tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-338673412024-03-13T16:53:34.203-07:00White PrivilegeWhite Privilege refers to the unearned benefits that some enjoy simply by having "white" skin. This blog is not about being guilty, but rather, being responsible. The privilege is at the expense of people of color but white people cannot maintain this system of privilege without losing a part of their own humanity. This social blog is dedicated to reclaiming our humanity through antiracist analysis, reflection, and storytelling. Send submissions: cjbalive@hotmail.comcjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-45977283764727265692014-09-02T18:19:00.000-07:002014-09-02T18:19:49.214-07:00Response-Ability: Privilege, Police Brutality, and Andy Lopez<div style="background-color: white; border-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.35em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Responsibility. Response-ability. It begs the question: What kind of response should white people have to the heart-breaking assassination of 13 year-old Andy Lopez? <span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit;">There is of course no one answer to that question. However, my hope is that the response would create some solidarity with a community of color that has a long history of police harassment and brutality. In mentioning race I may be accused of “playing the race card.” However, in not considering race and the history of race in this community as a significant causal factor to this tragedy, I would being playing a different race card—the white supremacy race card. By not mentioning race, we blind ourselves to a deep and painful reality and in doing so, prevent ourselves from being response-able. Further, in looking at racial implications, as white people we have the opportunity to learn about ourselves and the culture we live in and thus become more capable of acting in solidarity with people of color.</span></div>
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Currently, there are many questions specific to the police shooting of Andy Lopez. Many are asking if the deputy acted out of fear or aggression, why young Andy had such a realistic looking toy gun, why he didn’t put down his gun, etc. These questions may or may not be answered. However, looking at the shooting in the context of U.S. history, and even just Sonoma County history, reveals a pattern that sheds some difficult clarity on the situation at hand. The important questions are questions about a manifestation of a larger disease. The ability to respond effectively requires asking questions about the underlying disease. Some local examples, that are but a few of countless national examples, can help us do this.</div>
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Sujey Lopez is not the first mother to be grieving the death her teenage son at the hands of Sonoma County deputies. In March of 2007 Jermiah Chass, a 16 year-old African–American boy with mental health struggles was shot dead by deputies despite being cornered and alone in a mini-van with a knife. Other men of color have also been killed by local law enforcement. A month after Jermiah Chass, Richard DeSantis, and unarmed man with mental health struggles was shot dead in his drive way by SRPD. In 1997 Kuanchung Kao was shot dead by Rohnert Park Police who believed that because he had a broom handle and was Asian that he was experienced in martial arts. And yes, white people too have been killed by local law enforcement. However, a second example illustrates a disturbing discrepancy.</div>
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Just two weeks ago a startling incident took place in the upper-class Sonoma County neighborhood of Fountain Grove. A white man named James Carl Provost fired four bullets out his window at his wife and a locksmith. An 11-hour stand off proceeded and eventually he was arrested. Not only was he not shot dead (despite having a REAL gun), he was not even charged with attempted murder. I do not mean to imply that James Provost should have been killed. However, did not his social position as a white, wealthy man possibly save his life? He was given roughly 11 hours to drop his gun. Andy Lopez was given roughly 11 seconds.</div>
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The obvious implication is that if you are white you are simply less likely to be killed by law enforcement. There is quantitative and qualitative support for this. Researcher Arlene Eisen in solidarity with the Malcolm X Grassroots Committee created a 2012 report on extrajudicial killings in the black community. In her report <a href="http://www.racialjusticeallies.org/operation-ghetto-storm/" style="border-width: 0px; color: #21759b; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Operation Ghetto Storm">Operation Ghetto Storm</a>, she highlights the fact that every 28 hours someone inside the United States, employed or protected by the U.S. government kills a Black child, woman or man. We can also look to the <a href="http://www.stolenlives.org/" style="border-width: 0px; color: #21759b; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Stolen Lives Project</a> which publishes annual lists and pictures of US Citizens killed by law enforcement. Overwhelmingly these faces are black and brown. The Stolen Lives project is a project of the October 22nd Coalition. October 22nd is the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. It is also the day Andy Lopez was killed.</div>
