This entire article could be rewritten in about ten sentences. The only reason I can see for this debate to exist, whether it's in regards to sexism or racism, is because people are defining words differently.
Most people: Racist = thinks other races are inherently inferior, hates black people/Mexicans/whatever
Him: Racist = complicit in a society where white people have advantages due to minorities being disadvantaged
Being called the first kind of racist is rather insulting. If someone defines racism that way, this article can be summed up like this:
You hate black people. You look down on them. You marginalize them, you put them down, you think you're better than them. If you say otherwise you're a liar and/or you're just in denial of your subconscious hate.
That's very different from:
You should recognize how being white in America gives you advantages you wouldn't have otherwise and not being white means having to fight an uphill battle against society. You should do what you can to change the system, you should not be complicit in the system.
I'm very familiar with this concept of structural racism. In fact, I discussed it 110 days ago on Hubski by what its actually called: "Second Generation Bias." I would expect a major professor at a well-known college also knows this term especially due to him dealing in issues of sexism and racism in his understanding of philosophy, which leads me to believe that his use of the term racism is damaging to his case.
Yancy asks me to believe that I am racist because I live in a system which has second generation bias. He absurdly calls this racism and me a racist simply due to my membership within a group advantaged by this system. The huge and glaring error in this assumption is that racism is a choice and bias is more subtle. I am no more a racist for being a part of this system than the Asian man who out earns me by the same measure. If we're just going by the measure that some system gives me a leg up over someone else, I'm a disadvantaged young man. By the same measure, black people are racist because they make more than Hispanic men in the same data.
Even moreso, this argument where everyone is expected to be within some homogeneous group, which I think I well showed in my first post, makes it so black people can never be seen as advantaged, white people can never be seen as disadvantaged, and everyone is set in their own little cultural prison. This is the kind of thinking that stops white guys from liking rap music, black guys from 'talking white', and everyone being whoever the hell they want to be without race being in the back of their mind forever. This is racism!
The problem with examining a system for second generation bias is that it is hard to find examples where someone is not actually still making racially motivated decisions. To be honest it took me a long time to make a single credible example for that other post, and even now I can pull that one apart easily.
If black guys get paid less for the same work, that's because HR is making racially motivated decisions. There's one single person who signs the line with their pay on it, that's the racist. It's not bias, it's racism, and that person's actions make them a racist. When Jennifer Lawrence found out she was getting paid less and realized that her co-stars negotiated harder and she didn't, she confessed to not negotiating harder to be liked. Women are well-known for this and it is a well observed partial explanation for the pay gap. She was the sexist oppressing herself there and she admits it! There are surely outside pressures which made her feel that was an appropriate response to the situation, but at the end of the day she made the decision. HR makes the decision. The guy who comments to his neighbor about the black family moving in ruining the neighborhood is the racist.
I am not a racist. Telling me that my skin color makes me a party to racism is racist. Telling me that a black man has no identity other than disadvantaged in a terrible system when you are a respected professor at a big university and another black man is the President of the United States of America, and another black man was Attorney General, and a black woman was Secretary of State, and a black people of all nations have summited so many peaks, telling me that black people are only the poor downtrodden stepped upon masses and that whites are their systematic oppressors, that's racist.
I will not apologize for being white. I will not pretend that I have no heritage. I will not accept that I am crushing my neighbors for my own benefit. I'm not the person that he asks me to be, and black people aren't one mass of the same person either. This is racism, and I won't be a part of it just because it has somehow become a progressive talking point.
I feel like you're misunderstanding the comment I replied to. Yancy is not saying that you think or act in accordance with the opinion that other races are inferior. All he's asking you to recognize is that you're complicit in a society where white people have advantages due to minorities being disadvantaged. This is a case of different definitions of racists/racism.
