I got home from my run in time to catch most of Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the NAACP convention in Detroit. I’d heard him a few times before, but was mesmerized by what he had to say tonight. I can’t find a full transcript online yet; if someone has one available, I’d be grateful for a link in the comments.
The fellow who introduced Dr. Wright used his first name repeatedly, evidently driving home the point that Barack Obama’s pastor speaks as part of a prophetic tradition that goes back as far — or farther — than the first famed Jeremiah. Those who splutter in righteous indignation at the reverend’s now-ubiquitious “God damn America” sermon would do well to reacquaint themselves with the Old Testament biblical tradition. I’m sure that this point has been made by many others, but it deserves repeating: prophetic language has political implications, but is not the same as political discourse. Only someone with a poorly-formed theology could assume that God will not punish America as he punished His beloved Israel. If God could allow the holy city on the hill, His beloved Jerusalem, to be sacked repeatedly; if he could permit and perhaps even will the first and second temples to both be destroyed, if his prophets could suggest that that destruction was earned and deserved, then it is jingoistic hubris to say that God holds the United States in higher esteem.
Watching Dr. Wright early this evening, I thought about the discomfort so many white Americans have with frank expressions of black anger. I thought as well about this comment by Fred, written in response to this post. Fred:
Maybe it is a matter of semantics, but I do not completely understand your comment on whiteness. “I have willfully refused to reject, renounce, or even seriously reflect upon my whiteness.” Skin pigmentation is an immutable trait, so what is there to reject or renounce. Should people also renounce their “blackness”? Or is “whiteness” some kind of euphemism for being a racial bigot?
When I wrote about “whiteness”, I wasn’t writing about my ethnicity or my skin pigmentation — but rather about a specific kind of privilege. One of the best-known short explanations of what white privilege is comes from Peggy McIntosh: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. (A few years ago, Amp at Alas, A Blog posted his marvelous update on male privilege, riffing on McIntosh’s work.) When I write about renouncing whiteness, I am not talking about rejecting my European-American heritage; I’m talking about doing everything I reasonably can to avoid unconsciously benefitting from the system that McIntosh so effectively describes.
Two years or so ago I wrote a couple of posts about WASPiness and “Our Kind of People.” I’ve also written about white privilege at least once before. My point in the first two posts was to write in semi-serious celebration of a specific ethnic and class identity with which I was raised. For example:
Yes, we’re WASPs. If you want to stereotype one aspect of us, we’re a Brooks Brothers wearing, Bloody Mary drinking, Buick Roadmaster station-wagon driving, fraternity and sorority joining, tennis-playing, mayonnaise and meat loaf eating, Junior League cookbook owning, monogrammed thank-you note writing, Town and Country magazine reading, English horseback riding, debutante ball attending, Social Register listed, pastel polo-shirt or sweater set clad clan. Without apologies.
Yes, in our family, babies don’t sleep in their parents’ beds. Yes, kids move away to college when they turn 18. Yes, when I greet most of my male cousins, we shake hands instead of hugging. Yes, we don’t raise our voices at the table. We chew with our mouths closed, keep our hands off the table, and don’t interrupt each other.
But you know what? We laugh. A lot. And even if we don’t live loud like something out of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, we adore each other. Where on God’s green earth is it written that the expressive and emotive cultures of the Mediterranean or Latin worlds are healthier than we quieter, more restrained WASPs?
That was a defense of a specific cultural value system, not a statement of ethnic superiority. In other words, it is okay to like pastel-colored polo shirts and moccasins worn without socks. It is not “okay” to ignore, deny, and continue to benefit without acknowledgment from a system set up by and for people who shared “white” people. It is not okay to be born with privilege that is invisible to them to insist that it doesn’t exist when they are given ample evidence that yes, in fact, it does. (Amp does a great job of illustrating this with this cartoon.)
My life has been made infinitely easier by my white skin, as McIntosh’s list makes clear. It’s true that growing up in a comfortable family meant that it was also made easier by class advantages — but white privilege is powerful enough to include even the poorest and least privileged of those with fair skin. Someone who grew up white in rural Appalachia and someone who grew up white and affluent in the suburban Bay Area clearly grew up with different degrees of advantage. But both of us will be less likely to be racially profiled by police than a black person from any economic background. The doors that open for me, the cops who don’t give me a second glance — that kind of privilege doesn’t happen because of my class (which is largely invisible) but because of my whiteness (which obviously isn’t.)
