nenena | Privilege is "not."

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countdown to concern trolls

Privilege is "not."

This was the assignment.

This is my response.

When did I first become aware of white privilege - or hell, any privilege? (White privilege being the first kind of privilege I was ever smacked in the face with, of course.) My answer is pretty standard - when I entered college. When I moved out of my lovely little middle-class suburban home and settled down in a real actual urban area for the first time. And even then, you know, I wasn't really in said urban area - for 2.5 years I lived on my college campus, a happy little bubble of privilege, comfort, and lily-whiteness. Of course, I was warned by my first year adviser, wisely so, that if I didn't get myself out of the campus bubble regularly I would turn into a shitstain of a human being. (She didn't put it in so many words, but that was the gist of it.) So I got off the campus - via a job and two volunteer positions - and yes, absolutely, those experiences were eye-openers. And that was before I ended up in AmeriCorps.

This is what I learned in my five years in Minneapolis/St. Paul: That so much of my life trajectory has been the result of my privileges - white, heterosexist, cisgendered, able-bodied, thin, etc. The tally is staggering: My college education. My opportunities to study Japanese, which is why I'm here in Japan now. My dog. (Yes, even my baby princess fluffypants Shetland Sheepdog. Owning a pet is a huge economic privilege, especially an expensive purebred with perpetual health problems.) And every time I've run into a wall, I've had a support system to bail me out: When I didn't make it into my grad school of choice. When I had that apartment emergency during my year with AmeriCorps. When my worthless BSA "health insurance" refused to cover the $900 surprise!surgery on my foot. When I entered AmeriCorps. As it's often said, AmeriCorps is perhaps the ultimate exercise in privilege - after all, who can really survive on $3.50 an hour? People who a) have other money to fall back on and b) aren't supporting dependents. Guess which demographic is more likely to fall into those categories. That's why - again and again, every year, across every Corps - a Corp that starts out diverse will inevitably shed members of color as the year wears on, and by the end of the Term of Service, most Corps are drastically whitewashed. My Corps was no exception.

This was my biggest "my white privilege, let me show you it" moment:

In January of my AmeriCorps year, I had a housing emergency and needed to move into a new apartment. I found the perfect apartment not too far from my base school. The problem, however, was that the property management company that owned the building only offered a minimum of a 10-month lease. At that point I had already applied for a job in Japan but wouldn't know until March if I'd gotten the position; which meant that, potentially, I might be leaving the country in July, six months away. I explained my situation to the landlord and begged him to make an exception for me, to give me a six-month lease. I swore that if I couldn't go to Japan, I fully intended to stay put in that apartment and take my second year in AmeriCorps. (Not a convenient lie, that was absolutely the plan.) The landlord was hesitant - for all of about five minutes. Then he caved and said, "Okay, I'll give you a six-month lease." And why did he cave so easily? The man told me himself: "I can tell that you're trustworthy." (He'd known me for twenty minutes.) And: "We need more residents like you in this building." Unspoken: The fact that the property values in this neighborhood were plummeting, because of the influx of African-American and Somali residents, and white tenants were moving out left and right. What I remembered as being a mostly white apartment complex when I first moved to St. Paul four years earlier (the apartments right beside Highland Park High School) was now almost entirely black and Somali.

He really didn't have to say anything more. We need more residents like you in this building. The equation never changes: White tenants attract more white tenants. Black and immigrant tenants attract more black and immigrant tenants. Black and immigrant tenants repel white tenants. Black and immigrant tenants lower property values. White tenants can reverse the process via gentrification. If you're a landlord and your livelihood depends on your property making money for you, which kind of tenant are you going to be willing to bend the rules for?

This is what it boils down to: I would not have been given a six-month lease if I hadn't been white. I wouldn't have gotten that perfect apartment - and I wouldn't have so neatly and easily solved my housing emergency - if I hadn't been white.

And that little anecdote is just the tip of the iceberg. There's more. Much more than I can ever fit into a single post. And a lot of it is much more insidious than the blatancy of my apartment snatching. And here's the problem that I most often run into when trying to explain what "white privilege" is to someone: White privilege is largely a negative. White privilege is not I automatically get a job because I'm white, it's I won't be turned down for a job because of my skin color. It doesn't mean that you won't be turned down for a job for other reasons. It doesn't mean that you won't be discriminated against because of your gender, sexual orientation, disability, or body size. But it does mean that, of all the big steaming turds that the cow anus of life might throw at you, racism won't be one of them.

