One of the most unbelievably stupid articles you will ever read…really. — Ed.
Unfortunately, I lost the link that inspired this. But I recently saw a post by a conservative about “reclaiming” the word racist. It went on to list a collection of reasons why he was a racist. The gist of it was that all of us dirty liberals were the real racists – because there’s no possible reason for us to support things like affirmative action, welfare, etc., unless we really, deep down, believe that minorities – particularly blacks – are stupid animals incapable of taking care of themselves.
It’s typical bullshit. So I’m responding in my own way. Because, you see, I am a racist. I’m not proud of that fact – but growing up in a deeply racist and sexist culture, you can’t avoid absorbing racist and sexist messages and attitudes into your worldview. And the blogger who inspired this is, like me, a member of the privileged elite. The difference between us is that I at least try to notice the effects of my privilege. I
I don’t support social justice programs like affirmative action, welfare, and job training because I think that poor black people need help because they’re less smart than me: I think that people like me have unfair advantages that we rarely appreciate, and that everyone deserves the same advantages that I’ve been lucky enough to receive. But however idealistic I am, however commited I am to social justice, the fact remains: I am, to my shame, a racist.
- I am a racist – because I never noticed all of the unearned privileges that are given to me until someone pointed them out.
- I am a racist – because even after learning about the unearned privileges that I receive, I still don’t notice them.
- I am a racist, because I have grown up in a culture that, at every turn, teaches me that to be white is to be better, and smarter, and I have absorbed that lesson.
- I am a racist, because I instinctively react to members of minorities with fear.
- I am a racist, because I live in a sunset town.
- I am a racist, because I believe that I deserve the success Ihave, even though I know people who are more smart, capable, andtalented than I am never had the chances that I did tobe successful, because of the color of their skin.
- I am a racist – because I am a white man who has directly benefited from the unfair preferences that have been directed towards me all of my life.
- I am a racist – because every day, I benefit from the denial of basic privileges to other people.
- I am a racist, because I do not notice the things that are denied to people who are different from me.
- I am a racist, because I do not notice the advantages that I have over others.
- I am a racist, because even when I do manage to notice what is denied to people of different races and backgrounds, I don’t speak up.
The point of this isn’t just to do a sort of “walk of shame”. Thepoint is that I am an incredibly lucky person, who has benefited fromall sorts of things – from where I was born, to the color of my skin,to the background of my parents, to my gender. I have received, andcontinue to receive benefits because of those, and many other factorsthat have nothing to do with my own merit. And except forvery rare occasions, that goes unremarked, unnoticed.
People like me think of ourselves as the default – as “normal”people. We consider the incredible advantages that we receive tobe normal, unremarkable. We don’t notice just how much we benefitfrom that assumption of our own normality – the benefits wereceive fade into invisibility. We don’t even notice that they exist. Andthen when someone who doesn’t get those benefits has trouble, we naturally blame them for not being as successful as weare.
The underlying theme of people like the jerk who inspired thispost is: “I made it by myself, without any help. Sothey should be able to make it by themselves, without anyhelp either.”
But that’s bullshit, because none of us “made it by ourselves”. We’rethe beneficiaries of the system we live in.
I grew up in a wealthy town in NJ. We didn’t consider ourselveswealthy – but by comparison to lots of other people, we really were. I went to a very good school system. We complained about it a lot:the textbooks were too old; the equipment in the science labs were toobeaten up; the classes were too easy, and so on.
When I was in college, I got to teach a summer program for topstudents from schools in Newark, Camden, and Jersey City. And Idiscovered that my students went to schools where they didn’t have toworry about their books being too old – because they didn’thave any books. I mean that literally: in their Englishclasses, they didn’t have books, because their schools hadnever been able to buy new books since it opened – and thebooks had long since fallen apart. They didn’t complain about thelousy lab equipment – because their schools had never hadscience labs at all. How could people coming from schools like thatpossibly hope to compete with students from a school likemine? I didn’t admitted to college over people from their schools becauseI was smarter. I got admitted into college over people from theirschools because I was richer and whiter.
And when my students went to the campus bookstore to buybasic supplies like paper and pencils, the people who worked therefollowed them around the store – because what would abunch of poor black kids be doing in a bookstore if they weren’tthere to rob it?
I write this math blog for fun. How did I get the background to doit? I come from a highly educated family. They taught me to readbefore I even started preschool. I’d learned about statistics from myfather when I was in third grade. I learned about algebra in sixthgrade, even though my school didn’t teach it until 8th or 9th. Ilearned calculus in my freshman year in high school – even though myschool didn’t teach it until a senior year AP class. I was learning this stufflong before the school taught it to me; and my parents made sure thatthey bought a house in a very expensive school district where there wouldbe things like AP classes. My parents paid for me to go to college – which gaveme the time to take courses not just because I needed them to graduate,but because they covered things that I wanted to learn, just for fun.
How could a person from a family that just managed to scrape by,who lived in a school system that couldn’t afford textbooks for thebasic classes, much less the AP classes, how could they compete withme? It’s damned close to impossible. Not because they’re any lesssmart, or any less talented. But because I’ve had an absolutelyuncountable number of advantages. Every day of my life, I’ve beengiven benefits which helped make it possible for me to become who andwhat I am. I’m here partially because I’ve worked damned hardto get here. But that work, by itself, wouldn’t have gotten me to where I am,without luck and privilege.
People like me need to remember that. We didn’t earn what we haveall by ourselves. We may have earned part of it – but onlypart. An awful lot of what we have is built on privilege: on the advantagesthat we’ve been given because of race, gender, wealth, and family.