Coming to Terms with White Privilege

Today I give you a piece by Jill Robbins at Huffington Post entitled “How I Finally ‘Got’ The Meaning of White Privilege Today“.  Written in 2016 after the shooting death of Philando Castile at the hands of police in Minnesota, this piece is a reflection on how this event brought the concept of white privilege home to her.

I offer this to you because some of you are probably in the same place that she once was with respect to white privilege.  The basic idea of white privilege is this:  It pays to be white in America.  It pays in a million little ways, and in many not-so-little ways, that some of you probably never even realized before.

Privilege is not a bad thing.  It is not a good thing either.  It just is.  It’s neutral.  It’s just privilege.  What you do with your privilege, however, is anything but neutral.  Once you become aware that you have privilege, it becomes incumbent upon you to use your privilege to work for a more just society by advocating for those who do not have privilege and by dismantling the structures in our society that give privilege to certain individuals for no other reason than that their skin is a few shades lighter while denying the same privilege to others whose skin is not as light.

Anti-Racism Books Are a Means, Not an End

Today I direct your attention to a piece by Saida Grundy at The Atlantic entitled “The False Promise of Anti-Racism Books“.  The big idea here:  Anti-racism books are flying off the shelves and have been for the past two months now.  That is a good thing, but only up to a point.  Why?  Because information without transformation is useless.  Knowledge that does not drive personal change is useless.  If all these people are reading anti-racism books now but we get another six months to a year down the road and things are still pretty much as they are now, what have we gained?  At some point knowledge has to translate into action.  There are lots of awkward and uncomfortable conversations that need to be had with crazy racist Uncle Jeds this Thanksgiving.  If that does not happen, what have we gained?  If more large corporations are not held to account for how they treat their black employees, what have we gained?  If more money isn’t invested into supporting black-owned businesses and building up black communities, what have we gained?

The Poison of Male Incivility: When Women Are Seen as Disruptive for Challenging Toxic Male Behavior

Today we are going to take a bit of a break from the incessant posting on racial justice and talk about something different.

ICYMI:  Last week Florida representative Ted Yoho called AOC a “f—ing bitch” and other such slurs as she passed by outside the Capitol in DC.  A couple of days later Yoho issued a tepid “apology” from the House floor in which he really didn’t apologize for anything.  AOC delivered a lengthy and fiery speech calling him out on it.

This piece at TheCut entitled “The Poison of Male Incivility:  When a woman dares respond to it, she’s seen as ‘disruptive’ ” argues that media coverage of this story in some outlets only serves to reinforce the gender-based power imbalances that AOC sought to challenge.  The New York Times, an outlet long known to be sympathetic to the progressive cause, spun the story as an instance of AOC’s political ambition, as if she were engineering circumstances for her own political gain instead of responding to them.  As if she were using the whole thing to build her brand.  (As contrasted to powerful white men.  They don’t have brands, they have careers.)  As if there was nothing disruptive whatsoever about Yoho’s behavior or his non-apology, but everything in the world was disruptive about AOC’s response to the behavior and the non-apology.  As if there was no possibility that Yoho could have been using the incident to build his own brand–his behavior plays very well with a certain segment of the white Republican base that can’t stand AOC.

Behind all this lies the unquestioned assumption that white male privilege and power is just the natural order of things.  That any in positions of power who are not white males got there by playing certain race or gender cards whereas white males in authority earned their way there fairly and objectively and are thus truly deserving.

This assumption needs to be interrogated ruthlessly.  And then placed in an iron coffin with spikes on the inside.

I said I was taking a break today from posting about racial justice.  I lied.  Because racial justice and justice along gender lines are intimately connected.  Some of you may have heard the term “intersectionality”, a buzzword that has emerged in recent years.  What intersectionality means is basically this:  Oppression and injustice cross-pollinate.  It isn’t just a black thing, or a gay thing, etc.  There are all different groups that are marginalized in our society, and some people live at the intersection of identities that place them in more than one marginalized group, thus the term “intersectionality”.  For example:  It’s one thing to be black, and it’s one thing to be a woman, but when you’re a black woman, that takes shit to another level.

It really is all connected.  If one is going to speak out about racial justice then one had better be prepared to speak out about gender justice as well.

Lil Wayne’s Been Saying This for Years

I was watchin’ TV the other day, right? Got this white guy on there talking ’bout black guys. Talking about how young black guys are targeted. Targeted by who? America.