At first blush, this might not seem like much of a "privilege" at all. But it is - an enormous, incredible privilege, especially in the United States. As

dansolomon once wisely put it, there are already certain invisible privileges that are pretty easy for anybody to understand. For example, the privilege of sight. "Even someone who was born into an abusive family and had to work in a coal mine from the age of five can accept that their life has been easier than someone born blind into the same situation," so sayeth Dan. No shit. Another one is the privilege of heterosexism. To not have to risk losing a job or being rejected by your church and/or family just because you commit the sin of having a significant relationship with another human being - that is an incredible privilege. To not have to hide your personal life. And sure, you might be poor and blind and crippled and live an incredibly hard life because of all of those factors, but at least you won't have to worry about losing your job - upon which your livelihood depends - if you're seen stepping out of the house one too many times with your significant other at your side. Not as long as your significant other doesn't have the same plumbing that you do. Another "easy" one is the privilege of body size: not having to worry that the bus/airplane/theater/arena/restaurant seats will be too small for your body, and that public humiliation will result. Just for one example.

That is how privilege of any kind works. It's invisible because it's mostly composed of "nots." Things that you don't have to worry about, don't have to think about, don't have to experience, and don't have to understand. For example, here are my own personal white privileges that I have become aware of over the past seven years. In composing this list I really made an effort to narrow it down to privileges that I have personally experienced (read: benefited from), or at least seen in action up close and personal, directly smacking the faces of my students, co-workers, classmates, and friends. The following list doesn't even touch upon the way that white privilege works in, for example, the criminal justice system - because I have no personal experience in that sphere. But anyway, here is what white privilege is to me, because this is the white privilege that I live:

White privilege is not being aware of any of this.

White privilege is not having to worry about losing your privilege, even when you're in a demographic minority. White privilege is perhaps the only of all the many types of privileges that exist that still works in most "minority" situations.

White privilege is not being told that your natural hair style is "too political" for the workplace.

White privilege is not being assumed to be "naturally" talented at rapping, basketball, mathematics, or spiritual communion with nature, based solely on my race. White privilege is also other people not assuming that those are my only talents. White privilege is not being heaped with bucketfuls of perhaps-well-meaning-but-ultimately-condescending praise whenever I exhibit any sort of skill or interest outside of my stereotyped ones, because let's face it, there are no stereotypes about what white people are or aren't good at. White people are assumed to have the potential to do anything.

White privilege is being able to express even a mildly critical opinion about questionable race issues in anything, from the small (a comic book) to the large (the Iraq war), and not realizing that, for all of the racist cluelessness that will inevitably be vomited at you in response, you're still being more listened to, and taken more seriously, than a person of color saying the exact same thing would be.

White privilege is not having to read anything by Ashvaghosa, Ilango Adigal, Kalidasa, Valkimi, Vyasa, or Yukinaga,* and still getting away with writing a bestselling book about how William Shakespeare "invented the human." Jerk.
* White privilege is completely ignoring the controversy surrounding Heike's authorship for the sake of brevity in this post.

White privilege is learning about both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in your history classes, but only reading the actual writings of one of them. (Guess which one.) White privilege is not questioning what your history textbooks presents as a summary of Malcolm X's writings and beliefs.

White privilege is not having to worry about your child being yanked out of his classroom and shunted off to special ed for the rest of his school career, based not on his actual behavior relative to other students in his class, but on the color of his skin.

White privilege is being secure in the knowledge that the policeman is your friend. White privilege is not understanding how or why anybody could be afraid of law enforcement. White privilege is not having to understand.

White privilege is not being pulled over because of the color of your skin.

White privilege is not being followed around suspiciously when you enter a store.

White privilege is understanding the risks of smoking pot, and not even remotely having to consider being sentenced to life in prison as one of those risks.

