This is an interesting little op-ed. My finace works with the racial divide and we've been having a lot of conversations about race, racism, and the difference between the systemic and individual definitions of both.
I don't know how much folks here want to touch the topic, but I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.
Alright I've been on Hubski less than a week but y'all seem like nice sensible people so I'd like to ask a question that I've been having problems with for awhile and I think it's because I haven't been able to have a sane conversation with someone about it that doesn't devolve into people getting defensive. I'm having problems with the concept of white privilege. Well...not problems. I get it in the Louis CK sense that if I got in a time machine right now and showed up anywhere in history with very few exceptions I would probably not be persecuted or enslaved (unless I happened to land in the Irish slavery part)....otherwise I'd probably just be told to sit down and shut up because I'm a woman. Ok. I get that and I respect that. Here's the part I get confused on. The first time I heard the term "white privilege" thrown around (on reddit, surprise surprise) I asked what exactly the parameters were for white privileges and shared my experiences as some others were. I grew up poor in a reasonably sketchy neighborhood with lots of gang activity right on the US Mexico border. I got the crap beaten out of me regularly for being one of the only white girls in my class. I got asked to leave stores on two occasions because their "clothes weren't for hueras" (the general jist of it). I took shitty jobs, sometimes several at a time and sometimes things nobody wanted any part of and dragged my way through college. I didn't get anywhere I was going with my social connections and like lots of people I scratched and clawed my way to get where I am. And I immediately got shouted down as someone trying to deny their white privilege because I could've used it to improve my circumstances and I'm sitting there going, "How? How the hell was I supposed to improve anything about that situation by being white?" Meanwhile a guy I follow on Twitter was piled on about his white male privilege when he was half Asian and grew up so poor he had been living on donated food infested with ants, but again his human experiences came down to the color of his skin and his gender with everything else taken out of the equation. So I guess what I'm curious about is...well not so much "how am I privileged" because once again, I get in a time machine and I won't find myself in a crappy situation more than likely, but where does socio-economic privilege come into this whole matrix of privilege? Because I hear people talking about white privilege and male privilege and all these other privileges but you ask about socio-economic and they go mum. I've had frustrated friends point out it's usually "trust fund scholars who majored in gender studies" saying all this so they're uncomfortable with the socio-economic aspect themselves, but I don't think that's it. I'm hoping someone can have a discussion with me about his because I'd really like to understand it, and it frustrates me to a degree (probably because I've seen too much of the ridiculous radical stuff on Tumblr). Yes I know, it's not your job to educate me but give me a push here or something.
I hear what you're saying and, like everyone, I can't claim to be an authority on race. But since you shared your background with me, maybe sharing my background with you is also in order. I grew up in an average family. My parents prided themselves on that fact. They were once farmers who escaped the lands my family had lived on for generations to find something better. They moved around a little bit but ultimately wound up in a mid sized city, occupying a mid sized home, living a middle class life, and I was comfortable. That life afforded me opportunities. Opportunities for advancement and opportunities for ignorance. Through the former I got into good schools and I got nice work, though the latter I was protected from some of the harsher truths of life. Down the street was a black family who was much like our own. The parents came from modest means and the children lived in modest comfort. In our little neighborhood, all things seemed equal. And in that neighborhood they were. There was no malice, no one preventing children from being with one another, no prejudice (that we could see) and so it goes for most. But to me something seemed off, and it was. The crux of the problem, though, is that what had made the world as it was (the world I was first hand to, anyway) happened before I was born. I learned years later what that really was. There were social and economic forces set into motion, long before I was even an idea, that still reverberate through our culture. It should be noted that I don't mean to attribute connotation to that statement (or, hopefully, any of these statements) I simply offer them as facts of another time. In 1924 the National Housing Act began a practice called redlining where banks would draw a litteral red line on maps to mark areas in which they would not invest. These areas were primarily black ghettos, which had the consequence of ensuring economically depressed areas remained economically depressed. The primarily black ghettos became primarily black because it's not like slavery ended and then everything became amazing. When slavery ended most blacks were only allowed to live in certain parts of the city. So you have these primarily black neighborhoods that can't get capital investment to improve. Then you get blockbusting during the suburban flight. As blacks start realizing their situation is bad they try to get out and they start to move to the