[Apollo]

http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/analysis/white-antiracism-winwin-privilege-indulgence-white-guilt/

I wasn't sure if I should post this at first, but I'm curious to see how many people share my anger.

This is an article, written by a white woman, that says white people are always racist because they always exercise white privilege and are therefore oppressing minorities.

The author also makes the claim that trying to give up your white privilege is "an ultimate expression of white privilege/racial oppression", because it devalues all the suffering of racial minorities. In other words, white people are horrible racist pigs and nothing they do will ever overcome that.

There's also a particularly stupid passage where it is claimed that eradicating racism from oneself and society is "being the white savior". The idea that white people could ever feel guilty about their racism is apparently "an indulgence".

So, in conclusion, this is a bunch of bull**** written by a white person who apparently hates her race for some reason.

To be fair, this kind of crap is only to be expected from a militant leftist website. This is such an extreme example of white guilt that, were it not for its origins, I would wonder if it was a parody. It fits in perfectly with conservative strawman arguments.

[Sarafan]

"anti-patriarchal"

"abolition of prisons"

L.O.L

I'm white and I'd really like to know how has this white privilege helped me in any way.

[MP-Ryan]

I love people who talk about race as if it is meaningful in any way, shape, or form.  The sooner people quit getting hung up on 'race' and focus on the social issues of particular affected groups, the sooner this issue will be dealt with.  The author misses this point entirely - she's exacerbating the problem.

Then again, 'race politics' in the US are incredibly ****ed-up to begin with, so she's not alone.

[Luis Dias]

I actually agree with the article except for a major point. The author makes a terrible and eggregious semantic error between having a privilege and being racist. Yes, white people are priviliged and most are utterly oblivious to it (just look at Sarafan), for the simple fact that they haven't experienced not one single moment of their life as a "black person" to really know what it is like. However this does not make a white person racist. For someone to be racist, he has to be actively (in some way) trying to maintain this status quo.

However, if you subtract that (big) semantical mistake, it's not that bad.

I love people who talk about race as if it is meaningful in any way, shape, or form.

Well what about people who think that racism is an illusion because the concept of "race" has been scientifically disproven, etc.

Racism isn't about facts, it's about social interactions between groups of people. And it is a real problem, no matter how "meaningful" you deem its core concept to be or not.

[Apollo]

I love people who talk about race as if it is meaningful in any way, shape, or form.  The sooner people quit getting hung up on 'race' and focus on the social issues of particular affected groups, the sooner this issue will be dealt with.  The author misses this point entirely - she's exacerbating the problem.

Then again, 'race politics' in the US are incredibly ****ed-up to begin with, so she's not alone.

It's embarrassing how, after all this time, there are still so very many, many people that view their world along racial lines. We have some people who want to pretend racism no longer exists and some who see it in everything. The reality is unfortunately much closer to the latter then I once believed. Racial tensions are everywhere and it only takes a little bit of a push to make everything explode.

[Sarafan]

Yes, white people are priviliged and most are utterly oblivious to it (just look at Sarafan)

I dont live in the US, I live in a country with far more racial diversity than the US, I wont say that in the US whites might not have such thing as "privilege" because frankly I dont know but what do I know is that where I live there is no such thing as white "privilege".

[Apollo]

I actually agree with the article except for a major point. The author makes a terrible and eggregious semantic error between having a privilege and being racist. Yes, white people are priviliged and most are utterly oblivious to it (just look at Sarafan), for the simple fact that they haven't experienced not one single moment of their life as a "black person" to really know what it is like. However this does not make a white person racist. For someone to be racist, he has to be actively (in some way) trying to maintain this status quo.

However, if you subtract that (big) semantical mistake, it's not that bad.

I love people who talk about race as if it is meaningful in any way, shape, or form.

Well what about people who think that racism is an illusion because the concept of "race" has been scientifically disproven, etc.

Racism isn't about facts, it's about social interactions between groups of people. And it is a real problem, no matter how "meaningful" you deem its core concept to be or not.

I agree with some of that article's secondary points too, but it's all wrapped in a layer of the most insipid kind of self-hating white guilt that makes it very difficult for me to appreciate on any level.

Although, I think some people overstate the role institutional racism plays in America. The poor economic status of black people probably has as much to do with damage from previous generations and poor social mobility as anything else.

