Terms of Tribalism: White Privilege
Taken from [https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com](https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com)
Is white privilege a real thing?
Before you rise up against me with burning indignation at my wokeless ignorance, or lick your chops in hopes that I will dismantle the proposition altogether, I need to say that I don’t have a dog in this fight.
Whether it’s real or not is the wrong question.
Even if we grant that white privilege exists, we still have what I think are more important considerations: is it helpful as a concept? Does it lead us to having a more productive conversation about race issues?
I don’t use twitter much, but recently I did a google search for “white privilege” and I quickly discovered that nobody on either side of the debate is pulling any punches. I found images of two cops kneeling on a white man’s neck, used as evidence against. Other images of holocaust survivors intended to show that the color of one’s skin shouldn’t be taken at face value. Other posts referred to people in terms that were unapologetically pejorative. Ashor Blaise tweeted “its difficult to admit that white privilege is real when you’ve amounted to very little despite it.” It’s a clever tweet, I had to admit. I couldn’t come up with a comeback like that, even if I were trying as hard as he was, to wound someone, using their membership of a racial group as ammunition.
It’s the good ol’ culture war. Only it’s not about culture so much. It’s about race.
A race war? Yes, it seems that that is what our social-political discourse on the issue is in danger of degenerating into.
Now, after the tragic death of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests, the streets are looking an awful lot like the back and forth on Twitter. Only instead of hashtags, memes, and snarky one-liners, it’s tear gas, rubber bullets, and broken windows.
True, the majority of these protests are peaceful. Still, there is an uncanny parallel between the way we talk about these issues as a culture, and the way that conversation seems to manifest itself in the streets, on the beat, and in the white house.
There are two important observations to make. Before I make them, I want to make it clear that it is not my intention to be dismissive of racial injustice. On the contrary, I make these observations in the hope of improving the dialogue around it.
The first problem with the term “white privilege,” is the same problem that exists with so much of our buzz-word based rhetoric: oversimplification. Not only is there the obvious problem of telling who it applies to, and to what extent, but it seems to imply that racial discrimination is the only meaningful form of adversity that a person can face. For instance, if someone goes their entire life free of racial discrimination, but they are sexually abused throughout their childhood, can we really say that that person has had a privileged existence? Would that be accurate? More importantly, would that be compassionate?
Perhaps this is part of the problem in our obsession with group identity in general. It blinds us to the individual – her needs, her story, her uniqueness. And I would argue that, to whatever extent we size people up by group identity, we simultaneously extract them from the uniqueness of their own story, and their true identity. In doing so – whether we intend to or not – we dehumanize the object of our assessment.
The second problem is the word “privilege” itself. Let’s be honest. “Privilege” isn’t exactly a word that is morally neutral. It has a connotation of ill-gotten gain, or unfair advantage. Again, even if there is truth to that accusation, we know that it is not true uniformly. It is, therefore, misleading, since the term isn’t capable of being used in a way that makes distinctions about who may be exempt from its depiction. But the greater problem is that in using a word with a negative connotation, we have to admit that the term is inherently pejorative. Given our history, are pejorative terms that describe racial groups more, or less likely to lead to the healing of the racial divide?
When Martin Luther King spoke of a future world where people would not be judged by the color of their skin, it marked a significant step forward in our progression toward compassion, and understanding. The concept of white privilege, and its over use in the social-political lexicon, is proof that progress never occurs in a linear fashion; rather it is a process of three steps forward, and one step back.
The issue at play in all of this is the departure from the ethic of color-blindness. That idea should not be dismissed as easily as it often is. Why? Because a move toward color consciousness can only serve to reinforce the tribalistic tendencies that are so innate to the human animal. That is not to say that I shouldn’t see your color. It is that I shouldn’t see you ***as*** a color.
It is legitimate, and necessary to highlight the struggles of people of color, but we should do that with the proper tools: reason, and evidence. Boiling it down to a catchy buzz-word that makes comparisons between groups will only lead us farther from the just, and peaceful society that we wish to create.
