Presidential debates on ABC right now-both parties

I wonder whether pro-Obama votes are actully anti-Clinton ones. SO when it comes to general election some democrat voters will either vote for McCian or just stay home. Will democrats be able to snatch a defeat from the jaws of victory

I am sure there are more skeletons in Obama closet and republican don't want to use their ammunition up so early in the game. This will be one interesting election. 

I'm sorry Shirley, I just don't know how to respond to your anger. Obviously my opinions have turned into something personal that you feel that I am at a loss to understand. I apologize for making you so angry. It seems that we have trouble hearing each other on this thread.



I'm not clear how we got from Obama to Wright to sending Wright to Africa where the people live in filth. And then we end up at a historically black college, and your daughter taking such a brave step to attend that campus. I applaud her. She has accomplished much. I'm sure it was not easy for her to go to school where most of the people around her didn't look like her. It sounds like, from your description that she learned quite a bit there, and I'm sure whatever she does with her life she will make a difference to those she touches.



There are many people of color who have had similar experiences in this country. They too went to schools where the people around them did not look like them. I have listened to their experiences in school and in the world. They vary widely. Some did not experience discrimination or racism, and others experienced those treatments too much. Many of them did not even agree amongst themselves.



And that is true in our world also. Each of us have had different experiences with racism and white supremacy idealogies in this country. I never said ALL black churches had pastors like Wright. And he is an ordained minister if only in his church or denomination. You can deny him that all you want, but it doesn't really make any difference to him.



In fact, as I read through your comments regarding my earlier post you seem to pluralize everything I say. I do not generalize and include ALL persons of a certain order as being the same or acting the same. We as white people are very good at doing that. We easily group people who look the same together and assume that the few we have met are how all the others we don't know act and behave. But when it comes to us we want to stand on our individualism. We want to say that as a white person I'm not like that white person over there who is behaving like a racist. You can't have it both ways. If you put other people into a group, then you have to go there too.



By the way. Wright may be "discriminating" in his comments about white rich men in America. He may be sterotyping who they are and how they behave; but he is not and cannot be a racist. See, being a racist means you are in a position of power, whether by race, class or gender. White right men win the lottery--they have all three-- they are in the power seat. A white man can be a racist, but not a black man. Wright has no position of power. He can't be a racist. You are certainly free to call him that, but perhaps you should try to come up with a more accurate description.



I believe the topic of Wright is already reaching the "old news" levels in our country. I picked up a Bay Area paper today, and any mention of Wright and Obama's denial of hearing these type sermons was buried on page 14. Seems people are getting back to the issues--the war, economy, immigration.



I still hope this thread will return to these issues, and drop the vituperous invective that has infected this thread.



grace

Well, I'll change the subject.  McCain is calling for the candidates to show what their Earmarks are for this year.  If I'm not mistaken, Clinton earmarked $390M, Obama $90M, McCain $0. Don't hold me to these numbers, I heard it on CNN last week.  Normally, this goes unnoticed by us.  I actually thought it was only for State funding of projects.  McCain calls it funding for a bridge to nowhere. 

With a little reading, it's also funding for special interest projects and I'm not happy with what I'm reading here:

http://www.examiner.com/a-1194444~Timothy_Carney__McCain_vs__Hillary_on_earmarks__Good_government_vs__pay_to_play.html 

Not in this election do most of the caucasions get exposure on TV to give their views.  Just last night I was listening to a black person say the exact opposite.  He wants Obama to leave that church even now and said he should have done it long ago.  Repudiating someone's words years later is not good enough for a person who wants to be our next President.  His words paraphased, not mine.  Though I blindly agree. 

There's going to be more fall-out from this.  It's not over. 

Amy,

Of course the news anchors are white, but they are all bringing on black commentators which I think have the better advantage in a discussion.  Except on the O'Reilly show.  He enjoys cutting everyone off who don't absolutely agree with him. 

I want to hear what the entire community thinks about this and I think they're doing a good job of letting a lot of people be heard on this issue.  Every candidate gets their hands held up to the fire.  This is how we test their mettle.  Today it's Obama's turn and we'll talk about it, then we'll move on.   

