White People and a Response to Privilege: the Good, Bad, and Ugly.
Primarily, white privilege is relegated to the acquisition of space, power, and manipulation. Early European explorers constructed a historical narrative that aligned whiteness with divine positioning and blackness as a divine instrument for the sole purpose of white expansion. Thus, the intricate processes of class and race construction afforded white people dominate space in America.
The calculated and measured creation of slave culture also helped reinforce a white ideology of dominance by providing slave masters the legal privilege to flog, rape, beat, and sell their human capital, African American slaves. Furthermore, the American economy was built on the notion that possession of land, resources, and free labor would ultimately build wealth — this was the end-game; wealth, the means mattered not. Black people, as Ibram Kendi notes, were Stamped From The Beginning. To be sure, America has always had an inherently negative attitude toward black life. The American plan for black life has entailed an element of Otherness since 1619. “The absence of recognition,” as bell hooks notes, “facilitates making a group the Other.” This reality of unrecognized Otherness distorts human personality and reconfigures it to subscribe to notions of nothingness — this phenomenon is manifested systemically via mental architecture.
The mental construction that white privilege scholars present as a fundamental basis of invisibility is what W. E. B. Du Bois, in 1935, termed Psychological Wage. He essentially argues that although white laborers received low wages during Reconstruction, their plights were not coupled with being lynched, raped, mutilated, or socially isolated. Being born into a system that was constructed to bequeath a certain degree of privilege for poor whites was enough to embrace the low wage and still put oneself above that of the wealthiest black. For instance, early eighteenth-century black millionaire John Drew had to use white privilege proxies “to perform financial transactions to avoid being excluded based on race.” It is important to note that although oppressed by an all-encompassing white domination system, John Drew had the privilege, the ability to manipulate space to gain access to more power, and the means to use white privilege for some social and economic gain. But this was indeed an anomaly concerning the amount of wealth owned by white men at the turn of the eighteenth century. However, some blacks who have the privilege of invading white space at the deepest of levels presume a level of white familiarity.
Nevertheless, one soon discovers that wealthy blackness perhaps entails simply the ability to slow the process of dying from symptoms associated with the disease of racism. Social death is inevitable for any black person, rich or poor, in the interrelated system of American racism. The oft-stated mantra green is the only color that matters is a fallacy. For Lawrence Otis Graham acknowledges that his notion of black elitism was challenged when he had to write a Nine Rules of Survival treatise when his son was accosted at an elite academy. His son reported that two men pulled up in a car as he was walking, and glaringly asked, “Are you the only nigger at Mellon Academy.” After hearing the fear in his son’s voice, Graham was convinced that economic privilege and Ivy League affiliation were still insufficient to secure an unbiased status in white space. In particular, one rule warns his children to refrain from enjoying a pleasant stroll in any residential neighborhood after sundown. And never, ever, carry a metallic object that could be mistaken as a weapon. Survival seems to be the common thread etched throughout the tapestry of blackness.
Christopher Collins and Alexander Jun argue that mental architecture, which undoubtedly presents with implicit bias, makes it rather difficult for white people to visualize their dominant spacing. Whites tend to denounce spaces of privilege and reduce the experience of advantage to determinism. However, whiteness, as a social construct, privileges those who exist within its parameters, which is where the majority of opportunity lies. For Robin Diangelo, privileged whites operate from within what sociologist Joe Feagin described as a white racial frame. This particular lens purports white supremacy in mass media, politics, education, and religion. This perennial frame of reference for whites constructs, regulates and sustains cultural signifiers, which perpetuate notions of race superiority and inferiority. In other words, white people, from a very young age, receive a bombardment of racially charged stimuli. Even if one is fortunate to rise above a white racial frame bias, there is ample room for embers of an entrenched racist ideology to be sparked, mainly when there is hatred within the context of a black/white relationship.
