say the sky is blue you may think it is grey. It would be a waste of time on my part to try to convince you that what I see is what YOU see. Hope that wasn't too "implicitly reductive" sounding.

If this thing you call "white" is deployed in a manner that erases the experiences and lives of those who might visually be "white" but who do not have access to the privileges that are claimed for those who deploy the functionality of "whiteness," then your definition is seriously flawed.

I am still learning about this thing THEY (the racist/white supremacists) call "white". If you go back to my definition -the one that you "don't buy"- it says:

riginally Posted by rhodey View Post
My definition and (I could be incorrect) is someone who:


(1) Classifies themselves as white and have been classified as white.
(2) Accepted as white by other people classified as white.
(3) Functions as white in all places and at all times
.

So someone who may look white but hasn't been classified as such (see#1),
has not been accepted by other whites (see #2) and most importantly DOES not function as white in all places and all times (see #3)would NOT be considered white. For further clarity refer to the Holocaust as an example. Many of the so call Jews looked "white" however they were not official sanctioned as such and Hitler (racist/White Supremacist) DID not consider them white. So in fact I think my definition holds up under this circumstance, but hey I could be wrong.

The label is too slippery to be meaningful until you begin to apply something else to refine your sense of "function."

Let me do a bit of reducing myself: Race and class are smoke and mirrors. The bottom line is always economic.

I disagree that the bottom line is economic and I will tell you why a little later . I do agree that the label is too slippery and more importantly confusing. It was intended to be that way IMO but the end result is that the definition of what "white" IS changes when the white supremacists/racsits want it to change. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but THEM.

[BrazenMuse]

Observed Phenomena
People who classify themselves as White are reluctant to disclose whether or not they are White when questioned by a non-white person.

Hypothesis
Racism is White Supremacy and the people who classify themselves as white are aware of its existence.

A white person’s reluctance to answer the question speaks to the white person’s knowledge of the existence of White Supremacy as a system while their denial and/or dismissal of their ability to function as White People is an expression of Racism in an of itself.

I personally have no problems identifying myself. I am non white. Why do I do it , it helps me gather information about how the person functions under the system of racism/whitesupremacy. Why do I gather information? To learn more about the system of racism/white supremacy. Why do I do that? I do it in an effort to replace the system of racism/white supremacy with a system of justice.



As I said (I thought clearly) before, I'm not here to present arguments. In MY OPINION that logic dictates that all things have a FUNCTION, I use this FUNCTION as a definition, you apparently don't agree. That's ok. I say the sky is blue you may think it is grey. It would be a waste of time on my part to try to convince you that what I see is what YOU see. Hope that wasn't too "implicitly reductive" sounding.



I am still learning about this thing THEY (the racist/white supremacists) call "white". If you go back to my definition -the one that you "don't buy"- it says:




So someone who may look white but hasn't been classified as such (see#1),
hasn't not been accepted by other whites (see #2) and most importantly DOES not function as white in all places and all times would NOT be considered white. For further clarity refer to the Holocaust as an example. Many of the so call Jews looked "white" however they were not official sanctioned as such and Hitler (racist/White Supremacist) DID not consider them white. So in fact I think my definition holds up under this circumstance, but hey I could be wrong.




I disagree that the bottom line is economic and I will tell you why a little later . I do agree that the label is too slippery and more importantly confusing. It was intended to be that way IMO but the end result is that the definition of what "white" IS changes when the white supremacists/racsits want it to change. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but THEM.

So, what happens then when people who aren't "white" take offense at your attempts to categorize and reduce? I am going to hope that you don't believe that every single individual you might cast as "white" is a "white supremacist" of some sort... I would prefer not to assume monolithic unity in any "racial" category.

I suppose we will have to agree that I don't buy your terms then. Jews were not "white" in that circumstance...they were cast as irretrievably "other" - outside the construction of what a true German was expected to be. That meme found fertile ground in Nazi era Germany and incredible harm came from that. I firmly believe that the socioeconomic system responds to pressures from those in advantaged positions, no matter what color they are. It all depends on the social context. I firmly do not believe that "race" drives socioeconomics, but that it's precisely the opposite.

[BrazenMuse]

Don't know if this is familiar to you or not...but it's a worthwhile read. Also...did you read the review of the argument made in "The History of White People..."?

Read this, let me know where it takes your thinking...

WHITE PRIVILEGE: UNPACKING THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK
Peggy McIntosh
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 which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which 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 was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one 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 which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless kapsack 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 co-workers, 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 can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
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.
Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
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 oblivion.
I can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behaviour without being seen as a cultural outsider.
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.
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.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
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.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have thme 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 perquisites 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, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

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 inconfident, 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 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.

I 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 excape 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 wich 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 Statement 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 me now to be about equal opportunity to try and 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 knowlege? 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 and reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College 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.
http://www.fjaz.com/mcintosh.html

[rhodey]

So, what happens then when people who aren't "white" take offense at your attempts to categorize and reduce? I am going to hope that you don't believe that every single individual you might cast as "white" is a "white supremacist" of some sort...

I suppose we will have to agree that I don't buy your terms then. Jews were not "white" in that circumstance...they were cast as irretrievably "other" - outside the construction of what a true German was expected to be. That meme found fertile ground in Nazi era Germany and incredible harm came from that. I firmly believe that the socioeconomic system responds to pressures from those in advantaged positions, no matter what color they are. It all depends on the social context. I firmly do not believe that "race" drives socioeconomics.