\- CJ
[https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com](https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com)
Is white privilege a real thing?
Before you rise up against me with burning indignation at my wokeless ignorance, or lick your chops in hopes that I will dismantle the proposition altogether, I need to say that I don’t have a dog in this fight.
Whether it’s real or not is the wrong question.
Even if we grant that white privilege exists, we still have what I think are more important considerations: is it helpful as a concept? Does it lead us to having a more productive conversation about race issues?
I don’t use twitter much, but recently I did a google search for “white privilege” and I quickly discovered that nobody on either side of the debate is pulling any punches. I found images of two cops kneeling on a white man’s neck, used as evidence against. Other images of holocaust survivors intended to show that the color of one’s skin shouldn’t be taken at face value. Other posts referred to people in terms that were unapologetically pejorative. Ashor Blaise tweeted “its difficult to admit that white privilege is real when you’ve amounted to very little despite it.” It’s a clever tweet, I had to admit. I couldn’t come up with a comeback like that, even if I were trying as hard as he was, to wound someone, using their membership of a racial group as ammunition.
It’s the good ol’ culture war. Only it’s not about culture so much. It’s about race.
A race war? Yes, it seems that that is what our social-political discourse on the issue is in danger of degenerating into.
Now, after the tragic death of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests, the streets are looking an awful lot like the back and forth on Twitter. Only instead of hashtags, memes, and snarky one-liners, it’s tear gas, rubber bullets, and broken windows.
True, the majority of these protests are peaceful. Still, there is an uncanny parallel between the way we talk about these issues as a culture, and the way that conversation seems to manifest itself in the streets, on the beat, and in the white house.
There are two important observations to make. Before I make them, I want to make it clear that it is not my intention to be dismissive of racial injustice. On the contrary, I make these observations in the hope of improving the dialogue around it.
The first problem with the term “white privilege,” is the same problem that exists with so much of our buzz-word based rhetoric: oversimplification. Not only is there the obvious problem of telling who it applies to, and to what extent, but it seems to imply that racial discrimination is the only meaningful form of adversity that a person can face. For instance, if someone goes their entire life free of racial discrimination, but they are sexually abused throughout their childhood, can we really say that that person has had a privileged existence? Would that be accurate? More importantly, would that be compassionate?
Perhaps this is part of the problem in our obsession with group identity in general. It blinds us to the individual – her needs, her story, her uniqueness. And I would argue that, to whatever extent we size people up by group identity, we simultaneously extract them from the uniqueness of their own story, and their true identity. In doing so – whether we intend to or not – we dehumanize the object of our assessment.
The second problem is the word “privilege” itself. Let’s be honest. “Privilege” isn’t exactly a word that is morally neutral. It has a connotation of ill-gotten gain, or unfair advantage. Again, even if there is truth to that accusation, we know that it is not true uniformly. It is, therefore, misleading, since the term isn’t capable of being used in a way that makes distinctions about who may be exempt from its depiction. But the greater problem is that in using a word with a negative connotation, we have to admit that the term is inherently pejorative. Given our history, are pejorative terms that describe racial groups more, or less likely to lead to the healing of the racial divide?
When Martin Luther King spoke of a future world where people would not be judged by the color of their skin, it marked a significant step forward in our progression toward compassion, and understanding. The concept of white privilege, and its over use in the social-political lexicon, is proof that progress never occurs in a linear fashion; rather it is a process of three steps forward, and one step back.
The issue at play in all of this is the departure from the ethic of color-blindness. That idea should not be dismissed as easily as it often is. Why? Because a move toward color consciousness can only serve to reinforce the tribalistic tendencies that are so innate to the human animal. That is not to say that I shouldn’t see your color. It is that I shouldn’t see you ***as*** a color.
It is legitimate, and necessary to highlight the struggles of people of color, but we should do that with the proper tools: reason, and evidence. Boiling it down to a catchy buzz-word that makes comparisons between groups will only lead us farther from the just, and peaceful society that we wish to create.
\- CJ
[https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com](https://mycrazybusymind.wordpress.com)