Amy ,

Media had treated  Obama with absolute adoration for such a long time. I guess that SNL skit did put them to shame.

I am not a big fan of Hillary but  she was  mistreated  by the media for quite a while.

I am glad to see that the gloves are coming off, and the media is waking up to the fact that Obama has quite a few skeletons in his closet.  He has been affiliated with this hate mongering pastor for far too long. And to call him his spritual advisor was not the smartest move that Obama made.

One thing that Hillary should thank media for is that all their attacks and unflattering portrayal toughened her up. Obama used to all this adoration is finding it increasingly hard to feild the tough questons. The interview after Texas and Ohio primary exposed a new side to him that I hope he would start exhibiting more  perhaps after Pensylvania defeat.  

Amy,

I found the letter that you reprinted from Obama's supporter disturbing. We need to move forward and better our lives and those of our children. 

It used be that African American and Jews had to sit in the back of the bus. Asian workers were brought to US as a cheap labor , Chinatown in San Francisco is a testament to it all. I don't see the Asian community rallying against white men today.

I have enormous respect for Bill Cosby who said that the  African American community has to take responisbility for their children and not continue blaming the white men for all the ills.

The US has seen a lot of immigrants coming here from around the world and a lot of them experienced discrimination. But I firmly beleive that the key to success is to make sure that the children do better than their parents. 

Amy, I watched that interview because, as you know, I do watch faux news.  McCain is graceous.  He has been saying throughout his campaign that he wants to run clean one.

MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23638104#23640119

Shirley, Grace and I do not agree with everything, if you've been following this thread. I appreciate her multidimensional, educated look at issues even when we disagree.

Wright should FORGIVE me and other whites for bringing Africans over to this country who were sold by their OWN people.  And FORGIVE me for white people mistreating them.  I'm tired of being accused of being one of those whites who enslaved blacks.  I'm tired of being accused of being one of those whites that made the blacks sit on the back of the bus.  I'm tired of being one of those whites accused of lynching and beating and murdering blacks.  I'm tired of it! 

I think you misunderstand that black people aren't pissed off because their ancestors were slaves or because they, their parents or grandparents were denied educational and occupational opportunities. The issues are about TODAY and the effects today. If you look at the percentages of blacks vs whites who live in slums, that's a  result of past institutional racism. 

I'm going to try to explain this to you one time.

Plantation owner A - owns 50 slaves who he uses to make a fortune back in the 1800s. He has 3 children who inherit his wealth which enables them to marry into and/or buy their own plantations and slaves etc. Slaves are freed with nothing. No education. No money. No land. Nada. Many aren't even allowed into schools particularly in the south. Black men were allowed to vote for a little while, but many were refused because of illiteracy and other Jim Crow laws so they had no power to change things. They have to start from scratch no matter how skilled or unskilled they are, just as Plantation owner A's children and grandchildren start with inheritance and education, no matter how skilled or unskilled or lazy or industrious. A's children have all the advantages that the former slaves do not.  This filters down generationally as it's much more difficult for  blacks to acheive the same level of prosperity and education than their white counterparts. Through the generations and as civil rights makes things a bit easier, the gap is smaller but it doesn't go away and probably won't for more generations. Things are so much better now, but they aren't what they should be.

You have totally missed the point if you think anyone, even Reverend Wright, is saying that you Shirley Hughes were responsible for making blacks sit in the back of the bus. You might have even been one of the people marching for civil rights-- but the white male dominated society. No one is saying that a bunch of white guys got together and said, lets see how we can oppress blacks. 20 years ago the 3 branches of government were almost all white males. Colin Powell was the first black secretary of state 7 1/2 years ago- the highest position a black has held to date. Nancy Pelosi was the first women to be 3rd in line to the presidency just a few years ago. This is about societal change, not  individuals apologizing for what they or their ancestors did. This isn't about shirley hughes---it's much bigger than any individual. 

Well I havent been following this thread of late.  I do think Obama's affiliation this Reverend and this church will hurt him.  Then there is all the hullabaloo about his affiliation with Resko.

Still undecided Nicki

I watched "DAWG" A bounty hunter cry on tv, and appologize and

promise to take a class to never say the word NEGRO again!