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One question being asked is why was Andy was walking around with such a realistic gun? This question implies that Andy was somehow at fault, not so different from a rape victim being asked why she wore such a short skirt. The same system that creates rape culture creates gun culture. And sadly, the same system that killed Andy Lopez blatantly encouraged his interest in guns. In August of 2011 the Sonoma County SWAT team held an event that amounted to a gun show for kids. This took place in South Park, a low-income neighborhood of mostly Latino, Native-American, and African-American families <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110830/articles/110839935#page=1%29" style="border-width: 0px; color: #21759b; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">(Press Democrat article)</a>. Children of all ages had the chance to pick up and play with unloaded firearms, including assault rifles. One would think in a country in which the right to bare arms is held more sacred than the right to food, health care or education, that Andy would be rewarded for his interest in firearms. While it is not known if Andy himself was there, it doesn’t matter because Andy lived in a culture in which the police encouraged people like him to be interested in firearms, an interest he paid for with his life.</div>
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So what does this say about us as white people and our ability to respond? I propose that white privilege makes us white folks unsafe. In viewing communities of color as potential danger (and thus increasing police presence, bias sentencing laws, and inaccurate stereotypes) we scapegoat violence onto those communities. After all, it is usually white men who are the triggermen in school shootings and other mass shootings. As well, most violence committed by Latino or African-American males is committed against someone of their own race. Our white privilege insulates us from response-ability, thus compromising our own humanity. When we do not effectively respond to situations like this we allow these situations to continue. No response is itself a response. If we do not take response-ability for creating a community that is safe from racialized police violence then we perpetuate that violence. If we see ourselves as compassionate and just people but do not act to address the disease, not just the symptoms (that is to say the system and not just the individuals in it), then our humanity and our community are compromised.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit;">What to do? In 2000 the United States Commission on Civil Rights admonished Sonoma County to create an office, independent of the D.A.’s office, to investigate police abuse. This did not happen. It is not a surprise to some that the system again failed to hold itself accountable. Individuals have taken action. Local activists have set up a Police Accountability Helpline (542-7224). As well, Cook Middle School students and other of Andy’s peers are actively organizing a response. Some have organized Copwatch patrols, some have held community dialogues. We can support these events by attending, spreading the word and talking to those students and asking what they need from us. We can be looking inward at how even our previous responses to police violence have allowed the system to continue. We can be acting by supporting communities of color as they need to be supported. We can do this by questioning the very systems that protect us but harm others—the sheriff, the police, the mental health system, the firearms industry.</span></div>
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cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-25714350001567152202013-06-04T21:44:00.000-07:002014-03-04T11:02:14.572-08:00Ethnoautobiography by Christopher Bowers<!--[if !mso]>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33867341" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=33867341" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><i><i>Do not think about doing her work of
seeing and healing before sacrificing your Self to </i></i><i><i>the tree, before talking in </i>útiseta<i>
to your ancestors. Do not think you can pass by the </i></i><i><i>guardian </i>Heimdallr<i>
by just uttering the name of your ancestors. Yes, that you must do.</i> <i>But it is only the beginning. Until you
have not been picked apart in the deep darkness of </i><i>all the changes, all the history which</i>
Urðarbrunnur<i> contains, until you have not shed the </i><i>tears of memory, until you have not
plunged into the shadow of all and everything our </i><i>ancestors have wrought, until then:
Remember the tree! Do not attempt to pass </i>Heimdallr<i>, because you are a lost
soul, and lost you will be in the world you are trying to e</i><i>nter </i>(Valgerdur & Kremer, 1999)<i>.</i></i></div>
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<b style="line-height: 200%;"><u>Crossing the Threshold</u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%;"> So this is the task in front of me,
to shed the tears of memory, to be picked apart. It is a task I hardly understand. I don’t even know how to get to the gate let alone pass through it.
