interchange: Do you think so? It is canonical that we are all continuously subject to a bunch of attributions about ourselves that are based on a great deal of things, high on that list being race. I guarantee you that you have faced negative attributions (consciously directed or not) based on being white (is this a fair inference?).
M: I don't know but I I think the reason is that I wouldn't notice because I've never internalized the notion that there could be something negative about me because of my skin color and that would include nothing positive either. There simply wasn't any comparing people by race in my family.
i: Although it is quite possible you were, at least relatively, isolated from these inferences during your development. Most of us (regardless of race) grow up with a large set of positive or neutral attributions toward white people, and I do think this is a key difference. Regardless of a white person's experience with even overt racism as an adult, their identity of being white is relatively comfortable advantage. I think this bias is truly more representative of the idea of "white privilege" than social networks, wealth, etc. For example, I grew up in a lower middle class home with neither parent college educated and am a product of the public school system. I had no access to familial wealth or connections. Nonetheless, there is no doubt in my mind that I have benefited tremendously from being a white male. I remember my first trip on my own hitching to NY to catch a plane for a two year trip to Europe where a policeman stepped in front of me asking why I had come out the door I did from the YMCA and who turned red as a beet when I told him to get the fuck out of my way.
M: I have no doubt about what you are saying as being genuine for you, and I know that I don't face the kind of discrimination that I believe many do, but I never felt particularly advantaged by being white because I'm a nobody who never profited from my natural racial advantage. I am, of course aware that I never had the misfortune of having to be on my toes as a black young man trained to yes sir no sir relationship with white authority. I remember my first trip on my own hitching to NY to catch a plane for a two year trip to Europe where a policeman stepped in front of me asking why I had come out the door I did from the YMCA and who turned red as a beet when I told him to get the fuck out of my way.
i: I heard a story on NPR (I think yesterday morning) about a Harvard business professor having a class on minority businesses. The argument here being that a (the?) main method of business education is through case study and that lack of studying prototypes of minority success in business leaves us lacking in our minds a picture of these minorities as being capable. In the past, this would have been something I would have defended against. I would have argued that the business principles being taught are independent of whether the businesses are minority run, and that what mattered to equality was equality of opportunity for education and employment.
But now I know the power of these prototypes. And that the way to work on these biases is to expose people to experiences which challenge our attributions -- to diversify someone's mental experiences. People are not open to that diversification when it is forced upon them under tacit condition that they are wrong. Instead, when this new information is presented in neutral scenarios or in scenarios where they have investment in getting something out of the experience apart from this diversification, people do rewrite their own assumptions. The professor advocated for these cases being integrated in the overall curriculum instead of a separate minority studies class (even if required), and I agree as unfortunately someone with bias against minorities or minority studies might not enter with neutrality or engagement in the material which may undermine the process.
Sadly, the paucity of positive mental representations of black people is not a phenomenon restricted to whites.
M: I agree with this fully. I find it interesting also that on Fox network there are quite a few programs that feature black heroes.
i: I know I penned the above with the risk that someone might interpret my words as saying that I understand somehow what it is like to be black and how these biases and overt racism might affect me if I were black. I do not feel this way. I am merely saying that I believe there is some common ground to create a dialog rather than requiring whites to take a back seat. And while I also find your assumption quite rational and unequivocal in totality of similar cases, I am advocating that, much like the Harvard professor, we examine them from a stance of neutrality or optimistic investment absent a condition that participants must accept that this event is an example of malicious racial attributions.
M: I have no problem with this. What I was saying is that in those situations where racism may in fact be present say on a college campus, the presence of a racist or even many does not mean the college itself is racists. I was addressing that kind of bigotry. You are describing another but very related kind.
The way I see it is that racism is the projection of ones own self loathing onto a different race, when in fact there is just one human race with different skin tones etc. Self hate is the result of being put down as kids, being compared to something presented as terrible, like a white monster that enslaved our people, or a lazy whatever. Once the child is made to feel he is as worthless as this other all the contempt that came at him is transferred to the other. Now the child is safe because he is just like his parents, superior, like they were, when they put him down. The outward manifestation of superiority is rooted in feelings of worthlessness and the need of the person to deny that as factual. It isn't factual, it was inculcated by violence, but the pain of remembering is terrible. This is why, in my opinion, forgiveness is critical because the person who will ultimately need forgiving is one's self for one's self.
i: I would think it unethical to represent to the police that I was 100% sure it was a gun if, in fact, I wasn't 100% sure. But I also don't expect the police to follow my directions.
M: I wouldn't expect that either but one would have fewer self recriminations if one called on a black student with a glue gun and the student was gunned down. I think there is a better chance for good judgment to be exercised if one has been recently reminded not to go off half cocked.
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