What kind of classes do they have to never say the word Negro again???

If he was talking about a cultural diversity class-- that's so much more than what words to say and what not to say.  I hope he's sincere in learning about diversity, not so sure about his comment though. He sure doesn't get it yet.

This is an article written by a white, Southern academic whose family actually owned a slave plantation. He has come to terms with that, and has dedicated his life to improving the lives of others, no matter whether they are white or another color, poor or rich, educated or uneducated, racist or not racist. If you go to his website you will see many other articles he has written and are all available to read for free. Yes, he does consider himself a liberal, however, I have had numerous occasions to listen to him speak to a wide audience, that even included some white supremacy young men. He treated each person who addressed him with respect whether he rejected personally their beliefs. For me personally, he is able to infuse a little humor and perhaps cynicism in his essays. But I also think he speaks for many whites in America, like myself, who see that in order to move forward, we need to educated ourselves. I am not saying we whites should become "missionaries" in any sense. Our job is not to "fix" what appears to be broken, but to ask what might be needed by others in order to fix what should be broken. We must rely on the communities of color to tell us what they need, and then as others on this board have indicated, we can work together and make things better for others who may have less than we do. Our country can only be strong if we come together and work as one. During the Women's Movement in the US, women of color read and listened to Betty Friedan and others, about how white males were dominant and "kept women down." It was a whole look at how women could move into the business world and be free to run their own lives--basically improving their dollars per hour to more equal males in same jobs. When Women of Color expressed an interest in also working on issues around gender, the White Women "invited" them to attend their meetings. Well, the issues for Women of Color were not only the daily wage, but issues of racism and classism. When the Women of Color said, no thanks, we need more than that and started their own discussion groups around issues in the Women's movement, the white women were rather mad and didn't understand why these women of color would not join them. What the white women came to learn, and understand about the issue, is that they were trying to fit the women of color into their program. They were unintentionally assuming that they knew what was best for ALL women. It took many years for that rift in the Women's Movement to be patched up.

So here is Tim's essay. I look forward to your comments. And here is his website if you would like to read more of his work: http://TIMWISE.org





Another Batch of White Whine:

Obama, Black Voters and the Myth of Reverse Racism



By Tim Wise



March 11, 2008



"Somehow I knew it would happen. In fact, I had even made a note to myself, indicating how long I thought it might take: twenty-four hours was my guesstimate, in case you're interested. Turns out I was overly optimistic, because it only took about nine hours from the time that my latest essay hit cyberspace--a piece in which I discussed white support for Barack Obama and what it does and doesn't mean about race in America--until I received the first hostile response, offering the specific critique I had anticipated.



In the original article, I had mentioned (almost in passing, but nonetheless within the first paragraph), that there were still lots of whites who are unwilling to vote for a person of color because of race. Indeed, exit polling from the Ohio primary suggested this clearly, given that one-fifth of voters said the candidate's race was important to their vote, and roughly six in ten who said this voted for Hillary Clinton. In other words--and this is just within the Democratic Party--literally hundreds of thousands of voters voted against Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton because of race. Although this kind of voter racism may not be enough to deny Obama the party nomination, or even the Presidency, and although there are plenty of reasons other than race and racism why someone may vote for Clinton (or ultimately, John McCain), and against Obama, my point was simply that for many whites, race is still the deciding factor in their voting behavior.



Yet I knew as soon as I wrote it what some would say in response. It's what lots of us white folks do whenever the specter of white racism is raised: namely, we try and change the subject and make ourselves into the victims, and black and brown folks into the perps. And there it was, in my e-mail box: the predictable and expected lamentations of white denial and victimhood.



"Funny how you try to spin those Ohio numbers," it began. "So if someone said race was important to their decision, and they voted for the white candidate, that's racism, but what about the forty percent who said race was important to their decision and voted for the black guy? Isn't that racism too, by your logic?"



"Oh no, of course not," the writer continued, "because those voters were probably mostly black themselves, while the Clinton voters who said race mattered were mostly white, and only whites can be racist, right?"



