When someone denies that there is such a thing is white privilege, and/or when that person insists that there's no such thing as institutional racism, or that it is a thing of the past, and that now everyone has the same opportunities and access, a lot of us probably think that comes from a conservative or libertarian.
Yes, that's a real problem in America, when you hear talking heads on FOX News rail against "race hustlers" or 'racial ambulance chasers" in their perpetual gaslighing of what people of color actually experience on a daily basis. But, conservatives don't corner the market on denying that white privilege and institutional racism are (still) issues that need our attention.
Follow me past the orange angel hair pasta please.
Martin Luther King Jr. was just as, if not more, frustrated, with white moderates and liberals than he was with KKK members. Letter From a Birmingham Jail should be required reading for all of us.
Tim Wise touched on this a few years back as well. One of the key points in this writing that is front and center in my mind now and one of the central points of why I write this:
And fourth, left activists often marginalize people of color by operating from a framework of extreme class reductionism, which holds that the “real” issue is class, not race, that “the only color that matters is green,” and that issues like racism are mere “identity politics,” which should take a back seat to promoting class-based universalism and programs to help working people. This reductionism, by ignoring the way that even middle class and affluent people of color face racism and color-based discrimination (and by presuming that low income folks of color and low income whites are equally oppressed, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary) reinforces white denial, privileges white perspectivism and dismisses the lived reality of people of color. Even more, as we’ll see, it ignores perhaps the most important political lesson regarding the interplay of race and class: namely, that the biggest reason why there is so little working class consciousness and unity in the Untied States (and thus, why class-based programs to uplift all in need are so much weaker here than in the rest of the industrialized world), is precisely because of racism and the way that white racism has been deliberately inculcated among white working folks. Only by confronting that directly (rather than sidestepping it as class reductionists seek to do) can we ever hope to build cross-racial, class based coalitions. In other words, for the policies favored by the class reductionist to work — be they social democrats or Marxists — or even to come into being, racism and white supremacy must be challenged directly.
And now, I see in a more direct way, not just by reading something what is meant by the two examples above. The first example, though, is a person of color who, daily, experiences the frustrations due to microaggressions and other things that in the end are just plain unhelpful. At the same time, it also showed me, once again, how privileged I, as a white male, am.
I have a Facebook friend, or let's say, more of an acquaintance via political discussion groups who is in my friends list. We agree on many things, but the disagreements, in light of other things I've seen him write, are just plain strange to me. He hails from Ontario, I think near Toronto (that's as specific as I'll get here). He is a liberal in the sense that he believes that access to health care, clean water, adequate shelter and food. Plus he rejects "supply side" economics. He even invokes the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights not with disdain as many American Tea Partiers are sometimes known to do, but with a sort of reverence.
But then there was this post of his in a political discussion group we're in (and that I help moderate):
Considering the recent polarizing obsession with race in mainstream media and throughout social media... Resolved: All demographics, regardless of race/ethnicity, have problematic histories where their group has been oppressed or has oppressed others. No one, not one person, should ever carry anger over what was done to an ancestor nor guilt over what was committed by an ancestor. We are responsible for ourselves and our actions. Live right and treat everyone the way you wish to be treated.
Plus the following comments:
As for black community, the oppression it suffered in the past was awful, all oppression is. But it has been several decades since Civil Rights act ended legal discrimination. Race no longer puts one at an advantage or disadvantage legally. Wealth is the only true disparity anymore in our society.
To which I asked "Are you saying that when civil rights legislation was passed on the 60s it had the effect of hitting the 'reset' button and made everything equal?" plus I added the lyric from Bruce Hornsby and the Range's Song "the Way It Is": "they passed a law in '64 to give those who ain't got a little more, but it only goes so far".
Then, he replied: "Nope, pretty sure I didn't say that. But I am saying that 1/2 a century later, those issues of legalized segregation and legalized racial inequality should not be used to cast an eternal burden of guilt or victimhood on each and every successive generation."
When I showed him a link to this video, he replied with "Utter nonsense, filled with hearsay and assumptions." then with "Of course if "fighting racism" is his "work" he will tend to project and suspect it everywhere he looks. Much as police may project and suspect criminality everywhere they look. That much is an all too human condition/failing." followed by a link to an article about cops who formed a human net to catch a mother and her daughters jumping from a burning house; his point being that this is the true nature of law enforcement in the US.
That exchange isn't all from him. Every time anyone has posted anything in support of Michael Brown, or Eric Garner, he has always been the contrarian (which, having a different opinion isn't necessarily wrong in and of itself, but to me it shows how he seems to have chosen to limit his own perspective). Are any of you familiar with the story of Shawn Torres and Benjamin Perry? The story that was chronicled not just in what I linked but also in Huffpo and told by them in person on Melissa Harris Perry's show? Well, my interlocuter asserted that those two were straight up lying about the whole thing (this was a few weeks back). He asserted that they lied in order to advance their careers, their notoriety, and to advance a particular agenda.
The Eric Garner and Michael Brown incidents have been blown up, in his mind, because of "irresponsible, sensationalistic media in the US" that he told me "is destroying your country". Michael Brown really should have just obeyed Darren Wilson. Eric Garner really wasn't choked to death. The protests about the Brown and Garner incidents need to stop and those engaged in them need to just get on with thier lives, he says. And, wait for it . . . he has gone along with the talking point that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio "threw the NYPD under the bus" thus they were justified in turning their backs on him when he was speaking at the funerals of the two recently slain police officers. He also has accused several cop watchdog organizations of being "hate groups" (maybe a few of them truly are, but he seems to have conflated them all).
People will believe what they want to. Each of us compartmentalizes our lives, our thinking, etc. Each of us is susceptible to cognitive biases that form our outlooks, although not all of us let those biases color our thinking equally. I've made plenty of wrong assumptions and have even had irrational thoughts before. Still, my exchanges with this fellow makes me wonder what can make one guy be a valiant champion in the struggle for a more fair and just society in one realm but also expend a lot of energy telling people that institutional racism and white privilege are things of the past and that any evidence to the contrary is not really evidence but is the result of biased studies that conclude what those who conduct the studies want to conclude? That racism in 2014 is nothing more than a few isolated instances of personal pettiness and ugliness? We may never know the answer to that, but this has been one of the most perplexing things I've seen.