I'm not understanding where the "hating yourself part comes into this. I completely recognize the underlying, pervasive racist structure that props up our society--I am very aware of what my race does for me--but I can't hate myself for that. I can hate the system, I can hate other peoples' inability to see it. But I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to hate myself. Maybe I'm familiar with my white privilege because I've been in numerous situations when I'm going along just fine until someone finds out my family is mixed racially--and then I'm very suddenly treated very differently. I've been subjected to that jarring contrast so much that it was always quite obvious to me that, yeah, there are perks if you're white. And maybe it's because my family struggled with it all together that I don't feel like I should hate myself for it. I don't know...it's just hard for me to make that connection from white privilege to hating yourself.
Hating yourself for it is extremely corrosive. The radicals of the late 1960's did it. It turned them into burned out basket cases, who would leave movements for social justice and focus inward to heal the damage done. Most damage was done by others in a group or commune, showing someone the errors of their ways, in a sincere effort to reform them. In practice, it meant making each one hate themselves through constant criticism. Aint no way to live, or to get justice. "The discussions took the form of self-criticism, a group psychotherapy in which it was assumed that anything said in self defense was probably a self-serving and defensive alibi." (Tom Hayden's memoirs)
Self criticism is important, but very dangerous.
I encounter priveledged white people suffering from white guilt, and even hatred, all the time in Native American Studies. Many of them go out of their way to adopt Indian identities. Sadly, as this is a form of cultural appropriation, it's just another racist act (as is the reduction of "cultural others" to the status of victims).
Not much time to write, but I wanted to say I think you have a lot of things right here.
I wonder if the reason people react so strongly is that the ideas of institutional racism, etc. are not widely understood. When people here "racism" most people seem to think "overt acts of racism." (or "individual") So when middle class suburbanites hear that they are the beneficiaries of institutional racism, they immediatly push off, "but I'm not a racist." Unfortunately, I think the standard usage of "racism" clouds the complexities of other uses of the term. What I've noticed in my experience is that people react much the way you described when their advantages are described in terms of race, but not nearly as strongly when it is put in economic terms.
Pita,
I'm curious about your comment, "as this is a form of cultural appropriation, it's just another racist act." I can see how cultural appropriation can be racist in a couple of ways - both as individual racism (in the case of making a caricature of a belief/custom/etc.) or as institutional racism (relating the "otherness" of it to novelty/etc.). But, as I read your statement, it seems that cultural appropriation is racist in and of itself. I understand cultural appropriation to simply mean adopting a belief/custom of another culture into ones own culture. I'm curious if your use of the term coincides with mine, and if so, how that is, in and of itself, racist; or conversely, if you are using the term differently, what you mean by it.
Cultural appropriation is a whole different topic, and there is plenty to discuss in what aspazia has already presented. Although I am interested in the idea that cultural appropriation comes from guilt.
Aspazia, you are cooking on all burners here. Excellent post. My own experience, going back to college days thirty years ago, resonates very well with Hanno's quotation of Tom Hayden. Aspazia, you are very right that ego strength is required to look at these things; yet at 50 I still interrogate myself as to whether I have the ego strength required, and it is really impossible to ask it of college age students (especially those working two jobs and going to school, etc.)
Funny though, I always thought the ego attack wasn't really so much from presenting the facts of "privilege" in a classroom setting, as from the "mind games" that progressives used to play with each other (used to, hell) to establish who was the king of the moral heights mountain. Such status entailing a kind of moral purificationism and endless self-betterment, but always starting from a not-OK destabilizing of the self which is never really allowed to accept itself no matter what strivings are made. This is really unattractive to me now.
I wonder how much of this comes from the Christian tradition, specifically the Protestant "sinners in the hand of an angry God" viewpoint. Though Maoist "criticism/ self-criticism" is in there too. Confession (which brings in Foucault). When it is accepted rather than resisted, it certainly makes one vulnerable to power trips by others, who have one's own self-acceptance in their hands; this is a recollection of my own experience.
