As with those of gender, J. Ron Crawford writes that we must recognize the privileges in accordance to race before we can tackle its problems.
You see, I’m aware that even when driving well above the speed limit, which I normally do, I’m relatively safe from a ticket. There’s usually another driver nearby doing the same, and his chances of being pulled over are usually much higher. It’s not that his car is red and mine is gray. It’s not that he’s in the left lane and I’m in the right. I feel this safety simply because he’s black or Hispanic. I am aware that only one of us is likely to be pulled over at a time, and the odds are that it will be him, and not me.
I am a privileged white American male. My privilege, from being white, allows me to think I can do as I please. I don’t feel guilty about it, because I didn’t create the situation. I know it isn’t fair, but I take advantage of it anyway. I just drive on, in a manner of speaking, relaxed.
At first I was unconscious of this driving behavior of mine. Now, however, I realize it’s deliberate. I am placed in a situation with people I do not know, where the social rules were already established. I can sit here and tell you those rules are wrong, but I will, and I do, take advantage of them. I may only by soothe my mind a bit with the knowledge that I’m less likely to pay a fine, but it affects my behavior: I don’t slow down or worry.
Now, if that were to suddenly change, if the police were to no longer stop black drivers more than whites, it would have a minimal effect on my driving. I would be more aware of when I’m breaking the law and I would be more nervous about doing so. I would probably drive just a little slower.
If, on the other hand, it changed by stopping whites exponentially more often (at the same rate or higher than blacks or Hispanics), having my car searched, and resulting in me justifiably fearing an arrest for talking back, now that would be entirely different. It would have a huge effect, not only on my driving, but in how I view the police. I would feel targeted, and I would be angry about it. I imagine that my entire understanding of how I am treated by our society and especially our government would be impacted.
The former sort of equal treatment is progress, and I would welcome it. The latter is what conservative groups such as the Tea Party have feared and picketed about for the past three and a half years, and while it may not be comfortable for me, it still could have a positive effect. If it were to occur, it may at least lead to everyday abuses of power finally being addressed. While this began as a small example, it is easy to see how closely it relates to major problems.
This is one of the reasons it was important to broadcast the recent images of Occupy protesters being pepper-sprayed at point blank, or being stabbed and beaten by batons. While many black Americans may not see anything new in that treatment, and some people may have found the hand-wringing annoying for that reason, it was needed. Those images help a privileged majority understand what is already happening to a substantial number of people, and do so by addressing their uncritical acceptance of privilege.
Facing the facts of one’s own privileged status is not a simple thing, because it can suggest that we have had things given to us, when we think we’ve worked hard for them. That’s the wrong suggestion, frankly, since we are not talking about an upper-class minority in this case (that’s a separate discussion), but the privilege that a large majority of the country holds as they compete with everyone else. Because we are speaking about the privilege of the majority, we should be able to address how others lack such privilege to help pull our society forward.
This doesn’t mean I have suddenly worked less hard in my life, but it does mean that I should be aware that many of my fellow Americans have challenges that are difficult for me to imagine. We shouldn’t need to see white kids at UC Davis being brutalized by police to think about those challenges, but many of us do, because it directly confronts our internalized expectations of how we should be treated, and it forces these thoughts into the conscious mind. This awareness often truly does have to be forced, even among thoughtful and informed people. Ignorance is bliss, after all, and that’s why.
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Many poorer whites are having real difficulty in making ends meet, and their benefits of privilege consist primarily of what does not happen to them, as opposed to all the great, imagined things that might. They are not as likely to be arrested or wrongly convicted, but when they hear they have “privilege” they look at themselves and literally can’t see it. It’s unlikely they would say, “Yes, I am so lucky that I’m not in jail because I happened to be near a crime scene.” It is more likely they would be offended by the suggestion, because they are working as hard as they can and don’t feel especially lucky.
All they will hear by “privilege” is what needs to be taken away. And that’s going to sound frightening. Giving the same treatment to minority groups should suggest that they will also have the chance to struggle along without additional unreasonable barriers, not that struggling white families will suddenly encounter those same ones.
But an underlying American fear of vengeance leads to the suggestion that turnabout is fair (or unavoidable) play, and even comfortable middle-class men and women have joined in the denials of their own privilege or good fortune, and shout their fears that liberals want to enslave white Americans.
