privledge and predjudice

I was thinking tonight about white privilege, more specifically, I was thinking about events that transpired some years back at an Art In Action camp I attended. It was intended as sort of a summer camp for radicals and the attendees were pretty diverse in age, class, ethnicity, and race; and for the most part people were getting along and bridging gaps until towards the end of the week when the facilitators pulled out their “anti-racist” trainings and suddenly things got very, very polarized. It bothered me then and it still bothers me because I see the same thing happening all the time in radical circles – discussions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and privilege seem to consistently have the effect of balkanizing the movement and emphasizing divisions between people, not helping them bridge those gaps and work together. To me, that points towards a major weakness in the way we approach these things – the goal of exploring these issues in a diverse setting should be to help us understand them and find was to extend meaningful solidarity to each other to support each others struggles – not to make people feel unwelcome.

Going back to the Art In Action camp, the experience of one man, a first-generation immigrant from the former USSR who had moved to the USA as a child and grew up in a low-income, high-crime, majority non-white neighborhood in LA, sticks out in my mind. In very real terms had had a harder life then most of the middle-class “people of color” in attendance and had very similar experiences to many of the working class folks there. If anything, growing up in the hood had been harder on him because he had always been the outsider. In his neighborhood he had been the minority, and he had suffered for it; not just in terms of a lack of support and acceptance, but also in terms of outright hostility and violence from his peers. He was not wealthy, he was not “privileged” in any meaningful sense of the word, and yet as soon as he stepped into the Art In Action setting people made all kinds of inaccurate assumptions about him and the kind of life he had lived based entirely on his skin color. For him it was incredibly alienating to be accused of being unwilling to give up his “privilege” and be accused of closet racism because he refused to feel guilty about the slave trade or anything like that. Why should he have felt guilty? Because he happened to have the same skin color as the people who were carrying out the slave trade, Jim Crow, et al even though at the time his family was on the other side of the planet? Worse yet, when he protested “look at me! I’m a first-generation immigrant, my family came here with nothing, I’ve had to struggle for everything all my life and I’m still poor, I’m just like you!” he was met with skepticism and suspicion from the  “anti-racist” trainers who kept on with their line about how all white people are inherently racist and how it’s impossible for people of color to be racist since racism = prejudice + power and people of color lack institutional power. Some of you may have encountered this line before, it’s a favorite of the “Combating White Supremacy Workshop”, a group out of San Francisco that’s been aggressively pushing this line every chance they get for the last 12 years or so. To me, that shit stinks of racism and hypocrisy. It’s ridiculous, it’s offensive, and worse yet people seem to be picking it up and repeating it. It makes me wonder what the goal of such “activists” is. If they’re trying to build a movement to abolish white supremacy and racism it’d be hard to think of a worse more counter-productive tactic then telling white people that they all benefit from racism and should feel guilty about those benefits and work to undermine them. If they’re just out to assign blame they’re not succeeding either – poor and working-class white people are not the bad guys in this drama and are not the enemies of poor and working class people of color. The only way this line makes any sense at all is if we understand that it’s really about letting the “trainers” work out their own personal grievances and/or white guilt on anyone person who’s dumb enough to buy into their bullshit, let themselves be abused, or even join in. As I’ll demonstrate, racism actually tangibly harms white people. If we want to oppose it there is plenty of common ground to build on. But first, lets start at square 1 – prejudice.

People make assumptions everywhere, it’s the easiest way to try to make sense out of a nonsensical world, but it seems to me that in politically charged circles in particular there’s a tendency to forget that easy doesn’t equal accurate. So many of us have ideologically-colored value-laden images of the world and how it works. That’s true for most people I think, but for people who are passionate about their politics there is a tendency to be a bit less flexible about adapting those preconceptions to fit reality. That’s definitely true for radicals on the left and reactionaries on the right, but it’s also true for people in the so-called “center“. It’s easier, after all, for an ignorant white person who doesn’t know any real-life black folks to talk about “the black agenda” as embodied by Farrakhan, for black nationalists to talk about “the white man” as the source of all their troubles, Christian conservatives to talk about “the gay agenda”, or for men who are scared of equality to talk about “the feminist agenda” then it is to understand that every identity group is internally diverse. I know a lot of white people who really truly honestly believe that all or at least most black people live like the black people they see on COPS or B.E.T., and I know a lot of black folks that honestly believe that all or at least most white people live like the white people they see on Beverly Hills 90210. Even on the face of it, such generalizations are absurd, but that doesn’t mean they’re not powerful. And I’m not talking just about politically ignorant people’s consciously-held beliefs either, I’m talking about the basic unconscious assumptions that people walk around with. To say that american’s (and people all over the world, for that matter) associate blackness with poverty and whiteness with wealth is so obvious that it’s a truism. There are good reasons for these generalizations of course – the vast majority of the planets tiny global elite is white and a disproportionate share of its wealthy people who fall short of elite status are also white. Likewise, black people in every country on the planet are disproportionately likely to be poor. The roots of that go all the way back to imperialism and the slave trade and in america at least stretch from there all the way through Jim Crow and into the present. So there are good reasons why people carry these associations around with them. That does not mean, however, that they are accurate. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of of poor and working-class people in America are white, and the majority of white people are poor or working class. I’m putting that in bold because that point has got to sink in before we can go anywhere productive. That’s been the case from day 1 and will probably remain the case indefinitely. Large-scale immigration of poor people from the US’s “latin” colonies is the only thing that could conceivably change that by adding a whole lot more poor and working-class people – not by reducing the number off poor white people.