Weeks now I’ve tucked letters to my ancestors under my pillow hoping for some imaginal
response to come forth while I am sleeping. </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Last night I dreamt an imageless dream that none the less
contained words simple and clear: “The red sky, the blue sky, and the grey sky
are sisters”. I am amused and baffled. It sounds like some mythological
cosmology, but I feel I’ve let down whoever the sender may be. I haven’t a clue
what this could mean. </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">I’ve gone to the green hills and offered tobacco
to the incredible oaks, hoping that they will somehow bridge this gap between
me and those whose DNA I transport hundreds of years into their future; bridge
the gap between Sweden and the United States, between what is known and was is
not, between what is past and what is not. In front of me the oaks seem to
stand in defiant silence. And how can I blame them. For behind me are the suburbs
that have crept up the mountain a little more every year. I can name the people
whose houses were once fields and I can name the games no longer played in
those fields. I can name the differences between these fields and those of my
ancestors. And with this I can begin to name what was lost:</span></div>
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<i> </i></div>
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<i> Bread
came from the rye field and meat from the cattle. Clothing and shoes were made
in the home by itinerant tailors and cobblers, out of wool from the sheep, flax
from the ground, skins from the animals. All necessary things were taken from
the earth. The people were at the mercy of the Lord’s weather, which brought
fat years and lean years-but they depended on no other power under the sun. The
farm was a world of its own, beholden to no one. The cottages nestled low and
gray, timbered to last for centuries, and under the same roof of bark and sod the
people lived their lives from birth to death. Weddings were held, christening
and wake ale was drunk, life was lit and blown out within these same four walls
of rough-hewn pine logs. Outside of life’s great events, little happened other
than the change of seasons. In the field the shoots were green in spring and
the stubble yellow in autumn. Life was lived quietly while the farm’s allotted
years rounded their cycle </i>(Mobery,
1949)<i>.</i></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Without the
Irish Curse</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Mobery’s
idyllic description of 19<sup>th</sup> century Sweden illuminates a silhouette
of grief, giving it form and texture. It is the grief that I felt but didn’t
know why. The vague sadness that crept in when I watched “The Lord of the Rings”
and wanted to cry at the colorful depictions of the hobbits picturesque
homeland, “<i>The Shire”. </i>It is the
grief I felt whenever I read one of Kurt Vonnegut’s nostalgic laments about <i>folk society</i>. Maybe he idealized it and
maybe I do too. But when I am in angry in traffic, or at home alone remembering
that it’s been three months since I saw a friend who lives a mile away, it’s
times like that I am certain of nothing but loss. It’s not just loss. It’s
hunger, longing. Growing up in the United States, a place so void of folksy
cultural markers, so void of communal intimacy, I often feel like a dog gnawing
and gnawing on a meatless bone. As any eastern philosophy would say, loss is
just the other side of gain, that they are two parts to one phenomenon. So what
gain has created this loss?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> When
I first learned about white privilege, those unearned benefits, those gains
that come with the color of my skin I felt guilty. Not so much for the vague
understanding that my ancestors had spilled the blood of the indigenous or for
the modern manifestations of white supremacy. The guilt came in that I was, as
commie-hobo-poet Utah Phillips (1996) once put it “armed to the teeth with the
weapons of privilege”, and despite that, I was so unhappy. Not an uncommon
experience among the privileged. Reflective of the American paradox, this
question of increased wealth and decreased joy has become central to my life
and work. To understand the costs of privilege, a cost that is so obvious in
our oblivion but so obscured in our opulence, I must go back. Back beyond my nine
month residency in the womb of a middle-class white woman married to a
dark-skinned “white” man. Back beyond the civil war where my northern ancestors
fought to end slavery while they simultaneously slaughtered the Indigenous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> My maternal great grandfather Carl T.
Roman (once spelled Rohman) took the ten-week oceanic voyage from Sweden to the
United States in 1910. He had come from a long-line of farmers but like many
early 20<sup>th</sup> century Swedes he’d acquired industrial skills as a tool
and dye maker. Industrialism and global economics had decimated many farming
communities in Sweden. By 1911 more than half the emigrants had industrial skills.
A sociopolitical crisis from 1907-1909, brought reduced wages and hours, labor
unrest, strikes, and lockouts. The result of this crisis was that 1910 was a
big year for emigration (Barton, 1975). Carl followed several siblings who had
already successfully established themselves in the United States and one who
hadn’t. His brother Lars killed himself after several years of struggling to
set up a new life in the United States. Carl set up in Chicago, which had one
of the most vibrant Swedish communities in the country. In 1910 one could go to
“Swede Town”, as it was known, and one could find Swedish hospitals,
newspapers, orphanages, convalescent homes, even a Swedish vaudeville scene (McGill,
1997).</span></div>
<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Carl
soon met Tansy Nelson, though her immigrant parents spelled it Nihlsson. Tansy,
like Carl, came from a long line of farmers in Sweden. However, homegrown wheat
prices plunged when industrialism made it possible for other countries,
including the United States to flood Swedish markets at home and abroad. From
1890-1910 agricultural population sank from 72% to 48%. Also, Sweden abandoned free trade in
favor of tariffs. Tariffs protected some farmers and industry elite but raised
costs for poorer rural and urban workers. During this time there was also an
increase in compulsory military service as well as increased religious conflicts
with the Swedish Catholic Church (Barton, 1975). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Swedes
landed in the U.S. with privilege that went beyond race. Prior to the Chinese
they were the most recruited nationality to work on the railroads and for many
years they were preferred labor because they were white “without the ‘Irish
curse’” (Barton, 1975). Some of the privilege that I benefited from began with
this wealth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pie in the Sky</span></u></b><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I found my identity as a radical
post-modernist affirmed in the class readings. Thus, I was particularly excited
to learn of one Swedish immigrant by the name of Joel H</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">ä</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">gglund.