In May, 2020 TLC series 90-day Fiancé cast member, Lisa Hamme, a white woman, confessed to making the mistake of calling her black husband, the N-word. Just the opposite — it was; in Freudian language, a slip of truth. The word was repressed under the notion of attempting to be a “good white person.” But at the core lies a frame of reference that has understood blackness in only negative terms. If the frame of reference is left unchecked, even “good” intended white people fall short in affording black people their full humanity. Stephanie M. Wildman and Adrienne D. Davis astonishingly observe:
“For me to struggle to visualize privilege has most often taken the form of the struggle to see my white privilege. Even as I write about this struggle, I fear that my own racism will make things worse, causing me to do more harm than good. Some readers may be shocked to see a white person contritely acknowledge that she is a racist. I do not say this with pride. I simply believe that no matter how hard I work at not being racist, I still am. Because part of racism is systemic. I benefit from the privilege that I am struggling to see…all whites are racist in this use of the term, because we benefit from systemic white privilege. Generally whites think of racism as voluntary, intentional conduct, done by horrible others. Whites spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves and each other that we are not racist. A big step would be for whites to admit that we are racist and then to consider what to do about it.”
It is safe to argue that failure to acknowledge systemic racism and its connection to white privilege is harmful toward black racial uplift. When used for good, however, privilege can create spaces in which underprivileged blacks garner opportunities to thrive. How might this happen? Education is essential in this regard. Privileged whites must immerse themselves in reading about black culture and history. They should also be conversing with a black person about racial ignorance; then, empathetic action must be taken to visualize one’s social responsibility to aid in dismantling a corrupt domination system.
Historically, it has been proven this can be accomplished. Privileged white abolitionists suffered as a result of aligning with slaves in their quest for freedom. White people used their privilege for good, and privileged whites assisted many blacks during the modern civil rights movement. Some white people marched alongside their oppressed brothers and sisters in racial understanding and unity. Courageous whites acknowledged that black people were caught up in a social system designed to prevent them from advancing as a race, and some were killed attempting to dismantle facets of the system. For instance, in 1963, William Lewis Moore, a white postman from Baltimore, Maryland, was shot and killed during a one-person march against segregation. And in 1965, after seeing John Lewis and many others being beaten by both the crowd and law enforcement at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Viola Liuzzo, a white wife and mother from Detroit, Michigan, packed her bags and drove alone to Selma, Alabama to stand with oppressed blacks. On March 25th, while driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery, Klansmen drove up beside her and shot her twice in the head. And Heather Heyer, in 2017 while protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was hit and killed by a car as she and friends walked down the street chanting, “Black Lives Matter!” Attempting to dismantle a system that has worked so well for over 400 years most certainly will cause backlash. The murder of white allies is a response of protection. The plan is to obstruct any attempt at disrupting and dismantling the system of American racism.
Denying that systemic racism exists further asserts and teaches the notion that black life does not matter. One cannot promote Americanism in its current form without being a racist. The system is flawed in that it privileges white supremacy over black life. Donald Trump and other racists refuse to acknowledge systemic racism — this is not a shock. They cannot see it — even in the event of black bodies presenting as clear evidence to the contrary. They attempt to explain away these murders as isolated events — this is both quite sinister and dangerous. For it projects the notion that black people exaggerate their experience in America. Thus, increasing the likelihood that ignorant white Americans will remain naive to blacks’ actual treatment in this country.
See references for further reading:
1. Allan G. Johnson, “Privilege as Paradox.” In White Privilege, In White Privilege, ed. Paula Rothenburg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016), 146–149.
2. bell hooks, “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” In White Privilege, ed. Paula S. Rothenburg, (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016), 29.
3. Blue Telsuma. “90 Day Fiancé star tearfully admits to calling Nigerian husband the n-word.” https://thegrio.com/2020/05/20/90-day-fiance-star-nigerian-n-word/
4. Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun, White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age, (New York: Peter Lang, 2017), 4–9.
5. Lawrence Otis Graham, “I Taught My Black Kids That Their Elite Upbringing Would Protect Them from Discrimination. I was Wrong,” In White Privilege, ed. Paula S. Rothenburg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016), 182.
6. Robin Diangelo, White Fragility, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 35.
7. Shomari Wills, Black Fortunes, (New York: Amistad, 2018), xv.
8. Stephanie M. Wildman and Adrienne D. Davis, “Making Systems of Privilege Visible.” In White Privilege, ed. Paula Rothenburg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016), 137–143.
9. According to Sue, “If we are to overcome, or at least minimize the forces of racism, we must make Whiteness visible. See Sue, Wing Derald. “The Invisible Whiteness of Being.” In White Privilege, edited by Paula S. Rothenburg (New York: Worth Publishers), 26.
10. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 (New York: The Free Press, 1962), 700.
