So a white friend, politely and respectfully, asked a black friend, on FB, to help them understand White Privilege.
Turns out the black friend was quite an eloquent writer, and made a powerful response.
I hope a lot of people take the time to read it.
I read it. It was powerful, and everyone should read it. I also think there is so much more to the concept of privilege to be shared. I hope that the dialogue continues amongst all of us.
Thanks for posting that article. Among other things, it alerted me to the existence of her website, goodblacknews.org.
Her stories are far from the worst one can read on the topic of white privilege, but I like the way she summarizes the lessons to take away from them.
Some people have the ability to put themselves in other peoples’ shoes, but it’s a lot harder to do that if you have no idea at all of what they go through every single day. This is the sort of thing that helps.
By the way, I didn’t think the white friend’s request was all that polite and respectful. There seemed to be a strong underlying tone of incredulity. But at least he was willing to try to learn something.
Yeah, and it was a bit embarrassing to see all the precautionary thanks and praise lavished on him just for making that “what-about-MY-feelings” request. Sadly, a lot of people need a whole lot of solicitous comforting in order to even get them to consider the implications of their own privileged status without getting all defensive and resentful.
Agreed. White fragility. I’m also uncomfortable with expecting black people to educate us. It’s up to us to educate ourselves without expecting black people to take time to tell us again what they’ve been trying to tell us for centuries.
Anyway, here’s an interesting Reddit post along the same lines as the Yes magazine article.
I want to gently pressure test this. How is a white person supposed to engage on the topic of White Privilege without coming-off with some sort of tone? What is the right way to ask about it among friends? I may have written the initial inquiry myself differently, but I, too, would struggle a little asking the question without adding baggage or making assumptions, and perhaps being overly careful about offending someone.
I am sympathetic to the cause and want to see less violence and terror and bullying such as what the writer mentioned, but to be honest, I am hesitant to join the discussion a lot because of the fear I may say something the wrong way, or have people make assumptions about me, or just dismiss me out-of-hand because of my race, age, and gender.
My point is I think we need to give everyone some space to ask questions and not assume bad intent from the get-go.
Hard for me to say, being white myself: I’m sure I’m “toning” all over the place in ways I don’t fully realize every time I mention the subject.
However, I can only hope I generally manage to do a bit better than the guy in the OP’s linked article:
Okay, there’s really no way to admit that you’re clueless about the whole concept of white privilege without coming across as somewhat, well, clueless.
Yes, dear, that is what being a member of a privileged group in a systemically unequal society inevitably involves. No need to sound so skeptical about it, as though you imagine that your “treating everyone with respect and humor” (uh-HUH, sure) somehow magically inoculated you against being a carrier of racism germs.
*“Blame those other people, not me, because I am a special being magically immune from perpetuating systemic racism even inadvertently or unwittingly.” *
So that you may be enlightened, Jason, how about you start out by reading a fucking book or article on the subject, of which there are quite a few available? Where do you get off asking your black and mixed-race FB friends to put in the work of sharing and explaining their “indelible marks” of institutional racism to you, that they may be rewarded with your subsequent “enlightenment”?
Your enlightenment on issues of institutional racism is something that you owe it to non-white people, especially your non-white friends, to achieve. It’s not a task that they owe it to you to perform.
Better idea, Jason: How about you work on yourself to be a little less of a cosseted snowflake prince so that you are better able to understand well-documented social phenomena by your own efforts, without “needing” your non-white friends to do the work of educating you from their own lived experience?
Apology sorely needed and not really adequate, IMHO. Turning your nose up at “the media” as a useful source of information about systemic racism and white privilege, and demanding that if non-white people you know want to obtain the priceless jewel of your “enlightenment” and empathy on this issue then they’re going to have to pay for it in advance with their emotional labor, does indeed come off as insensitive, crass and offensive.
Well, black people with white friends are probably going to have better answers to that question than mine. I would just tentatively suggest that we should probably start from an attitude of self-improvement and try to engage with and understand some of the White Privilege 101 basics on our own, using generally available resources, before pestering our non-white friends to explain it all to us and thereby provide us with our Official Helpful White Ally Reassurance Certificate.
Sure. But “space to ask questions” does not necessarily mean “comfy lounge chair in the center of attention for me to boast about my imagined immunity to racist behaviors while my non-white friends work to provide their stories of personal difficulty and mistreatment that I ‘need’ for my ‘enlightenment’ about racist behaviors”.
I just thought she was throwing shade on him, because, as noted he wasn’t all that civil. It was a thin veneer of civility. She was just returning in kind, I thought. Implying among his needs was the flattery of a grovelling to open with, for his ego.
Maybe so! I also liked her quietly sarcastic “intersectionality is another term I’m sure you’ve heard and want to put quotes around, but it’s a real thing too, just like white privilege”.
Wait, did I read the right article? The neighbor kids threw rocks into her family’s swimming pool? People–store clerks and postal clerks, sounds like–gave her a little crap about going to Harvard? (Could she have dropped “Harvard” into the conversation any more times?) And they all said the exact same thing? “The one in Massachusetts”?
I moved into a neighborhood. Not a nice one. One I could afford. My neighbors threw actual rocks through my actual windows. Which broke. Some of which were weirdly shaped and expensive to replaced, and actually not replaced, except with boards, for a couple of years. They stole my pool, little green one with a turtle slide, you know, not exactly an in-ground pool. This was despite a six-foot fence, which was locked, so it took some effort.
