Your Black World: White Privilege and Racism

This was written by my friend and respected colleague, Tim Wise. Tim, along with Father Michael Pfleger, both happen to be white males who actually get it. They both have my eternal respect.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
9/13/08

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Why Universities are Fundamentally Racist

By: Dr. Boyce Watkins

I recently spoke at my undergraduate alma mater, The University of Kentucky. Coming back home was an amazing experience, as I could literally look at every corner, street, building and sidewalk on the campus and have a powerful memory of being in that particular spot. It could be the place where I first kissed my girlfriend, stood fuming over a bad grade, played football with my friends, had a car accident or drank a milkshake. I consider that university to be my home.

The energy in the auditorium was off the chain, as the house was totally packed. I actually never realized how much an educated black man can scare some people, as I had been labeled a “Dangerous Negro” by local media. The students came ready for war, and I was ready to guide them down the war path. I didn’t want them filled with hate. I just wanted them to have understanding, purpose and direction.

I started with the undeniable facts. I asked the students how many of them have had more than one black professor. Two hands went in the air, with both students being African-American studies majors. The fact that there were hundreds of people in the room, yet only a couple of them have had more than one black professor (after taking several years of classes, half the room was filled with college graduates) made my point immediately and clearly. There was honestly not much else to say.

Is it not the right of students of color to have faculty (especially tenured faculty, not just soon-to-be-fired adjuncts and assistants) who look like them? Is it the presumed destiny of these students to feel that they are not worthy of the same rights as white students, who are more likely to have mentors, associates and individuals with a common cultural background and disposition? I never had a black professor in my class until I became one, and I took far more classes in my life than I care to admit. When I did meet one black professor (the only black professor in a business school faculty of 90), he became my mentor, changed my career path and became one of my best friends. To this day, he is, to my knowledge, the only black professor tenured in the 140 year history of the entire University of Kentucky School of Business. That’s a damn shame. The bigger shame is that this is actually the norm.

I will be blunt and make the politically suicidal statement that many faculty across America might be afraid to make: the hiring and tenure of black faculty is simply not a priority for most predominantly white universities. We are invited in droves to dribble basketballs, but not asked to contribute intellectually to the same campuses that earn collective billions from black youth whose mother’s can’t even pay the rent. We are asked to sweep the floor and win football games, but are declined the opportunity to make critical decisions or drive campus policy. Rather than giving results when it comes to the hiring and promotion of black faculty, we are given the same old excuses. Universities have taken little personal responsibility as it pertains to dealing with the residual impact of their clearly racist historical foundations. Their predecessors didn’t want us there, and by having such allegiance to the traditions of racists, many universities are merely continuing the dirty work their academic forefathers began.

The excuses universities use for not hiring or tenuring black professors usually fit (but are not limited to) a few neat categories. While Business Schools are the worst when it comes to diversity, there is evidence that many of these arguments also apply across campus:

1) “We can’t find black professors, they don’t exist”. That’s a flat out lie. They do exist. I know a lot of them. They go to the best schools, do great work, and then apply for jobs, only to be told that they aren’t qualified for the position. Most of them don’t get a chance to be interviewed, even by academic departments that have not hired or tenured a person of color in over 120 years. I have many friends RIGHT NOW who are highly qualified to teach at the top universities, but they aren’t getting a second look when they send in their applications.

2) “The ones who apply for hiring or tenure are just not qualified. Therefore, we can’t quite justify giving keeping them here.” – There is not a more insulting statement in the world, nor one that is more indicative of the mentality that embraces white supremacy. The idea that there is a job that hundreds of people have done, mostly white men, in which THERE IS NOT A PERSON OF COLOR ON EARTH QUALIFIED TO DO THAT JOB implies that you’ve not come to terms of the shear insanity of such a conclusion. Given America’s history of racism and exclusion, it is far more likely that this history of exclusion plays a powerful role in the fact that many people are being systematically shut out of these opportunities. The environment was built by racists to promote and support the success of one ethnic group over another (take a look at an old picture of your own campus from, say, 1950….see any black folks in that picture?).

