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White privilege
Jun. 8th, 2008 10:29 pmSome time ago, I promised to make a post on White Privilege And How I Don't Have It. I probably ought to make entries about other things first - What My Degree Has Done For Me, for one, and also The Visit of OMG 1.875 - but a couple of things have happened on two successive days to make me want to make this post first. These are not big things. They are not things of any note at all. And yet, etc.
Firstly, yesterday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
luminometrice and I went shopping, and we were wandering around Boots picking up make-up and putting it down, and I was rhapsodising about my love for eye glitter, and liquid eyeliner, and, indeed, my love for eye make-up in general. I don't wear eyeshadow, though, I said. It's all in silly pastel colours that don't look good on me. In fact, realising this not for the first time, it's all made for white people.
Secondly, my very favourite leather sandals gave up the ghost yesterday afternoon and I went barefoot into town this morning; consequently, I had to stick plasters on my heels if I wanted to keep on walking. The plasters are "flesh coloured". They are at least three shades lighter than my flesh, and merely look ridiculous.
These are small things. They're nicely highlighed in Peggy McIntosh's Invisible Knapsack framework; white privilege, she writes, is not just contained in single incidents, but "invisible systems conferring dominance on [one] group." This doesn't mean, of course, that these aren't very small incidents, but it is true that they are part of a greater system, so to speak. The funny thing is, I read that list and find lots of statements that aren't true for me, but that I had never noticed until I read that list. Of course, people of my race aren't represented in the media I read. Of course, the "person in charge" of an establishment, if I ask to see her, is never someone of my race. Of course people ask me to speak for my entire racial group on occasion.
The one that I have been aware of for the longest is: "When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."
Because, yes. At school, I was not taught my own history. The obvious thing to object is that of course I wasn't taught Indian history in a suburban British school, and it's a terrible, lacklustre argument, but even if we give it credence, I can then say, well, it was my ancestors' systematic exploitation that sustained the British Empire. Why did this not come up in twentieth-century British history?
And, in addition, I occasionally scandalise my nearest and dearest by professing to never having read a novel published before 1900. A lot of this is, I must say, because my reading tastes simply don't tend that way; what I have read pre-1900, I have usually not enjoyed, ergo I don't seek any more out. But part of it is that, well, another book about historical white people, hurrah. I can't read my own literature pre-1900 because I only read English, and it's only after 1900 that I can read Tagore and Narayan if I want to.
I also occasionally irritate my nearest and dearest by being disproportionately angry about the fact that Sainsbury's supermarkets have an aisle devoted to "ethnic foods". This makes me hopping mad because it marginalises, trivialises and banalises an entire world's worth of cultures, including my own. Also, it's really bloody offensive. Another example of something minor - but one minor thing is minor, and lots of them, not so much.
And, well. There are more complex levels to it. You see, this is an invisible knapsack I don't have, but there are lots that I do have. I'm Oxford-educated, the child of well-off, professional parents, the current instantiation of an old and high-caste family. So if I, who should by rights be as little affected by institutional racism as anyone could possibly be, still am affected - then, well, I wonder what it's like for all the people who aren't lucky enough to be in my position. I couldn't speak for those people, but I wonder.
And a converse: I'm pretty well assimilated. I'm grumpy on Christmas Day, I think the British notion of washing-up is ridiculous (and I used to get into trouble at school for this; it's odd, but I suffered a lot more from my lack of white privilege when I was in kindergarten than at any other time), but I'm pretty well assimilated. And this raises a whole set of other problems. Because another lot of privilege I don't have is, for lack of a better term, Orthopraxic Cultural Assimilation Privilege (yes, terrible term, sorry), because that works both ways. For this, I give you one example:shimgray and I are both quite normal geeky people. We wander around town being geeks. Our only notable feature, which has been commented on elsewhere, is a slightly comedic height difference. But when we wander around town together, one thing I notice over and over: other Indian people look at me funny. Isn't that a gloriously vague thing to say? But it's true, regardless. Other people of my ethnic group disapprove of the extent of my assimilation; other people of my ethnic group disapprove of my choices; other people of my ethnic group disapprove of the fact that I'm not with someone of that self-same ethnic group. And it made me wonder - when was the last time I saw a couple who were of two different ethnic backgrounds? Not recently. I mean, of course in our lovely Western liberal society it shouldn't be anything of note. But how common is it, really?
And, yes - if I had been born and lived in a place where part of my identity did not have to be constructed by otherness, distance, diaspora, and that vague thought that home is not the place I've spent my entire life, then this wouldn't be an issue. But I wasn't and haven't and this is an issue. And it is especially an issue when I engage in debate, here, online and elsewhere - because I will always be open to accusations of taking it "personally", I will always wonder that myself. In fact, my policy until very recently was to never engage in debate about race, because it is not only a matter of academic debate to me, and I can't trust myself to hold it to that level - and because I hate it when other people use anecdote instead of argument. But if the argument itself concerns invisible privilege, I'm open to being swayed. So here it is, this is what I mean when I talk about it.