I think the whole thing was sarcastic, and not quietly so. I guess it depends on who she was talking to but frankly it didn’t really speak to me.
Sure, there was some formal shade there which we must hope he took in stride as a pointing out that indeed there’s much he doesn’t get. It’s within the parameters of polite discourse still.
OTOH I would not get all hostile to a questioner who says “I don’t get it” for, well, not getting it, since that is obviously the question being raised. But a lot of her answers are really things that should be known to people to be common problems i.e. she should not need to explain those or elaborate the examples so specifically. Turns out, though, “privilege” often does also involve that a problem must come within a certain few degrees of separation before it becomes something for you to address or before you’ll trust the affected person’s testimony.
That said, if someone I have a friendly relationship with approaches me and says “J, what is it I’m missing/ not getting?” about something related to the dynamic between my identity and his, I’m not going to *lead *with “read a book”, instead I’m going to ask him back to clarify what is his question (so as to see if by examining his own question something clicks about how he’s asking it wrong), and then say dude, yes, trust me that IS real and yes it DOES touch you even if you don’t think you notice it, *and it’s ok to “not get it” as long as YOU **work *at fixing that shortcoming – and *then * if he wants to deep dive into the issue, recommend he read/educate himself about it.
She was trying to speak to you but it appears you don’t want to listen.
The writer made it clear what the racial significance of these situations were. Other families, who were white, had pools and the the neighborhood kids didn’t throw rocks at them. But they threw rocks at the black family’s pool.
When a white friend said he was going to Princeton, the postal clerk congratulated him. When the writer said she was going to Harvard, the same postal clerk questioned whether she was going to the real Harvard.
Like I said above, these aren’t the worst stories, by far, that you can read about the consequences of white privilege. And these weren’t all, by far, of the stories she could have told of her life. One of her points, to me, is that these things happen all the time, every day, and usually there is no recourse without coming off as a jerk yourself. I mean, those other folks were just kidding, or taken by surprise, or whatever, they get to be who they are, and she has to just take it most of the time. And when it finally gets to be too much and she explodes at someone for a relatively trivial remark, she’s the one who has the problem. Well, she does have a problem, and it’s called white privilege.
As for Jason, I think it’s OK for him to ask for other people he knows to share experiences that he hasn’t had, to help him to grow. Clearly he has a lot of growing to do, since just about everything he wrote was cringe-inducing. Nevertheless, it is possible, if one is willing to have one’s eyes opened, to benefit and learn from experiences like that.
I may not be the best person to answer this, but the technique I’ve been trying to use is: shut up and listen.
There are a whole lot of people right now writing and speaking on the subject. There have been for quite some time – since before the specific term was invented; but they’re even easier to find, these days. I find that I just plain trip over such writings from time to time – here in this thread, for instance. So I read them. Many of them have links to more info. So I read some of that.
The local libraries have had some discussion groups. If it weren’t for covid, I could go to those. Anybody there is a volunteer, who wants to talk about it.
I can definitely see a problem with the “white friend” cited in the story, who appeared to me to be saying the equivalent of ‘I’m not going to believe this is actually happening unless someone personally known to me is willing to tell me all the details about how they’ve been hurt in this fashion.’ Insisting on being allowed to poke around in somebody’s wounds when they’d rather keep the bandages on isn’t usually considered a friendly gesture.
No, I actually don’t think she was speaking to me. I don’t think she should have to. That’s the privilege, see? A writer I follow, Attica Locke, wrote a tweet about why she was NOT going to write an essay. I appreciate that. I think it is somewhat presumptuous to ask someone that, in the first place. “Could you write an essay explaining yourself, for white people?” Gah. White people should figure it out and not, say, express surprise that the person ahead of them in the first class line is a non-white person.
PS: Attica Locke writes mysteries. They’re good.
Funny how some people immediately thought the white friend wouldn’t believe it until he had examples. I read it as “its obviously an issue but I’m clearly not seeing the obvious, please show me”. No hint of “demand proof”.
Many and maybe most, times people are clueless about what’s around them. So when encountering someone like that, why do so many immediately jump to a judgement of willful ignorance.
Like the guy who’s getting dumped by his girlfriend asks why and she says “you know what you did”. Sorry, lots of times the reality is “no, I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking”.
But in this case, “Jason the White Friend” in the article is obstinately proclaiming his willful ignorance:
In other words, “I refuse to take this phenomenon seriously or do anything to educate myself about it unless people I know personally go to the time and trouble to explain to me specific ways that it has impacted their lives.”
I think we’re giving “Jason the White Friend” too much credit here if we assume that he’s honestly doing his best to understand the situation. Nope, he’s starting from a position of lazy entitlement, and demanding that his personal circle put in the work of convincing him that these issues are real before he’ll bother trying to learn for himself.
Then I would argue your post was confusing. That’s usually how those who wish to undermine the concept of white privilege respond. They pick out one particular white person (often themselves) and show they had it worse than one particular black person. You even did the thing where you only address one of the stated examples, ignoring the rest and thus the overarching point–implying you read only to the first example and stopped to “debunk” it.
If you get the concept, then all of her examples make perfect sense. She pointed out how she was treated one way while white people in the same situation were treated differently. There was no reason for people to only go after the black family’s pool other than the fact they were black.
So your criticism didn’t make any sense.