As a tangent, the fact is that immigration DOES drives wages down for everyone in that low income bracket according to the laws of supply and demand (the more people there are that want any given job the less that job will pay). The argument that immigrants take jobs white people or “Americans” don’t want is actually a perfect illustration of this prejudiced blindness in action. What people who use this argument actually mean is that immigrants take jobs that wealthy white Americans don’t want. Which is true, but it wasn’t wealthy white americans that needed those jobs anyway, now was it? It was poor people, who come in all colors, and the majority of whom are white. Immigrants, incidentally, also come in all colors. Doubtless I’ll be accused of being an anti-immigrant racist for pointing this out, but the fact is that this argument is itself racist because its based on a racist assumption – that all white people are wealthy and that dangerous back-breaking manual labor is the proper domain of people of color. There are plenty of good arguments for why our current immigration regime doesn’t work and needs to be scrapped and why people from America’s southern colonies have every right to seek higher-paying jobs in the empire that exploits them regardless of their location. Lets scrap the bad ones. To go global again for a second, all those same arguments are equally valid for the situation in europe, which is dealing with its own immigration crisis as people from Europe’s neo-colonies seek better lives in the heart(s) of the empire(s) that exploit them. The solution to the low-wage issue and the immigration issue are the same – end imperialism and you end the forces that destroy, uproot, and dismember families by forcing people to move thousands of miles to do dirty, demeaning, and dangerous work in order to survive. Immigration is not a race issue, though race is of course a factor in how readily society accepts how many new immigrants. The fact that it is typically spun as a race issue by people on all sides of the debate says more about how truly absurd popular political discourse is then it does about anything else. And, as usual, by consistently framing the issue in terms of Race the left guarantees its own defeat. I know a lot of Irish Americans who feel pretty passionately about immigrants rights but their voices are totally silenced by the racial polarization of the mainstream debate.

Welfare is another of these issues that should never have been discussed along race lines. The majority of welfare recipients in America, like the majority of poor people, are white. By spinning welfare as a race-issue and filling the popular press full of stories about 4th-generation black welfare queens, the dominant pro-business faction in the Republicrat party was able to use the racism of middle and working-class white America to dismantle a program that mostly helped poor white people, and provides one of my favorite examples of how and why racism hurts poor white people. Incidentally, the left fell for it hook line and sinker and instead of pointing out the factual inaccuracy of the stereotypes being peddled and advocating for the rights of poor people as a whole, they followed the corporate news’s lead and framed the defense of welfare and social safety nets along race lines – guaranteeing that they’d lose. The fact is that as long as poverty is associated with blackness and poor white people are invisible with neither wing of the ruling party even pretending to advocate for them, the ruling party will be free to keep poor people as a whole running scared. To my mind, that right there is the fundamental genius (evil genius, but genius no less) of the Race system that most people completely fail to understand. The purpose of Racism and other systems like it is not to oppress minorities, the real function - the reason the global ruling elite and their various ruling parties around the world have invested so much time and energy into keeping systems of caste-based discrimination alive and kicking – is to allow the ruling elite to dominate the dominant ethnic/racial/religious group, and thus dominate the nation. That’s just as true in North Ireland as it is in South Africa, Australia, Germany, the USSR and its successor states, or America. Think about it. The Anglo elite in North Ireland controls the Protestant population through fear of Catholics, The ruling party in South Africa used Apartheid and the constant threat of black people taking back their country to keep the white population scared and compliant, Australian elites used (and still use) anti-immigrant and anti-aboriginal sentiment the same way, in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories the fact that entire ethnic, political, and religious groups “disappeared” was a strong incentive for “good Germans” to shut the hell up and follow orders, in the USSR the constant purges against ideological dissent and of ethnic and religious minorities did wonders to keep the dominant Russian group in line, and of course in America any time working-class people of any ethnic group get uppity and start organizing labor unions the boss’s have been quick to respond by bringing in people from other groups to scab and break the union, whipping up just the kind of racist anti-Irish, Italian, Slavic, Jewish, Black, Philipino, Chinese, Mexican, etc. sentiment needed to keep people distracted from their commonalities and fighting each other.