White privilege is knowing that - God forbid - if anything terrible should happen to me, like an earthquake or a hiking accident or a psychopath with a knife, I will be missed. And holy fucking hell will be raised. And there will be media coverage - lots of it. And I will not be ignored or forgotten by those who are charged with the duty to save my life.

Also, white privilege is knowing that the hypothetical psychopath with a knife is statistically more likely to go after a black woman than he is me - provided that he's rational enough to be able to make calculated choices about which attack he's more likely to get away with.

White privilege is not having heard of Gwen Araujo, Robert Bailey Jr., Jesse Rae Beard, Mychal Bell, Sean Bell (no relation), Venice Brown, Tyrone Brown (no relation), Madonna Constantine, Shareef Cousin, Terrain Dandridge, Rebel Diaz, Esmin Green, Renata Hill, Sonia del Cid Iscoa, Duanna Johnson, LaVena Johnson (no relation), Patreese Johnson (no relation), Carwin Jones, Tobias Kingsley, Regina McKnight, Romona Moore, Emmanuelle Narcisse, Tamara Nopper, Bryant Purvis, Sparkle Reid-Rai, Edith Isabel Rodriguez, Karen Salazar, Theo Shaw, Sanesha Stewart, Herman Wallace, Robert King Wilkinson, Tarika Wilson, Megan Williams, or Albert Woodfox.

And those are just the names that have shown up in the past six months of my RSS feeds. Granted, some of those people have more strikes against them than just their skin color - Gwen Araujo and Duanna Johnson are trans women, for example - but their ethnicity definitely was a factor in the way that they were treated by their attackers, by the media, and by (*shudder*) idiots commenting on blog posts about them.

Anyway.

White privilege is not having to stop and think that for every name on that above list, there are thousands more in the United States (and millions more worldwide) that nobody hears about, because the mainstream media just. doesn't. care. And again, from only six months' worth of one random girl's RSS feeds.

White privilege is not having to type "no relation" any time that I'm making a list of white people with identical surnames, because I can trust that my audience won't assume that two people who both have white skin and who both have the same surname are always going to be related.

White privilege is thinking that you're all spiffy and anti-racist if you know all of the names on that list, because even being mildly informed is better than most white people manage, and white privilege is not actually having to do anything to fight the racism infecting our law enforcement/education/medical institutions, because just knowing about the problems is enough to earn you your anti-racist cookie. From other white people.

White privilege is not knowing what the Vitter Amendment is. White privilege is not having seen the most recent video by Deborah Davies. White privilege is not knowing what the New Orleans City Council and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development have been up to, now that they're in bed together. White privilege is never having heard of Rodolfo Acuna, or perhaps not knowing that his book is about to be banned in the state of Arizona. White privilege is believing that Debbie Almontaser is actually a terrorist.

White privilege is me copping out and being unable to finish this portion of the post, because I actually started listing all of the high-profile instances of racist laws, incidents of police brutality, talking head utterances, newspaper and magazine editorial columns (and "trend" articles), movie and video game depictions, fashion brouhahas, etc. that I could think of in the past six months, ended up with over six thousand words before I even got to the topics of Barack and Michelle Obama, and said FUCK IT, I can't deal with this anymore. And I don't have to deal with it, because I'm white. I can plug my ears and sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" until it drowns out all of the icky bad news about racism in America, and it works, and then I don't have to worry about racism anymore, because it's not targeted at me.

Of course, that doesn't work if you're not white.

Being able to say FUCK IT and ignore racism when it starts to make you feel bad is the ultimate white privilege.

Standard disclaimer: This post is US-centric like whoa, and deliberately so.

Edited to add: "The Vitter Amendment" is not the same as the "Preservation of Marriage Amendment," although both sponsored by Vitter... It's just that one is referred to by his name and the other isn't.

Edited again:

sanguinity has written an excellent post further describing what white privilege is, and sharing some of her own experiences with it.

Edit the third: Terrance breaks it down.

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We spent an entire lecture in my long-ago Jewish Women's Studies class discussing Jews as the "model minority," and all about the advantage we have being able to "pass as white" (if you're going to follow the argument that Judaism is a race/ethnicity). And while there have been periods and places in history - and not so long ago - where that isn't true, to be a middle class Ashkenazi Jew in America today, yeah, it pretty much is. It's a hard pill to swallow and sometimes I don't know what to begin to do about it, if there's even anything to be done.

