File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1999/postcolonial.9902, message 180


Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 10:57:35 -0600
From: Wail Hassan <w-hassan-AT-wiu.edu>
Subject: Re: Is free thought dead?


The following essay was posted on another discussion gourp. It is relevant
to your question.

>
>>Subject: an article forwarded from the Duke Femilist
>>
>>
>>>>> This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper
>>>>> and was written by a white professor at the U of
>>>>> Texas.
>>>>>
>>>>> "White people need to acknowledge benefits of
>>>>> unearned privilege"  By Robert Jensen
>>>>>
>>>>> BALTIMORE: Here's what white privilege sounds like:
>>>>> I'm sitting in my University of Texas office, talking
>>>>> to a very  bright and very conservative white student
>>>>> about affirmative action in college admissions, which
>>>>> he opposes and I support. The  student says he wants
>>>>> a level playing field with no unearned advantages for
>>>>> anyone.
>>>>> I ask him whether he thinks that being white has
>>>>> advantages in the United States. Have either of us, I
>>>>> ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run
>>>>> mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is
>>>>> something real and tangible we could call white
>>>>> privilege.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, if we live in a world of white privilege --
>>>>> unearned white privilege -- how does that affect your
>>>>> notion of a level playing field? I asked. He paused
>>>>> for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
>>>>> That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the
>>>>> ultimate white privilege: the privilege to
>>>>> acknowledge that you have  unearned privilege but to
>>>>> ignore what it means.
>>>>>
>>>>> That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about
>>>>> race and racism with students. It drove home the
>>>>> importance of confronting the dirty secret that we
>>>>> white people carry around with us every day: in a
>>>>> world of white privilege, some of what we have is
>>>>> unearned.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up
>>>>> around discussions of affirmative action has its
>>>>> roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to
>>>>> talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and
>>>>> white privilege. White privilege, like any social
>>>>>   phenomenon, is complex.
>>>>>
>>>>> In a white supremacist culture, all white people have
>>>>> privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist
>>>>> themselves. There are general  patterns, but such
>>>>> privilege plays out differently depending on context
>>>>> and other aspects of one's identity (in my case,
>>>>> being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather
>>>>> than try to tell others how white privilege has
>>>>> played out in their lives, I talk about how it has
>>>>> affected me.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of
>>>>> northern European heritage and I was raised in North
>>>>> Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I
>>>>> grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by
>>>>> racism, both personal and institutional. Because I
>>>>> didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have
>>>>> exposure to the state's only numerically
>>>>> significant nonwhite population, American Indians.  I
>>>>> have struggled to resist that racist training and the
>>>>> racism of my culture.
>>>>>
>>>>> I like to think I have changed, even though I
>>>>> routinely trip over the lingering effects of that
>>>>> internalized racism and the institutional racism
>>>>> around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one
>>>>> thing never changes - I walk through the world with
>>>>> white privilege.
>>>>>
>>>>> What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I
>>>>>  seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or
>>>>> hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening.
>>>>> Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me
>>>>> -they are white. They see in me a reflection of
>>>>> themselves - and in a racist world, that is an
>>>>> advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I
>>>>> am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical
>>>>> opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.
>>>>> My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am
>>>>> white.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some complain that affirmative action has meant the
>>>>> university is saddled with mediocre minority
>>>>> professors. I have no doubt there are minority
>>>>> faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very
>>>>> many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if
>>>>> affirmative action policies were in place for the
>>>>> next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of
>>>>> that time the university could have as many mediocre
>>>>> minority professors as it has mediocre white
>>>>> professors.
>>>>>
>>>>> That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but it's a
>>>>> simple observation that white privilege has meant that
>>>>> scores of second-rate white professors have slid
>>>>> through the system because their flaws were
>>>>> overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well
>>>>> as on gender, class and ideology.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some people resist the assertions that the United
>>>>> States is still a bitterly racist society and that
>>>>> the racism has real effects on real people. But white
>>>>> folks have long cut other white folks a break. I
>>>>> know, because I am one of them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am not a genius - as I like to say, I'm not the
>>>>> sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching
>>>>> full time for six years and I've published a
>>>>> reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the
>>>>>         unexceptional stuff one churns out to get
>>>>> tenure, and some of it, I would argue, is worth
>>>>> reading. I worked  hard, and I like to think that I'm
>>>>> a fairly decent teacher. Every once in a while, I
>>>>> leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I
>>>>> really accomplished
>>>>> something. When I cash my paycheque, I don't feel
>>>>> guilty. But, all that said, I know I did not get
>>>>> where I am by merit alone. I benefited from among
>>>>> other things, white privilege.
>>>>>
>>>>> That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or
>>>>> that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the
>>>>> job. It means simply that all through my life, I have
>>>>> soaked up benefits for being white. All my life I
>>>>> have been hired for jobs by white people. I was
>>>>> accepted for
>>>>> graduate school by white people. And I was hired for
>>>>> a teaching position by the predominantly white
>>>>> University of Texas, headed by a white president, in
>>>>> a college
>>>>> headed by a white dean and in a department with a
>>>>> white chairman that at the time had one nonwhite
>>>>> tenured professor. I have worked hard to get where I
>>>>> am, and  I work hard to stay there. But to feel good
>>>>> about myself and my work, I do not have to believe
>>>>> that "merit" as defined by white people in a white
>>>>> country, alone got me here.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard
>>>>> work, I got a significant boost from white privilege.
>>>>> At one time in my life, I would not have been able to
>>>>> say that, because I needed to believe that my success
>>>>> in life was due solely to my individual talent and
>>>>> effort.
>>>>>
>>>>> I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged
>>>>> individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the
>>>>> culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that
>>>>> was binding me to those myths. Like all white
>>>>> Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I
>>>>> didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and
>>>>> privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard
>>>>> work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I
>>>>> wasn't special. I let go of some of that fear when I
>>>>> realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I
>>>>> was still me.
>>>>>
>>>>> What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when
>>>>> I know that the rules under which I work in are
>>>>> stacked to my benefit. Until we let go of the fiction
>>>>> that people have complete control over their fate -
>>>>> that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose -
>>>>> then we will live with that fear.
>>>>>
>>>>> White privilege is not something I get to decide
>>>>> whether I want to keep. Every time I walk into a
>>>>> store at the same time as a black man and the
>>>>> security guard
>>>>> follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am
>>>>> benefiting from white privilege.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is not space here to list all the ways in which
>>>>> white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but
>>>>> it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me
>>>>> until the day white supremacy is erased from this
>>>>> society.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Baltimore Sun.
>>>>>
>>>>> The writer is a professor of journalism.

Wa=EFl Hassan
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Journalism
Western Illinois University

Tel 309 298-1112
=46ax 309 298-2974




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