The 5 Stages of White Privilege Awareness
Stage One:
I’m not a racist!
AKA DENIAL
When I was 19 I went on a Spring Break trip to Los Angeles. There were 50 of us and we spent our days working throughout the city at various nonprofits and community centers and our evenings discussing issues of race and justice. On the first night of the trip, while we ate pizza and decompressed from the day, we listened to a welcome talk given by a white man who worked at the neighborhood center where we would be sleeping each night. His opening line to us was this: “You are all racists. Every. last. one of you.”
Not one for easing into things, that guy. Consistent with the demographics of the small private Christian college I attended, the overwhelming majority of our group was white. I was sitting near the back and I remember thinking, “Excuse me??? Who are you calling racist? My high school boyfriend was totally Korean. How could I be a racist if I dated someone who wasn’t white? No way.” I’d like to say that despite my discomfort I listened with an open mind and thus began a lifelong quest of inner examination and contemplation surrounding race and my own whiteness. But I didn’t. I completely tuned him out, full of my own righteous indignation.
It might have helped if our speaker had defined his terms. And maybe he did, I wouldn’t know. Understanding the terms is important. I didn’t like being called a racist. Nobody does. But the problem stems largely, I think, from the definition; the designations we make for what racism is and isn’t. So let’s start there. Racism, as defined by Merriam Webster, is:
- (a) the poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race and/or
- (b) the belief that some races of people are better than others.
When I considered whether or not I was racist, I was looking to that first part of the definition. Racist? Not a chance! I have never treated someone poorly or, heaven forbid, resorted to violence against someone because of their race. I wouldn’t dream of it. Taking stock of that first definition left me feeling like my conscience was clear and ready to defy anyone who would challenge me on it. My dukes were up.
But the second half of the definition — the belief that some races of people are better than others — is where the line started to get a little fuzzy. My first response was still a stubborn, “Me? No way! I don’t think that!” But on closer examination even I had to admit that there was another story was playing out, both in the culture and in my own mind. There are studies, I discovered, that show that children, even black children, have a clear preference for white dolls over black ones. This was originally discovered by husband and wife psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in the 1940s and, if you’re like me, you probably assume it’s an outdated study. Certainly we’ve come a long way since the 1940s. That was then and this is now. But Kiri Davis repeated the study in 2006 and found that the results hadn’t changed.
There’s also the fact that most people on welfare are white — whites actually take in a whopping 69% of government benefits — but most Americans think the majority of welfare recipients are black. Our workforce still remains strongly stratified by race. We continue to perpetuate the myth that black fathers are more absent than most when recent findings actually show the opposite. And we continue to uphold and perpetuate the myth of Asians as the “model minority.”
But still, I argued with myself. I’m not part of that.
This, here, was the critical juncture for me. It was the point at which I realized I could either keep shouting “not me! not me! not me!” or I could admit that even though I might not fully understand it, I am a part of this. I am part of the dominant race in a country whose kids are choosing white dolls over black ones; whose preschoolers make the black kids play the part of the “bad guys” on the playground; whose black citizens are imprisoned for drug possession at a wildly disproportionate rate compared to their white counterparts; whose white students routinely outnumber Latino and Black students in the gifted programs in our schools despite the fact that science shows giftedness to occur at exactly the same rate across all racial groups.
The belief that some races of people are better than others evidently does exist, at least on some level, although it apparently simmers so far beneath the surface that many of us, myself included, are often wholly unaware of it. I kept looking at the first half of the definition and exonerating myself. But I eventually realized that even if I had never uttered a single word that could be construed as “racist,” I was still racist. I know this because, even now, after years of self-reflection and efforts to override my conditioning and socialization, when I hear about an accomplished scientist or brilliant author, my mind conjures a white person. The belief that some races of people are better than others.
Even though I had believed myself to be entirely above reproach all those years ago, I finally came to a place where I could look at the larger landscape and see that something was amiss; and that I, myself, was an inextricable part of the landscape. The U.S. has a systemic problem with race and I am part of the system. That is where I found myself about a year after that night in LA: alone in my apartment, eating a hearty piece of humble pie and wondering how I had been so blind. It took me longer than it should have but I got there eventually. But I had to stop fighting first. I had to settle down, stop defending myself in order to allow these other stories to unfold before me. It was only after I stopped fighting that I was able to see the world, and our country in particular, in new ways. And that was when I was finally ready to begin the hard work of digging down through those deeper, more painful, layers of my own prejudices.
Ready for the Next Stage?
Stage Two: Get This Thing Off of Me!
The Rest of the Series
Click HERE for Stage One: I’m Not a Racist!