[Phantom Hoover]

I happened across this article a while ago, which has quite a lot to say on the problems with the moral statements made by this particular brand of anti-racism.

[Apollo]

Yes, white people are priviliged and most are utterly oblivious to it (just look at Sarafan)

I dont live in the US, I live in a country with far more racial diversity than the US, I wont say that in the US whites might not have such thing as "privilege" because frankly I dont know but what do I know is that where I live there is no such thing as white "privilege".

On paper we don't, but other races are often viewed through the lens of negative stereotypes and thus face great discrimination.

They've also incurred a ton of economic damage from the pre-civil rights era.

[Apollo]

I happened across this article a while ago, which has quite a lot to say on the problems with the moral statements made by this particular brand of anti-racism.

I like how that article talks about white privilege. It's more a "privilege" to not face racial discrimination than anything prestigious like the term normally implies.

[Mr. Vega]

Noone's more privileged than a white or black intellectual that's so busy railing against white racism that they don't bother actually trying to improve the conditions of the people they claim to champion. If you think the Drug War is an incarceration machine, then lobby and protest against the drug war! Oppose the cuts to food aid and inner city education the Republicans are trying to push through. Do something USEFUL instead of jacking off over how morally superior you are.

Conversations like this are a waste of time at best and horribly damaging at worst, because when you start telling poor whites unable to find full-time jobs in this recession and burdened by debt how privileged they are it alienates what should be the natural political allies of blacks. Let me remind you that one of the chief motivations for Jim Crow was the fear of the southern white upper class (what was left of the antebellum plantation owners) that poor blacks and whites might ally politically. Those guys and gals who march in Tea Party rallies? We liberals should blame ourselves for failing to organize them and allowing them to be attracted into the camp of those who are out to screw them. Sixty years ago they were the most ardent supporters of the New Deal (Remember, Texas and Arizona were poor in the 1920s and destitute in the 1930s). Nobody's suffered more from government policies than the black population trapped in the inner cities from 1970 onwards, but this obsession with universal white privilege is one of several cancers that need to be cut out of the left. All it does is help the right divide what should be a single voting block.

[MP-Ryan]

Well what about people who think that racism is an illusion because the concept of "race" has been scientifically disproven, etc.

Racism isn't about facts, it's about social interactions between groups of people. And it is a real problem, no matter how "meaningful" you deem its core concept to be or not.

The trouble is people like the author of that piece confuse racism with social inequality.

Racism exists, absolutely.  It makes no sense, its a lazy and inaccurate method of group people, and its based on complete misinformation.  That said, "whites" don't have privilege any more than "blacks" are subjected to racism every moment of every day.  Putting matters in essentially those terms not only hurts her argument, it renders it meaningless.

Social issues are a whole lot more complex than the colour of one's skin, and by constructing her argument in this way she just adds to the foundations of the very thing whose ultimate core I have no doubt she would like to deconstruct.

The problem with writing about privilege and racism is that you often end up using the very argument structure and narrative that you're opposed to, as this author did.  If her purpose was to reinforce racist stereotyping and argument patterns, she was a resounding success.

The author also lost all credibility as soon as she mentioned "abolition of prisons," but that's not central to my point that the author is reinforcing racist narratives by even writing this piece.  It's like she's taken a couple classes of history focused on the United States and sociology, slept through most of it, and then decided to frame her arguments based on out-of-context excerpts of the extra credit reading and wants people to take her seriously... just... no.  My critical thought processes - unlike hers, apparently - actually work.  She needs to cut the angst and up the education, because she's writing from a perspective that is best characterized as "utterly out to lunch."  Being an 'anti-racist' that calls all 'white people' racist and privileged is like being a feminist that argues that womens' equality takes precedence over mens' - in constructing your argument this way, it is patently obvious that you are not what you claim to be.

*Edited for clarity and content*

[Luis Dias]

That said, "whites" don't have privilege any more than "blacks" are subjected to racism every moment of every day.  Putting matters in essentially those terms not only hurts her argument, it renders it meaningless.

I don't really understand you here. Of course whites are privileged by not being subject to racist attitudes everywhere, and that's basically what it means. I don't see how putting it on such terms hurts her point, since her point (I think) is precisely that racism is not only a negative action, but a counter-positive action, in the sense that basically all the society is (in its status quo sense) somewhat "Affirmative Activistic" for the white people, in detriment to the black people.