Joel had fled Sweden only eight years before my great-grandfather. Presumably
he was fleeing the same class strife Carl faced. Joel was a migrant laborer who
joined the International Workers of the World. Like me, he was a radical and a
songwriter. He wrote a song that coined the phrase “Pie in the Sky”. Mr. H</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">ä</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">gglund
became a great labor organizer known to many by the name Joe Hill. The same
government my great-grandfather adored murdered Joe Hill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Most
Swedish immigrants were not radical and in fact were embarrassed by socialist
Swedes (Barton 1975). Carl was not a radical. He insisted on assimilation. My
grandfather and his two brothers never learned Swedish. In some ways I am
baffled by how my great grandfather left his homeland to resist conscription
and to find equal opportunity only to go to a world leader in both military
strength and class strife. Carl raised his kids to believe in the national myth
of democracy and equality despite the fact that many faced similar
circumstances that led Carl to leave Sweden. However, here in the United States
there was a crucial difference. That difference was white privilege. In fact,
Barton (1975) suggests that the Swedes very success in America is what led to
the loss of their own culture within America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> In
this moment I have just reconstructed a memory that at the time seemed
laughable, but now feels painful. When I was about 25 my grandfather sat drunk
at the dinner table. He began to speak about the one time he went to Sweden. He
was four years old. He spoke of it as if it were yesterday. He began to cry. At
the time I looked at my mother and she rolled her eyes. We all thought the old
man was just drunk and overly sentimental. He is dead now and I find myself wishing that I could talk with him,
grieve with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I
believe this story is not specific to Swedish immigrants. Never the less, it is
the reason why I will never know the intoxicating nuances of brännvin, the
taste of knäckebröd, lingonberry preserves or cured <i>lutfisk</i>. I also don’t know anything about the lives of Carl or
Tansy’s parents, I know no stories of life on the farm, life before the farm,
no stories of a life ruled by a cosmology instead of a constitution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Revisionist History<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Clearly
the case should be made that the beginning of white privilege came from making
the choice to emigrate, rather than being stolen from ancestral lands. Here in
the United States Carl and his family could raise their socioeconomic standing
simply because racial markers had been constructed into an economic and social
hierarchy. The class strife Carl faced in northern Europe could be minimized if
not erased because here others with darker skin and Irish accents would take
his place in the lower classes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Like
most difficult and problematic privileges, this one too began with the best of
intentions: the desire for freedom, survival, adventure, a willingness to live up
to that which you believe you are capable. As well, the intention to get back
what was already being lost with the forces of industrialization and the global
economy. Like the other privileges I enjoy, my great grandfather’s privilege to
willfully go to America, or in Swedish “mer-rika” (more rich) has made my life
what it is- all the losses and all the gains began with these innocent
intentions. And yet, I find myself questioning these intentions. Was it the
spirit of adventure or acquiescence to power?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> In
my post-modern identity I find something I didn’t expect on this path: resentment
towards my ancestors. Why didn’t
they question or struggle against the classism and racism of their time? The
common argument is “Those were different times”. Yet, Joe Hill was not unlike
my great grandfather in many ways. Perhaps my ancestors would resent this
socialist re-contextualization. After all, the implication is that
acculturation included the willful loss of class identity within personal
identity. I have to ask myself, is this revisionist history a reclaiming of a
deeper identity or simply narcissistic wish fulfillment? Erik Erikson in studying the Sioux was
able to connect loss of personal identity to the loss of cultural identity (Frager
& Fadiman, 2005). I suspect a similar phenomenon in so called white
America. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Whiteness Takes A Detour<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I
have chosen to focus on the Swedish strand because so little was known. So
little is still known. Without the same level of detail there is one other
strand on my father’s side worth mentioning. Growing up my father had a great
tan. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, my father had
a great tan. He was just born with good pigment. That was the story but not
until I am in my thirties do I realize this is not the whole story. My
girlfriend at the time, whom I’d met doing anti-racism work, is looking at one
of my photo albums. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> “Your
dad is a person of color” she casually remarks. I am stunned into silence.