In sum: word.

There is a lot of truth there. No idea why you're lumping in sexual rights with white privilege though, to me it's two separate things entirely.

Racial and sexual privilege are incredibly closely linked.
Because I am white, I can assume that
-If I am sexually assaulted, I will be less likely to be blamed for provoking the assault than if I were a woman of color.
-I will not be considered the sexual property of others, and others will not feel entitled to sexually harass and/or assault me based primarily on the color of my skin.
-I will probably not be beaten, raped, or killed because of the race of my partner (in this case, that's partly because my partner is also white, but I also won't be seen as involved with someone whom I'm not entitled to date based on race).
...and that's the far tip of the iceberg.

Those points are true, but I label those gender issues.

By Sexual I meant homo/het issues, where I really don't see a racial component at all, like that Vitters amendment thing

(which I knew as Preservation of Marriage amendment- which is what its called in the States, and a complete misnomer in my eyes)

When people say they oppose gay marriage, I usually ask them how would two people of the same gender marrying affect how God sees a het marriage, or to tell me what how there's actually any social benefit from banning same-sex marriages.

I never get a good answer. I then often get accused of not being a "true conservative" (but I never said I was)

Here's another connection: many of the arguments currently being leveled against same-sex marriage--"unnatural," "against the Bible / God," "will destroy the American family," etc.--are word-for-word identical to the arguments leveled against mixed-race marriage fifty years ago.

THIS Vitter Amendment (http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/03/07/extra-abortion-limitation-for-native-americans-only), not the gay marriage one. Sorry, I didn't realize that it would be confusing. The IHS amendment I've seen always referred to as "the Vitter amendment," whereas the gay marriage one is, as you said, "Preservation of Marriage amendment."

Edited 2008-07-09 20:24 (UTC)

I didn't know about that at all. Admittedly I just google searched, saw his name besides the PoMA, and assumed that was what you were talking about.

I just assume someone can't have two simultaneously batshit ideas out at once. After four years in the AF under smegheads, I should know better.

Nah, that's okay. It's my fault for not clarifying more in my post.

(Vitter is batshit!)

Black women are statistically more likely to raped and assaulted than white women. Native American women have the highest rate of sexual assault of any demographic group in the United States (34%). Women of color are more likely to be denied birth control, more likely to be denied abortions, and more likely to have their children taken away if they are impoverished and have to apply for welfare or Medicaid. ("More likely" compare to white women in the same circumstances.)

Also, what Rachel said - Interracial couples are still targeted for hate crimes. If not hate crimes, then at least shunning, ostracism, and (gag) racist comments on internet dating sites (yes, I've seen lots of that).

Forgive me, but I'm baffled as to how you can look at any of that and say "Oh, that's just a gender issue." It's not because white women aren't treated the same way.

I know interracial couples are, I've been in an interracial relationship once myself- and saw it. Thankfully, I grew up in a military culture that had no tolerance for that.

Never knew you did the online dating thing either... ^_^

Those things you mentioned are racial issues. I must have been referring to something else.

Oh. Okay.

My apologies that I keep getting the communication wires crossed here. (It's early in the morning for me right now. That's my excuse.)

Well, I worked midshift the last two nights so I'm confused myself. I have to shift back and forth a lot, but it's worth it to work a job where I get paid well to do little. You always seem to do less as you get paid more.

So if we're white privileged, what can we do besides feeling like jerks for being born?

(This was a really interesting, well-written post, btw.)

Honestly- the only thing that cures prejudice is necessity. Majority groups tend to not change their behavior unless it's adapt or die- this also tends to be a historical trend.

The one policy I would pursue is equality of opportunity in education. From that will come more equitable opportunities in economics, and that's the only true way to get equality.

This. Yes.

The public education system is the root of so much inequality it's astounding.

1. Don't feel like a jerk for being born, that doesn't help anything. Owning your privilege is one thing, feeling sorry for yourself is another.

2. Do something, anything, to get involved.

3. Say something when you see racism around you. This can be pretty damn hard when it comes from friends, family, and/or co-workers. But if racism isn't challenged, it won't go away.