I can’t change my skin color. I certainly am not ashamed of my heritage, even though I like to poke gentle fun at certain WASP or OKOP conventions. What I am ashamed of is the degree to which my whiteness blinds me to my privilege. For example, when the Amanda Marcotte thing first broke, I implied in my first post on the subject that she had been slandered by a false charge of theft. I wrote using the standard rhetoric of those who are willing and able to rely on the legal system to solve disputes. It’s not about the merits of that particular issue. It’s about not thinking through what it would mean to have a white male feminist weigh in on behalf of a white woman involved in a dispute over racial sensitivity. I wrote as if my skin color and my gender were irrelevant to the claims I was making in Amanda’s defense, making the classic white and masculine assumption that an idea can always be divorced from the identity of the person making it.
I also assumed, wrongly, that the hostility my posts engendered was because of my rhetorical style or my tendency towards navel-gazing; in other words, I assumed it was “all about me”, and if I could just be a little less pompous or a little less narcissistic, everyone would appreciate my insights so much more. But though I may be self-involved, the real problem seems to lie less in my pomposity and more in my blindness to the way in which white privilege comes through so strongly in my writing. And it’s been pointed out to me that I have this blindness over and over again, and I’ve said lovely things about “working harder”, and nothing has changed substantively, other than my fall women’s studies syllabus.
I reread McIntosh today. Anyone who goes back to a familiar text after some time away knows that feeling of being stunned to see something that “wasn’t there before.” (This happens to me with the Psalms a lot.) And I’d read McIntosh many times, and never seen this: In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
That’s exactly the sort of blindness I have continued to have even after being called out on it, and it’s the sort of blindness that shows up in Fred’s query. After that line, McIntosh concludes:
Disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political 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 subject taboo. 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.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.
Lots to wrestle with. In the meantime, I’m going to be doing a better job of listening to the prophets, the Jeremiahs past and present, listening for clues as to how to do the next right thing.
Please let me know if you find a transcript - the speech was SO moving!
markdanielsnyder@gmail.com
You know, one reason I like you, Hugo, is because you really DO keep the dialogue going and your mind open, and you DON’T retreat in emotional pian from input that can often look and feel like “attacks”.
Which isn’t to say that you DON’T feel emotional pain; just that you don’t let it STOP you. (Maybe that is something you learned from running?)
Also I like the way you keep your focus on Community and Communication instead of “winning” or “losing” a specific argument.
Oh, anyway, Good Job! I find your thoughts very helpful on this topic.
My wife and I watched Reverend Wright on Bill Moyers Friday night. My sense was that anyone who actually heard him (not sound bites) speaking and didn’t like what he said, would never support a candidate such as Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton for that matter).
Wright is brilliant, insightful, engaging and certainly confrontational. Listening to him is helpful for me and I think would be for many others. Hearing his words makes clear how racism and partisan politics lead the media and politicians opposed to Obama to distort both Obama’s politics and his faith. It angered both of us!
She was. That’s not the whole story, but it’s part of it. Being sensitive to privilege doesn’t mean you have to suppress the truth.
Maybe this is just a philisophical difference but to me the truth matters, always. The merits of that particular issue matter. I tend to nit on people who get facts wrong and I *like* it when people nit on me on my blog. I’ve gone back and corrected many posts based on user comments.
One thing that annoys me in life is the idea that there has to be one side that is 100% right, and one side that is 100% wrong, a silly sort of moral absolutism.
Amanda was in the wrong in a lot of ways, but the people who accused her of listening to BFP’s speech then writing it up as her own were also wrong, and it shouldn’t be verboten to point that out. Again that isn’t the whole issue, but it as at least part of it.
That said it was a little silly to demand that people recant first without naming names. Calling people out as a group never works.
In other news, pretty much everything Wright has said was right on. A couple factual nits but 95% of it is great. I’m not familiar with his most recent speech but his sermon and Moyer’s interview were both great. As a white guy I don’t get the reaction. We just invaded a country, killed hundres of thousands of people, created millions of refugees and have given shelter to only a few HUNDRED while the rest suffer. Why the hell wouldn’t God damn America?
In concentrating on white racism, you are ignoring black racism. It’s a rather counterintuitive form of racism, but racism it still is–the demand that blacks be seen always and only in the roles of victim and oppressed, and therefore superior to whites who must be seen always and only in the roles of victimizer and oppressor.
God does not see races or societies or systems–He sees individuals.