Somewhere in me I knew everything that such a statement implied and it was utterly
disorienting. Perhaps most stunning was the realization that if my father was
not fully European-American, then neither was I. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> My
dad is an ex-marine, a conservative republican and some would say racist. He
has consistently made racist jokes, racist statements, and his sense of
entitlement and supremacy is not always so obscured. Never the less, save for
one incident that I am aware of, my father has enjoyed the privilege of passing
as a dark-skinned white man. The incident to which I refer is one I’d been
aware of prior to the revelation that my dad is not fully white. When he was
applying to colleges and attaching newspaper photos of his record-setting track
and field achievements, one college in Texas rejected him on the basis that
they did not accept “negros”. Even when hearing this story, it never occurred
to me that there was a much bigger story at hand. This story, like so many
stories that make up the collective shadow of this country, is filled with
omissions, assumptions, half-truths, inconsistencies and again, loss. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> What
I know is not much: My dad’s grandmother Leona is either one-half or one-fourth
Native American. She had some illicit affair that alienated her from her
children. Whatever knowledge they had of her heritage was taken to their grave
along with their resentments. My dad’s father was not dark-skinned but had
recognizable indigenous facial features in his jaw and nose. Leona’s birth certificate
lists as her parents John Griffith and Sarah Spurgeon. There is nothing
particularly ethnic about those names and there are no known photos or records.
How can one “talk to your ancestors” when you don’t even know who they are or
where they were from? The most I know about my ancestors is what they are not.
They are not record keepers, they are not totally white, and they are not
speaking to me. Loss. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Other
complicated histories on my father’s side: The first generation is from the
Bavarian region of Germany. John Underfanger fought in the Union during the
Civil War. While they fought to end slavery, they also slaughtered the
indigenous. It is quite possible it was at this crossroads in our nations
history that my family’s whiteness took a detour. Maybe one of my grandfathers met a woman too beautiful to
kill. Or maybe he loved her and killed her anyways. In the United States ethnic
history is a violent history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> As
I write this I consider more deeply and more directly how my own violence may
be something brought to me from the past. Specifically I wonder if the ways
that I have hurt others in my life is just an extension of my fathers
internalized racism, the internal rage he may have felt at being aware of his
difference without understanding its meaning. Is this my rage as well? Is my
great, great, great grandfather’s dissociation that made him to fight for one
group and kill another similar to that which allowed me to major in feminism in
college and then be emotionally abusive in my relationships with women? When
blame is removed from the equation the answer becomes more collective and
opposing forces feel a little less so. Along with Carl, Tansy, Leona, John and
others I now have the names of over 50 other people in five different countries
over 300 years whose lives led to mine. Yet, I know almost nothing of a even
one of their lives. </span><i>“Do not think you can pass by the</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><i>guardian </i><span style="line-height: 200%;">Heimdallr<i>
by just uttering the name of your ancestors…”</i></span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> If I consider all those I don’t have the names of and go back
even more years I find the loss is multiplied. More and more memory and culture
lost to assimilation and survival. The fact is that my ancestors who
participated in class warfare, genocide, and hoarding of wealth were merely
circles that came before my circular path and they themselves were lost souls.
They themselves had lost their way and I cannot separate my loss from theirs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">PART II<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Sometimes
I wonder what would knowing more do for me anyway? Even if I go to Sweden,
connect with my relatives and learn the Swedish ways, how will that really affect
my life here? I am not convinced that it will change much at all. Plus, I am
not just Swedish. I am many things. Some of them are ethnic and some are not.
