And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 17:25:08 -0600 (CST)
>From: jeff machota <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: An article on white privilege..
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>From: Anjali Adukia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper and was written by a
>white professor at the U of Texas.
>
> "White people need to acknowledge benefits of unearned privilege"
>By Robert Jensen
>
> BALTIMORE: Here's what white privilege sounds like:
> I'm sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright
>and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college
>admissions, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a
>level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him
>whether he thinks that being white has advantages in the United States.
>Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run
>mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and
>tangible we could call white privilege.
>
> So, if we live in a world of white privilege -- unearned white privilege
>-- how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I asked. He
>paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter." That
>statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the
>privilege to acknowledge that you have unearned privilege but to ignore
>what it means.
>
> That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with
>students. It drove home the importance of confronting the dirty secret
>that we white people carry around with us every day: in a world of white
>privilege, some of what we have is unearned.
>
> I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions
>of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal
>is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.
>White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex.
>
> In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether
>or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but
>such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other
>aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of
>privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played
>out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
>
> I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European
>heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in
>the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by
>racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a
>reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically
>significant nonwhite population, American Indians. I have struggled to
>resist that racist training and the racism of my culture.
>
> I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the
>lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism
>around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes
>- I walk through the world with white privilege.
>
> What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a
>university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look
>threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me -they are
>white. They see in me a reflection of themselves - and in a racist world,
>that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not
>dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After
>all, I'm white. My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white.
>
> Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled
>with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority
>faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis
>Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place
>for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the
>university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has
>mediocre white professors.
>
> That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but it's a simple observation
>that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors
>have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of
>solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
>
> Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a
>bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real
>people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know,
>because I am one of them.
>
> I am not a genius - as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the
>drawer. I have been teaching full time for six years and I've published a
>reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff
>one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, is worth
>reading. I worked hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent
>teacher. Every once in a while, I leave my office at the end of the day
>feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheque, I
>don't feel guilty. But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by
>merit alone. I benefited from among other things, white privilege.
>
> That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white
>I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my
>life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. All my life I have been
>hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by
>white people. And I was hired for a teaching position by the predominantly
>white University of Texas, headed by a white president, in a college
>headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at
>the time had one nonwhite tenured professor. I have worked hard to get
>where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself
>and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit" as defined by white
>people in a white country, alone got me here.
>
> I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a
>significant boost from white privilege. At one time in my life, I would
>not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my
>success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort.
>
> I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so
>deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear
>that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living
>with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe
>luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was
>afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special. I let go of some
>of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I
>was still me.
>
> What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the
>rules under which I work in are stacked to my benefit. Until we let go of
>the fiction that people have complete control over their fate - that we
>can will ourselves to be anything we choose - then we will live with that
>fear.
>
> White privilege is not something I get to decide whether I want to keep.
>Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the
>security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting
>from white privilege.
>
> There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege
>plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this
>privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this
>society.
>
> Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Baltimore Sun.
>
> The writer is a professor of journalism.
>
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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