white suburbs. Once a house in a white suburb is purchased by a black family, the banks would call or visit other houses in that neighborhood and talk about how the whole place was going to pot. They would offer to buy white house for less than it was worth, get the whole block on their books, and sell them back to mobile blacks at far more than they were worth, making economically depressed and largely black areas. And because the loans were so high, owners would often default and have to move back to the ghettos. This created an american mentality of "blackspace" and "whitespace". Ghettos are blackspace, suburbs are whitespace. This has social effects which are well ingrained in our culture, generally to the detriment of blacks and to the benefit of whites. Most of that was quashed by the courts during the civil rights movements of the 1960's and 70's. So the language shifted from racially charged to economically charged. The Obama Administration's recent stimulus package, for example, targeted pre-existing assets, which the past 140 years of racially motivated legislation insured fell into the hands of predominantly white individuals. 1.5% of the beneficiaries of this package were black (I have the source on paper but not immediately available). So, imagine playing a game of monopoly where everyone else gets 10 turns before you can put your piece on the board. You're at a marked disadvantage. This, generally, is what people mean when they speak of the socio-economic disadvantage to a certain group of people. It might not exist currently or in the forms that have been so well documented in the past, but it does in some way exist. Now, this isn't to say that whites can't also be affected by these same forces. The scope of these programs is so high and so wide that, while they primarily affected minorities, there were also whites who were equally affected. Further, it seems that the current wealth disparity has far fewer of these race based caveats and are targeting, in mass, anyone who is simply not rich. This would seem to be a turning point in the constant power struggle in our world, but it doesn't erase the social, cultural, and economic disadvantages that were placed on many black families. I'm still learning about all of this and I will be the first to say that there are likely gaps in my knowledge and my arguments. I am always researching and always seeking new information and if you have any questions I'm happy to share anything I can find. These are deep and touchy subjects in American culture and they generally have to be navigated delicately. I've never been one for yelling matches and boasting, but I can get on a soapbox from time to time. If I did so above it was not my intent and I hope something up there helps provide some semblance of reason to what once was an unreasonable argument. edit: holy shit I wrote a novel.
Hey thank you so much amouseinmyhouse for responding (and also thanks to Elisza and also dashnhammit down below there out of this thread). I want to sit down and read through everything and that was what I intended to do, but my morning just went from 0 to panic because apparently I'm having surgery tomorrow. I know that has NO bearing on anything we're talking about but I didn't want you guys to think I was one of those people that came in and said "Hey let's have a difficult conversation....LOL BYE!" I'm going to sit down and read all of this and write up a thoughtful response once I'm not completely drugged up and hopefully we can continue the conversation at a later date (thank goodness this site seems to rely less on only current conversations being worth it.) Sorry about that and everybody have a good weekend!
Oh man, that's way more important than a discussion! I hope it's nothing too serious. Feel free to reply anytime or not at all, like I said, this is just something that's always rattling around in my thoughts. Good luck with the surgery!
Edit: read amouseinmyhouse's post for a good briefing. His/her post has a lot more detail than mine, mine is more dictionary-like and a tad bland I suppose. Ok, I'll try and give it a shot. I'll start with a broad description, from what I can find on mobile. I'll see if I can find actual figures later, since mobile is a pain and I'm supposed to be at work (shh). The term 'white privelege,' as refers to (from wikipedia) ''both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white persons may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely.'' In the United States (picking on them again, sorry) it is especially apparent because of the lingering effects of racism from the nation's founding. Accumulation of wealth and its inheritance would have been limited to white people, and their descendants would have received those benefits and be off to a much better start. For instance, access to better education, housing, nutrition, etc COULD lead to a better future employment potential and an overall preservation of wealth across the generation, which allows for major investment opportunities like property that accelerate the accruement of their assets. To put it simply, it's because money can make money for you when you have enough to start with. Similarly, this income gap disparity creates a social divide: white people are likely exposed to people with more influence (friend of your dad is CEO, can he help you out on your job applications?) than minority groups who don't likely have the same chances of doing so. I'm sorry to hear of your past experiences, and I hope this may have at least clarified a few things. I am no expert, so the best thing you could do is to educate yourself and double check anything I said to see if it's factual. I mostly read from wikipedia, which is accurate and unbiased most of the time, but they can be wrong.