You see, one in every one hundred Americans are locked up. One in every nine Black Americans are locked up. And see, what the white guy was trying to stress was that the money that we spend on sending a motherfucker to jail, a young motherfucker to jail, would be less to send his or her young ass to college.

See, and another thing the white guy was stressing was that our jails are populated with drug dealers. You know, crack cocaine? Yeah, stuff like that. Meaning, due to the laws we have on crack cocaine and regular cocaine, the police are… only…, I don’t want to say only right, but shit… Only logic, by riding around in the hood all day, and not in the suburbs, because crack cocaine is mostly found in the hood. And um, you know, the other thing is mostly found – You know where I’m going… But why bring a motherfucka to jail if it’s not gonna stand up in court? Because this drug ain’t that drug. You know; level three, level four drug, shit like that.

Mhm… I guess it’s all a misunderstanding. And um, I sit back and think, well shit, us young motherfuckers, you know, that one in every nine: We probably only selling the crack cocaine just because we in the hood and it’s not like your suburbs. We don’t have the things that you have. Why? I really don’t want to know the answer. But, I guess we just misunderstood huh? Yeah.

You know, we don’t have room in the jail now for the real motherfuckers, the real criminals, you know: sex offenders, rapists, serial killers, shit like that. Oh, don’t get scared, don’t get scared, I know you saw one of them sex offender papers! Don’t trip, he live right on the end of your block, mhm. Yeah, that nigga live right down the street from you. Sex offender, on the level 3 drug. Convicted, ex-con, yeah, check him out.

And what you got, you got daughters, son, what you got? Yeah, well you know what? (coughing) Don’t stop the track, that’s the good weed.

You know what, I have a fucking daughter. You understand me? And, why the fuck would you bring my neighbor to jail just because the reason why he live next door to me ain’t the reason why I live next door to him. Meanin’, he didn’t rap his way to my fuckin’ neighborhood. He sold crack cocaine to get to my neighborhood. You move him out, bring him to jail for life, and then you move in a sex offender, hahaha. Then give me a paper, haha. Is that a misunderstanding? ‘Cause I don’t understand it.

–Lil Wayne

The above is part of a five-minute spoken monologue at the end of a song entitled “DontGetIt”, which closes out Lil Wayne’s 2008 album Tha Carter III.

Lil Wayne is talking about mass incarceration, a consequence of the War on Drugs.  This is one of the gravest injustices perpetrated against black people over the past three to four decades.

Started by Reagan, amped up by Clinton, the War on Drugs created harsh mandatory sentences for drug offenses, mostly for possession and/or distribution of the kinds of drugs that are most prevalent in low-income black neighborhoods.  (Drugs that are prevalent in affluent suburban white neighborhoods were for the most part unaddressed.)  Predictably, the black prison population exploded.  The police were militarized, armed to the teeth with all the latest military weapons and technology.  Police tactics changed; no-knock warrants started to become a thing.  Breonna Taylor was the victim of a no-knock warrant.

Lil Wayne has been saying this for years.  Over a decade.  The song came out in 2008.  Yet we did not want to listen.  I did not want to listen.  Until now, when I felt I had no choice but to listen to him and other black artists who are telling via music the story of what it is like to be black in America.  Why?  Because Lil Wayne is a rapper who came up from the ghetto, rapping about thug life and ghetto life.  As white people we justified this by saying that his music and that of other black hip-hop artists glamorized sex, violence, drug use, and misogyny/subjugation of women.  The reality is that Lil Wayne and other black hip-hop artists are singing/rapping to us about real life and what it is like to be black in America.  (It is true that misogyny/disrespect toward women seems to be a recurring theme in much of Lil Wayne’s music.  But that is something for black people to address among themselves, in their own discussions.  It would be very bad form for me as a white person to moralize about what a black artist should/shouldn’t be singing about.  As a blogger I have built my life/career on venturing my unsolicited opinion on subjects about which I know nothing but even I have my limits.)  If you as a white person don’t like the things Lil Wayne raps about, then let us work together to change the story of what it is to be black in America by dismantling systemic racism.

As a secondary but related point:  To those of you white people out there who say you want to learn about the experience of oppression from the black perspective, don’t put that on your black friends.  It takes a very special kind of grace for someone to educate others about oppression while experiencing it themselves, and the vast majority of people, black people included, likely do not have it.  The reality is that black people have already been telling you–telling us–for years.  It’s out there.  There are a shit ton of good books out there, some of which we will be looking at here later.  Listen to podcasts.  Or do like I have done and dive into the world of black hip-hop.  If hip-hop isn’t your thing then find black artists from whatever musical genre you prefer.