Yes, telling you that you hate black people just because you're white is racist. But asking you to recognize that your skin color affords you advantages over people of color is anti-racist: the first step to dismantling structures of racism (or second-generation bias, whatever) is recognition of their existence and of our obligation, as their unjust beneficiaries, to dismantle them.
I fully understand what he is saying. He is saying that I live in an advantaged position because of my skin color. I am saying that my skin color is not sufficient enough to describe me, nor would anyone else's skin color be. I also understand that this new understanding of racism has become more popular and accepted. I do not agree that this acceptance is wise. Despite my understanding of the concept, I do not accept it. I think that you are having trouble separating my rejection of the argument from not understanding it.
- He is saying that I live in an advantaged position because of my skin color. Am saying that my skin color is not sufficient enough to describe me, nor would anyone else's skin color be.
Right. Both of those things are true.
It's literally a question of definition. You're saying that racism should be defined as racial prejudice-- fine. All I'm saying is, don't interpret Yancy's article as though he's talking about what you mean when you say racism.
I completely agree with this. If I'm not the one being racist, don't tell me that I'm part of it. If you believe something is racist, take it up to the people being racist and improve it. If you need help with that, ask anyone you want to help you out, but don't group me up because of my skin color and call me racist.
I'm sorry but I still really don't get it. Perhaps I'm blinded by "my inner racist" or something, but this comment (from the article comments section) was most relatable to me:
As someone who is sympathetic to the struggles and conditions that many people, not just Black people, live with, I don't find this kind of "letter" to be particularly helpful, for several reasons.
First of all, it seems hypocritical to address all "White Americans" as if we all had the same attitudes, latent or expressed. Imagine the response, should someone write a letter titled "Dear Black America" and pointing out certain failings. People would say: Black people have different experiences, different attitudes, we aren't one homogenous group. And they would be right.
Secondly, and related, if people are really looking to change the world, it is far more effective to focus directly on problematic attitudes and behaviors themselves, rather than attributing them to some group and saying that the group must change. Every person, regardless of race, gender, or whatever other classification you want to choose, needs to look at themselves and see what about themselves needs improvement. We all need improvement because none of us is a perfect, but not because we're White or male.
It's simply not effective to make people feel that they are "wrong" in some way because of their classification, regardless of how prevalent certain attitudes might be within that group. The focus needs to be on the attitude or behavior itself.
and this:
I understand the concept of white privilege, and I understand how I benefit from the community actions, the set of assumptions made about me simply because I am an educated white person of the middle class. I fully understand how it is my responsibility to effect change, and that we are all under the onus of our own preconceptions. But responsibility is not guilt, and being white is not being racist.
I am a racist if my thoughts and actions make so, and only if my thoughts and actions make me so.
I actually agree with you here. I wasn't really sure what the point of this article was at all. It seemed like a long winded mix of two different types of protest signs:
"Fight racism with love"
and
"Fight racism with guilt"
Which are two really conflicting ideas.
Man. I would love to see a similar letter applied to "White Canada" - racism against the Aboriginal peoples is very real here, but I feel that it's much less "in your face" than in the US. I'm not sure which one is more dangerous.
I think a lot people see the world as very black and white (pun intended). As such, when challenged to self-examine, their first response tends to be, "Well, how can I fix it? What can I do to be better?" It's often something I ask myself, but I'm still not sure what the answer is. And perhaps without that answer, that's why people seem to be so reluctant to take on this constant battle with themselves.
The First Nations are substantially more powerful than Native Americans. They're also more numerous. There are under three million Native Americans in the United States in a population of 350 million; there are almost a million First Nations People in Canada in a population of 35 million.
I grew up in New Mexico (10% Native American), moved to Washington (2% Native American) and lived in California (1% Native American).
In New Mexico, particularly where I was, the Hispanics (47% of the population) deeply resented the Native American population because they had perceived economic advantage from the Federal government, which was seen as a recent invader since the Hispanic culture of NM predated the United States by 200 years. However, the resources possessed by the Native Americans were sparse indeed and largely related to vast swaths of land and the ability to ticket, host gambling and sell fireworks thereon.
