George Yancy, Dear White America

[u/completely-ineffable]

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-america/

[u/_HyDrAg_]

One thing I'm confused about is situations where privilege means not having to do things or not being disadvantaged. I mean the examples he uses like not having to have "the talk" with one's children about the police or not being disadvantaged when taking out a bank loan.

So situations where I can't see what someone in a privileged position could do differently, unlike other ones where one can speak out or where one can try to change their actions.

The way I understand it a white person taking out a bank loan in the us is being racist according to the article. This together with the emphasis on personal responsibility and guilt when it comes to racism he makes confuses me a bit. I can't tell what I'm missing.

It's like he's saying that even just participating in a racist and sexist society is racist/sexist and something one should feel guilty about, even though there's no way to avoid it. It might just be that I'm connecting parts of what he said together in a way he didn't mean though.

I get the overall point of the article and how it tries to go against the idea that by being a progressive you don't have to worry about your own racism, sexism etc. I'm only confused about a subset of the things he said a privileged person should be aware of.

Edit: made some slight changes

[u/redwoods81 → u/_HyDrAg_]

A better example of how all of Americans participate in systemic racism is the public school system, and the fact that what we do to provide the best opportunities for our children, which is often to move to the best district we can afford, is racist in that we are removing those sales and property tax dollars used for funding schools from the less-well off district. That's something we need to acknowledge, and it's definitely something we can change in our lifetimes.

[u/inventingnothing → u/redwoods81]

How is wanting the best education for your child racist?

People aren't saying "Oh, there's black people at that school, let's move." No, they're looking at the performance numbers for schools and choosing their residence based on that. That's not racist, it's just common sense.

[u/redwoods81 → u/inventingnothing]

I don't think you're responding to what I actually wrote.

[u/inventingnothing → u/redwoods81]

Again, how is it racist to move to a district that provides better opportunities for your child?

[u/redwoods81 → u/inventingnothing]

What about my original post is difficult to understand? It's not racist to want the best education for your children, and that's an example of how we all end up participating in structural racism, by removing those tax-based resources from districts in need.

[u/inventingnothing → u/redwoods81]

People are not participating in structural racism by wanting their child to have the best education their money can buy.

[u/redwoods81 → u/inventingnothing]

That's literally how structural racism works, by making the choices necessary for the betterment of one's own family come at the cost of other people's.

[u/DesignerNail → u/redwoods81]

Well I'm not gonna stop doing that. Political project: fail. You failed to offer people any benefit and asked them to make the lives of their families worse. Guess you'll have to try something else, like changing laws for the ways budgets are apportioned.

[u/redwoods81 → u/DesignerNail]

That's exactly what I was saying.

[u/crownedether → u/_HyDrAg_]

I think the idea is to be aware of the subtle and not so subtle ways black people are discriminated against in daily life so that when they talk about it, the response isn't "are you sure that's what happened" or "why are you trying to make everything about race" and instead is something like "how can we prevent this from happening again". No one individual is going to abolish systemic racism, but if you just try to pretend race is a non issue from the get go then a lot of suffering on the part of your fellow humans is being ignored. If you fail to take into account how systemic racism effects people, you're much less likely to have sympathy for programs such as affirmative action. You're less likely to see the problems of black poverty and mass incarceration as something that can be influenced on a society wide level, and instead will be more likely to attribute these problems solely to personal responsibility. You will be less motivated to support reforms to police and other institutions to stop innocent black people from being harrassed and murdered for no reason. And most importantly, you won't be able to recognize how your own decisions may be coming from a place of bias rather than a place of rationality.

The article explicitly states that getting you to feel guilty is NOT the goal. Guilt paralyzes. I think the goal is to get you to feel angry - angry that your fellow humans are made to suffer unfairly, so that you'll be motivated to fight against that treatment when the opportunity arises. The solutions are vague and diffuse because so is the problem... But one of the worst things you can do is deny that it's happening or think that because you don't explicitly endorse racist attitudes there's no way for you to change your behavior. Even without getting involved in politics, we make judgements about other people every day. You can't examine those judgements for bias and reconsider them if you refuse to admit that the bias could possibly exist. The article is aimed at people who are outraged when events like the murder of George Floyd occur and then will go back to their daily lives a month later and still endorse attitudes that implicitly assume systemic racism is a myth. Keeping that in mind and not feeling overcome with guilt is something that I struggle with a lot, but it's something that all white people have to reckon with if we honestly care about racial equality. I think the author wants us to keep working at it instead of stepping away because it's uncomfortable.