She also decries "white knights" pretending to be solving the racism problem, since it's the continuation of the archetype of the "white guy saves the day again", and I also think that's a fair (but also brutal, harsh) point.

I also don't see how saying that social matters are "more complex than just racism" negates the problem of racism. You say you have a working thought process (at least it's confident of itself), but I do not see you recognizing how reductionism is actually useful here.

Now having said all this, I agree with you that the way she is talking about issues is not probably going to help anyone at all. I'm more of a "pretend there's no race, let's discuss basic economic rights for everyone instead" kinda guy too, but I also see the downfalls of ignoring a cultural, psychosociological issue.

Being an 'anti-racist' that calls all 'white people' racist and privileged is like being a feminist that argues that womens' equality takes precedence over mens' - in constructing your argument this way, it is patently obvious that you are not what you claim to be.

That's not a good case of good thought process there, come on. The analogy is flawed. It would be more like "All men are sexist because they are priviliged". I can see what she's trying to get at, but as I said earlier, this is a terrible semantical confusion, probably even deliberately made.

[Mebber]

What an annoying article. I will not dispute that white people have privileges in many of the western countries, and it's a good thing to make people more aware of that. But i just don't get the point of this article. After every passage i hoped the author might start to draw some sort of actually constructive conclusions or thoughts, but all i've read seems solely to be there to backup the initial "whites are racists because they're white" statement.

By the way, i don't like statements like "Person X is inevitably Y because he's white/black/whatever" anyway, they tend to sound so... racist.

[MP-Ryan]

I don't really understand you here. Of course whites are privileged by not being subject to racist attitudes everywhere, and that's basically what it means. I don't see how putting it on such terms hurts her point, since her point (I think) is precisely that racism is not only a negative action, but a counter-positive action, in the sense that basically all the society is (in its status quo sense) somewhat "Affirmative Activistic" for the white people, in detriment to the black people.

She also decries "white knights" pretending to be solving the racism problem, since it's the continuation of the archetype of the "white guy saves the day again", and I also think that's a fair (but also brutal, harsh) point.

I also don't see how saying that social matters are "more complex than just racism" negates the problem of racism. You say you have a working thought process (at least it's confident of itself), but I do not see you recognizing how reductionism is actually useful here.

Now having said all this, I agree with you that the way she is talking about issues is not probably going to help anyone at all. I'm more of a "pretend there's no race, let's discuss basic economic rights for everyone instead" kinda guy too, but I also see the downfalls of ignoring a cultural, psychosociological issue.

The author is confounding social issues into her version of racism:
1.  Systemic racism
2.  Economic inequality
3.  Racist action

She makes no effort to point out the complexity with which these variables interact.

The author then commits another cardinal sin in sociological writing by dividing the issue into 'whites' and blacks/'people of colour.'

Then she conveniently ignores every shred of evidence and data from outside the particular experience of 'race relations' in the United States because they sink her argument where it stands.

The trouble with this author's version of racism is it's framed entirely by patriarchal whites and subjugated blacks/POC.  The issue is much more complex than this.  It's somewhat ironic that you're saying I'm being reductionist, because if anything the author is displaying a spectacular lack of understanding of social issues in general in order to paint one part of the population with one brush, and the other with a different brush.

'Whites' are not privileged.  Certain Caucasian, English-speaking, upper-middle class, come-from-a-nuclear-family, native-born-and-multui-generational-residency-status persons *may* display elements of what she would term privilege.  However, you can swap any one of those variables and still end up with a person that may display privilege.  Similarly, 'blacks/POCs' are not all subjected to racism - there are a whole lot of other variables.  Is skin colour a factor?  Sure, and racists do exist based purely on the colour of one's skin.  But the root cause of racism isn't just skin-colour, it's a whole host of issues that are wrapped up and identified under that banner.  And she's perpetuating those stereotypes.

She's taking a major list of social ills, throwing people into one of two categories, and calling it racism.  If anything, her article is inherently racist because of this narrative.  It displays a startling lack of self-awareness.  Apparently in her mind, all of what she terms 'whites' are racists and can't help it, while blacks/POC apparently are always the victims.  What poor, unsubstantiated, lazy writing.  Put another way, she's applying a T-test to data that requires ANOVA or other multi-variable analysis and her results are not only useless, they're worse than useless, because they confound the overall picture.

