Thank you - I have printed it up just now and will have a read tonight.
Karen
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of karyn fearnside
Sent: Wednesday, 22 March 2000 7:03 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [recoznet2] white race privilege
This may now be a little late,(I seem to have been away for a couple of days
and missed much interesting debate, as I have just tried to read through 105
emails!!) but I contacted Jenny Tannoch-Bland, and asked if I could put up
her essay on white race privilege which she sent me. I was hoping Karen
might gain something from it, but I have also found it extremely useful. It
is pretty long and might be worth printing out and reading in bits I hope I
got the acknowledgements right:
Jenny says
just make sure you acknowledge FAIRA - the
book came out of the conference in 1997 in Brisbane - BRINGING AUSTRALIA
TOGETHER.
IDENTIFYING WHITE RACE PRIVILEGE
Jenny Tannoch-Bland
White people's race privilege in this country is based on past acts - all
white Australians live here because of past actions of murder, massacres,
poisoning, torture, dispossession, internment, enslavement and genocide.
These acts were committed against Indigenous people on the basis of race -
they were racist acts. Australians are having the native title debate now
because of these past racist acts. But through talking about white race
privilege, I want to suggest that racism in the present is confounding the
native title debate.
White race privilege is invisible, unearned, denied, systemic, undesirable,
and confers dominance. I'd like to approach a definition obliquely, by
talking about racism generally. Anecdotal evidence tells me that there is
nowadays hardly a family gathering where we don't hear someone proclaiming
'I'm not a racist'. What they usually mean is 'I am not motivated by race
hatred to taunt, main or murder.' What these people understand by racism is
race hatred. They do not feel hatred in their hearts, and we as a society
no longer condone race hatred.
These defensive proclamations are prevalent now because many other people
understand racism to be something more complex than race hatred. Most of
these people, when they talk about racism, are talking about racial
oppression - the systemic or systematic oppression of one race by another.
Seeing the situation in terms of racial oppression focuses attention on the
oppressed. Thus in Australia there is a racial focus on Indigenous people.
Racism is seen as a problem for Indigenous people - but not for white
Australians.
By seeing racism in terms of racial oppression we locate it with Indigenous
people. It is not our problem -- not the problem of white Australians. It
exists in the system outside us, impacting on others but not on us, not on
white Australians. This means that we white Australians tend to see racism
as causing Aboriginal disadvantage. The Siamese twin of Aboriginal
disadvantage is white advantage. Logically we can't have one without the
other. But we don't connect white advantage - unearned advantage - with
racism. We don't think of racism in terms of our white race privilege. We
think our lives are not affected by racism. But we benefit from it.
Through white advantage, through unearned race privilege, through not
experiencing race disadvantage, our lives are affected by racism.
It is just that we are not conscious of it. It is invisible to us, but not
to Indigenous people because, on a daily basis, our race privilege affects
them. Thus far we know two points about our white race privilege: it is
invisible to us and unearned. I will list some of the benefits, largely
unrecognised, that we white people accrue from the system of racism. These
are benefits that I did not earn but that I have been made to feel are mine
by birth, and are normal. The Aboriginal women with whom I come in contact
cannot count on most of these benefits.
1. I can, without material loss, choose to be surrounded by people of my
race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people who oppress me on the basis of
race.
3. I can be reasonably confident that in most workplaces my race will be in
the majority, and in any case that I will not feel isolated as the only,
often token, member of my race.
4. I can rent or purchase housing in any area which I can afford.
5. I expect that neighbours will be neutral or friendly to me.
6. If my white neighbours disturb the peace (statistically most neighbours
in Australia are white), I can act confidently, requesting them to desist,
without fear of being responded to on the basis of race.
7. In Queensland I can go to any public hospital and not have my
recuperation hindered by my frustration that such infrastructure was funded
from wages stolen from my people (perhaps my own parents, siblings or
myself), who are still waiting for the balance to be released by the
Queensland Government.
8. When I watch TV and read the papers I see people of my race widely and
positively represented.
9. When I am told about Australia's history or about 'civilisation', I am
shown that people of my colour made it what it is.
10. I can rest assured that at school my children are given learning
materials that confirm the existence and importance of their race.
11. I could, as an unmarried mother in the 1970s, admit myself to a
Queensland hospital to have a baby confident that the child would not be
taken from me because of my race.
12. I can send my children to school in unironed uniforms without it
reflecting on my race.
13. I can let my children travel to and from school by bus confident they
will not be harassed because of the colour of their skin.
14. I do not have to travel in taxis to avoid racial harassment on public
transport.
15. As a woman I can venture into public spaces alone, fairly confident I
will not be harassed.
16. I do not have to fear that male members of my family could be put in a
cell instead of an emergency ward.
17. If I am depressed, I can go to a counsellor, psychologist or
psychiatrist who shares my basic cultural assumptions and psychic worldview,
and who will not explain that I must change my belief and value system,
forfeit my cultural identity, in order to exist in this society without a
high level of pain.
18. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to the voices of
Indigenous people.
19. I suffer no consequence of ignoring the perspectives of people not of my
race.
20. As an academic, I can, without penalty, be blissfully ignorant of any
culture but mine.
21. As a postgraduate student, I do not have to educate my supervisor about
his race privilege before he can begin to interact with me on a professional
basis.
22. I can find the writings of my race well represented in any bookshop, and
makeup suiting my skin colour in any chemist.
