Over the past few years I have been trying hard to learn about race and how various ethnicities view each other. One of the things I have learned more about is racism. My motivation for learning this is that I have a daughter who is Asian. I started to try to figure out what life will be like for her, and what I will need to do to help prepare her for dealing with her growing up a minority in this country.
I will readily admit I have some blind spots. I will never know what she will go through. I can only hope to prepare her for what ever her life is going to be.
One of the things I started reading as I studied race and racism is about white privilege. At first I resented the term. I denied it existed. I thought that everyone had the same opportunity, and why single out whites any way? Then I read further about experiences that people of color have. Some are extreme, some are more subtle. I also recognized that I never had to deal with some of the things they did.
I grew up in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood. It was not predominantly white, it was all white. There were virtually no minorities in any of my schools until high school. I had almost no exposure to minorities until I was about 14 years old.
There are things I never even thought about. I always had white teachers. All the way through college I can count on one hand the number of minority teachers I had. I never worried that the police would question why I was in a given neighborhood. The one time it did happen, I was stopped and asked if I was lost and OK. I never had to worry about whether I would go to college – it was expected of me. I never worried about whether bosses would think more or less of me based on anything other than my work. I could go on and on.
One thing I came to realize as I learned this is, as a white guy, I am privileged. Much of American culture does disadvantage minorities just because they are minorities, and many people don’t recognize that.
We can see this in the language we use. It isn’t until we see language from a different source do we get a different view point. I once was given an older text on nursing. All of the pronouns relating to nurses were “she” and “her”. When referring to doctors and patients it the pronouns were “he” and “him”. As I read this book I realized how difficult it was for me to relate to nursing because of that. How much more difficult must it be to be a minority and be actively ignored, feared, or put down?
It wasn’t until I spent a month in central Asia did I really get an eyefull – or earful – of language differences. I suddenly became a minority. I was under suspicion. I was looked at as being lesser because I did not understand the language, because I was American, and for a whole host of other reasons. My translator was a wonderful person. She was helpful and nice, but in the end, I was a job to her. I finally began to think what it must be like for others.
We all have blind spots. We don’t understand how others see us, and we don’t understand others viewpoints. Those viewpoints are made up of a persons experiences, education, culture, and a whole host of other things. One of the hallmarks of white privilege is that we (whites) don’t recognize it. It is easy to criticize other groups for complaining about how hard life is, or wanting or needing assistance, or demanding equality, but it is very difficult to see reasons why.
We white folks/straight folks/name your privilege folks need to grow up a little bit and recognize that just because we didn't mean to say something offensive, and just because we don't hear it as offensive, doesn't mean it didn't really and truly hurt someone else to hear it. And we need to be mature enough to recognize that someone telling us we did something wrong is not the equivalent of calling us a racist/sexist/homophobic/name your hate word.
In many conversations I have had someone will quote “I dislike that they all say they are victimized”. To this I say, when you really see what their life is like, then you can tell me they are not victimize. There are people who use the victim approach and are not victims. Then there are people who have been victimized – either by society, family, or where ever. I don’t know their life, I can’t judge them.
The most difficult thing is to see someone else’s perspective, and to be open to it. There have been several discussions about race and why there aren’t more bloggers of color on Dkos. What I have learned, is that often when people of color go to events, public areas, etc, they either are actively shut out, or seemingly invisible. How many people here read the Black Kos Week in Review? How many comment there? Why? I don’t know the answer to this and many other questions. I do hope though that I keep learning, and can open others to thinking about this.
Here are a couple links worth pondering.
racialicious - race in pop culture
Anti racist parent