And, finally. If anyone comments to tell me that flesh-coloured plasters aren't the same colour as white flesh, either, you are wilfully missing the point in a really quite offensive way. I am quite willing to explain it again, but I would rather not.
Firstly, yesterday
luminometrice and I went shopping, and we were wandering around Boots picking up make-up and putting it down, and I was rhapsodising about my love for eye glitter, and liquid eyeliner, and, indeed, my love for eye make-up in general. I don't wear eyeshadow, though, I said. It's all in silly pastel colours that don't look good on me. In fact, realising this not for the first time, it's all made for white people.Secondly, my very favourite leather sandals gave up the ghost yesterday afternoon and I went barefoot into town this morning; consequently, I had to stick plasters on my heels if I wanted to keep on walking. The plasters are "flesh coloured". They are at least three shades lighter than my flesh, and merely look ridiculous.
These are small things. They're nicely highlighed in Peggy McIntosh's Invisible Knapsack framework; white privilege, she writes, is not just contained in single incidents, but "invisible systems conferring dominance on [one] group." This doesn't mean, of course, that these aren't very small incidents, but it is true that they are part of a greater system, so to speak. The funny thing is, I read that list and find lots of statements that aren't true for me, but that I had never noticed until I read that list. Of course, people of my race aren't represented in the media I read. Of course, the "person in charge" of an establishment, if I ask to see her, is never someone of my race. Of course people ask me to speak for my entire racial group on occasion.
The one that I have been aware of for the longest is: "When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."
Because, yes. At school, I was not taught my own history. The obvious thing to object is that of course I wasn't taught Indian history in a suburban British school, and it's a terrible, lacklustre argument, but even if we give it credence, I can then say, well, it was my ancestors' systematic exploitation that sustained the British Empire. Why did this not come up in twentieth-century British history?
And, in addition, I occasionally scandalise my nearest and dearest by professing to never having read a novel published before 1900. A lot of this is, I must say, because my reading tastes simply don't tend that way; what I have read pre-1900, I have usually not enjoyed, ergo I don't seek any more out. But part of it is that, well, another book about historical white people, hurrah. I can't read my own literature pre-1900 because I only read English, and it's only after 1900 that I can read Tagore and Narayan if I want to.
I also occasionally irritate my nearest and dearest by being disproportionately angry about the fact that Sainsbury's supermarkets have an aisle devoted to "ethnic foods". This makes me hopping mad because it marginalises, trivialises and banalises an entire world's worth of cultures, including my own. Also, it's really bloody offensive. Another example of something minor - but one minor thing is minor, and lots of them, not so much.
And, well. There are more complex levels to it. You see, this is an invisible knapsack I don't have, but there are lots that I do have. I'm Oxford-educated, the child of well-off, professional parents, the current instantiation of an old and high-caste family. So if I, who should by rights be as little affected by institutional racism as anyone could possibly be, still am affected - then, well, I wonder what it's like for all the people who aren't lucky enough to be in my position. I couldn't speak for those people, but I wonder.
And a converse: I'm pretty well assimilated. I'm grumpy on Christmas Day, I think the British notion of washing-up is ridiculous (and I used to get into trouble at school for this; it's odd, but I suffered a lot more from my lack of white privilege when I was in kindergarten than at any other time), but I'm pretty well assimilated. And this raises a whole set of other problems. Because another lot of privilege I don't have is, for lack of a better term, Orthopraxic Cultural Assimilation Privilege (yes, terrible term, sorry), because that works both ways. For this, I give you one example:
shimgray and I are both quite normal geeky people. We wander around town being geeks. Our only notable feature, which has been commented on elsewhere, is a slightly comedic height difference. But when we wander around town together, one thing I notice over and over: other Indian people look at me funny. Isn't that a gloriously vague thing to say? But it's true, regardless. Other people of my ethnic group disapprove of the extent of my assimilation; other people of my ethnic group disapprove of my choices; other people of my ethnic group disapprove of the fact that I'm not with someone of that self-same ethnic group. And it made me wonder - when was the last time I saw a couple who were of two different ethnic backgrounds? Not recently. I mean, of course in our lovely Western liberal society it shouldn't be anything of note. But how common is it, really? And, yes - if I had been born and lived in a place where part of my identity did not have to be constructed by otherness, distance, diaspora, and that vague thought that home is not the place I've spent my entire life, then this wouldn't be an issue. But I wasn't and haven't and this is an issue. And it is especially an issue when I engage in debate, here, online and elsewhere - because I will always be open to accusations of taking it "personally", I will always wonder that myself. In fact, my policy until very recently was to never engage in debate about race, because it is not only a matter of academic debate to me, and I can't trust myself to hold it to that level - and because I hate it when other people use anecdote instead of argument. But if the argument itself concerns invisible privilege, I'm open to being swayed. So here it is, this is what I mean when I talk about it.
And, finally. If anyone comments to tell me that flesh-coloured plasters aren't the same colour as white flesh, either, you are wilfully missing the point in a really quite offensive way. I am quite willing to explain it again, but I would rather not.
