Big Damn Race Post

[molly_o]

International Blog Against Racism Week was last week, and I didn't post anything, but I read some things, and some of them inspired me and some of them made me cranky, so now I'm belatedly posting on the topic.

I get so fed up with white people who seem to think that if they aren't black and they aren't in the Klan, racial injustice doesn't have anything to do with them. In particular, the "my family wasn't even here then" argument (in reference to slavery) sets me off. As it happens, my family *was* here then, in the South no less, and while I don't believe any of'em were plantation owners (and I'm pretty sure grandma would've bragged about it if any of them were, because grandma was an old-school white supremacist), it's a good bet some of my direct ancestors owned people, so my hands are what you might call filthy.

But supposing your grandparents arrived on these shores sometime after the Emancipation Proclamation: Your hands aren't spotless either. Because achieving racial justice is not about making up for the injustices of the past (mighty though they are); it's about doing everything we can to eliminate the ongoing injustices of the present day. And they ARE ongoing, and just because you aren't burning crosses or sipping chablis at the club while Biff plays nine holes, doesn't mean you aren't benefiting from entrenched white privilege.

Now maybe you say, "but I'm a woman [or Jewish, or poor, or whatever]." I don't want to hear it. It's entirely possible you've been a victim of patriarchy or anti-semitism or classism or whatever; that doesn't negate your white privilege. Own it, damn it.

In a (probably misguided) attempted to own my own white privilege, I've compiled a list of all the times I can be reasonably certain my skin color has given me an advantage.

This list only counts examples of color privilege; it doesn't count all the other ways I have been privileged -- things like getting admitted into a prestigious college because my dad is an alumnus -- even though I think you could make the case that that's a benefit that coincides with whiteness (many of those schools until recently didn't admit African Americans in any kind of numbers, if at all, so the number of black alumni who can help their kids get in is disproportionately smaller than the number of whites who can).

Also, this is just what I thought of in the past 24 hours.

EDUCATION

-- Every standardized test I've ever taken has been culturally biased toward white Americans. (Any steps ETS has taken to eliminate this bias happened after I finished the testing phase of my education.) Those tests got me into college and grad school (trust me, my grades sure didn't).

-- All of my teachers (possibly excepting my teacher in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, who was not from the United States) almost certainly expected more from me academically, and conversely tolerated more minor misbehavior from me, because I am white. In one memorable example, an African-American classmate left her long-division worksheet at school and called me that night so I could dictate the problems to her. The next day, our 5th grade teacher SENT HER TO THE PRINCIPAL for this. Seriously. It's gone down in class lore as "the time Mrs. P sent [name withheld] to Mrs. G's office for being black."

-- I can't recall a single text assigned from 5th grade through 12th that featured a non-white protagonist. "Huckleberry Finn" is probably as close as we got. And I think some classes read Othello. I did read a lot of literature by black writers in college (I was an English major), but almost all of that was in elective courses, not required ones.

EMPLOYMENT

-- summer job, 1984 -- Marion Barry's Summer Youth Employment Program was intended to serve disadvantaged young people, and participation required proof of family income (meaning lack thereof), but administrators looked the other way for white applicants in order to admit a more ethnically diverse group of applicants.

-- first job out of college, 1990 -- I beat out a black male applicant with roughly identical qualifications for the position.

-- second job out of college, 1992 -- I can't be positive about when I was hired, but I know in subsequent hiring processes the man who hired me displayed bias against people of color.

-- I can't go into detail about my current job for fear of being dooced, but I am fairly certain my promotion to my current position would not have happened if I had been African-American.

OTHER

-- All those Young Adult (YA) novels I read as a child featured young white people (many of them girls, for maximum empowerment) having adventures. I have a shelf of those YA novels (Madeline L'Engle, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, etc.) to share with my children, if we ever have any. RM and I have been talking about adoption, which could well mean we'd be parenting an African-American child, and it hit me that 90% of those books are about white kids. If it weren't for the Earthsea books, it'd be all white, all the time. I'm going to add some Walter Dean Myers books to the shelf, because I remember those fondly, too (and would want a child of any color to read them), but it's still going to be a predominantly white shelf. And what kills me is I probably wouldn't even have *noticed* what a colorless group of books it was if I hadn't been contemplating a hypothetical non-white child.

-- The white couple down the block eagerly welcomed us to our gentrifying neighborhood and organized a series of happy hours/cocktail parties that were ostensibly for people in general in the neighborhood but somehow managed to be 80 percent white in a neighborhood that's 70 percent black.