4. Try to minimize the impact of your privilege. The single most important (and most difficult) way to do so is to listen to what people of color have to say.

Word up on that one. It is so true. Even with that Black Power era and Martin Luther King Jr., in Psychology, I learned that in an experiment, little African-American kids still preferred "white" people when they picked white dolls instead of black dolls. Or, when this African-American doctor was forced to sell his gold BMW because he got pulled over too many times.

Black people are still being treated as a minority. In California, people were lobbying to build a railroad station but the people in Marin County (the wealthiest county in California) wouldn't allow it because they didn't want the minority groups to cross their area. Whateverrrrr.

It's a good thing you talked about this, because even though people say racial prejudice is over, it's not.

I think it reminds me of this one time at my mom's work party, there was a woman making balloon animals. I wanted one, but the lady always made excuses ("I need to eat now", "It's too late; I'm going home"). After she said those excuses, I saw that she made a balloon animal for another woman. I happened to be the only Asian kid in the area.

Edited 2008-07-09 15:52 (UTC)

Being able to say FUCK IT and ignore racism when it starts to make you feel bad is the ultimate white privilege.

This. It is one that I am guilty of, too.

Two of the girlfriends I look back on most fondly were black, and nothing associated with race ended either relationship, so my experience in that department has been slightly different. But I see more than enough of everything you said to know that your words are spot-on.

Let's face it: people suck.

and said FUCK IT, I can't deal with this anymore. And I don't have to deal with it, because I'm white. I can plug my ears and sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" until it drowns out all of the icky bad news about racism in America, and it works, and then I don't have to worry about racism anymore, because it's not targeted at me.

Yus! >:| This.

Privilege is being able to see something that directly affects the lives and livelihood of a marginalized group and treat it purely as an academic exercise and be able to shrug and walk away and put it all out of your mind after, b/c hay, it doesn't ultimately affect you in any way.

That was an amazing and awesome post! :D The sad thing is, as you said about white privilege in still being respected and not immediately dismissed in discussions or race, that if a PoC wrote the same post (w/o your personal anecdote of course, or with an opposite anecdote where they were rejected for the apt) it would be more likely to be dismissed as due to their "bias" or that they're "whiny" or "bitter" or as "reverse racism" or a billion other reasons :(

Your observations of racism are counted for more than PoC's experiences with it :(

White privilege is being secure in the knowledge that the policeman is your friend. White privilege is not understanding how or why anybody could be afraid of law enforcement. White privilege is not having to understand.

Yus! Also this :( As a transwoman of colour, I'm always scared of having to deal with authority figures like police officers, border security, etc b/c I dunno how they might regard me or if they're going to hassle me, or what they might do to me if they felt like it :( I've alrdy faced harrassment from police in a routine ride check and from security guards and thankfully none have been violent but I'm keenly aware of the possibility :(

And also that WoC and transwomen (and esp transwomen of colour) are more likely to be assumed to be prostitutes by police officers (and certain vigilantes) if they are out at night and stuff :(

*hugs* you are rly awesome for writing this and examining yourself and stuff :)

If I, as a gay man, wrote this sort of rubbish I'd be accussed of absorbing homophobic attitudes. Any black person who wrote such stuff would be accussed of being a Uncle Tom.

This reeked of self-hatred and more than a bit of self-absorbtion. Get over it. Your quote from the landlord doesn't necessarily mean what you read into it -- unless you are psychic.

This was chic, PC, rubbish designed to make you feel morally superior.

unless you are psychic.

Judging by the way I tagged this post, I'd say that I totally am.

Not at all. Your tag is merely an attempt to exempt yourself from criticism, a means of trying to intimidate others in advance. So it is right to ignore your attempt. Nor does the attempt prove anything other than the ability to guess that a diatribe that is meant to be insulting to one group of people will offend some people. It doesn't take much to predict that.

Humorless and stupid. That's the best kind of troll!

lol. its not like gay people of color havent had plenty to say about racism in gay communities now, is it?

good post.

Good post, thanks. I've crosslinked it from mine, especially since you took such a different approach.

…I love your 'countdown to concern trolls' tag.

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