Wednesday, September 16, 2009

On Being White...

I've been at Drury University for four years now. It's a liberal arts school with a strong emphasis on human rights issues in America. In my mind, that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned about while being here. Still, that doesn't make it easy. I'm currently in African American Literature reading abolitionist writers (W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, etc) and it's really hard for me to do. Let me tell you why.

I'm white. I'm a while MALE. AND I'm in the middle class. Basically, I embody everything that has been wrong with this country since its inception. I'm not overtly racist, classist, or gender biased, but that doesn't mean that I'm not currently benefiting from hundreds of years of gruesome acts of hatred based on race, class, and gender. All of that makes me feel very conflicted.

Du Bois talks about the concept of double consciousness. He says that when he realized that he was different from everyone, when he realized he was black, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he had two separate identities struggling to take supremacy over his character. He was both an African and an American, and that created a veil between him and the outside world while he simultaneously waged war with himself over how to successfully integrate his two identities.

When we were talking about that in class, my professor rhetorically asked, "When did you discover that you were white?" Even though it was a rhetorical question, I answered him.

"Freshman year of college for me," I said. You see, even though I knew about racism and had heard of all the bad things associated with it, I was SEVERELY sheltered from it until I came to Springfield. My high school had next to no diversity whatsoever, so I lived my life thinking that I was merely a white male living in a time when racism had had its influence on history and now it only existed in small pockets of America and the minds of small people. When I came to Drury and started reading civil rights writings, feminist thought, philosophy, theology, I began to see things very differently. Suddenly I was doubly conscious of two very different identities within me.

I have my white, middle class male side which I am not acutely familiar with. This is who I am and who I must learn to take responsibility for being but not who I want to be. Alternatively, I have my meek, shy, scared little boy side who just wants everyone to get along and love each other. I don't know how to reconcile myself. I want to totally decry the role that middle class, white men have played in the history of the world, but I AM one.

It's also difficult to try and make that point in class discussions. What usually ends up happening is I'll start to try and make the point but end up looking like a whiny racist, sexist, classist man. I feel as though there is no way I can make the point that I'm not racist or sexist despite my appearances and cultural heritage. It just seems to me that even by those who champion justice, often times we still make judgments based on color and gender.

5 comments:

Mozart said...

"It just seems to me that even by those who champion justice, often times we still make judgments based on color and gender."

We do. Or at least I do. It's not intentional, but it's definitely conscious--physical appearance (and hence any sexual/religious/racial/etc. alignment) is the first thing we (I) notice about a person. And then, because of cultural biases, personal biases, and past experience, we (I) make an immediate judgment.

I don't want to call myself racist, but sometimes I think I am, just in the sense that race plays such an important role in my initial impression of an individual. And I know we shouldn't be colorblind; we shouldn't pretend it's all homogeneous and it doesn't matter, but at the same time, we don't need to be classifying and comparing as we're (I'm) so wont to do.

But I can't remove the veil of culture, and I can't eliminate the preconceived notions that I've accumulated through personal experiences in the past. Of course I judge an individual on his or her own merits, but I hate the fact that I fall into the trap of saying to myself, "so-and-so is ______ for being _______"

It's horrible, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but that's how it is.

secret agent woman said...

It's impossible to completely bracket off your race, gender, nationality, and so on. Those things shape us and our veiews of the world. I think the best you can do is maintain awareness of how it affects your thinking.

(I had a clinical supervisor once who had a row of porttraits of the biggies in psychoanalyis - all white males. I asked if hedidn't think that influenced him in a negative way when he was dealing with women and minorities, but he denied the possibility. I am certtian that it did. I called it his "wall of dead white guys" which he did not find amusing.)

Elliot Spicer said...

I'm a white female, but given the history... a long line of history that says many women in general are inferior, passive, domesticated, baby makers, etc. etc.

It doesnt mean I let that past define me in modern times.

Excuse me, but you are NOT defined by the past or the actions of others 100 years ago. And dont you dare go about accepting responsibility for things you had no control over.

I dont care if you daddy was white, or his daddy before him, or if anyone in your family never owned slaves... you dont take on the responsibility or grief of some no name white man who DID have slaves.

Slavery has existed in all cultures, all continents, between people of the same color, people of different colors.

Horrible things have happened since the dawn of time, no amount of grieving over that or condemning it will rewrite history OR keep bad things from happening.

Flogging yourself because youre a white male from the middle class doesnt serve anyone. It doesnt serve you, black people, women, or history.

Be a brave, fair, honest, productive, and intelligent man and you will do more for society than pitying your skin color or damning the past.

-A

Anonymous said...

Word, A.

Peter Clothier said...

Don't feel badly about it, Mark. What you say is true for most of the rest of us, too. I only discovered that other side of me when I started research on a book about the African-American artist, Charles White, back in the 70s. In those pre-Internet days, the usual research procedure was to head for the library. Guess what? Silence--and not just the library kind. The only way to find out about his history was to travel all over the country and talk to people who had known him. I found myself, repeatedly, in circumstances that reminded me forcefully of the color of my skin, and of the persistence of racism in American society. For a nice, white liberal boy, it was a sobering experience!