23. I can get 'flesh' colour bandages which more or less match the colour of
my skin.
24. I know my skin colour will not work against the appearance that I am
financially reliable.
25. I know my skin colour will not work against me or my children in court.
26. I did not have to educate my children about systemic racism for their
own protection.
27. My children don't come home from school filled with the pain of
experiencing white race privilege every day.
28. My main worries about my children do not concern others' attitudes
toward their race.
29. I can talk with my mouth full, swear, wear body piercings, shop at
Lifeline, or not answer letters - without these actions being seen as a
reflection on the bad manners, bad morals, poverty, illiteracy or laziness
of my race.
30. I can dress down or be drunk in public without reinforcing negative
stereotypes of my race.
31. When I speak in public my race is not on trial.
32. Through my achievements I am not called a credit to my race.
33. Nobody asks me to speak for all the people of my racial group.
34. When I ask to talk to 'the person in charge' I usually face a person of
my race.
35. When I address an audience, I usually look out at a sea of familiarity -
faces of my race.
36. If I declare that something is a racial issue, or that it is not a
racial issue, I am granted credibility because of my race.
37. I can choose whether or not to be concerned about racism.
38. I can talk about racism without being seen as self-interested or angry.
39. I can be outspoken without being seen as not knowing my racial place.
40. My size, posture, and body odour are not seen as a reflection on my
race.
41. When I win a job or a scholarship, I am not suspected of doing so
because of my race rather than my merit.
42. When things go badly in my life, I need not interrogate each episode for
its racial overtones.
43. From among the people of my race, I can choose from a wide range of
professional role models.
44. When I am late, my lateness isn't taken as a reflection of my race.
45. When I need legal or medical help, my race does not work against me.
46. I can arrange my life so that I never have to experience feelings of
rejection based on race.
47. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention
only to people of my race.
These are just 47 conditions of daily experience that I once took for
granted, that I thought were universal, available to all in this égalitarian
Australian society. The fact that Indigenous people do not experience these
conditions means that they are not universal; they are the features of white
race privilege.
Some privileges allow me to feel at home in the world - to feel comfortable,
not an outsider, to feel confident. They are what everybody ought to have
in a just society. There are two problems: (1) we don't all have them, and
(2) there are some that nobody should have . Because we don't all have
them, some of them protect me, allowing me to escape penalties or dangers
that others suffer. I escape fear, anxiety, insult, injury, being treated
as a trespasser in my own land, a sense of not being welcome in this
society, not being real. I don't have to worry about suspicion, within my
group, that I am sucking up to the dominators - or alternatively drawing too
much unwanted attention to my group through my outspokenness. I don't have
to be angry about not having what everybody ought to have.
Problem 2: The privileges nobody should have. My licence to be blissfully
ignorant bespeaks unequal power. I can freely disparage, fear, neglect, or
be oblivious to Indigenous cultures, histories and sensitivities. At the
same time an Indigenous person, to get a position in the institution in
which I work, must be more thoroughly versed than I am in my culture.
These undesirable privileges confer power without conferring moral strength.
Race privilege works to overempower us, conferring dominance - permission
to control on the basis of race. It gives licence to one group to be
oppressors. The amount of licence varies - right here on the banks of the
Brisbane River it gave members of our group licence to be mass murderers.
Now, white race privilege still gives us a licence - we can be ignorant,
oblivious, arrogant, destructive, insensitive, patronising, paternalistic.
We can exercise that licence how we choose. If we are enlightened, we can
even try not to exercise it, but it remains.
Through the news media, the curriculum, TV, the economic system, daily life
- I receive signals that my people count and that Indigenous people seem to
be trying -- though not very successfully -- to be like us. The dominant
culture, my culture, has a tepid tolerance to allowing Indigenous voices to
make a noise. While my racial group is made confident, comfortable and
oblivious, the corollary is that other groups are made unconfident,
uncomfortable and alienated. As a result of overempowerment, members of our
group can seem foolish, ridiculous, infantile, or dangerous by contrast to
Indigenous people who have lived survivors' lives to become strong through
not having all these unearned advantages, and who daily contend with our
blind arrogance.
Our arrogance is damaging us. Most parents know that unearned privilege is
not good for a child's development. We are damaged by being led to believe
we are better than others when we are not, by being kept ignorant of all but
the white histories cleaned up, distorted, and taught in our schools, by
learning not to make waves, by being encouraged to live in fear of
Indigenous people. Significantly, by having unearned advantage which stunts
our development, distorts our humanity and degrades us, we are damaged
spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and morally, with enormous social
consequences.
Our white race privilege is part of a system. It is difficult for us to see
our privilege and then to keep it in focus, precisely because it is encoded
in invisible systems conferring racial dominance on our group from birth.
One of the most valuable lessons of history is that privilege systems can be
challenged and changed. England dispensed with the feudal system. America
abolished slavery. Women, even Indigenous women, are admitted to
universities.
Criticising the system won't be enough to change it. To redesign social
systems, we need first to recognise their vast hidden dimensions. We need
to focus on the silences and denials surrounding privilege. We must use
these to expose white race privilege in our daily lives, in our social
fabric and in our political systems -- and significantly to expose the role
of white race privilege in the native title debate.
What we collectively need to understand is that racism is fundamental to
Australian society. Racism is embedded in our history, our institutions, our
policies, our way of life, our psyches. It is through exposing our white
race privilege to one another that we can begin to unpack and unlearn
racism.
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