Some are self-created, some are not. Some are from the past, some are not. It
seems to me the task of white people in the United States is to negotiate white
identity in a way that recontextualizes it as an identity of reconciliation and
integration. Bringing into the now, all that has passed- all the horror, all
the loss, and all the pride and from this bring forth some thing new, dynamic
and evolving, something not so monolithic in nature. So, I again look to the
past to make sense of the now. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Ishi at the World Fair</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> This
month in 1904 the World’s Fair was in St. Louis. One of the exhibitions was a
Native American known as Ishi who had crawled out of the woods near Oroville,
California, the lone surviving member of his clan. He was put on display as the
“the last wild Indian”. But, the “<i>wild”</i>
had been taken out of wilderness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> The
hills are green though the gold is waiting in the wings of spring. I am reminded
of Moberg’s writings: <i>In the field the
shoots were green in spring and the stubble yellow in autumn. Life was lived
quietly while the farm’s allotted years rounded their cycle. </i>I have grown
up in these fields. Not Moberg’s Sweden but perhaps not unlike it either. I
have traversed these trails since I was a young boy. My ancestors went from
being farmers to migrant industrial workers to capitalists. When the industrial
revolution came to Sweden people lost their land and with it a sense of ecology.
Emigration and assimilation made this loss complete. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> As
much of a sentimental connection as I have to this land, I realize I have never
taken the time to notice the hills change color. I go to bed one night and the
hills are green. I wake up the next day and they are gold. When did I become so
alienated from the metamorphoses? Only recently have I noticed how loud the
birds sing on spring mornings like this one. My connection to land is largely
visual. I first knew this landscape from the window of my kindergarten school
bus as it drove the ten miles from my house to school. I would sit in back in
silent revelry of the hills around me. As a child I played in these hills, as a
teen I hiked in them. The sad irony is that now I enjoy this connection largely
via the spoils of industrialism and white flight as I take long, nostalgic drives
through the beautiful back roads that scar up the countryside. This land is
simultaneously loved and ruined, just like Ishi at the World Fair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Rain Dogs<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span>Why
don’t I know how to grow a tomato? Why did it take me so many years to notice
the cacophonic symphony of the local voleries? This land was once stewarded by
native peoples, primarily the Pomo. They probably perceived many shades between
green and gold, probably had conversations with the birds it took me
thirty-some years to notice.</div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> The
factors that obscure my own indigenous roots are personal and institutional,
systematic and mythological, real and imagined, past and present. For this
inquiry I began to research different indigenous cultures of Northern Europe,
the Sami, the Old Norse. It was an attempt at cosmological healing, to go to
the origins of things. It became quickly apparent that this is far more
complicated than finding a singular beginning point. As a white person in
modern North America there is no one origin to go back to. There are many
strands to choose from and almost all of them will lead into darkness and
obscurity. Musician Tom Waits named his 1990 album “Rain Dogs” explaining that
rain dogs are the canine that wander the street at night because the rain has
washed away the scent that would have led them home. As a white person in North
America, I feel like a rain dog. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> To
get an experiential sense of origin, I can go back to my childhood, to a sense
of being in love with the world without any sense of God but instead a
mythology of innocence and wonder. When I was a child, more than any other epoch
of my life, I lived according to cycles outside of modernist and capitalist
digitized time. I lived a little closer to something eternal, an existence in
which I did not know that time was portioned into days, weeks and months all of
which adulterated by names and deadlines, an existence ignorant to the
imprisoning structure of schedules. I awoke with the sun and I knew the day was
getting on by how the trees I climbed cast longer shadows at different angles
and because the sun had changed the scope of its illumination upon the dirt in
which I dug up imaginary but priceless treasures. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Sadly,
this nostalgia is not indigenism but contains some aspect of it: sense of
place, ecology, a connection to something bigger than myself. Yet, it is the
only experience I have ever known of living without some internalized
modernism. This is complicated by the fact that without modernism, my time in
the temporal spotlight would have been very short indeed. I was born with only
a half of a heart and modern science made it so that that half was sufficient. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> When
modernism married Christianity, indigenous knowledge seemed to not stand a
chance. And yet there are pockets of the world that have been resilient and I
feel that this resiliency has planted seeds in my own heart. I feel that
despite all I don’t know, despite all I will never know, there is also wisdom
still available to me should I remain engaged in the process. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span>In
the process of participatory inquiry we are asked to investigate the various
aspects of a deep question, to relate them to one another and come to something
altogether new. We are asked to create a feedback loop of changing and being
changed, of nurturing and be nurtured, the “circular relationship of knowledge”
(<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Valgerdur
& Kremer, 1999)</span><i>.</i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> So in this way perhaps
what I don’t know can commune with what I do know and some empty spaces may be
filled. Or, as Tom Waits (1990) puts it “the things you can’t remember tell the
things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream”. In this way, what will seem to be
speculation from here on out is in fact something more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<b><u><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Be the Tree</span></u></b><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <b><u><o:p></o:p></u></b></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I
have chosen the path of a healer in this life. This path has been prescribed to
me in very specific terms by modern Western culture, a culture which seems to
have divided phenomena into a series of dichotomies only to emphasize the more
negative sides. I am told that being a healer means knowing deviance and
dysfunction. Yet, deviance and dysfunction can only be defined against a norm.