How can you have an honest conversation about race if right from the start you make it clear that there's only one acceptable opinion, and everyone who doesn't fully agree with you is racist and therefore evil? They were probably just hoping to find someone stupid or angry enough to say something "racist" in front of a camera, so they could use him as confirmation of their preconceived notions about white racism.
Who was hoping? The quality and tone of the responses seem to indicate that this doc was in no way set up for any "gotcha" style points.
Maybe I missed it, but what's the one acceptable option?
Yeah, I understand that feeling. I think the word racist is undergoing the potential for a definitional shift - from applying to an individual to applying to a system. The individual definition is an indictment of a single person and generally reflects on that person being "bad". The systemic definition is an indictment of a system and asks all participants of the system to recognize how that system benefits some and detriments others. I find that many progressive conversations use the systemic definition, and that causes a defensive reaction from those using the individual definition. I also think that's one of the core truths of this video series, while there's a lack of resolution as to the actual definition of racism, people won't know how to talk about it. For me personally, seeing the systemic definition of racism and of white supremacy helped to absolve me of my guilt and allowed me to have much more beneficial conversations about the very real social structures which exist all around me.
You're absolutely correct when you say that there's been an effort on the part of progressives and self-proclaimed anti-racists to redefine racism. I don't see this as a positive development, though. Here's why. Not only is the alternative definition being used to vilify a specific racial group, which in itself is, well, racist; it's also used to justify the dogmatic concept of "white privilege", which is basically a kind of original sin, something you're born with and can't ever get rid of, no matter how much you repent; it also erases the experience of white victims of racially motivated crime, and gives black people moral impunity for those crimes; "systemic racism" is also vaguer than individual racism, which makes it more difficult to talk about in objective terms, and ensures that the identity of the person who's talking matters more than whether his argument makes any sense at all. It seems quite obvious to me that the people advocating for this pernicious definition are doing so purely out of selfishness and self-interest (in the case of black people) or guilt and ideological conviction (in the case of white people). People who are actually anti-racist should reject it as a step backwards for healthy relationships between the various races.
This is true, but I've criticized it before. The prejudice+power definition already has a term: institutional racism. It got the point across and it's clear.
Racism means interpersonal racism to most people, as you said. Replacing this definition with the institutional one when dealing with laymen makes the issues unnecessarily confusing and, in my opinion, works against anti-racists. It allows people to think "are you saying black people can't be racist? That's ridiculous! [Insert anecdote]." It's better, to me, to keep "racism" meaning interpersonal and using "institutional racism" when referring to the systemic type.
That's super odd that they were all so skittish about race. My university is pretty diverse, and the white people that attend tend to be extremely opinionated about topics like these. Yea they will try to deflect from time to time, but they aren't afraid to have a conversation. There were a few comments I loved. The dude that said that racial blindness is only being brought up by white people, I agree with that. I don't get the idea of racial blindness. I have no interesting in shedding my race and everything that comes with it. I understand that different races have different aspects about them. I respect their differences, and live my life. I don't get why we have to look past race for whatever reason. The other interesting comment was the person that said she never knew she had a racial identity. She never knew what it meant to be white because she never had to. That was an interesting point because I always think about my race. Maybe not always, but I think about it a lot. It is something that has come to define who I am. I mean I could tell you a lot about where my family came from, but I have friends who tell me they are mix of a whole bunch of stuff that they know nothing about. For white people it doesn't seem to be such a large defining characteristic or at least it didn't before.