I don't know how to solve this from a pedagogical standpoint. On the one hand, its mere presentation seems to imply an assertion of moral superiority by the person teaching it. On the other hand, if the person teaching it denies that she is any better than the students, this comes across as a kind of "Christian" humility which has its own sting -- "join me and all of us in our practice of ritual self-flagellation." Not an attractive invitation to some of us anymore.
My personal resolution for this dilemma is to accept and even "love" ordinary people for their ordinary desires, aspirations, and needs. This means an acceptance and not a denigration of one's own. You lower your standards for others as well as for oneself, and if you act, you act in solidarity or fellow feeling, not because you or they need some kind of redemption. Maybe the pedagogical answer is to lower the emotional /moral temperature but provide a lot of reality, in the form of accounts of other people's lives presented sympathetically but not moralistically.
I don't understand the 'hating yourself' either. It's hard to understand where this comes from, but I didn't learn to understand racism through a white privilege analysis. I have some reservations about it because it is contradictory without explanation: racism is structural -- racism doesn't require intent -- but the solution to the problem appears to be very personal: examine your privilege!
A student is left wondering: so what do I do?
What it also does, I think, is militate against this notion, from critical race theory and criticial whiteness studies:
"If you have come to help me, please go home. But if you have come because your liberation is somehow bound with mine, then we may work together."
I don't think MacIntosh intends this -- and I didn't read the whole essay before I posted this, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
Humbition really liked an article I posted from Linda Alcoff that you might find helpful Aspazia, What Should White People Do?
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006...hite-people-do/
Linda really liked the discussion that sprang up around the article, too.
The problem you're coming up against, maybe, is something that was addressed in a Teaching Sociology article years ago. I'll try to remember the article title/authors, but it was about the problem of anger that erupts in the classroom whenever we teach about race / class / gender. Students can feel despair: what can I do?
the article suggests that the class should always include a component that helps people see that there are things that can be done.
I agree with Jeff, obviously, in so far as the idea of insitutionalize oppression is wholly absent from Us political discourse. People don't get what institutions, social structure, etc. are. We live in this incredibly individualist society, where we are constantly taught that it is all about intention. Racism and Sexism are words that signal personal intent, and its hard to get beyond that.
And Humbition, man, spot on about the double bind: you are either in a position of enlightened one OR in the position of self-flagellater.
Oh good gravy, do you have that one right.
To that end, maybe hands on essays that work toward a "so what can you do?" approach might be helpful:
one, Tired of Playing Monopoly
http://blog.pulpculture.org/tire...tired-monopoly/
Jenny Yamato's Something About the Subject Makes it Hard to Name
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006...t-hard-to-name/
(damn humbition, you're just genius!)
I don't know how to solve this from a pedagogical standpoint. On the one hand, its mere presentation seems to imply an assertion of moral superiority by the person teaching it. On the other hand, if the person teaching it denies that she is any better than the students, this comes across as a kind of "Christian" humility which has its own sting -- "join me and all of us in our practice of ritual self-flagellation." Not an attractive invitation to some of us anymore.
Boy, this is really making me pause. And, I am sort of sore to realize that I have put myself in the position of moralizer. It makes me cringe. But, it sure does do a lot to explain the reaction. But, then again, it doesn't fully explain why the reaction comes from working class white students.
Putting students in the position of being "confessor," is no good either. So, I am going to have to rethink this. But, let me add, that I don't think it should be easy to accept white privilege. Perhaps it shouldn't inexorably lead to self-loathing, but it's not unreasonable to assume--is it?--that the awareness of structural racism and how it benefits "me" could cause some emotional stuff.
But, I will think a lot more about how to do this without any implication of the holier than thou stuff. I, too, hate the type of oppression olympics that you describe. And, I think it is totally unproductive.
bitch/lab--
You know, you are exactly right that part of the anger comes from not knowing what to do. We taught this piece along with another article by Paul Kivel called "How to be an ally." This was full of strategies for how to be effective in dismantling structural racism. But, one student responded to this with annoyance, suggesting that it was talking down to her and that she was capable of figuring out what to do on her own. Ugh.