By disproportionately oppressing one group and threatening the “privileged” group with the loss of their privileges, elites all over the world are able to dominate. Divide and Rule is simple, it’s easy, it works. It’s one of the single most powerful weapons of elites against the rest of us. So why in the world would we help them by dividing ourselves?

But that’s only part of the article I set out to write tonight. The other part of the article goes back to Art In Action and our young immigrant friend who I introduced way back in the first paragraph, and it’s about privilege and how it functions. So often when I hear people talking about “white privilege” in radical circles they’re not talking about “white” privilege at all, they’re talking about CLASS privilege and, based on their own racist assumptions, projecting that class privilege onto all white people as a whole regardless of their actual class backgrounds or experiences. In a nutshell, the way much of the radical left talks about racism and privilege is – in and of itself – racist. It says more about the relatively wealthy backgrounds and desire to avoid talking about class issues of the people that tend to run workshops on “combating white supremacy” then it does about anything else. Which doesn’t mean that racial privilege doesn’t exist, it’s very real indeed, it just means that (as per usual) the trust-fund lefties have their heads up their asses and are too busy listening to themselves talk to pay attention to feedback from working-class people of any color.

To my mind, “white privilege” is a misnomer, because it’s bigger then just white people. We should use the term “racial privilege” and we should understand it rather differently. As we’ve discussed, in our culture poverty is associated with blackness and whiteness associated with wealth, and from there its a short step to see that all of the various activities and skillets associated with poverty and wealth are also, in a racist world order such as this one, projected onto the two groups. So, since poor white people are invisible and in popular culture people assume that all white people are “middle class” or “better”, they expect to see white people filling well-paying jobs. Since “blackness” (which in this case refers to everyone who isn’t “white”) is associated with poverty, there is a tendency to expect people of color to do low-paying menial work or working in the underground economy (drugs, gambling, prostitution, etc), or in the entertainment industry (athletes, musicians, etc). These roles are self-reinforcing. Because people associate participation in the underground economy and attendance at under-performing schools with “blackness”, it is more difficult for people of color to find gainful employment in the skilled labor market – even when they have the skills – and once in place they have to “prove themselves” by working harder and more accurately then their peers. I’m sorry to say that mainstream rap music, which arguably provides the single best chance for poor folks (and formerly poor folks) to speak through the mass media in their own voices and challenge these stereotypes, has pretty much completely failed to do so; at least partly because it’s extremely difficult for artists who don’t buy into the blackface bullshit to get any air time or gain the attention of their target audiences. The image of “blackness” pushed by Viacom’s B.E.T. et all is so pervasive that anything different is seen as “outside” and has a very difficult time being accepted, even when it comes from within the black community.

The same dynamic, incidentally, also applies to women in a patriarchal society, queer people in a hetero-sexist society, and white people who are attempting to function in parts of the economy and culture associated with “blackness.” To use a personal example, the fact that I’ve been rapping for over 14 years and am working on my 6th album doesn’t count for shit when I walk into a hip hop show with an audience that isn’t familiar with my work. When I get on-stage all they see is a white guy with glasses and the immediate assumption is that either (1) I’m a middle-class “tourist” who’s “slumming it” in the hood or (2) I’m a clown – either an Eminim wannabe or a Paul Barman / MC Frontalot “Nerdcore” rapper. The absolute last thing they expect is for me to come with serious flows on serious social issues, white rappers are supposed to be funny, “conscious rap” is off limits. All of these things color the way the audience perceives me, if I break the stereotype I become more remarkable then I would be as a black person doing what I’m doing precisely because it’s unexpected. I am outside the norm, so it’s much more difficult to get inside because doing so would require changing the norm, and a lot of people are just plain scared of change. I am hardly unique, of course, this applies to anyone and everyone going outside the roles proscribed for them. A black man who’s got an MBA in business faces the same problem when he applies to work in corporate America. It doesn’t matter how competent he is or where he’s from – he could have been born and raised wealthy and attended an Ivy-League school or be a first-generation immigrant who moved here from Sudan, his father could have been a preacher, a factory worker, a college professor, an executive, or a tribal hunter in Africa – all of that background is irrelevant to the first impression he makes because the first thing the interviewer sees when he walks in the room is “black man” and in a racist society there’s a good chance that the associations that go with that are “hip hop music”, something vague about the civil rights movement, and “that guy in the car chase on COPS last night”. If he’s a progressive type the interviewer may even feel vaguely guilty for having such thoughts and make a conscious effort to keep an open mind and just judge him on his skills, but the odds are pretty low that thoughts about race won’t even pass through our hypothetical interviewers mind. That’s some heavy shit to have to carry into a job interview.