Click HERE for Stage Two: Get This Thing Off of Me!
Click HERE for Stage Three: Look at Me! Look at Me! I’m a WPGI!
Click HERE for Stage Four: Awareness Fatigue
Click HERE for Stage Five: What Now?
And for the complete series all in one place, click HERE.
I’m looking forward to this week’s posts! Today, I particularly liked the line “we have to be willing to look at the larger landscape and see that something is amiss.” So true!
Have you hear of: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
I read about it in a book… forgetting which one at the moment. You can test yourself to see how readily you associate certain racial attributes with certain virtues. Anyway, according to the book (dang which one?!) if you fight your first instinct to associate a certain race with a good or bad word it’ll be revealed in the amount of time it took you to answer, thus revealing your true thoughts…. You can also take the test a lot, fighting your instincts each time, to eventually brainwash yourself to not associate attributes to race anymore… I haven’t taken the time to do either but probably should. 🙂 Note: I didn’t go to Harvard so my description of this test is probably terrible.
Alright, I decided to take the test myself and this is my result after one time through:
“You have completed the African American – European American IAT.
Your Result
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American.”
I suppose I already assumed that. For me I think being aware of my preferences and their fallacies is really the first step to recovery. This is a very interesting topic, at least to me. 🙂
That sounds really interesting, Kathryn! Thanks for the link. I’ll have to check it out.
Finding this interesting so far. You’re asking some great questions and have given some thought provoking examples of the extent of this systemic problem.
One minor correction- as a demographic there IS a greater level of absence among fathers in the black community. This is not a myth.
The author of the ThinkProgress article may have made an honest mistake in the way they interpreted the chart and study they saw (likely passing on this misunderstanding on to you.) The chart they listed, the study they cited, and the LA Times article they linked to were all woefully obtuse or inadequate in addressing the single most important question in understanding these statistics: What percentage of fathers of each race actually lives with their children vs the percentage that are absent?
The US Census has numbers on this and they paint a vastly different picture than the narrative provided on ThinkProgress. For example, only 5.4% of white households in 2013 consisted of a single mother with children under 25 (4.3% with children under 18.) Among blacks it was 17.7% with children under 25 (14.8% with children under 18.) That means that as a group black fathers are on the right side of the NCHS chart 3 times more often than white fathers. Therefore, demographically speaking, they are significantly less involved in their children’s lives, not equally or more involved as the ThinkProgress author seemed to think.
If you want to look at the numbers yourself, check out table H3 here:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2013H.html
Please note that I’m not making any claims on why this is the case. And since I haven’t looked extensively at the cause(s) it would be premature to make any specific value judgments based on what I’ve presented. Nor am I trying to apply demographic trends to any particular individuals.
I simply want to see stronger families and better lives for everyone in our country, and believe that accurately recognizing where we are is an important step towards progress in working together to make this a reality.
You’re right – the percentage of black families without a father living at home IS higher. Thank you for the info and numbers.
The article I linked was looking at rates of involvement across the various racial groups, specifically for dads who did NOT live at home. The Pew Research Center estimates that 67% of black dads who don’t live with their kids stay involved with them on a regular basis, compared to 59% of white dads.
This may be a question of what’s specific to the myth vs what’s relevant to the overall topic of paternal involvement.
Both of the following are true:
1) Demographically, black fathers are more involved than their white or latino counterparts when compared within the same living situation.
2) Demographically, black fathers are less involved with their kids overall, mostly because they live with their kids less often than whites or latinos.
For any folks that envision black fathers at home with their kids but disengaged more than white fathers, or that think that black fathers that don’t live with their kids just disappear and stop being involved, this provides a needed correction.
For the group of black men within each generation that are worried about whether they will be a good father, this provides both hope and a challenge. It provides hope in that these stats underline that there is nothing inherent to blackness that affects one’s potential as a father. The challenge is that they need to be intentional in decisions they can control that may impact whether or not they end up living with their kids if they want to reach their full potential for paternal involvement.
I’ve attached 2 graphs that show this in detail. I’m happy to share the Excel sheet if that’s of interest.
Note- this does not begin to address causation or look at the various relevant factors (culture, socio-economic factors, education, etc.) But it’s a good step towards more fully understanding the situation.
Lastly – the absence of Asians and other minorities in this comparison is due to limits in the data/sample size of the NCHS survey.
I believe that the new study shows that African-American fathers who are engaged with their children are more highly engaged. That’s important to note. As we work to strengthen family life among African Americans, it good to have solid evidence of extraordinary modeling within the community.
Agreed.