In other words, if voting for a white person because of their race is racism, then so too must be voting for a black person because of theirs. So see, those black Obama boosters are every bit as racist as we are, maybe more so, because they're breaking his way by about eighty-five percent, while whites are splitting between Obama and Clinton by about fifty-fifty. So if anything, the e-mailer said, it was blacks who were more racist and whites whose voting behavior portended open-mindedness. And now that Obama has won the Mississippi primary, almost entirely due to the votes of blacks--and among those who said race mattered, nine in ten voted for him--this refrain will only become more prevalent, one supposes.



Such an argument--which is really the political equivalent of "Why can't we have white history month, I mean, we have black history month?"--suggests how far we have to go in this nation simply to have a productive dialogue about race, let alone to really conquer racism.



Simply put, there are any number of reasons why whites voting for a white candidate because of race is altogether different than blacks voting for a black candidate because of the same. For African American voters, voting for Barack Obama--a man of color who actually stands a chance of winning the Presidency--is an opportunity to participate in a major historic moment. The pride and excitement caused by such a possibility (even for black folks who might not agree with all of his positions, and who might wish he spoke more about issues like racism and discrimination) is completely understandable and to be expected. Just as millions of women as women are understandably excited about the possibility of a Hillary Clinton Presidency--because it would be a history-making first and a real breakthrough in terms of gender (at least symbolically)--and just as many Catholics were likely inspired to vote for JFK because of a shared religious background, so too are many people of color likely to hop on board the Obama train as a way to make a statement. So if black folks say race was important to their vote, and they voted for Obama, it is this sense of achievement, and "firstness" that likely animates them. That, and of course the fact that they really do believe him to be the best person for the job.



Or if not the historicity of the moment, then perhaps black voters casting their ballots for Obama, and saying that race matters to their decision, were animated by a desire to elect someone who, because of his own identity, might better relate to their daily struggles. It would be nice, one imagines, to have a President who could understand because of some of his own life experiences, what it means to be a person of color in America. In that sense, identity and the experiences that such an identity likely gives a person, become bona fide qualifications and credentials in the eyes of persons sharing that identity.



But one thing we can almost guarantee is not among the reasons why a black voter might say race matters to their vote, and then vote for the black candidate, is deep-seated anti-white bias. After all, black folks have been voting for white people for years. They have voted for white Presidential candidates, white Governors, and white Congressional candidates time and time again, seeing as how they are often given very little in the way of a choice. So it's not like black folks refuse to vote for white people. Indeed, the kind of black person whose anti-white biases were that deeply rooted, would probably be the kind of person for whom Obama would be unacceptable too (given his biracial ancestry, generally moderate positions, and fairly bland approach to addressing racial concerns), and who wouldn't vote for him, in spite of a shared skin color. In other words, we can rest assured that when blacks vote for Obama, after saying that race mattered to their vote, they were casting a ballot for the black man, not against the white woman per se.



On the other hand, for a white voter to say race matters to their vote, and then to vote for the white candidate and against the person of color, is almost by definition about something else. It certainly can't be due to excitement at the prospect of electing the first white President, or breaking with tradition, since we've had forty-three white guys in a row. And it's not likely to be about the desire to vote for someone who can relate to their "struggles" as white people. After all, although there are millions of white people in the U.S. who are struggling to make ends meet, none of them are in that position because of their race, but rather in spite of it. So the "white struggle" as such simply doesn't exist. The class struggle is real--and if a white, working-class candidate stood a chance of winning the Presidency lots of white working class folks would turn out for him or her because of that shared experience, and understandably so--but it is simply silly to think that whites would vote for Hillary Clinton, after saying race mattered to their vote, because they think she will be more understanding about their plight as white people.



What this leaves us is the very real likelihood that when whites say race mattered to their vote, and they voted for the white candidate over the candidate of color, the vote so cast was largely an anti-black vote. It wasn't cast for the white person out of some form of in-group bonding so much as it was cast against the man of color, as an act of out-group rejection. And given the way in which the Clinton campaign has made Obama's presumed inexperience and "lack of qualifications" the big issue in the primaries--and given how the "qualifications" trope plays so neatly into longstanding white biases about black ability and competence--it is hard to imagine any non-racist reason for someone to say "race matters" to their vote and then to cast it for Clinton.