This is why I'm contemptuous of race politics - if ever there was a discussion that is actually counter-productive to your stated goals, this is it.

That's not a good case of good thought process there, come on. The analogy is flawed. It would be more like "All men are sexist because they are priviliged". I can see what she's trying to get at, but as I said earlier, this is a terrible semantical confusion, probably even deliberately made.

I don't think the analogy is flawed at all.  If you're an anti-racist then you should stand against the narrative offered by racists, not do your best to present an argument that complements theirs.

I am an anti-racist.  I fully acknowledge that racism exists and that people are in general lazy and use the most convenient means at hand to categorize other people because our brains work best by dividing people into 'in-groups' and 'out-groups.'  I recognize that this causes no end of social harm.  I also recognize that the majority of overt and systemic racism is casual, integrated, and primarily the product of history and results not because of biological race, but because of social issues that are variables confounded with the appearance of race.  I also believe that the best way to combat racism is to address the social issues which are confounded with race and not argue around race itself, nor further segregate the issues into racial stereotypes because this further entrenches the inherent problem.  Racism is a problem best treated by treating the social causes of racism and not trying to treat racism itself.  Every attempt to actually treat racism results in failure or - like this author - perpetuation of racist narratives.  Treating the social issues around race largely extinguishes racism in general, with the admitted exception of the most delusional and problematic racists, which can be confronted and discredited when their arguments hold no credibility at all.  Incidentally, this approach works not just with racism but with any social division that is a scapegoat for underlying issues.  It has also been successfully tried in Northern Ireland to encourage better relations between Catholics and Protestants (in a place where religion is entirely a surrogate for political values and beliefs).

The author is not an anti-racist.  She displays distinct racist narratives and thought processes, and does her cause much more harm in her writing than good.  She's an excellent example of how race politics are toxic and those writing about race politics are immune to self-reflection and critical analysis.

[Luis Dias]

Come on, I was speaking correct english there. I was specifically *not* saying you were being reductionist, I was saying that you were incorrectly deriding her reductionism.

About all the rest I agree with you. Except for one minor point, where I don't necessarily agree with, but just to point out it's more a question of faith than just pure "logical reasoning", which is when you state that to solve racism we should never confront it directly.

I think there's a confusion here of sorts, and it's not exactly yours but still. On one hand, we could even call the economy in the US "racist" itself, in the sense that there's a really wide economical gap between blacks and whites that is perhaps much more obvious than in other countries. Now we can confront this by saying "let's not call blacks as blacks, let's just discuss poverty in general", which is basically avoiding the race question directly but rather to solve it indirectly. If inequality and immobility could tank somehow without one mention of race per se, then the question of race would be over by itself, the dream would be fulfilled, etc.,etc.

Personally speaking, I also think this is the best course of action. However, if one is slightly more paranoid, one could eventually get to the conclusion that any promoter against equality, against immobility, etc., is not only engaged in class struggle (the rich against the poor) but also in a racist struggle (I don't want no blacks in my condo!). It's really easy from this point to politicize racism, as it's so glaringly obvious when people discuss how any criticism of Obama is racist in itself (and many other examples). IOW, what muddles the issue is that for the greatest part, the "class struggle" in the US awkwardly shares a very similar Vonn diagram with the "race struggle".

It would be better if one could disentangle them, but as it is...

[Al-Rik]

Critical Whiteness, anyone ?

Inside the German left Critical Whiteness is a hot topic. In some circles you can't speak about racism and discrimination without making at first a statement about your own whiteness and your obvious privileges.
If you don't do it, you might an will be criticised by others, more "aware" persons that you are not aware enought.
It's a nice way to keep control during a discussion, mainly a tool to get the upper hand.

Thank god most humans are part of a discriminated minority, (maybe your parents aren't so educated or poor, maybe your are white but a migrant, maybe you are gay or queer or straight but weird,...) so what you can claim a different stance that gives you the moral superiority against ordinary white straight guys...

[666maslo666]

First, because racism involves institutionalized, systematic, and historical oppression on the basis of race, only white folks can be racist.

This type of racism is a major one, but not the only one in existence. What an ignorant statement..

[The E]

Obligatory Scalzi: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

[Phantom Hoover]

Fine then, a more direct criticism: I don't see how you can claim that straight white male is the 'lowest difficulty setting' whilst making no mention whatsoever of class.