Meeting Minutes from InspireSeattle Social on June 13, 2009
We had our fifth social event of 2009 at LueRachelle
Brim-Atkins s home. We had a nice turnout with around 22 guests to participate
in our racism workshop. Thanks so much to LueRachelle for opening up her home
and for generously leading this workshop.
Summer sabbatical inSPIRe is taking the summer
off!
inSPIRe Website Please visit our website for
information about inSPIRe, soon including photos from this social.
www.inspireseattle.org
Our Standard Reminder !
inSPIRe s goal is to provide a lively, fun as well as
informative discussion on current issues. As mentioned in our rules of
engagement for our social events, we are not trying to obtain total agreement
on topics discussed in our meetings, but rather to educate members as to
different viewpoints. In building our local Progressive community through
grassroots efforts like ours, we believe it is important to provide people with
educational opportunities to understand different aspects of current issues as
well as a fun, friendly environment in which to discuss these. Our guest
speakers are encouraged to share their insights and thus to lobby for the
support of inSPIRe members towards their goals. Building community, providing
education, inspiring activism and having fun remain our four primary objectives!
The Standard Apology !
As always, the open and engaging nature of our social
events leads to our note-taker/recorder/editor (me) to get caught up in the
discussion and thus miss writing everything down. My apologies if I missed any
important points made or issues raised, or if I did not capture or
misinterpreted our speakers messages in any way.
Announcements
IAN (Inspire Activist Network)
The King County Executive Candidate Forum on June 1st
was a success!
inSPIRe Book Club! We are now reading House of
Cards by William Cohan for our next meeting, July 12th. To join
the book club and get on the list, just send an email to
inspirebooks-subscribe@list.moralpolitics.org.
Keynote Speaker: LueRachelle Brim-Atkins
Main discussion topic for this evening: racism
LueRachelle lead us in a participatory workshop on racism.
She began by describing our front packs . Studies have shown that all of us
have our values, understandings and opinions surrounding most issues well
solidified by the time we are ten years old from our surroundings and the early
lessons we were taught. This set of our world view is sometimes called our
front pack . We learn from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends,
neighbors, etc. Our core values come from the messages we receive. We will
typically hold onto these values unless we have a significant life event change
them.
All in the audience at our workshop then shared personal
stories about what was in their own front pack, and why it got there. We all
agreed that these stories would be left in the room , so I won t provide
details here. But suffice to say that we all have very different backgrounds
resulting in different front packs. Front packs are invisible, but they are
real. They tend to result in cultural collisions from our different cultural
backgrounds. Ask yourself: what is in my own front pack, and why?
We then all turned to the person next to us and had a 5
minute chat on our own experiences with racism growing up. When we came back
together as a full group, we then shared many of our own stories. Again, the
diversity was clear. This discussion lasted for approximately 30 minutes. From
it we were exposed to our many different life lessons and the learnings we have
taken from them.
A key lesson LueRachelle learned in her life was that one
never knows when racism is going to hit you. This is the essence of racism.
LueRachelle next describe to us a useful learning ladder
that we all go through as we learn and grow.
- Step one is unconscious incompetency . During
this step, one basically is unaware of the fact that they are making
mistakes regarding an issue. But since they are unconscious of this, this
step can still be a comfortable place to be.
- Step two is conscious incompetency . This step
is where one is after they have been exposed to the fact that they really are
incompetent at something, I.E., they become aware of their mistakes.
- Step three is conscious competency . This step
is where we go when we make conscious efforts to fix the problem , but it
doesn t yet come naturally.
- Step four is unconscious competency . This step
is where we are at when we ve gotten so good, through a lot of practice, that
we do the right thing without even having to think about this.
We discussed in great detail how this learning process
works, and how it relates to the issue of racism. Again, many personal stories
were shared. For me, a key takeaway was that judgment serves no purpose but we
mostly don t see this fact. Also, all of us will be more open if we recognize
our own incompetencies.
We then discussed the differences between prejudice and
racism. After a very lengthy discussion by the group, we got to the learning
that everyone pre-judges , and this is not necessarily bad. Racism involves
power . Systemic, institutionalized power that is used against someone or a
group of people equates to racism. In America, power is institutionalized.
White people, and more accurately white men, have the power. Prejudgment +
power = racism.
But here is a compelling fact: there is no such thing as
race . Recent studies have validated this. Please read more on this at
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm. The
social construct that came up with the idea of race actually happened quite late
in the development of our culture.
Society acts to confirm power. This is seen in many
flavors. Frequently it involves injustice towards the poor.
To see where you really personally stand in regards to the
issue of racism, don t just assess your own views. Ask yourself who are my
circle of friends and peers? Why is this?
We next discussed the issue of White Privilege. Again,
group participation was extensive and personal, so individual stories won t be
shared here. However, I will include a compelling article on the subject of
White Privilege below.
White
Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
By Peggy McIntosh
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of
meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"
Through work to bring materials from women's studies into
the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant
that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are
disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society,
the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of
lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of
advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male
privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a
phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking,
there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our
society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege
that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had
been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but
had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which
puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white
privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun
in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come
to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can
count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious.
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions,
maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As
we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some
of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having
described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base
of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was
unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that
white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are
just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to
count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been
conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an
oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged
culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended
on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague
Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as
morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to
benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like
"us."
Daily
effects of white privilege
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying
some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those
conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege
than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course
all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my
African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into
daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot
count on most of these conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people
of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained
to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of
renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would
want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a
location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well
assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page
of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about
"civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular
materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a
publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a
group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to
another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her
race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the
music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which
fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who
can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count
on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time
from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of
systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and
employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief
worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put
this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not
answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals,
the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without
putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being
called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my
racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of
persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my
culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much
I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the
"person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my
tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books,
greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my
race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I
belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place,
outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague
of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement
than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion
of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely
to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree
with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there
isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either
position than a person of color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing
and minority activist programs, or disparage
them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways
to be more or less protected from negative
consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the
perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or
body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as
self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer
without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my
race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask
of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be
willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political,
imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be
accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness
reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that
people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have
chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my
race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have
to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure
that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions
which give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of
the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color
and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting
embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people
approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which
implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my
choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of
public life, institutional and social.
Elusive
and fugitive
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list
until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive
and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must
give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a
free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain
people through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I
have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did
I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we
need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these
varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and
others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white
privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person.
There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among
those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was
educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and
of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect,
or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the
main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident,
comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident,
uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of
hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in
turn, upon people of color.
For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me
misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether
earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have
described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such
privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
Earned
strength, unearned power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and
unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact
permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list
are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be
decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be
the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful
people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.
We might at least start by distinguishing between positive
advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which
unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the
feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say,
should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned
entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage
for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the
power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United
States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who truly distressed about
systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question
for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will
get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred
dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to
do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many,
perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism
doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see
"whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the
only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily
experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or
advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.
Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding
parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the
advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it
is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social
class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other
factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the
Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of
1977.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking
oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms,
which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class
and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize
racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in
invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them.
I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their
attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites
whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us.
Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge
their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege
are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here.
They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned
advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by
whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to
try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance
exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage,
like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the
United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that
democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that
freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up
those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that
have most of it already. Although systemic change takes many decades, there are
pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise
our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we
do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question
whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of
our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader
base.
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley
Collage Center for Research on Women.
As always, many, many questions were asked but not
recorded. Sorry!
Many thanks to all who participate in inSPIRe!
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