I work hard for my money!

All this talk about white privilege might have some thinking, "Sheesh. I'm white, and I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I've worked hard for everything I have!" I'd have to say, yes, of course, hard work is important, and I'm all for it. But I'd also like to point out that, if we're white, we probably don't have to look too far beneath the surface to see how white privilege forms the foundation of the lives we built with hard work.

I'll use myself as an example. My grandparents came from Italy, struggled through the Depression, and, through hard work, scraped together enough money to buy a house. Although there was some prejudice towards Italians in those days, they made it into the white club pretty early on, and my grandparents were allowed access to a middle-class, white neighborhood. (This is important, because as my grandparents were buying their house, people of color were being systematically kept out of white neighborhoods through the government-approved practice of redlining.)

Enter, my parents. My father never graduated from high school, and worked at a printing company his whole life, earning very little. My mother stayed home with the kids (there were five of us) until we were all in school, and then worked as a caregiver for children and the elderly. Although they worked hard for their money, they would never have been able to afford our middle-class neighborhood if not for the fact that we lived upstairs from my grandparents in a two-family house, paying very little rent. (The same scenario holds true for my husband's parents.) When my grandparents died, my parents received a small inheritance that they used to pay off my father's gambling debt (interesting to wonder what might have happened to him, and to us, had that money not been there) and as a down payment on their own home, which they bought for $21,000 and sold twenty-five years later for $220,000. So, because my grandparents benefited from their whiteness long before I was born, I grew up in a safe neighborhood, received a good education at the good schools in that neighborhood, and had a financial safety net in my parents if needed.

So I've worked hard for my money, yes. But without my realizing it, my whiteness was working, too.

White Privilege, Part II

Any conversation about white privilege has to start with Peggy McIntosh's essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." McIntosh says it so well -- she describes white privilege as "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks." She lists the everyday benefits of being white -- the big things and the little things. Read it for yourself at

http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf

I know I had never thought of any of this before I read this essay for the first time, and that's the thing about white privilege. It's invisible to those of us who benefit from it. I didn't have to think about race because, well, I'm white. I don't really have a race. I'm just regular, which means that, for me, everyone else is irregular. I never thought those words consciously, of course – it’s just an unstated (invisible) way of looking at the world.

Here’s an example. Last year there were two scary incidents at my son’s school involving possible “stranger danger.” Here’s how they were described on the school website (I’ve removed names of streets and school district):

Incident 1: A Hispanic man driving a silver two door Honda or Nissan approached a group of students requesting they get in his car. They wisely refused, however even after the refusal the vehicle followed them for some time. A police report has been filed.

Incident 2: While a group of students were throwing a shot put at the track, a red vehicle stopped in the turning lane and began taking pictures of them. A police report has been filed.

What do you notice? The person in incident 1 was clearly described as Hispanic. Incident 2? Apparently the car was taking the pictures. I happen to know that the man in the car was white, because my son was one of the kids throwing shot put who reported it, and he clearly stated that the guy was white. Yet that didn’t make it into the report, because in this mostly white school district, whiteness is assumed. Obviously, there’s a lot more to this topic than this, but it’s a small example of how one aspect of white privilege operates.

Maybe you’re thinking, hey, I’m not privileged! I’ve worked hard for everything I have! More on that in next week’s blog.

What is White Privilege, Anyway?

(If you're like me you don't read long blogs. For the point, skip to fourth paragraph below.)

On July 22, Senator James Webb (Democrat) published an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal titled, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege." In essence, Senator Webb seems to be saying that yes, slavery was bad, and that the civil rights movement and affirmative action were at one time necessary. But that's all over now and anyway, recent immigrants didn't suffer at the hands of the American government like African American slaves did, and so they should not benefit from governmental diversity policies that take the focus off African Americans (divide and conquer strategy here?) and ultimately hurt whites (especially from the South). Whew!

Far more adroit bloggers than I have commented on Senator Webb's article. Read it for yourself if you want at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379630952309408.html.

Some of Senator Webb's statistics are a little old (1974), and his comparisons of groups are questionable. But here's what jumped out at me -- what is white privilege, anyway? Even if I agreed with Senator Webb's assertions (which I don't), I could point out that white privilege involves more than employment and education stats. What about all the little, immeasurable benefits that I receive every day simply because I'm white?

Here's an example. I went apartment-hunting with my daughter last week. We saw two apartments -- both in houses in residential, white neighborhoods. Both landlords were friendly and anxious to have us sign on the dotted line. Both shared the same basic sentiment -- "We want the right person in here. We want someone we can trust. We don't want any riffraff" (actual word used). Apparently, my daughter was the right person; one landlord even called her later to lower the rent. What made us so right? They knew nothing about us -- not income, not employment, not education. They did not ask for references. They certainly have not seen how my daughter keeps her room. But they did know one thing for sure. We're white, and evidently that's enough. We all know that racial discrimination in housing is illegal. I also know that, as usual, our whiteness worked in our favor last week. That's white privilege.