A white exec or a black rapper has a lot more control over the first impression he makes, and on stage or in a job interview first impressions are very very powerful things. Being differentiated from the Norm means that you constantly have to “prove” yourself, and that’s tough. The difference between myself and out hypothetical businessman of course, is that the stakes for him are much higher then they are for me since I don’t rely on rap to pay my bills. If I choke and get booed off the stage (fortunately, that’s never actually happened yet…) my pride is hurt and i lose face, but my world doesn’t end; but if he makes a visible mistake it’s more likely to cost him his job and his mortgage is on the line. Black folks call this “last hired, first fired”, and it’s well documented. In every period of economic growth people of color are hired at lower rates and in every downturn they’re laid off at higher rates. Women experience similar phenomena – getting passed over for earned raises and promotions – the glass ceiling. Even people who deviate from the norm in relatively minor ways – people who don’t have children for instance are less likely to get promotions and pay increases since their co-workers with kids “need” the increased salary more and sympathetic managers are likely to consider that when deciding who to promote. These things are all well documented statistically and are just a few of the many many ways that the lack of “privilege” that comes with going outside the normative “roles” proscribed by our culture impacts people.

In other words, privilege is a function of social norms. It’s easier for women to get jobs as elementary school teachers or secretaries, for gay men to get jobs as interior decorators, or for people of color to get “unskilled” work then it is for any of them to be accepted into positions outside those limited spheres. It’s not impossible anymore, of course – that is one concrete victory of the civil rights movement – but it’s on them to prove competence. It’s like being assumed guilty in court and having to prove innocence instead of being assumed innocent until proven guilty. It’s possible, but it’s more difficult. “Privilege” then is the right to be assumed innocent. It’s not something that should be “given up”, it’s something that should be extended to everyone.

There are very real institutional factors here too – poor and working-class people are proportionately more likely to attend shitty schools that don’t do a good job providing students with the skills they need to compete effectively outside of “unskilled” labor market and the underground economy, everyone knows this. White America tolerates this situation because they don’t see it as relevant to them because poverty is associated with blackness, and so – once again – the white majority of poor people is tangibly harmed by white supremacy. I highlight that harm not to imply that it’s more important then the harm done too poor non-white people, but in order to point out that there are plenty of good reasons for poor white people to want to oppose racism and white supremacy because it actively hurts them, and so we would do well to stop telling them to “give up their privilege” and feel guilty about imperialism and instead focus on organizing an interracial movement that could demand and implement a more equitable society for everyone.

Understanding that, the goal of anti-racist “trainings” within the radical milieu should be deconstructing these normative assumptions and learning to accept each other for who we actually are – not who we assume each other to be. The problem for the folks at Art In Action and for others who use their methods is that instead of basing their “anti-racist training” program around the deconstruction and destruction of normative racism, the good folks at art in action merely inverted the norms and left them intact. “Black” becomes synonymous with noble resistance, strength, and wisdom and “White” synonymous with guilty oppressors fat off the suffering of others. This is actually incredibly common in the radical left today and is one of the major things that in my experience turns people (and not just white people) off to leftist politics. It’s stupid, it’s dangerous, it’s alienating, and it further entrenches divisions that weaken us.

Meaningful anti-racism isn’t flipping the value scale and leaving the normative system intact, it’s got to be centered instead on extending real solidarity to each other and supporting each others struggles, and on combating our tendency as a culture to make assumptions about people based on their skin color. Anti-racist “Trainings” should be built around how to conduct effective solidarity campaigns and on encouraging people to take a bit more time to get to know each other, accept each other as individuals, and appreciate each other’s cultures and heritages – not on guilt trips or demonization. This should be obvious, I shouldn’t even have to say it, but apparently I do.

I’m looking for the day when people see me as who i am – a hip hop head, a celt, a radical who cares passionately about social justice and our planet, an intellectual, and a working-class man doing his best to make a living without making a killing – instead of projecting their preconceived assumptions about my ethnicity, class, identity, and value-systems onto me based on my skin color. That’s how I try to perceive people and I’m getting better at it, slowly. It’s not easy, there’s so much to un-learn(!), but if we’re serious about eliminating racism it’s the best place I can think of to start. And maybe if we un-learn all the bullshit in time we can at least avoid passing it on to future generations.

Posted: July 23rd, 2007 under community, gender & feminism, politrix, race & racism.
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