Even when racism leaves the hearts and minds of the individuals affiliated with that institution, their commitment to the standards created and embraced by the institution (developed on an undeniably racist foundation) allow racial inequality to fester and have an impact on the hiring and promotion processes of that university. Many of the power brokers at predominantly white universities were hired during a time when the “No negroes allowed” sign was in full view. They were mentored by individuals who obtained their powerful influence during periods of clear racial exclusion. Years later, young black scholars “play the game” like Parker Brothers, only to find themselves feeling like black defendants in the court of law, being criticized, scrutinized and “haterologized” by individuals who just don’t see the significance of any work they’ve done in the black community. When black scholars bring something different and powerful to the table, they are rejected. When they try to morph themselves into white men and bring the same weak junk to the table, most are rejected. Who you are is not good enough and most of us are not good enough at trying to be somebody else. In the end, your experience as a black faculty member is no different from that of a black boy in the public school system being told by his suburban teacher that he should be in special education, needs to take Ridlin and has a behavioral disorder. As a rapper might say, “Ain’t a damn thang changed.”

This leads to the another important question: “Who is deciding if an applicant is qualified?” If a group/committee created and sustained by a historically racist institution is making decisions on who is qualified and who is not, then their criteria for choosing those who are most qualified is again likely to support the advancement of one group over another. That’s like forcing Garth Brooks to perform in the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and then judging his talent based on the audience’s reaction. Even if the voting is fair, and the individuals want to be fair-minded, the reality is that the system is not fair at all and the outcomes are simply unreliable.

Now, the third standard excuse:

3) “We made offers to them, but they won’t take the job” – Easy racist tactic: offer the minority candidate an embarrassing lowball salary and then let them walk away. That’s what the Yankees did to Joe Torre- they made an offer, but the offer was so insulting that they knew he would not take it. That’s like urinating on your girlfriend’s $3 engagement ring and then saying “B*&^%, will you marry me?” What’s interesting is that when most major universities, who’ve sold the soul of their academic integrity to collegiate athletics, want a hot shot basketball coach, they pay as much as $4 million dollars per year to make it happen. In other words, they find a way to get what they want.

I once saw two pictures, side by side, in the law school of my alma mater. One was a picture of the faculty, the other a picture of the janitorial staff. The first picture was 100% white, the other 100% black. What is most telling about the picture is that scores of faculty walked past that picture every single day and never noticed anything wrong. Deep down, they thought this was the way things were supposed to be.

The source of this injustice is the same reason that many black scholars were once told by high school teachers that they were not qualified for college. It is the same reason that black men and women are dying in the prison systems. All the while, “geniuses” like George W. Bush are being funneled to the top of major corporations, Harvard Business School, Yale University and the White House. The same is true of academia, where individuals wear crowns composed of discriminatory entitlement and arrogantly sprinkle scorn on those of color who've been exposed to fundamentally and ridiculously flawed assessments. Not me homeboy, I'm not that brotha. Until I have senior faculty of color fairly evaluating my academic credentials, I have ruled any such assessment to be flawed and unreliable.

Racial inequality took 400 years to build, but for some reason, people are asinine enough to think it should take just 20 years to fix it. America has spent centuries constructing institutionalized racism, but no time deconstructing and rebuilding in a spirit of fairness. Even the most brilliant of us are duped into the same traps of racial bias, lame excuses, and efforts to invalidate the messenger that were used by racists 100 years ago. I fully expect that those most infected with the disease of racism will find some way to discredit what I am saying, to excuse the clear imbalance around them and to engage in some process of thought that inevitably concludes the inferiority of black scholars. What is most sad is that such behavior is quite predictable.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” He is also the founder of YourBlackWorld.com For more information, please visit www.boycewatkins.com.