13 September 03
Scrutinizing White Privilege
For the past two days I was participating in a diversity workshop run by the campus. Though it was not specifically about race, this culture is organized very much along racial lines, a racial hierarchy that includes class and other elements. Race was therefore an important topic over the two days.
The thing I learned most forcefully: that there will always be more to learn.
Owning up to, and acknowledging, the privileges that are mine because of my skin color is painful. I can rent or buy a house, I can expect to drive anywhere without being stopped by the police, I can shop in the market without being followed, I will be innocent until proven guilty: these things I take for granted; I don’t even notice them. My brothers and sisters of color do not experience life like this. They fear for their children’s safety on a constant basis. They experience much more subtle racism than perhaps their parents did, but they experience it all the time. Every day. The stories I heard made my skin crawl.
Another thing I learned is that there is not much impetus for the dominant culture—i.e. the culture that looks like me—to change. We have it too good. Any requests for a reconsideration of our position on the part of people of color are likely to be met with incomprehension, incredulity, or ridicule. “We’re bending over backwards,” the standard line runs. “We’re doing what we can. But we can only do so much…”
I believe we can do more, we whites who are tired of the way things are. We can encourage those around us to look at these things in a new way. It involves a lot, mostly the acknowledgement that the privilege we have is unearned and undeserved. That the fear we have, collectively, is mostly fear of the unknown, and the unknown can be learned about. It’s an opportunity we have. I believe our world can be richer for it. And I believe the consequences of not doing this will be disastrous.
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Once I was sitting on the shore of a lake near Mt. Fuji when a tall, willowy black man approached me with his half Japanese son. We got to talking about what it is like in Japan. He admitted that even here he experienced racism, but the difference he felt was that, “At least here there is honest racism. If they don’t like something about you they let you know loud and clear, whereas in the States everyone pretends that there is nothing wrong. Also, here in Japan the Japanese don’t descriminate by your skin color. Those who don’t like foreigners put them all in the same category: you’re just a foreigner. I’ve never felt threatened because I’m black.”
There are many things I don’t like about Japan, but the sense of safety and the sense that in general you are treated fairly and with respect no matter where you come from or what you look like is one thing that endears Japan to me. Freedom of expression and the press is jealously guarded here and I always find it puzzling that so many Americans seem to feel that such freedoms are only practiced in the States.
I’ve been manhandled by police in California for looking like a Mexican in a rich neighborhood. I’ve had beer bottles thrown at me and the words “Get the ”#$x%x out of this country, you #$x%x’ Ayrab!” from a passing car while I was riding my bicycle in Oregon. I’ve had a guy stick a gun in my face while I was working the graveyard shift at a hotel giftshop in Boston and again was told, “Go home you ”#$x%x Ayrab!” after I caught him attempting steal some candy bars. And I’ve had my door broken down by a drunk neighbor in Boston, who said he ”#$x%x hated having such foereign filth living in the same building as him”. Luckily the police came by, but I decided then and there I had to get out of such a crazy country.
I don’t know if I will ever go back. Certainly I want nothing to do with the mentally ill immigration people at the borders and airports who treat foreigners like garbage, and make non-whites feel like guilty criminals. After the New York tragedy it must be simply unbearable.