The whole class is designed to encourage, reward, and inspire students to take an active part in dismantling systems of inequality. But, I always fear that I have lost them once they read Mcintosh. So, maybe it is time to chuck it. But, if I do, I need something that is as effective of showing the other side of the coin. It is not enough to just look at racism as a problem of people of color.
Thanks, thanks, thanks.
Oh, and the Alcoff is a good suggestion. I need to look at that piece. I heard her give an earlier version of that when I was in grad school. Good call!
When I was an undergraduate and in graduate school, I saw a slide show put out by a Danish vegabond called "American Pictures" It was an eye opener, and not in a way that provokes a defensive reaction, in part because of central character.
Bring him to campus: www.american-pictures.com
Its a little dated by now, but wow.
Here is the book to read: *The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege,* By Robert Jenson.
After reading this small book, I made a checklist for myself to follow:
1. Every evening I will say to myself, "What did I do today to combat racism?"
2. I will own up to my racism, to what my ancestors did, own the guilt, and make restitution.
3. I will keep in mind that I am the problem, not "them."
4. I will recognize racism in others. I will not play it down or let it pass. I will keep my eyes and ears open and write and comment on what I observe.
5.I will understand that the only way to save this country is to lift the oppression.
Oh, I missed the part about it coming from white working class white students. Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you teaching in the south too?
Regardless as to what part of the US, here's the problem: working class people are keenly aware that *they* are continually stereotyped as THE racists.
In Fear of Falling, Barbara Ehrenreich has a great chapter on this: about the way the popular media, academia, public intellectuals, etc. effectively thrust on the white working class the role of "racists".
But a lot of working class kids are going to know, for various reasons, that it isn't confined to the working class. And in the south? This is a bitter issue. I won't go into it all here since I don't even know if that's an issue you're dealing with too.
I can also tell you my own personal stories of being seen as from the working class and then having white people in academia automatically assume I must be racist. It apparently didn't matter that I majored in African American Studies as an undergrad. They somehow missed that? I don't know.
Anyway, my background gave them, they thought, opportunity to engage in racist commentary to a sympathetic audience (or so they assumed). Ahh finally. I can say what I think, she'll understand! *rolls eyes*
when I taught on a team-taught course, I was asked to lead the plenary debate on the pro-affirmative action side. The course director reasoned that I should n b/c obviously I would have complicated views since I was a woman and for AA, but from a working class background and opposed to AA
I'm not kidding. This was a nice, well-meaning prof from Canada. And the worst part of it was: we'd been team teaching this course for several years. All of us knew that our upper middle class white students were split on the issue of AA -- about half would always write positions papers opposing AA!
So, where on earth did he get the idea that racism and opposition to AA was a problem of the working class? Beats me.
And this kind of thing went on *constantly*. Fortunately, I went to grad school when I was in my late 20s and had a fairly well-developed sense of self -- and I was a lefty, with a way to explain what was going
sorry to go on...
But if you're feeling resistence from white working class students, then what needs to be addressed is precisely this issue. After all, it's not white working class people that make the decision to produce "flesh" colored band-aids. It's not white working class people that create institional norms that carry out instistutionalized oppression. It's people in positions of power in those institutions.
----
And yes, re-reading the MacIntosh piece, what becomes clear was something I'd never noticed, not even from teaching this piece for a couple of years: it is entirely geared to her colleauges and in her social milieu: upper-middle class professional. The things she describes are so thoroughly middle- and upper-middle class.
A white working class student is not included in her audience because, for P MacIntosh, they don't exist. For her, work has some autonomy, for instance. For her, economic advantage is conflated with whiteness.
Figurative language and imagery? In the Arts?
heh. a white working class person feels that the arts reflects her?
"If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem."
--Leader would not be something the typical white working class student is going to see herself as.
easily "choosing" an affordable place to live?
arguments with colleages and what it has to do with your advancement?