And I also object to the idea that America will be punished like the Children of Israel were punished. The Israelites were published because they had a special relationship to God, and therefore their sins were worse than the sins of other nations. It’s an act of hubris to think that the USA has that level of relationship to God–and one that’s normally found only in the ranks of right wing fundamentalists.
good post about a difficult topic. this is , I think, tangential, but one problem i have (as a white guy) with the term “white” is how it ignores and denies ethnicity. i have had through my work many, many conversations about race and ethnicity and get irked how so many people think white is an ethnicity or can’t even define the term. some use caucasian as a snooty, pseudo- scientific term for white, but few can define that. it would help white people ( damn now i used the term) if they could understand and see their own ethnicity better.
two thoughts. this is not meant to sound as critical as it might. but when you say your whiteness blinds you to something, maybe it isn’t your whiteness per se, but it’s you. as an example i used to work at a mental health center with only two african american staff, they both worked in my department with 8 other white folk. one, stupid, administrator kept mixing the two AA staff up. they didn’t look anything alike, one was taller, heavier, much darker skinned, quieter and they had different hair.it would be easy to say his whiteness led him to mix up the only two AA employees on staff. or we could just say he was a dork, since none of the other staff ever had that problem. my point is that with such a sensitivity to race and gender, people often attribute plain old denseness and human failings to race or gender. sometimes people are just stupid and while a lot can be attributed to race and gender, everything isn’t.
second thought about why some have such trouble with white male privilege. first off i completely believe that their is such a thing and an not a denier. but the disconnect is in how people define themselves. most people don’t or cant’ mentally split themselves into sections and say, the white part of me had all these advantages and the male part of me has these. people who are down and out can’t use some calculus to say , as if in some sort of dungeons and dragons game, I get a plus 2 bonus for my whiteness and a plus 2 for maleness. most see themselves as a unified whole. and most people have suffered in their lives or been beaten down. trying to tell a wounded, suffering white man that these two characteristics of him have all these great advantages, even if they do, just doesn’t work.
i think to get white men to see their privilege we have to, counterintuitively, speak and listen to them as whole individuals.
sorry for the long reply, i find this a fascinating and frustrating subject.
Is Wright trying to sink Obama?
kishnevi–
The Bible shows a strong sense of the character of institutions and systems of government, so I do not agree that the Creator does not “see… societies or systems”. In fact, not only does the Creator judge each of us, he appears, on the evidence of the Bible, to have judged the kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh.
greg –
The privilege associated with people identified as white has nothing to do with ethnicity. People of all colors have rich ethnic and family backgrounds to draw on. Identification as “white”, on the other hand, has nothing to do with what we inherit from our ancestors or our communities, or indeed what we bring to the world ourselves. People identified as “white” have no common culture or community, only a fundamentally empty quality of appearing to others, on wholly irrational grounds, as recipients of a fundamentally irrational privilege. To identify yourself as “white” has no meaning; you receive the privilege if and only if you appear “white” to other people in a position to accord it, and the status associated with a person identified as “white” has no other meaning.
Is Wright trying to sink Obama?
The question falsely assumes that Wright can hurt Obama. On the contrary, I would imagine that anyone who’s scared by black liberation theology and some controversial showboating was never going to vote for Obama in the first place.
are you prepared for the consequences?
you know how you have to explain male privilege over and over and over and over again? you will have to explain white privilege over and over and over and over again. and then you will have to deal with the intersectionality of sexism and racism.
if you really try to address white privilege, you will find that people who were/are your allies wrt male privilege may not “get it”. that not “getting it” may range from simply turning away from you to turning against you.
one of the things to keep in mind is that people who “get” one kind of oppression do not automagically “get” another. explicitly people who get sexism/feminism/anti-patriarchy don’t get white privilege/racism/anti-racism. don’t fall for the idea understanding the nature of one kind of privilege will give deep insight into another kind of privilege; it doesn’t. it gives some insight, but far less then you will expect.
this is also true for yourself.
don’ttry not to fall into the pitfall that your understanding of one privilege/oppression pairing will help you not step on a landmine wrt others. i’ve read your comments; there are a few things you are grossly ignorant about wrt to white privilege. how are you going to educate yourself?* * *
if you are serious about taking about white privilege, racism, white supremacy, you are going to need to the academic/technical/activist definition of racism: racism = prejudice + privilege.
* * *
a short reading list to expand your education:
- reread the first chapter of “why are all the black kids sitting together in the caferteria?” by beverly tatum. reread it two or three times. the other chapters are good, also, but you will find the topics in the first chapter will come up over and over and over and over and over.
- a decent link farm Race-related resources
- tim wise’s website and essays
John S.- I know and I agree, white has no actual meaning. but by using a silly term that denies something of value, ethnicity, we are not able to adequately talk about the topic. by ignoring ethnicity and class and individual experience, using “white” prevents a discussion with people.
“white” functions at a broad sociological level but people are to varied for it to be much use below that level. and if we are to improve race/gender relations, perceptions, etc. then we have to start by modeling the kind of discussion we want. if we want a discussion about how people are hurt by white privilege then we have to talk about everybody as individuals. everybody needs to be able to express their own experience in useful terms.