Though a lot of attention has been focused on the racism and privilege inherent in recent remarks made by Republican presidential candidates, designed to garner support from the party's southern and tea party base, and the actions of elected officials like Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, too often, fingers are unfairly pointed at our warmer climes as being the sole site of racist activity and/or attitudes. Frankly, the history of racism in the U.S. has no regional boundaries; it was embedded in our roots from the moment indigenous occupants were attacked and removed. Hand in hand with systemic racism goes what those engaged in civil rights struggles and the academic study of racial disparity have dubbed "white privilege," which is a cornerstone of the academic discipline of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
A northern case in point is Duluth, Minnesota, where there has been controversy over a recently launched campaign designed to confront racism and white privilege.
Dubbed the Un-Fair Campaign, a coalition of local groups and two area colleges and universities are engaged in sparking a dialogue to address and fight against racism and privilege as a responsibility of not just those who are oppressed by it, but also those who may not even realize that they contribute to it. Only when members of the white majority engage in self-examination and action about our history and current day racial divides will we vanquish a prime corroding element in our democracy.
The Twin Ports is a predominantly white community (89%). In a recent report by the Knight Foundation entitled Soul of the Community, the results of a three-year study reports: The [Duluth area] community significantly under-performs against the comparison group overall in four of the seven individual openness measures. [...] Fewer residents than in other comparable communities say it is a good place for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, young adults without children, and talented college graduates looking for work.
People of color experience incidents of racism every day, and they have long asked “when will white people in our community stand up and speak out about racism?” This campaign is part of a response to that question. Racial justice will never be achieved until we as white people address white privilege and work to change it.
Continue reading below the fold.
I find Duluth of interest specifically because of its location, demographics and history. A port city on Lake Superior, its population is overwhelmingly of Euro-American stock. More than a third of those persons are of Scandinavian heritage.
The racial makeup of the city was 92.7% White, 1.6% Black or African American, 2.4% Native American, 1.1% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 0.3% from other races, and 1.8% from two or more races. 1.1% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. The population's ancestry was 23.6% German, 16.8% Norwegian, 15.3% Swedish, 10.6% Irish, 7.1% Polish, 7.0% English, 5.1% Italian, 3.2% Scottish or Scotch-Irish, 1.5% Danish, and 0.4% Welsh according to the 2000 Census. Thus, slightly more than one-third of Duluth's residents were of Scandinavian (Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish) ancestry.
Clearly, Duluth is a far cry demographically from states like South Carolina, Florida, Georgia or Arizona.
Since we are currently celebrating Black History Month, I think it might be useful to take a look at a major incident in Duluth's past.
There are few Americans who are unaware of "lynching" and still, to this day, that ugly period of our past tends to be viewed as solely southern. Duluth, much to the surprise of many of its citizens, gained its own notoriety in that regard in 1920.
North Star - Duluth Lynchings: Presence of the Past
In June of 1920, six black circus workers were wrongly accused of raping a white Duluth woman. Rumors of the rape spread through Duluth like wildfire, and a mob of angry whites formed. The mob abducted three of the suspects, beat them and paraded them through town. The terrifying rampage ended at a lamppost in the middle of downtown Duluth. With thousands clamoring to watch, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie were hanged.
For those of you who are familiar with the songs of Bob Dylan, he immortalized this ugly event in his opening lyrics of Desolation Row:
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
It took decades for citizens of Duluth to face the buried past and bring it to light. In 2003, they established the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial to honor those who were lynched.
But a memorial, however fitting, does not eliminate racial problems. And so the coalition to address current ills and specifically target the need for white citizens to explore the part they play—consciously or unconsciously—was launched.
Kudos to the mayor of Duluth, Don Ness (Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party), who has boldly backed this effort, hoping that it will spark dialogue. He is getting push-back and a backlash from certain quarters, including receiving death threats. A host of white supremacist websites have targeted him and the campaign (I refuse to link to them). Supporters are closing ranks behind him, and you can send him a message of support via his Facebook page.
Each semester, in women's studies and anthropology classes, I have my students examine not only "race," racism and sexism, but also white privilege. In recent years, a wealth of thoughtful material has been written on the subject. Paula Rothenberg's ground breaking anthology, White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, which is now in its fourth edition, is a good place to start.
Quite a few colleges and universities now offer programs and courses in Critical Race Theory. This year, the 13th Annual White Privilege Conference will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 28-31.
The conference is unique in its ability to bring together high school and college students, teachers, university faculty and higher education professionals, nonprofit staff, activists, social workers and counselors, healthcare workers, and members of the spiritual community and corporate arena. Annually, more than 1,500 attend from more than 35 states, Australia, Bermuda, Canada, and Germany.
Keynote speakers for the conference this year will be Heidi Beirich, of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, and one of the founders of CRT; Jane K. Fernandes, University of North Carolina at Asheville; Mary J. Romero, professor and faculty head of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University; and Charlene Teters, from the National Coalition on Racism in Sports, and the media chair of the Studio Art Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
You can view videos from past conferences here and here.
One of the important things to recognize in the images portrayed in the billboard campaign about the accidental privilege conferred by the accident of birth—skin color—or other phenotype markers is to consider the flip side. Known to many as racial profiling, it is now known as "driving while black, brown, Asian or Indian," and a whole host of other acronyms to deal with shopping, trying to get a mortgage, or simply walking down the street when you are visibly non-white.
Campaigns using the word "fair" are common, like that of Restore Fairness. They have produced, along with the Rights Working Group, a series of videos to highlight the perspectives of those of us without that accidental privilege.
I realize that naysayers dub any attempts to "unpack the knapsack" of privilege as "racist." Often, attempts to raise the topic are viewed as blaming, and met with a solid wall of defense mechanisms.
We must persist in scaling the walls of privilege, building bridges of understanding and empathy, and ultimately, we must take both educational and political actions to end it.