When we travel, Richard Stupart writes, we force ourselves to go outside of the rules of our home society.
Tom Matlack at the Good Men Project recently reflected on the experience of being white during a journey he took to Kenya.
Being white, and from South Africa, some of the questions Tom asked feel fundamental to the world I live in. Mine is a country where racial divisions remain, and are as embedded in daily life as they are repressed in the interests of national reconciliation.
After years of economic inequality, white privilege in South Africa is entrenched, problematic, and largely invisible. It’s not even a matter of consenting to privilege—history just meant that as a white person, I was part of an ideological universe that cut me more slack, offered me more opportunities for education and advancement. How wide and pervasive that world is, is often invisible to participants.
Confronting it is like trying to ask fish to confront water. Or an entrepreneur to confront the damage and inequality that is a necessary consequence of unfettered capitalism. Too often, the response is a personal one. We rationalise a defense on the basis of personal experience. Say something like “I worked really hard to be where I am.”
Which may be factually correct, but also besides the point. The system supports you. The system lets you never have to think about being white and the benefits it accords. Until you find yourself stripped of them. Find yourself in a society where whiteness doesn’t confer the same respect or opportunities.
The process is explained well in a reply by Tom’s friend Steve Locke when he points out:
When you went to Africa, you said “you were the minority for the first time in your life.” That’s not true. You have been the only adult in a room full of children, the only man in room full of women, the only non-incarcerated person in a jail. In America if you were a minority at a hip-hop concert in Compton, you would still have the privilege that accrues unbidden to persons designated as white, with all of the political, social, and economic access that comes with it.
What you experienced in Africa, Tom, was that the apparatus that supports the dominance of white skin was absent. It has nothing to do with being a minority someplace, you were free of the prison that is whiteness
Travel can have that effect, in that you find yourself in a place where the rules of your home society no longer exist. Where expectations are different. That jarring feeling of strangeness can be the thin end of a very large wedge, leading to an uncomfortable but necessary rethinking of much of what you think you know about yourself.
And it’s often not just whiteness. It’s gender, it’s religion. Sometimes it’s even values or ideas that are so fundamental as to be beyond question—like consumerism. Capitalism. Globalization.
But confronting these issues is tough. In Uganda, an English friend delighted in teasing white South Africans about the difficult questions of privilege that we face. Until I eventually snapped and pointed out that Britain sat upon a mountain of historical racial privilege on a continental scale. One that South Africa paled into insignificance next to.
My own questions trouble me. And will continue to do so the more I see the water I swim in. The tiny victory is that I am at least free to ask them.
This post originally appeared at Matador Network.
More On Race:
White Boy in a Black Land
Black Boy in a White Land
‘Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race’
Eating While Black
Facing Mecca
Beautiful on All Sides
Race is Always a Parenting Issue
Poetry In Motion: A Story of Hardship and Hope in Crow Country, Montana
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Photo wwarby/Flickr
You just have to face the ugly truth: quite often what we get is a result of our actions, as well as actions of our community. People in prison are not there because they lack a privilege, but because at one point they commited a crime. People in some countries in Africa are poor because the government is corrupt and weak and there are many rebels, freedom fighters-whatever- that terrorise peaceful population and make lives miserable.
I find it hilarious (in a twisted way) that an Englishman could so easily forget the role Britain played in creating and perpetuating racist societies based on birthright privileges. Modern South Africa is, after all, a product of British (and Dutch) settlement and colonialism. Amazing how people can level accusations and be so IGNORANT! South Africa (and Africa in general) today is plagued by so much violence; rape, HIV and felony assaults seem to have become the defining problems of post-apartheid South Africa. While “white privilege” still plays a role in South Africa’s social problem landscape, black majority rule has… Read more »
“…being yourself is not a privilege, since I cannot control how other people treat me because of some immutable characteristic, just as I am not responsible if somebody discriminates against me for that same immutable characteristic. I have no more obligation to ‘check my privilege’ than I do to apologize for myself – which is none at all…”
People can control how they treat others. I’ve had white “friends” of mine actually say to me quote “I don’t usually date African Americans” etc..etc.. I had another guy I was involved with say to me quote “you’re the first black girl I’ve been with. So yes white privilege is real and it is perpetuated by those who continue to separate themselves from other people they see as being less than them because of what they’ve been taught. Let’s check out the rate of interracial marriages between black women and white men….trust me racism and white privilege is alive and… Read more »
I think what I don’t like about the privilege idea is that it provides an infinite regress of social problem (of whatever sort) for moral entrepreneurs. In spite of the fact that women and minorities who apply themselves do better and better here (with many advantages now in hiring, etc.) “privilege” is used to imply that the problem hasn’t gotten any better. A black woman and I were each denied reappointment at previous colleges to the one at which I teach now. My case was actually much better than hers, but only she could sue, because I wasn’t in a… Read more »
I’m curious to know what you mean by ‘internal security’? 🙂
I mean huge problems with people being assaulted by criminals. Not all of the victims are white, of course, probably a minority. Not all the criminals are poor either. The scenario is actually Fanon-like, however. My fear is that South Africa will drift toward a Zimbabwean type situtaion. This is a situation that demands strong governmental action.