I believe that under the system of racism white supremacy non whites have been conditioned to run to the defense of white people and or/ attack nonwhites who speak truthfully about racism/white supremacy. I do not believe that all whites are racists however I do believe that all racists/white supremacists are indeed white.


Question Brazen Muse, who gets to determine who is "white"? Hint:(Adolph Hitler and the Nazis were in the process of creating written qualifications for what a White person was; check out the "Wannsee Conference)

I believe racism/ White supremacy is the single most dominating force the WORLD. It believe it permeates all nine areas of people activity including economics.

[BrazenMuse]

The arguement would be that by virtue of their whiteness, they will ALWAYS have access to the privledges assigned to whites.

Its an interesting balance as I can not argue there are certain benefits to my white skin, whether I intend or accept them or not. I also can't argue that great harm has been, and continues to be done to people who are not white.

However, the absolutist aspect of rhodey's theory bother me as they seem to only assign blame and place anyone who isn't white in a consistent position of inferiority.

ie. the statement "white supremists control everything" would also mean "I control nothing". The absoluteness of the original statement requires it to mean the exact opposite.

If whites control everything, you do not even control the ability to change that control, as that would also be controlled by whites.

In the end, I agree with you that economics is at the root of it all and while eradicating racism would end the mistreatment of folks because of skin color, it would not end the injustices of how we treat one another.

Of course there are benefits. And it takes some consciousness raising life experiences to even make any of us notice the differences in privilege conferred or taken away by such categorization. There's always the Peggy McIntosh knapsack, so to speak...and I see the same flaws you are outlining...

[rhodey]

Don't know if this is familiar to you or not...but it's a worthwhile read. Also...did you read the review of the argument made in "The History of White People..."?

Read this, let me know where it takes your thinking...

WHITE PRIVILEGE: UNPACKING THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK
Peggy McIntosh
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 which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which 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 was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one 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 which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless kapsack 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 co-workers, 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 can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
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.
Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
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 oblivion.
I can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behaviour without being seen as a cultural outsider.
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.
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.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
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.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have thme 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 perquisites 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, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

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 inconfident, 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 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.

I 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 excape 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 wich 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 Statement 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 me now to be about equal opportunity to try and 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 knowlege? 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 and reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College 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.
http://www.fjaz.com/mcintosh.html

Already read it. I notice that non whites seem to give more credence to white folks who talk about racism than other non whites. They drop all their suspicions and just are so happy these good white people are talking bout race! God Bless that Tim Wise! Anyway have you heard this?

Paraphrased Excerpt: non white radio host interveiwer: "Will you work on providing me with a bus ticket to the 'White Privilege Conference' in Wisconsin next April?"

MCINTOSH: "You keep asking me to use the term 'White Supremacy' whenever I talk about the work I do that non-white people so adore. So, no, I don't think I will. People who don't speak clearly about white supremacy will be flying in with some white people's help. But you? ---not even tape for your worn shoes."

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/victim-...ret-v-mcintosh

[BrazenMuse]

Already read it. I notice that non white seem to give more credence to white folks who talk about racism than other non whites. They drop all there suspicions and just are so happy these good white people are talking bout race. Anyway have you heard this?

Paraphrased Excerpt: non white radio host interveiwer: "Will you work on providing me with a bus ticket to the 'White Privilege Conference' in Wisconsin next April?"

MCINTOSH: "You keep asking me to use the term 'White Supremacy' whenever I talk about the work I do that non-white people so adore. So, no, I don't think I will. People who don't speak clearly about white supremacy will be flying in with some white people's help. But you? ---not even tape for your worn shoes."

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/victim-...ret-v-mcintosh

Great response on her part. I will say this...assuming naivete on the part of people attempting to do the needful in regard to dismantling the structures of what you like to label "white supremacy" is dangerous. I suppose you can try relegating me to the contingent of those who "drop their suspicions," if you like. It's interesting that you seem very quick to be dismissive. I am not.

I am the result of relationships between people who cared for one another, going back at least 3 generations and across all sorts of taboo lines. I have to live with that reality. No matter how much I hyphenate my identity, I can't ever afford to lose track of that simple reality without disrespecting my forebears in ways I simply will not.

[Disko Ole]

[Nay Sayer]

I believe racism/ White supremacy is the single most dominating force the WORLD.

No. That would be the love of money...

[rhodey]

Great response on her part. I will say this...assuming naivete on the part of people attempting to do the needful in regard to dismantling the structures of what you like to label "white supremacy" is dangerous. I suppose you can try relegating me to the contingent of those who "drop their suspicions," if you like. It's interesting that you seem very quick to be dismissive. I am not.

I am the result of relationships between people who cared for one another, going back at least 3 generations and across all sorts of taboo lines. I have to live with that reality. No matter how much I hyphenate my identity, I can't ever afford to lose track of that simple reality without disrespecting my forebears in ways I simply will not.

No dismissiveness intended. If I had a white parent it would be tough for me to honestly look at the system of racism and white supremacy in a truthful way without feeling like I am indicting my parent or white relatives.

[rhodey]

No. That would be the love of money...

Non-White People, under the SYSTEM of racism (white supremacy) ARE money...the principle medium of exchange...the means by which a white person uses their time and energy practicing racism (the mistreatment of people on the basis of color) in exchange for the product of white supremacy (white people being in a supreme position over the people they subject to their POWER).

The POWER the white people who practice racism (white supremacy) have acquired is through the practice of racism (the mistreatment of people on the basis of color) and it is maintained through the practice of racism (the mistreatment of people on the basis of color).