White Privilege?

I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with the hysterical anti-Sarah Palin emails I’ve been getting lately from my liberal friends and acquaintances. Not that I don’t agree with many of the concerns voiced in these emails, but the shrill tone and inevitable hyperbole in these viral missives always end up making me roll my eyes and fear that the left is sounding more and more like a right-wing parody of the left.

I never forward such emails on, even when they’re not full of fear-based hyperbole. I don’t mind getting such messages myself but I don't like being a conduit for unsolicited emails of any kind, it’s just something that I never do. And I’ve purposely avoided including any of these messages on my blog.

However, this morning I received an email from a friend in Washington that I thought was so well written and to the point that for once I actually wanted to pass it on. You may have seen this already but I think it’s a fascinating read. It was written by Tim Wise, anti-racist activist and author of the books “White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son” and “Speaking Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male.” Wise is a controversial figure in some circles. I admit that I’ve never been that comfortable with the term “white privilege” but this piece really brings it home for me.

In my view, I would question whether some of Wise's points below are more of an example of class privilege than white privilege. I also think that the tendency of the left to start sounding a bit condescending creeps into this piece towards the end, but overall I think it is an excellent, thought-provoking essay. I like it because it’s not about vilifying Sarah Palin, it’s about looking at our response to some of the issues surrounding her nomination and how it compares to the way other candidates are treated.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege 
by Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. 

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

What do you think? Strangely, on some blogs I've seen this essay attributed to George Clooney, of all people. Living in the inner city near downtown L.A., I have to say that I've lately been made more explicitly aware of how I "benefit" from white privilege, mostly in how I am treated by police officers and others who view middle-aged white guys way differently than how they view most of the African-American and Latino men in my neighborhood.

Comments

[La Framéricaine]

Thank you very much for breaking your own rule about "forwarding" posts.

I have tried to refrain from hysterical pronouncements regarding my own feelings about, what I consider to be, the cynical and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee and, instead, concentrate upon the reasons why I would be quite proud to have the Obamas as the first family and the Bidens as their cohosts for, at least, 4 years.

Mr. Wise's reframing of the debate dovetails very nicely with my own perspective and makes me feel slightly more sane. An echo of the truth in what he has to say was heard on NPR's KPCC 89.3 FM last week when a white male journalist and a black female journalist interviewed 7 white and 7 black citizens regarding the degree to which they felt that "race" was an influence on how they intended to vote.

To a person, the white people said no it wasn't, but they were voting for the white guy, coincidentally. The black people were voting for the mixed race candidate, coincidentally.

However, the thing that I was most startled--not surprised, mind you--to hear from a white male was his assertion that he felt he had had no special advantage in life because he was white (Please insert stunned silence here).

I don't think that there is a day that has gone by, since I was a child, that I didn't think that my "whiteness" had, by definition, endowed me with an easier row to hoe in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But, perhaps, that's just me.

Thanks again for passing along this reframing of the matter at hand.

[Maria Sosa]

I agree with you Danny that the notion of "white privilege" is complicated by class. I don't know what its like in LA, but I do know that since I moved to Baltimore I have seen a fair share of very low socio-economic status white people who would shrug at the concept of privilege and white being in the same sentence. But yes, I would have to agree that once you attain the threshold class level, you get a lot of free passes for being white. It's something that I often caution Latino and African American parents about in my educational outreach work. I mean, why lie about it? George Bush can snort cocaine and still become president of the United States but the likelihood of a minority kid being able to get away with that are slim to none.

[liza]

I saw this letter all over the progressive blogs and I love it. I think it spells out a whole lot of what is wrong with this campaign and this country.

One can read a letter like this and think, wow,it's true, I am a beneficiary of white privilege (even if I'm a Jew, which complicates the equation.) I can actually become a better person for being aware, for keeping this idea in my consciousess. Maybe I can even make a positive difference in my life, the lives of people around me, and around the world. Yes, it's a good thing.

One thing not explicitly addressed in the letter: If you are a radical religious fundamentalist extremist like SP and you are white you get praised for family values. If you are not white you are labeled a terrorist.