-- to people fromworking class backgrounds, you don't have the kind of autonomy your job. you don't argue, period.
Do white working class students really feel it's their culture? Do they think they had anything in common with Walt Whitman? Hemingway? The people who made "high" American culture?
-- White working class people generally will feel their culture is denigrated in the popular media. The whole "redneck" comedien industry is dedicated to mocking that culture *first* before anyone else can.
I could go on. When I read MacIntosh's piece, I was already fully steeped in an anti-racist literature for reasons I won't get into here.
But placing myself in their shoes... Wow. And I was teaching students from very wealthy and upper-middle class backgrounds, so it hadn't occured to me to look at that article from another perspective.
I can see how MacIntosh's article just doesn't even speak to their daily experiences or that of their parents and relatives. Which will only add to their sneaking suspcion that academics like Peggy MacIntosh are completely unaware they exist.
They may not be cognizant of it or even be able to articulate it very well, but she's describing a work experiences that would make little sense to a lot of students anyway, and even less sense to working class people who tend not to experience much autonomy on the job.
How to teach this, I don't know, because the problem you'll also have to concern yourself with is the too easy way learning about issues that effect white working class students can allow them to still fail to grasp white privilege. The Tired of Playing Monopoly article is good for combatting that, though.
There's a discussion list for people interested in working class students and pedagogies, as well as working class studies. They might have some effective pedagogical approaches.
I also have here a really great article about what it's like for working class students from all races when they attend college: the problem of feeling like they have to "kill themselves" (disavow their identity) in order to fit in.
http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/lis...g-class-
studies
Bitch/Lab--
Amen. I think you just articulated what I was clumsily trying to say. The McIntosh piece does not speak to working class students. I teach just north of the Maso-Dixon line (about 10 miles north), but most of the white working class or lower middle class white students come from Philly, NJ, and Long Island. Many of them are Italian American (hence why I mused on my Long Island days). But, I think there are, as you rightly note, plenty of stereotypes out there that working class white people are racist, anti-affirmative action, etc. I hadn't thought of that angle, and it really makes sense!
We are going to teach Tired of Playing Monopoly. I love that piece because it treats social class as a culture, a perspective that I had never really adopted before.
Btw, on a some what unrelated note, are you a philosopher? I ask, because one of the problems I have with our textbook (Race, Class and Gender, by Collins and Andersen) is that it is sociology heavy. I am anti-Sociology as a discipline, but I find that the axioms with which Sociologists often view social phenomena are more rigid than mine are. They have to build models with certain assumptions built in. But, what if the assumptions are wrong? And, that is the philosopher in me, nagged by that.
Does that make any sense?
For me, facing up to my privileges doesn't translate into self-hate. There's emotional fallout, but it feels more like hopelessness and frustration than shame. When I realize how pervasive the privilege is, and how I am largely unable to renounce it or opt out of it, I feel sad and frustrated. These feelings don't diminish my desire to fight racism or confront privilege. Yet, at the same time, these feelings arise from the realization that I can scarcely hope to relate to the people around me in what I consider to be a fully morally acceptable way.
I think men who become aware of male privilege may have similar feelings. They want to have equal, loving, trusting relationships with women. They don't want to be sexist. They also realize that our entire society not only gives them privilege, but also demands that they take it. Attempts to refuse privilege are often seen by both men and women as weak, fake, and/or self-serving.
Do we intend to fight for racial justice or not? Are we going to let white people off the hook about race because they are "working class?"
Not that I think racism is any more prevalent among low income whites than it is among other whites!
Racism is immoral.
You sound mighty confident about putting people in categories according to your class definitions. Isn't that in itself a form of classism?
me--
You sound mighty confident about putting people in categories according to your class definitions. Isn't that in itself a form of classism?
If a student tells me that she comes from a working class background and therefore doesn't have any special privileges, am I being presumptive?