In Washington, Native Americans were resented under everyone's breath because, well, for one thing don't be racist (the fact that I called Native Americans "Indians" when I arrived caused me a lot of grief, despite the fact that they were Indians where I grew up and still are) and for another thing, the benefits available to Native Americans were seen as unfair boons that encouraged sloth and debauchery. Fishing rights, for one. Tax exempt status. Which could be combined to allow the Native American tribes to lease out $1/year fishing rights to white sailors. That the majority of Native Americans in WA live in unhappy conditions was not seen as a counterbalance; obviously, white people wouldn't become child-beating alcoholics if they were given "free land" and subsidized living. Thus, dwellers on "the Rez" can be simultaneously condemned for living there and also for enjoying the advantages of not living there.
In CA, Native Americans are a concept to be respected but never viewed. The on-ramp onto the PCH out of Santa Monica is named after a river that isn't there anymore in the language of a tribe that died out over a hundred years ago. Tribal casinos have a garnish of native american culture, like a lemon twist on a cocktail... they certainly aren't drenched in symbolism like the fourteen I passed on the way to Olive Garden growing up. And they certainly aren't "Indians." Indians are... Johnny Depp, for reasons none of us understood and are embarrassed to discuss now.
And while I've never lived in British Columbia, I've spent as much time there as I can... and the vibe I got was that the First Nations weren't like any of these. The First Nations were a group with a lot of legislated power that they had by birthright and while there was resentment about that amongst the white folx, there wasn't much to be done about it... unlike those filthy Chinese and Indians (dots not feathers).
I suppose I am comparing the Canadian First Nations to racism against blacks in the United States. To be perfectly honest, I didn't even realize there were still Native Americans around.
I can't speak for the Inuit (or any tribes in Eastern Canada) as I've never met any, but growing up in rural Alberta/Saskatchewan is much different than British Columbia. Japanese internment camps in WWII really defined a separation within Canada that still continues to exist, though most prominently in BC.
"Indians", outside of liberal inner cities, is a term still widely accepted. There is a lot of thievery, a lot of issues concerning education, land, and money. Unfortunately in the prairies, this:
|a lot of legislated power that they had by birthright and while there was resentment about that amongst the white folx
is a problem when almost everyone seems to be white. Hopefully we can begin to see real change with an inquiry into the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women, though many still believe they have "brought it on themselves."
This article is a good start on the topic.
You won't hear this much, but racism in the United States is unique in that it gets addressed, not in that it exists. Consider: for most of Europe your choices are "native" or AUSLANDER. Melting pot? My ancestors fought yours in the Crusades! Canada and the US are on this list. Europe and Asia... aren't.
Living in the perpetual Anglos vs Francos battleground that is Quebec, I didn't even realize there were so many issues with the First Nations until this last election. I don't read the news much so the extent of my knowledge constituted the couple months in school spent learning the difference between Iroquoiens and Algonquiens and the sight of the same group drunk aboriginals downtown for the past 10 years :(
I feel they really have not been part of the narrative for too long and we have failed them greatly by shoving their problems aside by pretending they don't exist... I hope to see a positive change soon: we owe it to all Canadian citizens to be treated well.
Come on, guys. Jesus.
NO ONE IS SAYING WHITE PEOPLE DON'T SUFFER.
But if you grew up poor, black, Irish and Catholic, you would've suffered more than you did-- you would've automatically been a police suspect most of the time, you would've been harassed, you would've been a victim of a system that systematically prevented your forbears from engaging in the primary means of accruing capital in the US. That is privilege. What privilege IS NOT is "all white people have it dandy just because they're white."
It doesn't enrage me much at all, but I'm impossible to offend.