Interestingly, those that shout the loudest about their lack of privilege often demagogue the most about their fears of vengeance should it be lost. Consider this recent Republican campaign ad from Florida, depicting President Obama as a slave ship captain.
As noted by Chauncey Devega:
It is important to emphasize the choices made by the producers of Oxner’s video. They decided to use a colonial-era vessel driven by wind and powered by slaves, as opposed to a modern cruise liner, a steamship, or even an airplane. They chose to cast the children as slaves who are monitored by a whip-carrying overseer. And Oxner’s ad was designed to feature one image above all others—that of children, most of them white, being abused by a gleeful and indifferent black man. The inversion of the expected image, one where a person of color enslaves whites in their own version of the Middle Passage, reinforces the idea that something is unnatural (and inherently wrong) about this relationship of domination and subordination.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeDespite the fact that white people control almost every major social, financial, economic, and political institution in the United States, the theme of white oppression by minorities is popular in the age of Obama. And while reasonable conservatives may not believe they will literally be made slaves like the children on the ship, there does appear to be a sense on the Right that whiteness and white people are somehow under siege.
Fear of racial equality leading to vengeance has been a part of American discourse since its founding. In my view, this persists so strongly even today because of this phenomenon: that those fearing equality believe the most strongly that vengeance is justified.
In the past few years, during the Obama Administration, we have heard cries of “slavery,” “communism,” and so forth from the far right. These aren’t intended as descriptions of political systems, either. These Glenn Beck-inspired delusions are honest expressions of fear of vengeance if their societal privilege is lost.
Here are people who are truly terrified that an equal society will hold them responsible for benefiting from their societal privilege. They were clear to demonstrate that in their signs about “white slavery” and other phrases that were popular in 2010. But that privilege will clearly persist, and change is slow: there is no indication that there will be a more abrupt move toward an equal society, let alone a reversal of racial roles in this country.
Fear of loss can start to explain the paranoia: a loss of status, of the existing order of this nation. After all, the racial hierarchy here was established centuries ago, by force. While we have dismantled its legal framework, its social framework has been slower to disintegrate. If one already believes that their place in this country is extremely tenuous, that they are slipping through the cracks, they will often cling to whatever hierarchy that they can—it’s much more solid than hope. If that means supporting the racial profiling of their neighbors, then they are likely to do so.
Ultimately, I hope we can reframe this argument from one of giving up privilege to one of extending it, by removing unnecessary barriers. The goals are the same, but the meaning is different for someone who cannot accept or understand the privilege that they have. Roadblocks in front of a few don’t help the majority move any faster.
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As men get older, we tend to cooperate more and lose the need for “one-upmanship” that defines many younger men. Taking stock of our own privilege should be part of our maturing, and part of our learning to cooperate. If we want to make this world a better place, then we have to look squarely at where we stand, what challenges others face, and do our best to address them. We can’t do that by clinging to a denial of our own advantages over our fellow Americans, whatever they may be.
–Photo John Steven Fernandez/Flickr
Alas, my comment was deleted. It must not have been nuanced properly. My apologies.
Looking into it. Will let you know.
Which was your last comment? Am not seeing one today in spam, or pending.
The opinion pieces written by Mr. J. Ron Crawford on male privilege and White privilege reminds me of the fictional character of “Don Quixote” created by Miguel de Cervantes.
If the youth of America have a problem with free market capitalism then it is their job to articulate what exactly they want to replace it with.
It was the welfare state that defeated communism, not capitalism. Without the welfare state, the underclass would have it far worse than under communism. People flee communism, people run to welfare states.
I think the problem with the privlidge discourse is not the existence of it but rather the way people choose to weild it in coversation. When someone uses privielge in a manner to claim that a given person “has _____ privilege” even though all they know about them is that they are ______ its understandable that people will get reactionary about it. A lot of people would then turn around and say that they “know” that privielge is not universal, well if they know its not universal then how do they know that it applies to any given _______ ?… Read more »
I tend to agree with you for the most part. I don’t think “you’re blind to it” should be used as a trump card like it is either, because we all pretty much are, and that’s part of my point. No one’s giving Clarence special breaks because he’s white, but that doesn’t diminish what the driver Leia describes experiences. I’m using the word “privilege” to describe something that really doesn’t feel special if you have it. I’m just trying to see what the driver she describes experiences, and am questioning why it’s denied by people who don’t experience it. In… Read more »
Cultural Marxism is bourgeois intellectualism, inherently reactionary in nature.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/021847.html
>”I am a privileged white American male.”
