Understanding White Privilege and Color-Blind Racism: A Personal Reflection, Thesis of Sociology

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White Privilege and Color-Blind

Racism:

Applying Race Theory to Life Experiences

Jessica White Final Paper- Race Theory Professor Greene May 15, 2011

I have spent most of my life not critically thinking about race, but placing people into a racial category when I first meet them, and assuming stereotypical racial ideas about people until they prove otherwise. I believed that this was the equivalent to not seeing race, because I never pointed out another’s race or used racial slurs. Race is something that seemed to happen to other people, people who did not “look” like me. Brown people, black people, native people, Asian people and I never questioned why I felt that race did not seem to affect me. I saw prejudice, discrimination and racism happening around me, but it was not happening to me, so I believed I was not a part of it. I now understand that whites can claim to be color-blind as a way to conceal racist ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2010). When race does not “happen” to you this seems like a reasonable and ethical response, simply pretend to ignore race. The experience of not being impacted by one’s race or aware of one’s part in racist ideology is part of the experience that is white privilege. One of my first experiences when I had to consciously think about race and racism was when I was ten years old and dancing in a touring dance company. Most of the children dancers were white, and there were two African American children, brother and sister, the Dowdles, in our group of 15 to 20. The significance of their race had not occurred to me; they were simply different. One summer day in 1987, after a

simply because they are men. McIntosh (1988) states that a similar phenomenon happens with white people, which is why she calls it “invisible” white privilege. I believe that although the mechanisms are difference and the experiences vary significantly, there is a similar subversive component to both gender privileges and race privileges. Part of white privilege is being immune to racial slurs because they are not historically rooted in violence and hate towards a group people deemed by some to be biologically inferior. Another part of white privilege, as a woman, is an unearned protection that follows me should someone insult me, or threaten me with physical harm. White women in the media are often portrayed as victims of violence, and therefore seen as people in need of special protections. I see now that being white is being viewed as the norm and not the exception by the dominant (white, elite class) and reportedly color-blind culture. Due to the lack of analysis of whiteness as a racial construct, whiteness is separate from me; it does not limit me, label me or demean me, it only affords me privilege. Therefore, although I may be disliked because of my light skin, I can disassociate myself from my race and not internalize negative beliefs. McIntosh says that white privilege consists of “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas,

clothes, tools and blank checks” (1). I assert that the invisible privilege is more than these unearned special rights and cultural capital, but also the ability to be immune to racial discrimination, to never feel inferior or judged by the color of your skin. White people in United States culture today typically do not have to think about race because whiteness is not seen as something that limits or defines them. Whiteness is rarely described as an unearned privilege. This is part of the color-blind ideology. Whiteness just is, it is the norm, and it is there without being pointed out or commented on. As the norm, being white usually does not signify difference. Rather it signifies sameness. This invisible, taken-for-granted, dominance is part of white privilege. The impact of this, as McIntosh (1988) states, white people “remain oblivious” to their privileged status (1). Invisible dominance of ideas, therefore power, is an important concept for understanding race. The term that summarizes the consolidation of power, ideology and invisible cultural mechanisms is hegemony. Antonio Gramsci first presented hegemony in 1971. Hegemony functions as an invisible ideology in which the majority of people in a given cultural subconsciously subscribe to a set of beliefs that benefit the ruling class (1971:182). In the case of racism in the United States, the ruling class is wealthy and politically powerful whites, mostly men that claim our country is founded on equal opportunity. Those who do

been used to assert that some communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor (2005:76). Yosso’s statement above explains how the subversive power of hegemonic ideologies can switch a critique of the privileged social classes into a statement about the deficiencies of minority groups. As I discuss race and racism with my freshman and sophomore sociology students, many of the white students adamantly claim that they do not see race, or mentally classify people by racial groups. Students will say, “I see all people as the same.” They claim in their own words to be color-blind. One white student even told me that he “never noticed” that his friend in the class was black. Somehow seeing and openly acknowledging race has become taboo for white people. White people are afraid to openly talk about race, especially around people who are not white. As a teacher, it is very challenging to discuss white privilege with people who claim not to see race, even their own. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010) calls this pattern color-blind ideology, which can lead to color-blind racism. In his research on United States college students and older people’s attitudes about race, Bonilla-Silva found that whites tend to use concepts such as equal opportunity, meritocracy and minimization of racism as strategies to disassociate themselves with racist ideology. One important way white students

claim color blindness is by carefully talking about race or avoiding race talk all together. Bonilla-Silva says, “whites use verbal parachutes to avoid dangerous discussions or to save face” (2010:45). Consequently, whites are not comfortable discussing race or admitting to racist beliefs. These verbal strategies allow whites to link minorities to structural outcomes of racism while separating themselves from racist ideology. “In short, whites can blame minorities (blacks in particular) for their own status” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:48). An important part of the strategy for blaming blacks and other minorities for social inequality and social status is the myth of equal opportunity. Lewontin (1991) argues equality of opportunity is an alternative strategy for explaining away social inequalities that began in the nineteenth century. He says this view perpetuates the cultural myth that “in the new society, the race is fair: everyone is to begin at the starting line and everyone has an equal opportunity to finish first” (1991:20). This idea allows whites to blame minorities for not achieving the same life successes as them, without having to admit to undeserved white privileges. Although color-blind racism can be muddled with a moral and liberal downplaying, sometimes racist-talk can be blatant and overt. When I was in high school I lived in the small mountain town of Flagstaff,

stratification. In other words, there is a “natural” hierarchy of races with white being the most superior race. Trog is biologically based because it infers a natural inferiority of Native Americans as being rejected by the creator; it places them below other races, labeling them as subhuman. The perspective of biological determinism and biologically based race is a major strategy for excusing racial social inequalities. In this ideology, race cannot be socially constructed, it is biological and innate, consequently race, including racial difference, is naturally just so. Many important authors have counteracted the biological myth of race by referring to the research of geneticists, including the Human Genome Project. Authors such as Joseph Graves Jr., Michael Omi and Howard Winant show how biology itself actually disproves the biological race ideologies. Graves (2005) shares that in early 2001 the corporation Celera Genomics mapped the human genome and concluded from the project that humans of all races are “essentially identical twins at the level of the genome” (2). Graves continues by saying this information was not a new development in the fields of genetics and physical anthropology and that for about fifty years these scientists have known “the nonexistence of biological races in the human species” (2005:2). In other words, the biological race ideology is a social construction itself.

I believe we must continue to talk about race and racism in this country, especially in our classrooms. As instructors of social theory, history, race, gender, inequality we must create a safe space for students to pull off the mask of color-blindness and really talk about what they believe about “other” races and why they believe such things. White teachers must not be afraid to admit to white privileges and be willing to have open discussions with their students about why these privileges exist under a cloak of invisibility. Racism is not dead, as many people would like to believe; it has simply gone underground into the subversive space of all the things we don’t talk about. We must pull it out, reveal it for what it is and talk to each other. Hidden hatred and fear of others has much more power then the hatred and fears we openly admit and allow others to challenge.