In the end it really is as simple as this: for persons belonging to groups that have been consistently subordinated to view the world through the lens of their group status is both predictable and rational. It would be hard, indeed, not to do so. One's identity as a subordinated group member shapes one's experiences to such an extent that it will naturally come to inform how one views the world, and how one operates within it. This has been true for all subordinated groups. Even those groups whose institutional subordination has largely ended in the U.S. (like Italian or Irish Americans, or Jews) often see the society through the frame of their particular ethnic experience--and certainly did so in generations past. So naturally, for persons of color whose subordination has continued to be institutionalized, engaging in acts of racial bonding makes sense. Voting for Obama may be one such act, for at least some black voters.



But for members of groups that have not been subordinated to "think with their skin" or their racial identity is quite a bit different, and more problematic. For dominant group members to engage in racial bonding only makes sense as a way to maintain dominance. It can't be about "getting a piece of the pie," since such persons already have access to it, and pieces galore; rather, it has to be about preventing others from getting theirs, from taking parts of the pie to which the dominant group had come to feel entitled. It is not to seek a place at the table, but to seek to secure the table you already have from the intrusion of others. White bonding, in other words, amounts to racism because it is redundant: it amounts to having those who are already largely in control, secure that control in perpetuity. It results in the maintenance of racial inequity, unequal opportunity and massive disparities in access and life chances. Black and brown bonding, on the other hand, is about gaining access, securing a spot, and collectively lifting up members of subordinated communities to a place where they can compete as equals with those who have always been in charge. There is nothing supremacist or racist about that at all, unless one presumes that--as Jesse Jackson and others have long said--there is no fundamental difference between a "Welcome" mat and a "No Trespassing" sign.



But there is a difference, in both practical and ethical terms. Those black voters (and for that matter non-black voters) who vote for Obama because of his race are striving for the welcome mat, however naive they may be in thinking that his victory would really open the door all that widely for others. Those white voters who vote for Clinton because of hers, on the other hand, are quite clearly continuing to hang the "No Blacks Need Apply" sign from their electoral window. And if we can't see the distinction between those two things, it becomes hard to imagine how we will ever conquer the larger racial inequities that continue to plague us as a nation. How indeed. "

This was written by a Wellesley professor and I have often used it during training programs when I meet with white women coming together to explore what it means to be white in this society, and how privileged we are and we don't even have to think about it. Enjoy!



White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"



Peggy McIntosh



"Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.



Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.



I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.



Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"



After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.



My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."



Daily effects of white privilege



I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.



1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.



2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.



3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.



4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.



5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.



6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.



7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.



8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.



9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.



10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.



11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.



12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.



13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.



14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.



15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.



16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.



17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.



18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.



19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.



20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.



21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.



22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.



23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.



24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.



25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.



26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.



27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.



28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.



29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.



30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.



31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.



32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.



33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.



34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.



35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.



36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.



37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.



38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.



39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.



40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.



41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.



42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.



43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.



44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.



45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.



46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.



47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.



48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.



49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.



50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.



Elusive and fugitive



I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.



In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.



I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.



In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.



For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.



Earned strength, unearned power



I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.



We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.



I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.



Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their "Black Feminist Statement" of 1977.



One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.



Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.



To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.



It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.



Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.



Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.



This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

Amy rants again:

You are no Bill Cosby, Shirley and I think you missed Cosby's point.

I can go no further with your post until I respond to the above.  I never mentioned Bill Cosby.  Go back and get it right.  However, I happen to admire him and say "kuddos" to him.  I will read what point Bill Cosby was trying to make ACCORDING TO AMY.  I may be all about interpretation because I have heard him speak.

I am not in denial about what has happened to African Americans in this country.  I remember the back of the buses.  I remember the "only _____" water fountains and bathrooms.  I remember a lot, Amy. 

Where I went to school it was divided into districts.  If one lived in that districk that's where one went to school.  We had many Mexicans, whites and only a couple of blacks.  We did not have black schools.  And the only two or so blacks in our school were treated as equals IF YOU CAN BELIEVE THAT!  Perhaps it is how one is taught.  If one keeps hearing how bad WHITES are they are bound to believe it!

Now, I'll TRY to finish reading your post. 

Shirley