Very true!!!
No one says it hasn’t gotten better we’re saying that there’s alot more that needs to be fixed/done. I’m a black/actress model and I know a bit about white privilege http://racismdaily.com/2011/06/17/brazilian-fashion-event-faces-protest-for-blocking-out-non-white-models/ excerpt She said: “According to the latest census we blacks represent 50.8% of the Brazilian population. This means an event which presents a majority of people with typically European characteristics does not represent the beauty and wealth of Brazilian ethnicity. You ever wonder how it is that blonds make up only about 2% or less of the world’s population and yet they make up about 80% or more of… Read more »
In fairness, this argument applies to anything, not just “Being White.”
if you are rich (have money), your privilege exists as a result of the monetary system; take away that system, your privilege goes away.
I just want to point that out since being “white” is often ascribed as a mystical and singular force, but it’s a situation like any other in that it is part of a system. It’s not magical or mysterious or unique.
I think it’s certainly true that there are other enabling structures that you can belong to (being a man, for example), without being white. I hesitate to agree that being born to money and whiteness are wholly disconnected though. I am sure there are lots of places where your wealth may not be as directly tied to your race, but if you take a historical perspective, race definitely has a complicated and difficult-to-pin relationship with wealth. South Africa is an unfair example to use here, since until recently wealth and race were explicitly engineered to be a certain way. That… Read more »
That’s exactly my point, the systems and their inherent barriers are subjective and, indeed, those barriers are largely relative. If “white skin” == “wealthy” then all “white people” would be “rich” and no “black people” would be. (I promise to stop with the gratuitous quotes from now on.) I’ll beg my own argument there because the first thing people would say is that the majority of european-descendent people have a much higher standard of living, per capita, than your average sub-saharan-african. That’s completely true. But that’s only one part of the puzzle though — The have-vs-have-not divide in the world… Read more »
I recommend Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel for a decent explanation of all this.
thank you fro suggesting this they definitely need to do some reading.
Matt N This is circular logic. The fact that WHITE CIVILIZATIONS found it necessary to leave their own countries and go all around the globe and “DISCOVER” new places and they also had weapons and disease and steel to use as superior weapons and then took all the wealth the people of these “NEW WORLDS” already had plus their own wealth and completely screwed these cultures up by forcing Christianity (which vilifies women and non-whites) other languages and customs and also slavery on these cultures all comes back to the exact same thing in a circular way …that thing being… Read more »
Sorry Mike, but I think your example is disanalogous. Saying that it it is entirely relative whether alchohol is a privilege or a problem is similar to – if I really press the tortured analogy – saying that being born into a good education, stable home environment and a network of opportunity is not really a blessing, but is a problem. Or something. I’m really trying here. The point is that by circumstances of birth, some people are born into circumstances that provide (much) better education, opportunities and a huge safety net. This makes it considerably easier for them to… Read more »
Richard, You have still not proven anything. Being born a non-alcoholic is a “privilege”. It means you have had to stuggle with addiction. So is finding $10 on the sidewalk one day. It means you have access to $10 that many people do not. You are arguing that being white in certain countries is the “deciding factor” between observed success and observed failure, and yet you cannot actually measure, or prove, the advantage of being white. Furthermore, many of the problems faced by non-white communities have literally nothing to do with whites. In the United States, non-white children are significantly… Read more »
Mike you’re annoying. Please stop asking us non-whites to PROVE how you white men (and those you accept) live better lives than us. You all have proven this fact yourselves through research and books (as per the article above). If you want proof of the bubble you live in then go do your own research unless of course you are somehow still stuck in the notion that us non-white people are supposed to do all of your work for you for free. Why are you arguing with people on the internet about the inferiority complex of white men which has… Read more »
There are significant problems with the theory of privilege. There is a huge gulf between “privilege exists” and “privilege is primarily responsible for observed differences in outcomes between groups.” The first is easy to demonstrate, but is not proof of the second. Proponents of the theory of privilege then never really bother to prove the second, and just charge ahead assuming that they have proved it. As an (admittedly over simplistic) example of the gulf between those two statements: the majority of people are not addicted to alcohol. Thus, being a non-addict is assumed to be “normal” and people with… Read more »