As a Hispanic guy who has lived in America and grew up in a suburb my entire life, I have always felt like I was in the middle when it came to race relations. Whenever the issue of race relations in America comes up, most of the time it's whites vs blacks. I am involved with poetry slams and there is a lot of focus on social justice. Whenever a poet uses race in a poem, most of the time it deals with the black and white relationship in America. Rarely do I hear a poem dealing with the Hispanic and black relationship in America or the white and Hispanic relationship or the Asian relationship with any other race. I have seen white people get called out for their indifference towards racial problems but rarely does anyone call out Hispanics or any other minority for their indifference. I sometimes think that if I never speak out against racism, then no one will notice because I am a minority. But if I was white, then someone would definitely notice and call me out on it. Maybe I just don't know that much when it comes to the issue of race in America. Until I started doing poetry slams at the age of 25, I never heard the term, "people of color" used before in my lifetime. It was always black or African American. I ran on track teams where the majority was black but never did I hear any of them refer to themselves as "people of color." It was always black or African American.
My upbringing sounds somewhat similar to InfernalFangirl's, and early on in my adult life I thought I was pretty racially tolerant, open-minded. I could never take seriously people who made excuses for how their lives were, blaming everything on their skin color. Running commentary in my head was: you know what?, I've been through hell and back, suffered through the absolute dregs of society, crushing poverty, etc, etc, but I decided to be a better person, to not perpetuate the cycle, to make different choices, and if it was that easy for me, then what was other minorities' excuse? Then I found myself in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn one afternoon. Had gone off on a walk, as I was wont to do, striking out in strange, new directions. 40 blocks later, I realized I hadn't seen any white people in some time. In fact, I was the only white person in a sea of black people. I noticed people looking at me funny, pointing me out. I finally found a bar, needed a drink and to rest my feet, opened the door, and every single person in that bar was black, and they all stopped, turned in my direction, with openly hostile eyes. The black bartender was dismissive, like I didn't exist, told me that I wasn't allowed to drink there unless I paid double what everyone else in the bar was paying, making it very clear that I wasn't welcome there. That afternoon made me see "white privilege" and race relations in a new light. Suddenly, I saw things from a new point of view, and realized I didn't know as much as I'd thought I did. That experience gave me the tiniest glimpse of what some black people say is daily routine for them.
I'm curious about the background of these participants. In my experience, white people who live and actively participate in a culturally diverse environment are far less skittish when talking about race. I noticed how most of the participants talk about the plight of minorities in the abstract and never something along the lines of, "I thought we had moved past racism until I saw how my black friend got treated like shit because they were black." Except for the anecdote about asking why black people are called black people when they have brown skin, it's always in vague terms.
I don't understand this argument at all; it falls apart on so many levels, and yet it's still paraded around like it's fact. "You are white, and therefore a racist". First of all, it's very U.S.A.-centric. There are plenty of examples of white people being racist to other white people, and black people being racist towards other black people. Using the blanket statement "white people are inherently racist" is absolutely laughable when there are plenty of white people worldwide who have been or whose ancestors have been victims of severe racism. Yet, people still automatically assume "You're white, therefore a racist". Also, it falls apart when you have mixed raced people. Take myself as an example. Asian/Irish. What happens now? I'm half 'white' and half 'Person Of Colour'. Do I get half the oppression points? Do the two races "cancel out"? I've even seen the argument that "people of colour shouldn't have children with white people because doing so trivializes the struggles of their ancestors". Where do you stand on those issues?
Once again, it comes down to the definition. Any individual can be prejudiced against any other individual for any reason, including race. If you use the individual definition of racism, then they are racist. If you are using the systemic definition of racism then the current power structure in the US favors whites. I'm not saying that under this definition anyone is "guilty" of racism, just that as a matter of fact there are certain people who benefit from such a system and certain people who don't. I can't speak to how you interact with the system simply because I haven't seen how you interact with the system. I'm simply relaying my observations of how the word 'racism' affects conversation based on the two apparent definitions that exist. As for separate races not having children together, that seems like an extreme argument that I can't say I agree with in any way.