Not unless “privileged” now means “retarded”. I’ve rarely see so many words written without a single factual statement appearing which could be either confirmed or refuted.
>”My privilege, from being white, allows me to think I can do as I please.”
if you are under the impression that you can do as you please, “retarded” might be too kind a word for you. Perhaps you are actually insane.
Copyleft nails it. This is far more a class thing than a racial thing. In fact, I’m white and not only have I been frisked twice in my life, I even had a drug raid on my house last year due to a malicious call-in. It’s nice to imagine that poor white males have privilege and that poor black males have none. All I know is that my type of people don’t commit crimes to the same extent and we also get no subsidies for us since we are totally conflated with a few thousand mostly white men at the… Read more »
Wrong. Your people aren’t policed to the same degree as others. For example, look up studies that report drug usage by your people and others. Now look up drug related arrests and incarceration rates between your people and others. I await your analysis on that. You may not directly benefit like the few thousand whites at the top, but your parents, grandparents, great grand parents, ect. probably did receive some benefits. You benefit directly or indirectly through resources passed down.
The case for white privilege is better than the case for male privilege. It is mainly men that are incarcerated, reduced to begging and homelessness etc.
As white people have white children and Black people have Black children, resources can be passed down. But men have daughters, too, and women have sons, too, so the resources gained by sexism are far harder to pass down the generations.
@black yoda Are you angry at white people? If not, how do you prevent it? I think every person who feels dehumanized by their government becomes angry. Government dehumanization induces a paranoia, a perpetual feeling of being hunted, like an animal. As an MRA, I know this anger very well. However, there is a difference. Feminism has given MRAs one beautiful gift: our pain and marginalization has a face. If there were no feminism, I wonder who MRAs would be angry at? Maybe all women? It is a scarry thought! Maybe this is what went wrong with feminism. Their enemy… Read more »
Ha, angry with feminism because women now have rights… poor men. We can’t even get angry back at you, that is just out of place and with no meaning at all. I thought that, if there as no feminism, you guys woudn’t even exist, wasn’t it your stupid argument? And that because all of you guys’s problems have been caused by feminism, nevermind most of the problems men face have been around way before feminism ever got a name and most of the few new ones are just consequences of a new way of life? Our “enemy” is patriachy (now… Read more »
I was in a car driven by my older Caucasian companion, who was making a sudden left turn at an intersection…an oncoming red sports car was driven by an African-American…resulting in a fender bender…no one was hurt, but the driver of the red sports car was beside himself (he didn’t have car insurance)….The cop who came by was Caucasian and very deferential to me and my companion and asked if we were all right…the same cop was professional but curt with the driver of the other car….when the driver of the sports car drove away, the cop said to my… Read more »
the cop said to my companion: “What’s he doing in this neighborhood?”….Shocking to me….I did not expect that at all…. I had a cop say the same thing to me, to my face once. “What are you doing in this neighborhood?” At the time I attended a church in East LA, and the immediate area around it was 100% Hispanic, as were my companions. (We were on our way home from Bible study… ) I looked out of place because I’m WHITE… and therefore was presumed to be up to no good. The cop was also white. She (yes, it… Read more »
I think we as a society need to be destroying racial categories instead of reinforcing them. We need to accept that all of these categories are flimsy, arbitrary, unsustainable, and downright absurd. For example, many definitions of “white” also include Arab Americans, though it’s hard to say they experience the same wonderful experience that WASP’s do since 9/11. Obviously, considering Jewish Americans to be white ignores a whole history of ethnic discrimination, as does thinking of Irish Americans or even German Americans as white. One of the main reasons that racism is wrong is precisely because these categories are stupid.… Read more »
Privilege is something all men hear about, but only a few ever men get to experience.
See that elephant over there? It’s called Class. And it’s a heckuva lot bigger than race or gender.
So how do you explain what happened to rich, upper-class Black dude Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.? How do you explain Michael Vick’s harsh treatment in comparison to White men engaging in the same behavior? How do you explain Viola Davis only getting cast in big-time movies to play racial stereotypes?
Gee, looks like those elephants are about the same size after all.
Trust, we all experience privilege in a myriad of ways. Only the few wise up to it.
Oh, so many white straight AMerican men not only deny their privileges over women but also deny their privileges as white. Why am I not surprised?