Black people have been telling us their story for years.  It is past time for us to start listening.

5 Signs You Might Not Be Antiracist After All

Today I direct your attention to an article by Dana Brownlee at Forbes entitled “5 Disturbing Signs That You Might Not Be An Antiracist After All“.

Being an antiracist is hard work.  Very hard work.  I’ll give you that.  There is a lot of reading and learning involved.  Lots of deep self-examination to be done, and more than likely you won’t like what you find.  Lots of uncomfortable conversations to be had with crazy racist relatives and other such people.  Lots of learning from black voices where there is nothing you can do but just shut up and listen.  The work is exhausting and in time it is so much easier to just let it go and go on about your comfortable existence.

But in this day and age, that is not an option.  Sitting on the sidelines, being content to be a so-called good person who is not racist–that’s no longer good enough.  (As if it ever was.)  In this cultural moment one has to be actively anti-racist.  One is either part of the solution or part of the problem.  If one is not anti-racist, then for all practical purposes one might as well be racist.  Brownlee likens racism to a fire.  Fire needs oxygen to grow, and the so-called non-racists are the oxygen fueling the fire of racism while congratulating themselves on not being the fire.

The 5 signs Brownlee enumerates are as follows:

–Others don’t clearly know where you stand during a discussion
–You’re not saying or doing anything that feels uncomfortable
–You find yourself constantly explaining
–Racists are eerily comfortable around you
–You’re not willing to sacrifice anything

Being antiracist is hard work and we won’t always do it perfectly, but we have to make the effort to live up to the label.  While there is something to be said for incremental progress, for instance if you are a recovering drug addict, at some point you have to put the pipe down.  And so it is with antiracism.

Generally I am distrustful of either-or thinking.  The vast majority of instances which people propose as either-or situations actually have other alternatives than the two proposed as part of the either-or, but whoever is proposing the either-or treats those as off limits.  But this is one of the rare instances that is actually, legitimately an either-or.  You are either antiracist, or you are racist or might as well be racist.

Peggy McIntosh on White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Today I direct your attention to an article by Peggy McIntosh entitled “White Privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack“.  McIntosh is a white feminist scholar who has taught at several elite universities including Harvard, Durham University in England, and Wellesley College.

Here in the US, it pays to be white.  That’s white privilege.  McIntosh defines it thusly:

…as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.

McIntosh then proceeds to unpack the “invisible weightless knapsack” by enumerating several advantages that she has experienced in making her way through the world as a white person.  These advantages include but are not limited to the following:  The ability to move into an affordable and desirable area of her choice, and count on being treated pleasantly, or at least decently, by the neighbors.  The ability to shop in stores without being tagged as a potential threat and treated accordingly.  The ability to see her race widely represented on TV and/or on the front page of the newspaper.  The ability to find appropriate hair/skin care products in the health and beauty section of her drugstore (black people cannot count on this, btw).  The ability to exhibit undesirable social behaviors without having it reflect badly on her race.  The ability to express herself in public without having it tagged as her race’s viewpoint, or to excel in a challenging situation without being pegged as a credit to her race.

Here is an interesting exercise for my fellow white readers:  Can you think of some ways that you have benefited from being white here in America?

One of our most cherished myths about America is that our society is a meritocracy:  You can be whatever you make of yourself.  You get out of life whatever you put into it, and you are rewarded/compensated in just proportion to the effort that you put out.  But as noted above, it pays to be white.  Consequently we have to let go of the illusion of our society as a meritocracy.

McIntosh then leads into the burning question:  Now that you are aware of white privilege, what are you going to do about it?

It is important to note that McIntosh did not ask for any of the benefits that she enumerates, and for a long time she was not even aware that she was receiving these benefits.  That is how the system of white privilege works:  It is intended to keep us oblivious to the fact that we are benefiting from being white, let alone that those benefits are coming at the expense of those who are not white.

White privilege is neutral.  It is not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just privilege.  What you do with your white privilege, however, is anything but neutral.  You can use it for good, you can use it for evil, or you can just go with the flow and pretend it doesn’t exist, in which case you might as well be using it for evil because that is in effect what you are doing.