-- A bouncer the other night accepted RM's work ID in lieu of a driver's license, but wouldn't accept his black coworker's. (There was also the state trooper who pulled over one of RM's coworkers, and when the guy flashed his badge, the trooper actually called to verify his employment. RM and his fellow officers don't believe this would've happened to a white officer. I'm not giving it a separate bullet b/c it didn't happen to me.)

-- Speaking of traffic, I'm a terrible driver, but I've NEVER been pulled over.

-- And speaking of cops, there's the time I was feeding my friend J's cats while she was out of town and accidentally set off her burglar alarm. When the policeman showed up, he asked for some documentation that I lived there, and I had to explain that I didn't -- I was just feeding the cats. He looked over my driver's license and said, "Well, you don't *look* like a burglar," and went on his way. I remember thinking it was probably a good thing she had *me* feeding her cats, and not our mutual friend B, who is a black man. I really, really don't like to think about how his conversation with the policeman could've gone.

-- Finally, there's every cab I've ever hailed.

In the interests of equal time, I'll also list the (by comparison, few indeed) times I think my skin color has nurt me somehow (even if it just hurt my feelings -- which is mostly the case):

-- A little boy in my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood asked me, "Why're y'all taking over?" One other time a slightly older boy gave me the finger, which I can't be sure had anything to do with my color. (I feel I must note that these incidents contrast sharply with the warm welcome we have received from many, many other black neighbors.)

-- If I were black, the PSAT scores I received probably would have put me in the running for a National Achievement Scholarship (for which only black students are eligible).

-- In eighth grade my best friend from seventh grade (who was black) withdrew from our friendship. I can't be sure, but I think race had something to do with it -- I think she needed some kind of moral support that, as a white girl, I was unable to offer.

-- This one is a little iffy: I was mugged when I was 13. I'm making assumptions, but I believe the mugger (all of 16, himself, but he had a gun) figured my wallet would be fatter on account of my color, and also might've had a harder time judging my age on account of my color (which would contribute to his assumption that my wallet would be fat). I told him I didn't have any money (I actually had $30 I had earned babysitting that week), and he sent me home, scared shitless but physically unharmed.

I don’t post this list as some kind of public self-flagellation, but more in the hopes that if there’s any white American reading this who somehow feels like s/he has received no benefit whatsoever from white privilege, s/he will rethink that position right quick.

I don’t spend my days wracked with guilt about my white privilege, nor do I feel that I (or any other white person) should decline job offers or wave away cab drivers or burn YA novels that have white protagonists. But I think we (meaning beneficiaries of white privilege) need to be aware of how we’re benefiting and do what we can to level the playing field.

Here’s a partial list of things we can do.

-- to the extent we participate in hiring processes, we need to bend over backward and examine our own reactions to make sure we are giving all applicants fair consideration, and if we see something that looks like racial bias from someone else, we need to call them on it.

-- when black coworkers allege racial insensitivity in our workplace, we shouldn’t hide behind, “Well, *I’ve* never seen anything like that here,” but instead acknowledge that just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not there -- and if we *do* see it, speak up!

-- we need to at least *try* reading black authors and seeing movies with predominantly black casts (thereby sending some dollars their way and increasing the odds there will be more books by black authors and movies with black casts), instead of assuming they aren’t made for us. (Fun fact: When they were casting a female lead opposite Will Smith in hitch, they deliberately cast a Latina actress (Eva Mendes), because casting a white actress would make a lot of potential moviegoers uncomfortable (still! today!), and casting a black actress would make a lot of white moviegoers assume it was a “black movie,” and skip it.)

-- we should also demand equal time for the black characters in ensemble TV shows and, when we see dubious scenes in movies and TV shows, write and let TPTB know that, yeah, we’re paying attention, and no, we don’t think it’s cool to resort to stereotypes. And while we’re at it, if a show (or movie or book or whatever) does something thoughtful about race, we should write and let them know we appreciate that.

-- we need to shoulder some of the financial burden of change by making donations to organizations that fight racism.

-- we need to be vigilant for racist assumptions that we make and that people around us make (example: the white woman in my neighborhood who posted to the local yahoo group, very concerned because one Sunday a month ago the teenagers who often hang out on her corner (some male, some female, all black) were joined by some adult men as well. It turned out to be a FATHER’S DAY BBQ!!)

I wish I could claim I do everything on this list; composing it has made me realise how much more I could and should be doing to combat racism.

Here endeth the lesson.