Several years back I had the occasion to interact with a Well-Intentioned White Woman on the issues of race and racism. And I had the creepy feeling that because she envisioned herself as a progressive anti-racist, she additionally wanted to be seen as the progressive anti-racist. Much in the way that men often get praise for doing the simplest thing for their children while women’s work is largely ignored, white people are often unduly praised for speaking out against racism.
Because they don’t have to do it and society doesn’t see it as their job. But they come to (or even always) expect praise.
And that is privilege.
The way interactions with the WIWW played out was that she was frequently condescending and patronizing. She “corrected” me. She expressed disdain at things I would say (”Oh, puh-lease!”) while taking the opportunity to offer her superior wisdom in a way that seemed designed to slap me down. And although she talked about her black friends, I never did view her as an ally.
Because she wasn’t anti-racist for her self. She was “anti-racist” because it was essential to her vision of herself as a good white person. But “anti-racism” meant that she knew how to say the words (”Racism is often defined as ‘prejudice plus power’”) but didn’t know how that manifested in real life. Because if every time you talk about racism you take the opportunity to get in a little slap at a person of color, then you just didn’t absorb those words. Every time you talk about how you “get it,” that’s when I’m convinced you really don’t. Because “getting it” is a process. It’s not an end point.
And I know lots of WIWP like her. Because white superiority runs deep. And when anti-racism is taken on as another form of the white man’s burden, the irony is complete.
*I leapt off from here where I read the comments and sighed. Why do I feel that people who should be allies are sometimes saying “I’m white and I don’t have to do this” as if it implies we owe them? Yeah, I admire some writers. But I don’t always admire their actions. Or their inaction.
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May 28, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Jeremy Pierce
I think we need to distinguish between two different things here. One is when white people easily speak out against racism but in a way that doesn’t demonstrate any central commitment to seeking to do what is necessary to fight racism. This is extremely common among politicians who think that as long as they don’t oppose affirmative action they can get away with ignoring any real solutions to racial disparity, but there are common ways this occurs among ordinary white people.
On the other hand, there is some reason for taking it to be morally courageous when white people speak out against racism in ways that really are cutting against the grain of what will naturally be accepted by white peers. In that kind of case, it isn’t all that courageous for black people to point out certain things, while it does take a kind of moral courage for whites to do so. Provided that we acknowledge that, I don’t have any problem admitting that sometimes white people use their easy speech against racism to feel as if they’ve done a lot and to take advantage of looking courageous while ignoring the hard work done by non-whites. But I think it’s going to discourage whites from opposing racism in the ways that are hard to do if we only focus on the first of these two kinds of scenarios.
May 29, 2007 at 6:21 pm
resistance
I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say it “isn’t all that courageous for black people to point out certain things, while it does take a kind of moral courage for whites to do so.”
In any event, we typically don’t give out cookies. ;^P
August 7, 2007 at 10:29 pm
michelle
Because she wasn’t anti-racist for her self. She was “anti-racist” because it was essential to her vision of herself as a good white person.
IMO that gets at the heart of the way that the “white anti-racist identity” operates in actual practice for most (if not all?) white people who identify one way or another as anti-racist or something like that.
There’s a satire site about this phenomenon here:
http://www.whiteantiracist.wordpress.com