Still, it's kind of a slap in the face when I willingly acknowledge that the issues raised in the article are valid, when I actively police my own behavior against "microagressions" to (hopefully somewhere near) the best of my abilities, and that I vastly favor socially progressive policies that are specifically designed to help out blacks. The same is true pertaining to women. After that admission, being told "fuck you because of your white dick" is really weird. I absolutely sympathize (note: I cannot 'empathize') with their fury, but there's a lot of vocalization right now in the far left that seems to be nothing short of reverse racism... which is, of course, racist. 'bl00's article that I badged yesterday had self-loathing-white-hate-guilt out the wazoo, but I don't think anyone can argue against the value of loving oneself. Unless you're actually a piece of shit with no interest in self improvement. And obviously that doesn't pertain to you, francopoli.
I'm absolutely racist, sexist, and all the other bad -ist's, and limiting those is a battle that I fight with myself on a daily basis. I'm human, after all.
See, here is the thing with me. I've taken a deep breath, cranked some Motorhead and took a step back.
Let's look at this article and the author. Here is the Author's bio. This guy writes race-related clickbait. Here is one of his books. Look! A White! Now, look at the guy's history; take a look at his Amazon Author page. I'll wait. I have no idea on the guy's family life, his upbringing or anything but he went to some damn fine fancy schools there. He went to Yale, which is a privilege neither I nor any of my friends would ever be given.
Now, to my frustration. Here we have some jackass who gets to go to Yale telling my friends and I that we are bad people because we did not win the birth lottery that put us in the top 10%. I did not choose my parents, nor did he, nor did you. I've broken off friendships with people less fixated on race than Mr. Yancy. There is only one privilege in this world: that is class/money/wealth however you want to define it. Going to Yale puts you in a social class far above mine, easily into the 5%er class. Having money puts you in a social class above mine. Hell, we want to go full bonkers and progressive stack here, having two parents raise you puts you in a social class above many people any more.
If we want to have a talk on how black people in the USA have been systematically shit upon time and time and time and time again, we can start on how black men who fought for the freedom of the USA in WWII were treated like shit and progress to Jim Crow and that inter-racial marriages were not exactly legal until 1955. It's not like this is the first time that the government used the army to crush poor people fighting back Hell it is not even the last. Sorry for all the shitty wikipedia articles, but if anything they sanitize a lot of this garbage.
So, my anger is that articles like this do nothing to fix anything other than to generate controversy and web clicks. Welfare is not working to keep poor families together which deepens the poverty cycle. FROM 19FUCKING83 NY Times a liberal (albeit establishment) paper! You want to really, REALLY help black men keep their families in tack and work to at lest stop the skid of poverty in this country? End the war on drugs. Turn drug policy from criminal to medical. White and black people all smoke weed yet the dark skinned fellas end up in jail. Stanford Text History here. If you end up in jail you don't go to school, don't get a job, and get exposed to other criminals who now become your friend structure. The jobs you do get barely pay the bills, and it is legal to not rent to convicts further amplifying the cycle. Where is Mr. Yancy's papers getting white people guilty enough to end this idiotic war on drugs? I'd support him if he did.
This country has a history of treating people like shit. The Irish were shit upon, the Italians were shit upon, the Germans were shit upon, now its the Mexican's turn. Hell, the French Catholics were treated like crap when they fled Canada! And then we get into the modern influxes of Russians, Chaldeans, Muslims, Arabs and everyone else who is buying the song and dance about the USA being the land of milk and honey. My hope for the internet and places like Hubski, and even Facebook and Reddit fer fecks sake, is that people get into discussions over shit that does not matter. Movies, music, video games, books, sports, etc. Then you find out that the person you have been talking to is <other> and that interaction humanizes someone that maybe you were raised to treat poorly. Playing video games online with an Arab Muslim will do more to fix racism than a million papers like this. Watching sports in a bar rooting for a basketball team of black guys is doing more to tamp down racism here than any government program you can think of. Articles like this are not going to bring people together; they may have the opposite impact. One of the key tenants of cults is that they segregate themselves, this segregation then radicalizes them and pits them against the outsiders. Want to know why the extremely religious hate the internet? (hint, can't have the kiddies finding out that the blacks and the gays are human beings just like them.)