[Bobbie]

I want to thank you for printing this letter. I had not seen it before - although I guess you'd call me one of those liberals. I have written quite a bit in my blog concerning my political beliefs. In fact, my daughter, as well as others have asked me to give it a rest, and I think I will do that, because I am aware that I am becoming part of the problem of preaching too loudly and to long, until no one is listening any more. I too am pretty sick of hearing both sides. We need to step back, stop blaming and criticizing, and instead, start just discussing solutions.
I think Mr. Wise has expressed very well a great deal of what I wish I had said.
Again, thank you.

[cruisin-mom]

Along the same lines...I was listening to Bill O'Reilly's radio show today (yep, I like to hear all sides), and a white, "blue collar" worker from Pennsylvania called in to say that he didn't like Obama because "someone who went to Harvard, can't understand anything about me, but since Sarah Palin's husband, is a blue collar worker, she can understand someone like me". I never in my life would have thought I'd actually hear someone say that obtaining a college education would make you undesirable as president of the United States. The world has turned upside down!

[communicatrix]

If you're going to break your own rule, that's a good piece to break it with.

I, too, have been uncomfortable with some of the angry, extremist reactions from the Left, and hey! I'm way, way over there on the Left, myself! My shrink and I had a long discussion (on my dime, I guess, but what the hell?) about the ugly turn this campaign has taken, and the frustration a lot of us feel about Obama not taking off the gloves.

There are a multitude of reasons for it, probably not least of which is white people can get away with conducting a vitriolic campaign, where if a black person did, he'd just be viewed as a "dangerous element." Only in much, much worse terms.

But I like to think that the reason is one outlined in this piece from The American Prospect that Adam Lisagor (aka Lonelysandwich) points to.

It basically says that the way Obama is choosing to run his campaign is an extension of his belief in the need for change, and that to stoop to crap tactics would run counter to what he stood for.

And that O'Reilly quote is some scary shite. I have a similar weakness for dipping into right-wingnut radio, and heard more flapjack nonsense on Dr. Laura about Obama being pro- sex ed in kindergarten. It was less overt, but in my book, that's just as bad.

[Pam G]

My largely poor inner-city neighborhood has been over-run with very young Obama supporters in recent days who seem shocked that people registered Democrat support McCain/Palin in such large numbers. I have commented on this in a few private emails recently only to remind people of the hold traditional conservative values have for many working class white voters. I'm not at all surprised by the comment made on the radio show by the PA blue collar worker. Walk into any bar in my Pittsburgh neighborhood today or twenty years ago when Reagan was President and you'd hear the same thing. The wealthy here seem to love this and have told me they are gladdened by what even they term McCain's "cynical ploy" of getting Palin for a running mate.

As for these liberal hysterical anti-Palin postings many of us have been getting, the last one forwarded to me (by my brother!) was so offensive that I don't even feel comfortable describing it and plan to remain largely silent on this issue from now on.

Thanks for bringing this essay to our attention. Thought-provoking.

[churlita]

I read that somewhere else and thought it was pretty right on. I don't know if you've read this yet: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/09/22/080922sh_shouts_saunders?currentPage=all, but it's pretty funny. I don't write about politics on my blog much, because I don't think I could do it without sounding shrill and angry.

[Barzilai]

Don't worry. I'm told that since the early nineteen hundreds, the incumbent party is never re-elected when the market is down for September of the election year. I think we're pretty much guaranteed a down September at this point.

[dmarks]

The generalizations are the problem. And aren't generalizations about race really racism, or close to it? Senator Obama has more wealth, power, and privilege than 99% of whites.

To address one of Wise's specific points: " and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action."

As long as any place has affirmative-action policies that promote people due to skin color rather than real qualifications, people in the favored skin color group will be tarred by such accusations.

[mark]

This is why I love your blog.

[Mary]

I have to admit that I'm not comfortable with Wise's piece. Call me "canadiense", but these attacks in general seem so low to me... and extreme, which really creeps me out! The scary thing is not the generalizations in his piece, but the personal attacks. I'm not comfortable with that in my politics.

[Mary]

P.S. Wilco at the BSB this year. Will you be coming up to Mountain View??