I'm glad if it was helpful. so weird, but I was so happy with Peggy McIntosh's article when it first came out or at least was widely circulated, I just never noticed. And I mostly taught it to students for whom it made sense and/or it was well known that you don't or shouldn't reveal any resentful sentiments -- ever -- even if you think them.
After I wrote that, i wondered if anyone had ever analyzed it and perhaps updated it to offer examples that are more relevant to students' lives. Surely, when PM wrote that, she was speaking more to colleagues at a conference, yes?
If no one has, I think that would be a great journal article.
As for your question, will reply via email. The short answer is that I'm trained as an evil sociologist, but have an odd background which means I know exactly what you're getting at.
I'm curious about the specifics, where you see the issues. I have a copy of the 1999 edition of the book. Would love to hear a more in-depth critique of the book's sociological biases -- which I can see, in their insistence on examining things like "social institutions".
yes. Just enrolling in your college is a form of privilege. But more importantly, if I'm following this, the purpose of your class is to question assumptions about race (and gender?). So why would assumptions about class be unquestioned? And why would you assume that a naive college student would be able to make an assessment of their own class at the same time that you think they need to be prodded to question their assumptions regarding race? A generation ago steel workers, auto plant workers, fire fighters, school teachers, office workers, and artists (actors, musicians) all considered themselves middle class. And aspiring to the American dream of home ownership was a middle class calling to the point of being a middle-class signifier. Do such assumptions still hold?
Great post. And I will read its follow-up as well, but some of the comments remind me of an old blues song (maybe Sonny Terry?) laughing at a young "White" guy who's obsessed by wanting to play the blues even though he doesn't (and maybe can't) fully "get it." The singer keeps talking about the "White" guy's frustration and how he's wound up "lost in the blues."
Some of what I see here is one of the reasons why I bowed out of full tilt activity in "the movement" in the 1970's after beating my brains out for several years. We start "processing" and the next thing you know we're "processing" the "process" instead of the issue...
I am a sociologist and make no apologies about focusing on the institutionalization of oppression in the name of "racism" (which then explains how working class European-Americans and upper class European-Americans interact and experience their mutuality in this matter). But I tend to keep my own discussions (in and out of classrooms) brazen and specific. It's not my job to make "White" people feel more comfortable with their problems. It's my job, as I see it (not as a sociologist or college professor, but as a human) to say what I see, to diagnose the problem. When the diagnosis is correct, the treatment is apparent. When the diagnosis is incorrect because we're lost in trying to help "White" folks (one more time) or because we're lost in the process (ad nauseum), then ultimately everything stays as it is. Which is in nobody's best interest.
Again, great post, Aspazia. Lots of meat and potatoes in there. And thanks to bitch|lab for bringing me here to read it. When I get a minute, I'm going to link to it.
But more importantly, if I'm following this, the purpose of your class is to question assumptions about race (and gender?). So why would assumptions about class be unquestioned? And why would you assume that a naive college student would be able to make an assessment of their own class at the same time that you think they need to be prodded to question their assumptions regarding race?
I have been mulling this over ever since your first comment. I am not sure I am grasping your critique, although you might be onto something here. Our framework in the course is indeed to consider race, class and gender. We are not assuming that the concept of class is by any means a less contested notion that racial or gender differences.
I want to make sure I am getting your point: are you saying that anyone who attends my college, by definition, cannot be working class? Or that such young students do not yet have any clear sense of what class they are in?
If I am right, why do you assume this?
I simply don't know how working class is defined. If a construction worker starts his own business, is he working class even though he is a business owner? How about teachers and nurses? What if a teacher is married to a construction worker? What about teachers and nurses who belong to labor unions? Do you consider doctors and lawyers middle class, and everyone else with a job working class? Or perhaps doctors and lawyers (and accountants and college professors) are part of a professional class and everyone else is middle class? What about the auto workers at Ford, whom we learn in the news this week average almost $70 an hour. That's $140,000 a year without considering overtime. Is someone at that salary level really working class?
Commenting by HaloScan