If I win the lottery I'd love to set up a fund that takes 20 inner city black men and have them meet 20 rural white redneck dudes and have them all compare notes for a few hours. These kids would get the chance to see that they are both fucked: their families are falling apart, the job prospects all suck, the doors that lead to college are slamming shut, those who go to college end up with a ton of debt and shaky job prospects, the unions that used to train our tradespeople are barely hanging on, entry level factory work was shipped overseas and both communities are wracked over by despair, poor health and serious drug and alcohol abuse problems. Does that describe South Chicago? Rural Kentucky? When you have two groups of people who don't like each other that is one thing; divide and distract is a legitimate strategy to win wars. To merge them into one group of people who just had their worldviews upturned and are now just a bit pissed off? That would be fun to watch.
Articles like this, and hell Fox News, MSNBC, Daily Kos, Breibart, Drudge, Democracy Now! all of them, are in my opinion trying to capture and segregate an audience. Reality (not truth,that is something different) no longer matters. We are losing out empathy to each other in self-selected filter bubbles that cater to our biases and make us feel good about ourselves, and fuck those other guys we got ours. KB said something in another thread that you cannot talk anymore without being shouted down. If there is anyone out there that still gives a shit, that is how you kill a nation and end a democracy. We have real, big, problems in this world, and if we are going to fix them we are going to have to work with people we may not like, who look different than us, go to different churches etc. I'd like to think we are better than this, but some days...
I kept looking for a quote to pull but I think I would end up quoting the whole thing. This is exactly the kind of thing I mean when I talk about unlearning. It's supposed to be painful because it means uprooting very base assumptions we make and don't even realize.
I'm confused as to what he wants us (white people) to do. Just acknowledge we're racist? That we can't do anything that reverses our racism? Yancy spends so much time saying the letter is a 'gift' but also says people are going to be mad about getting it. Then says we shouldn't be mad, but we're going to be. I don't get why spend all the time doing that. It makes it about individuals, when he seems to be urging instead recognition of inherent societal racism that all whites benefit from. I like that he titled it "Dear White America" but he then seems to take it to a personal level that I don't see helping his point or his cause. Honestly, he kinda turns me off to it. If I'm racist, and nothing I can do or say gets rid of that racism, why shouldn't I try to benefit from that racism? I think there is a clear answer of rights, but Yancy never goes there. I believe in an end to racism, and am involved in the movement to a limited extent because I believe in rights and human dignity. But Yancy comes across to me as saying not "You're part of the problem," but "You are the problem." That makes me, irrationally or not, not really want to fix it. At least not until I can benefit from the current system.
I also don't get why he seems to dismiss many of the questions and arguments against him as a result of whiteness and discomfort. I, for one, want better reasons than that, especially from a philosopher. The man asks and answers questions for a living! I've been told I'm racist countless times, for legitimate and in my view illegitimate reasons, that I'm racist. What I've never been told is why really. Why I can't ask certain questions, questions certain motives, or judge certain actions. Why can't I be persecuted, for example? I only read this now because so learned that:
- Yancy is a professor in one of the top 20 philosophy departments in the country, and a well-respected scholar on race.
I'm on a philosophy kick right now, and I thought maybe he'd answer some of my questions in a rational and non-emotion based way. But instead, I hear what is another "You're racist." And quite honestly, for me at this point, hearing that doesn't fucking help anybody at all.
Dear White America,
You're all the same. Stop thinking everyone else is all the same. You can't have bad experiences at the hands of others. Sorry, you lost that right after others who looked like you gave someone who looks like me bad experiences first. Sincerely,
Who Gives a Fuck About This Guy?
