Embrace your race privilege.
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Happy Tuesday,
I read dozens of responses to these emails each day. So many of you are asking thoughtful, sincere questions in response to topics because you're understanding how much power you hold in your communities, workplaces, and families to change conversations for good. And many are also realizing the deep, emotional toll of being in this practice each day.
As we commit to being active anti-racists in our communities, we must first embrace what comes with our privilege, especially the racial privilege we may have. I briefly covered this topic in the first email I ever sent for the Anti-Racist Daily (41 days ago! Feels like a lifetime). And I'll keep coming back to it. I believe all of us should. We must continuously locate ourselves, or, recognize where we are in this fight and what strengths we can leverage from our position.
If you identify as non-white and have a story to share, send us a message. And as always, you can make a one-time contribution on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or contribute monthly on Patreon.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Use this worksheet* to understand your race privilege. 10mins
2. Reflect by answering the following questions (alone or in a group).
How does your race affect you when you...
go to vote?
get your annual checkup?
interview for a job?
buy a new car?
GET EDUCATED
What is race privilege?
Privilege is, simply put, “a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group” (Everyday Feminism). There's a lot of different types of privilege, including privilege based on gender, sexual identity, able-bodiedness, academic background, and socio-economic status. But today, we're focusing on race privilege, which centers our racial identity.
These unearned benefits aren't just perks. Privilege comes with power, specifically "unearned power conferred systematically," a term coined by anti-racist activist Peggy McIntosh (read her full essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, in this PDF). This means that people with privilege tend to have inherent power simply because. The worksheet in today's action was designed to help build this perspective based on McIntosh' work.
A more modern take on unpacking white privilege went viral in June on Tiktok. Kenya Bundy created a list of 12 statements of experiences she's had as a Black woman, including "being called a racial slur, being denied service because of the color of your skin, and having to teach your child how not to be killed when dealing with the police" (Insider). Listeners can raise their hands and follow along, putting a finger down if each statement applies – a simple points-based system. Try it for yourself on Tiktok.
What is white privilege?
White privilege is especially important to understand because, in addition to everything written above, people with white privilege are also granted the "power of normal". Our society (U.S.) is built around whiteness as the default. Tolerance.org, a platform that creates resources for educators to help them lead a diverse, democratic future, has some great examples of how this shows up in everyday life (Tolerance).
A super easy one: What skin tone pops into your head when you read the words "flesh-colored"? Most colors that are called nude and flesh by brands are light-skinned. In fact, it took ALL THE WAY UNTIL MAY 2020, a whole 135 years, for Crayola to create a series of crayons that represented a broad set of skin tones (Lifehacker).
But the greatest privilege that white people experience, according to Ibram X. Kendi, is the privilege of life itself (The Atlantic), a privilege made so acutely aware as we watch police brutality and COVID-19 highlight the inequities people in the United States – and around the world – experience because of race.
We need to remember that white privilege didn't happen by accident. These benefits are the product of a system that's built on white supremacy. White privilege wouldn't exist if we didn't live in a world that has been systemically marginalizing people of other races. You can see this play out in other forms of privilege, too. The privileges associated with being a cisgender man wouldn't be possible without a long history of patriarchy and sexism. So because we have created a society that aims to normalize white people in positions of power, we also normalize violence against other groups.
As you move through today's exercise, notice how these scenarios don't just demonstrate power, but power in relationship to whiteness, the normalized and default expectation.
“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost”.
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Privilege is intersectional.
There are many more factors that define our privilege than just race. And I know that today's exercise looking at race privilege alone omits other critical factors like socio-economic status, gender and sexual identity, able-bodiedness, academic background, and other critical parts of our social location that make up who we are. We discussed intersectionality in more depth in our article about elevating the voices of Black women and Black trans lives in the Black Lives Matter movement. All of the components of our unique identities define how we show up in this movement.
But that doesn't mean that your intersectionality excuses you from acknowledging and embracing your white privilege. Even if you grew up poor, or are marginalized by your sexual orientation, you still have white privilege if you identify as white. That racial privilege still gives you relative power to help dismantle racism, and can likely support you in advocating for the health and safety of other communities you're a part of, too.
Embracing privilege means living with the discomfort.
This section is particularly for our white readers who benefit from white privilege. With this privilege comes the responsibility not just to leverage this power, but move through the emotions that come with it. Unpacking privilege and its contributions to centuries of harm is not easeful work, but necessary. And remember that these difficult emotions can prevent you from being a more active part of the dismantling work.
White fragility, for example, looks at how quickly people that benefit from white privilege can become defensive or angry when privilege is challenged (KQED). And white guilt and white shame, two other difficult emotions that can arise when processing white supremacy and the violence it upholds, can be dehabilitating (this PDF on white guilt offers a comprehensive overview). It's why investing in self-care, along with anti-racism training and workshops, on both an individual and community level is so critical to helping this work move forward.
Also, understand the concept of "white exceptionalism," which anti-racism author and educator Layla F. Saad explains in her recent interview with NPR. This is an unhealthy practice where people who identify as white aim to label themselves as "one of the good ones," in attempts to shield themselves from their participation in the system. People who practice white exceptionalism have to believe that they're one of the good ones, but, according to Saad, there is no bad or good. "This isn't about your inherent goodness as a person. We're talking about the ways you're unaware of causing harm to other people. Because you're not aware" (NPR).
And searching to be good or bad is a privilege in itself. It's a practice of centering how the perpetrator is perceived, as opposed to the outcome for the individuals harmed. Consider this as you ask questions on interpersonal racism, like microaggressions and cultural appropriation. Are you asking these questions to shield yourself from being seen as racist? Or, are you asking these questions with the intention of understanding, listening and learn, and make space for others? Are you using your questions a way to process your emotions, and if so, how else can you process them?
Remember that you are not alone as you unpack your racial privilege – especially when you actively bring others into this conversation. Gather your friends and family who have similar racial privilege as you to move forward, together. This work needs all of us.
*Worksheet from the Tri-County Domestic & Sexual Violence Intervention Network Anti-Oppression Training for Trainers. Created by Carol Cheney, Jeannie LaFrance, and Terrie Quinteros in 2006.
“You do have to acknowledge the advantages you receive personally as a white person, but the work is about understanding and changing systems. You have to understand that every system in the United States was created structurally and legally to serve white people, and you have to take personal responsibility for changing a system that treats you better than everyone else”.
― Joseph Barndt, PISAB trainer and author of Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America, in SELF
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Understanding our privilege helps us further understand how we can move anti-racism work forward
White privilege doesn't erase other aspects of our intersectional identities
Unpacking white privilege is emotional and necessary work
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
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