[Imc-chicago] What is White Privilege?

[Andrew Spencer]

>
>
>
>
> This is Your Nation on White Privilege
>
>  September, 14 2008* By Wise, Tim*
>
> For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are
> constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this
> list will help.
>
>    - White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like
>    Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of
>    your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you
>    or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and
>    Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as
>    irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
>    - White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck,"
>    like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes
>    with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to
>    "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy
>    (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
>    - White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six
>    years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then
>    returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no
>    one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a
>    person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and
>    probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative
>    action.
>    - White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town
>    smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with
>    about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of
>    Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all
>    piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term
>    state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
>    - White privilege is being able to say that you support the words
>    "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for
>    the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately
>    disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written
>    in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the
>    1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their
>    rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a
>    prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only
>    supported by mushy liberals.
>    - White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make
>    people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a
>    husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your
>    state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no
>    one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black
>    and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home
>    with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's
>    being disrespectful.
>    - White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and
>    the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to
>    vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child
>    labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely
>    question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no
>    foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow
>    being mean, or even sexist.
>    - White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even
>    agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running
>    mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has
>    inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party
>    a "second look."
>    - White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your
>    political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a
>    typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely
>    knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you
>    must be corrupt.
>    - White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose
>    pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George
>    W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian
>    nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological
>    principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict
>    in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and
>    everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if
>    you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin
>    Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often
>    the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism
>    and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates
>    America.
>    - White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked
>    by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such
>    a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word
>    answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question,
>    or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
>    - White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has
>    anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and
>    experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.
>    - And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly
>    allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90
>    percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing
>    their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from
>    world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole
>    "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say,
>    four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
>
>
> White privilege is, in short, the problem.
> Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008),
> and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> "Nothing [in life] is a waste of time [dull or 'boring' unless your
> experiencing it] wisely."   -Rodin
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-chicago/attachments/20081010/aa3ac12c/attachment.htm