As Christians with white privilege, it is incumbent upon us to use our privilege for good.  “To whom much is given, much will be required.”  What does this look like?  First of all, we must acknowledge that this shit is real, and that it is much bigger and deeper than any of us may have ever suspected.  Then, we must get the word out about it, shouting loudly and tirelessly from every rooftop, because the whole power structure of white privilege is dependent upon people not even knowing that it exists, let alone doing anything about it.

To redesign social systems, we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

On Being a Doorholder for Social Change

Today I would like to go back to that Andre Henry piece I linked a few days back where he discusses his spiritual journey and journey into activism.

I would like to lead off with a quote from the beginning of the article, where Henry describes his experience being part of a BLM protest in the heart of Pasadena back in June:

White people and people of color stand on the perimeter, disrupting the flow of business-as-usual and acting as a barrier to police violence so that the black people in the center can experience, even briefly, joy.

No white people were asking us for anti-racist learning resources or trying to absolve themselves of white guilt by apologizing to us on behalf of all white people, giving us advice on what strategies for protest would most appeal to their racist family members. A former mentor of mine, a professor of black studies, once told me that what is required for black liberation is for non-black people to “get out of the way” of our joy and — I’ve added — in the way of anti-black violence.

I have had the opportunity to volunteer at several of the Passion events for college students/young adults over the past two decades.  The volunteers at those events are called “Doorholders”.  The term is a reference to Psalm 84:10:  “Better is one day in your courts / than a thousand elsewhere; / I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God / than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”  The idea of being a “Doorholder” is that your role is to hold space for students and young people to enter into the presence of God, and to hold the door open so that they can freely enter.  Your role is to take yourself out of the way so that they can enter in, and put yourself in the way of anything that might disrupt their ability to experience God during the event.

Those of you who have been tracking with me over the years know of my post-evangelical life and post-evangelical sympathies; as a consequence I now carry a healthy dose of skepticism toward the claims of any evangelical space to be a place where God is specifically and uniquely present–any more so than He is present in the world at large.

But this:  The world of protest offers so much of what church has promised.  Protest has taken up the mantle that church, particularly evangelical expressions thereof, has dropped and is creating a microcosm of the kingdom of God here on earth, a space where black people–and people of all races, for that matter–are free to live and enjoy life.  Jesus’ promise that “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst” is just as true of this space as it ever was of any church gathering.  Our role as white people is to be “doorholders” by holding this space, getting out of the way of black people enjoying life and in the way of all who are opposed to it.

Where do I sign up to be a doorholder for that?

Dominique Gilliard: The 4th and Freedom

Today I direct your attention to a piece by Dominique Gilliard entitled “The 4th and Freedom“.

Like Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July speech (if you haven’t read it already, go read it now), Gilliard reminds us that white and black Americans have had two completely and totally different experiences of the freedom that Americans fought for and gained back in 1776.  It has become painstakingly clear that even at this late date, the “land of the free” which we celebrate on the 4th of July is not truly the land of the free for all people.  Until that state of affairs changes, we have lots of work to do.

On Black Christians Bracing for “Whitelash”

Today we are going to talk about “whitelash”.

Unfortunately, this is a reality that many black people find themselves frequently on the wrong side of.  It happens whenever a news event forces us to have honest conversations about race in America.  And we do, but at some point white people tire of the conversation and want to shut it down, even though black people wish to continue the conversation.  The most graphic example of “whitelash” was when angry white people responded to the election of Obama as president by banding together to shove their Donald Trump down our throats.

Read this article from CNN which discusses the issue and why many black Christians are wary of what will happen when George Floyd, etc. fades from the news cycle and grow weary of the conversations that are happening now.

“Me And White Supremacy”: A Resource for Coming to Terms With Racism

Today I direct your attention toward a book entitled “Me And White Supremacy:  Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor“.  The book is by Layla Saad, an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman living in Qatar.  It came out of a 28-day Instagram challenge a couple of years back which became a free PDF workbook and now a full-length book.  Saad lays out terms like “white centering” (believing that whiteness is the normal, default mode of being and existing in the world) and “ally cookies” (the positive props that some white people seek for not being racist – kinda like the praise some people seek for just doing their job).  Saad encourages readers to keep a journal and wrestle to the ground tough questions like “What negative experiences has your white privilege protected you from throughout your life?”

Here is an interview with the author on NPR, in which she walks through some of the big ideas in the book.  The endgame here is that black people do not need saving; what they need is for white people to recognize the things they are doing without even realizing it that are causing harm to black people, and then stop doing those things.