Sherrod, One More Time

If you’ve been listening, watching, or reading the news at all this week you’re probably tired of hearing about the Shirley Sherrod fiasco by now. (In case you haven’t been watching, here’s what happened – an exposé style blogger, Andrew Breitbart, posted a brief video clip of an African American USDA official named Shirley Sherrod saying that she did not fully assist a farmer in need because he was white. Big hoopla, Ms. Sherrod denounced by NAACP and White House, forced to resign. Turns out the clip was taken out of context – the incident was decades ago, and Ms. Sherrod had recognized her own prejudice and helped the farmer to save his farm. More big hoopla, lots of apologies, Ms. Sherrod offered new job.)

This story has more layers than the onion I’m about to add to my potato salad (I really am making potato salad today). Why was the video posted? Why were leaders, both white and African American, so quick to speak and act? Why do charges of “reverse racism” rise to the top so quickly? Research shows that many whites feel racially victimized by affirmative action policies, among other things, and stories like this confirm and validate these feelings. If I’m honest, I’ll admit that I’ve sensed that little, “Ah-ha, you see!” at stories of whites being treated unfairly – maybe some of you have sensed it, too. In terms of the African American leadership who jumped on the story, I imagine they felt much like my mother when JFK ran for office – although Catholic, she didn’t vote for him because she feared a Catholic President, in avoiding favoritism, would ultimately hurt Catholics.

But I’d like to suggest we see the Sherrod story as a metaphor for how many of us view policies related to race. We saw a brief clip and passed judgment (that’s not fair! she’s racist!) without knowing what came before or after. We see a college scholarship that whites are not eligible for and pass judgment (that’s racist!) without knowing the context – the decades, the centuries of racism that excluded all but whites from institutions of higher education. We hear of a firefighters’ exam that was thrown out by the city of New Haven because African Americans failed, and shout, racist! without knowing of the history of discrimination in that city. Yes, fairness is important. But judgment without context can never be fair.

Was Michael Jackson Still Black?

Strange question, right? But it made perfect sense to the thirteen-year-old who asked it: if race is determined by phenotype (especially, in his mind, skin color), was Michael Jackson, whose skin was as light as many white people’s, still black? My first reaction was to brush the question aside with a quick response, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a very good question it was.

We know through recent studies of the human genome that the genetic variation among people of any given race is greater than that of people between races -- in other words, I may be more genetically different from a white person than I am from an African American or Asian person. Some may say that this is proof positive that race doesn’t matter – in fact, biologically speaking, there’s no such thing as race. No need for further talk, and please, shut down the blog! Still, my answer to the question was, of course, yes -- regardless of skin tone, Michael Jackson was still black. Why? Because while it’s true that race isn’t biologically significant, it certainly has been and still is socially significant. What’s more, the social significance of race in America was created and maintained by whites with one clear purpose – to maintain the place of power in society.

So Michael Jackson was still black. Race still matters. And we still need to talk.

You can run, but you can't hide

Madeleine L'Engle writes, "If you are an artist, regardless of your religion, everything you do is your witness. You cannot hide what you are." I've been working on a children's fiction project this summer -- a modern-day reworking of a familiar rags-to-riches theme. My main character is a young boy named Ryan, who is biracial. I needed to create a situation that leaves Ryan somewhat destitute (like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess). When I completed my first draft, I asked an African American friend to read it. She pointed out what I already knew, but couldn't quite bring myself to admit -- in my story I'd recreated several stereotypes about African American males. Of course, I was horrified.

My point? As L'Engle said, I cannot hide what I am. I'm white. No matter how hard I try, those prejudices and stereotypes that come with my whiteness emerge, and all I can do is to ask for help when I need it. If I were colorblind, though, I wouldn't know enough to ask.

What I Didn't Say

Facebook friends might remember a post of mine from about a year ago describing an ethical dilemma of sorts. On my way into the supermarket one early Saturday morning, a thin, strung-out looking woman approached me. She flashed a veteran’s I.D., explaining that she needed some money for gas in order to get to the V.A. hospital several miles away. Her hands and voice shook as she spoke. Should I give her some cash? I wondered. I come from NYC, where cynicism is a way of life. (Note – I was raised by a woman whose favorite summer saying was “Mr. Softee is a crook.”) Somewhere I’d heard never to give strangers money because they would probably use it to buy alcohol or drugs. Still, I wanted to be a good Samaritan – what if she were telling the truth? So, reluctantly, I pulled out a twenty (the only bill I had) and gave it to the woman, who thanked me profusely and drove away. My facebook post asked, should I or shouldn’t I have given her the cash?

Did you assume that the woman in the story was white? Since I didn’t mention her race, you probably did (a topic for a future blog), and if so, you were correct. What I didn’t have the courage to post at the time, but what I still wonder is this – would I have given her the money if she hadn’t been white? Would I have even engaged in conversation with her, or would I have waved her away and kept walking?

Author Lee Anne Bell notes that, “though mediated by class, gender, age, sexual orientation and other factors, whiteness accrues benefits.”* Although she seemed troubled in other ways, the woman that approached me possessed one unearned benefit – her whiteness, which made her feel safer to me. So, the question remains, would I have helped her if she hadn’t been white? I’m not sure, but it’s worth thinking about.

*Storytelling for Social Justice, p. 30.