Thread: White privilege: Should it be noted?

White privilege: Should it be noted?

By Joe Dejka

As director of intercultural life at a small Iowa college 12 years ago, Eddie Moore Jr. decided to hold a conference on the advantages white Americans enjoy simply because of their skin color.

He called it the White Privilege Conference.

Every year since, people have suggested changing the name to something less provocative, Moore said.

He stood firm and now points to growing attendance — up from 150 that first year at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, to 3,000 this year in Minneapolis-St. Paul — as a sign the concept is catching on.

Authors of a book purchased by the Omaha Public Schools for cultural sensitivity training say teachers must acknowledge the existence of white privilege to better relate to minority students.

But critics view it as an unhealthy, hurtful fixation on race with dubious academic merit and potentially negative consequences for students.

Adherents to the white privilege concept define it generally as the tangible, but sometimes invisible, benefits whites enjoy as the dominant racial group in America.

Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh defined it plainly in 1988 in one of the early writings on the topic. McIntosh wrote of "an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day."

She compared white privilege to "an invisible weightless knapsack" full of tools that benefit whites like her.

Critics, however, say that focusing on white privilege distracts from the real challenges facing minority communities and from back-to-basics academic approaches that have been proven to lift poor and minority students' performance.

Carol Iannone, a critic who received a doctor of education degree in English literature from State University of New York Stony Brook and edits a national academic journal, said she's not aware of any evidence such training will improve achievement.

"Because overt racism and overt prejudice is very rare nowadays, now they have to find some kind of unconscious residue that is working without even any intention behind it to explain why their inequality persists," Iannone said.

Focusing attention on white privilege distracts from bigger issues that disadvantage many minority children in the classroom, she said, offering as an example a lack of fathers in the home.

Outside of academia, meanwhile, many people have never heard of white privilege.

OPS's book purchase stirred a firestorm of controversy. A recent World-Herald article about the book, purchased with federal stimulus money, raced across the blogosphere and national news media and prompted a surge of letters to the newspaper.

The authors of the book, "The Cultural Proficiency Journey," assert that only teachers who admit to white privilege can reach the highest level of cultural awareness.

The Omaha school board in April approved buying 8,000 copies of the book — one for every employee, including members of the custodial staff.

Advocates of the white privilege viewpoint see a disconnect between white teachers and minority students. Teachers who acknowledge white privilege stand a better chance of forging a productive relationship with students of color, they say.

Advocates see white privilege as a possible factor in persistent academic achievement gaps between white and minority students, which Omaha has suffered.

Recent census data also showed that wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The recession and uneven recovery have erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites on average with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics, according to an analysis of the data.

Omowale Akintunde, chairman of the Black Studies Department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told educators at a recent education summit in Omaha that white people have a hard time seeing their privilege because they are the dominant class.

"If you're all the way in it, you don't see it," he said during one session at the summit co-sponsored by OPS.

Akintunde said he's not out to blame or shame whites, rather just to expose the concept.

As a child growing up in Mobile, Ala., Akintunde said he noticed that pictures on the wall of the Lutheran school he attended portrayed Jesus as white. Biblical figures on the chapel's stained-glass windows were white. The TV cartoon families Flintstones and Jetsons were white, too.

He said he discovered "a world of whiteness." He realized he had adopted the white race as normal, that the "default race" in America is white.

In his view, schools need to review what they're teaching to make sure lessons don't reflect only the white point of view.

The omission of the word "white" from textbooks or worksheets — for instance, assuming that great American heroes or political leaders were white but identifying minority figures by race — affirms white as the dominant class, he said.

Tim Wise, author of several books including "White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son," said privilege isn't just about wealth.

He said white privilege actually is "any advantage, head start that a person who's white has that a person of color does not."

White privilege, for instance, means the white student doesn't have to worry that the teacher is making negative presumptions based on his race. White kids often are perceived by teachers as more capable, and therefore more likely to be tracked into advanced classes, while at the same time not disciplined as severely as students of color, he said.

Wise rejects the notion that the 2008 election of President Barack Obama ushered in a post-racial era free of discrimination.

"The reality is there are 85 million, approximately, black people in this country whose names are not Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey, and for the vast majority of black folks, and people of color generally, the opportunity structure is far different than that," Wise said.

Warren Blumenfeld, assistant professor of multicultural education at Iowa State University, teaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Ninety-five percent of his students are going into the teaching profession.

He said privilege exists not just for whites but also for men, heterosexuals, Christians, English speakers, U.S.-born residents and able-bodied people.

Blumenfeld said he teaches his students that their multiple identities impact their perceptions of the world, their teaching and their students' responses to their teaching.

Training teachers in cultural proficiency will help them function in an increasingly diverse democracy, he said.

"If I don't see a person's color, their race, I'm disregarding their background, their history, the legacy of oppression in this country and their culture," Blumenfeld said. "That's not a way to treat someone."

Critics find the concept of white privilege problematic on many fronts.

Mark Bauerlein received a doctorate in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has taught at Emory University in Atlanta and wrote a book about a 1906 race riot in Atlanta.

He said the concept of white privilege as something teachers must acknowledge fuels racial tension and "bleeds over into indoctrination, not education."

Discussing white privilege as a kind of mental condition that one must acknowledge borders on thought control, he said.

He warns of a potential negative effect on minority students.

"If that kid buys that, then every dissatisfying encounter that that kid has in later life, that kid will be inclined to ascribe it to skin color," Bauerlein said.

Iannone, who has criticized the teaching of white privilege in her writings for the National Association of Scholars, argues that a better approach would be to treat students as individuals.

Recognizing a certain amount of group identity is OK, but public schools should be a unifying force for students, she said.

"Heck, we're all Americans. And part of what public school education used to be about was giving a sense of unity to young people," Iannone said.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110807/NEWS01/708079896

Not anymore. IF you are white and straight, you WILL be discriminated against. Where is OUR parade.

Has anybody noticed that most of the new shows out now have Hispanics and blacks as the authority figure? Not that they don't deserve to be in authority, but it shows how whites are now being discriminated against and it shows that this is going to be the new normal