A lot of white people in America are looking in the mirror with dismay and confusion. "Not me!" they cry. Sorry, you, too. And me. In fact, all of us white folks need to be far more humble about how white privilege works. Between the lying woman banker further undermining #MeToo (while exposing how race can and does override gender in an intersectionality moment) and the police killing of an African-American in Minnesota, we are really seeing how white privilege functions. White folks really should not be heard talking about "Well, I ain't rich like Oprah or Michael Jordan, so don't tell me about reparations!" for awhile (but we know it will come back again). That is not where white privilege is located, as that remark confuses highly unequal class stratification and general race related issues. Yes, there is a multi-relational aspect to race and class, both of which are relevant for African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. For white people, the privilege is firmly located in white people's relationship with their local police, and the criminal justice system in general. White privilege is located in where we are allowed to live, and the schools in which our children are educated.
In another look in the mirror, we see the way police have responded to the protests in Minneapolis and the way police handled the unauthorized and non-permit armed protests in Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, a few weeks ago. We really need to recognize what we are seeing there, too, which is it is far safer to protest what doesn't challenge economic royalty and white dominance, and how very dangerous it is to challenge economic royalty and white dominance. Just ask the Native Americans protesting a couple of years ago at Standing Rock. Everyone who was even doubtful or the slightest bit critical about Colin Kaepernick owes that man a deeply heartfelt apology. Everyone who listens to Lee Greenwood's song about "Proud to be an American/Cause at least I know I'm free" should notice how this is a song that glorifies racial dominance. You can't really think you're free if you are African-American, Latino, Native American, or even Asian-American, and know how the law works against each of those groups, and how the dominant culture works against them.
And despite the hypocrisies shown in the way Tara Reade has been received, and the woman in Central Park who clearly lied to police in claiming a black man was threatening her, women know how male domination and male violence works in a way us guys can never stop acknowledging and owing an apology to women. However, what we are learning again this week is how white women often choose race over gender as they recognize the protection they get from being white. Again, intersectionality can be a double-edged sword, which is why it is so important to evaluate and learn from.
Overall, this is a hard learning moment for white America, especially, all on top of the virus crisis and the economic crisis arising from, and exposed within, the virus crisis.
UPDATE: May 28, 2020: Over at FB, I was asked why I use the word "we" or "us" as a "white" person and why I am putting blame on myself, when I like to think of myself as not harboring racist assumptions. I provided this explanation, which I admit is kind because I can easily say, as a person raised "white," I may still have unconscious racial or ethnic biases that those of discriminated against minority groups may be able to see that I do not. What I said was this:
...I think we who been given, particularly since the New Deal, the designation of "white" have to acknowledge the system rewarded our grandparents and parents, up through the end of de jure segregation (meaning legal segregation), at the expense of African-Americans and Latinos. It was a wealth accumulation that changed the way we saw ourselves compared to African-Americans and Latinos, led to different assumptions in how we moved through life, and had important effects that stretched into how police viewed us; police who were of the same socially constructed ethnic and race as we were. My parents were able to buy homes and move to areas African-Americans and Latinos could not, and my Dad received benefits from FHA loans and GI bills that African-Americans and Latinos were too often denied. I think, too, of how many parties I attended in the 1970s where young people smoked pot or even snorted cocaine (I was known as a Milk and Cookies guy, who did not partake), where we did not worry about the police, and if the police came, there would be informal mechanisms to ensure our lives were not ruined. My father, who was in politics in the late 1960s through early 1970s, knew many of the cops in our area for years thereafter, and my relationship with the police was one where I had comfort in seeing them, and confidence I would be believed if there was something that happened.
The idea our nation should judge the issue of reparations or other economic issues vis a vis whites and blacks through Oprah compared to the white working class would be recognized as absurd if we honestly looked at these facts of life, as the wealth data consistently show much higher wealth median whites have compared to African-Americans and Latinos. That wealth disparity was the result of conscious policies we followed for many decades, even as white America was confronted with racial disparities it used to arrogantly deny. This is what I am trying to set forth when I say "we whites." Although my Dad joined the NAACP in high school in the early 1950s, when the NAACP was considered just barely a non-Communist organization, and although I was raised in a home which truly revered Jackie Robinson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we benefited from having that status of "white" at the expense of those not granted that designation. That I am not really seen as "white" in certain quarters of American society is a recent consideration, but not as relevant vis a vis African-Americans and Latinos.
UPDATE: May 28, 2020: Over at FB, I was asked why I use the word "we" or "us" as a "white" person and why I am putting blame on myself, when I like to think of myself as not harboring racist assumptions. I provided this explanation, which I admit is kind because I can easily say, as a person raised "white," I may still have unconscious racial or ethnic biases that those of discriminated against minority groups may be able to see that I do not. What I said was this:
...I think we who been given, particularly since the New Deal, the designation of "white" have to acknowledge the system rewarded our grandparents and parents, up through the end of de jure segregation (meaning legal segregation), at the expense of African-Americans and Latinos. It was a wealth accumulation that changed the way we saw ourselves compared to African-Americans and Latinos, led to different assumptions in how we moved through life, and had important effects that stretched into how police viewed us; police who were of the same socially constructed ethnic and race as we were. My parents were able to buy homes and move to areas African-Americans and Latinos could not, and my Dad received benefits from FHA loans and GI bills that African-Americans and Latinos were too often denied. I think, too, of how many parties I attended in the 1970s where young people smoked pot or even snorted cocaine (I was known as a Milk and Cookies guy, who did not partake), where we did not worry about the police, and if the police came, there would be informal mechanisms to ensure our lives were not ruined. My father, who was in politics in the late 1960s through early 1970s, knew many of the cops in our area for years thereafter, and my relationship with the police was one where I had comfort in seeing them, and confidence I would be believed if there was something that happened.
The idea our nation should judge the issue of reparations or other economic issues vis a vis whites and blacks through Oprah compared to the white working class would be recognized as absurd if we honestly looked at these facts of life, as the wealth data consistently show much higher wealth median whites have compared to African-Americans and Latinos. That wealth disparity was the result of conscious policies we followed for many decades, even as white America was confronted with racial disparities it used to arrogantly deny. This is what I am trying to set forth when I say "we whites." Although my Dad joined the NAACP in high school in the early 1950s, when the NAACP was considered just barely a non-Communist organization, and although I was raised in a home which truly revered Jackie Robinson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we benefited from having that status of "white" at the expense of those not granted that designation. That I am not really seen as "white" in certain quarters of American society is a recent consideration, but not as relevant vis a vis African-Americans and Latinos.