I'd really appreciate if you'd frame your response as a critique, not a (for lack of a better word) salty parody. This comment accomplishes little. That said:
- Yancy never says white America are all the same. The fact that white people are all racist does not imply that we are all the same in other aspects, and suggesting that it does is a childish fallacy.
- Yancy never claims that white America can't suffer at the hands of others. He just wants us to acknowledge that whateber suffering we experience in white bodies would be magnified in a black body, and accept the call to action that that acknowledgement entails.
- The issue is not that "others who looked like you gave someone who looks like me bad experiences first." The issue is that the continuing legacy of those bad experiences impacts and oppresses people of color to this day, and white America, in our failure to acknowledge and speak out against said legacy, becomes complicit in it.
(To your signature, Yancy is a professor in one of the top 20 philosophy departments in the country, and a well-respected scholar on race.)
(I had you muted for a while after a previous discussion on race. That discussion and now this comment, compared to your tone and contributions elsewhere on the site--which convinced me to unmute you--make me think you're falling prey to irrationality and anger.)
All right. He never outright says that all whites are the same, but in practice that is his assumption. Ex: If you are white, and you are reading this letter, I ask that you don’t run to seek shelter from your own racism. So if I'm white, then I'm racist. And because it's something that Yancy admitted to, then I'm supposed to be okay with being called a racist? Not going to happen.
"As you reap comfort from being white, we suffer for being black and people of color. But your comfort is linked to our pain and suffering. Just as my comfort in being male is linked to the suffering of women, which makes me sexist, so, too, you are racist." A racist is someone who makes decisions based on race. I don't do that, I refuse to be called a racist just based on my skin tone. See how backwards that is?
He starts off by offering that if you can listen to this with love that you will see his side of the argument. This implies that people who do not agree with him didn't listen right. It's a quick route to make the opposite side look inferior, but I don't think that's what he's doing here. He's doing the opposite, which is making the people who support him looking loving in accepting that they are sexist racists and are willing to work on it. I'm sick of this kind of white guilt preying nonsense. I'm not a bad person and I refuse to accept the mantle that just because someone before me built an imperfect system in which we currently live that I am responsible for it.
He also outright says that pornography is proof of someone being sexist. Lots of people watch porn, not just men, and not just straight people, but Yancy does indeed imply that whites are the same simply by addressing a letter to 'all of us' collectively. You can't write a letter to white America and pretend that you don't see them as a homogenous group.
Then he blames the media for objectifying women, without saying that men are 'objectified' in the same conceit. Instead he uses this as a bridge to further imply that as a member of white America I am sexist. Just because he admits that he thinks of himself as sexist because of this nonsense doesn't actually mean that I am.
Then we go on to this letter being a mirror for my white racist self. "After all, it is painful to let go of your “white innocence,” to use this letter as a mirror, one that refuses to show you what you want to see, one that demands that you look at the lies that you tell yourself so that you don’t feel the weight of responsibility for those who live under the yoke of whiteness, your whiteness." My whiteness is not a burden under which I place others. If they feel that way, it is an echo of a system gone by and I am not responsible for that. Further implying that simply by being white that I am benefiting from racism and that no one else is ignored a lot of war and genocide that got us all here as a country. People of all races who are Americans today benefit from the wars against the Native Americans. Do they feel bad about that? Nope. So why would I feel bad about something done, not in my name, by someone who looked like me, but wasn't me?
I didn't vote for Obama, I don't have a lot of black friends, I'm not a 'good' person, or any of the other stupid ways that people decide whether or not they look good to others. I'm kind to people I meet, I judge people based on their actions, and I'm not going to be okay with being called a racist, sexist, privileged white just to fit in with the narrative that seems to be permeating white progressive circles right now. That someone who would ever want to be my friend would ask me to hate myself is terribly insulting.
George Yancy is a professor of Philosophy. And if this is the type of scholarly Philosophy which he provides, then I can not respect that.