Part of white privilege is that your very existence, your life as it is, is the
norm. White people, though diverse in many other ways, largely define the norm
simply by being. That norm has been shaped by modernism, capitalism, racism,
and all the disparate strands that played out in my life and in the lives of my
ancestors. A primary cost of privilege, the loss of ancestral knowledge is
really just a smaller part of a feedback loop, for our ancestors lost something
too. My Swedish atavists did not know their indigenous roots. The loss of the modern
age may very well be the loss of indigenous knowledge, that is to say, the
knowledge of wholeness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Western
culture has no unified cosmology and appears to depend on dichotomy to maintain
its dominance: norm and deviance, objective and subjective, us and them, individual
and community, white and non-white. In these dichotomies there is no wholeness
because both sides are rarely held simultaneously and only clumsily synthesized.
In western culture, one pole subsumes the other. Instead of this <i>and </i>that, it becomes this <i>vs. </i>that, either/or. These dichotomies become
internalized and before we know it, we are at war with ourselves, a war
impossible to win. In my own life I know that healing has often come in trying
to skillfully synthesize or integrate two competing parts of myself: the seeker
and the activist, the artist and the intellectual, the anger and the love, etc.
I suspect that my generation is being called to this same task on a macro
level. In some way this speaks to another fundamental brokenness waiting to be
healed and made whole: self and other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> The
larger strands of my ancestry are Scandinavian. I am possibly of the Sami
people, but since most of my Swedish heritage is from southern Sweden I may
also be Viking. I do not know where to look for the appropriate healing. I am
still waiting for the whispers of inspiration in dreams, meditations and in
walkabouts. For now I can only make very rough estimations using more intellect
than intuition. In the Old Norse
mythology there are two important trees. From one tree come Askr and Embla, the
first two humans. I am struck by Engles drawing of these two figures. I was
unable to find any reflections by Engles or other art critics on what he may
have intended. However, it seems to infer the very conflict of the modern area
with the indigenous origin. Who is the sword-wielding man with coattails? Are
his arms raised in reverence or in revolt? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> The
other tree is a version of the “tree of life”. In the Old Norse mythological
story known as </span><i>Gylfaginning,
</i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">there is a dialog between a seeker
and an elder. In this exchange we learn the significance of this tree: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i> The
tree is birth and death, becoming and decaying, generation and regeneration.</i><i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></i><i>At its root are the </i>nornir<i>, three of them are well known to us by their name: </i>Urðr,<i>
the one who holds the memory from which </i><i>Verðandi</i><i> creates what is coming to be present</i>;<i> and then there is</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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Skuld,<i> she knows what is owed to the ages, what
their meaning is. They keep track of the </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>lunar cycles of time, they score the records as
humans have taken the clue from them and </i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>scored the movements of the moon for many thousands
of years.</i><i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">(</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Valgerdur & Kremer, 1999)</span><i>.</i><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Urðr<i>,</i></span>Verðandi<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">, and </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Skuld are personified representations of functions and tasks specific to
the indigenous wisdom. However, this call to healing cannot be fulfilled
without some sacrifice. </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
seeker is admonished to “be the tree”. In fact, the seeker is told that this is
the only way that they can cross the threshold into spiritual communion.</span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<i> Thus
the tree of life is nourished by the women who live at her roots and ladle the
fluids </i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>from </i>Urðarbrunnur<i> and other sources. As the tree
receives she gives nourishment to others: At her roots snakes gnaw away, and
deer eat her leaves. She gives protection to the eagles and hawks in her top.
Squirrels run up and down as messengers between the different parts of the
world. She stretches into all nine worlds, into all nine aspects of being, she
connects us with them, and she is all these, she is the above, the below, and
the middle.</i> <i>We are trees, and to honor our origins and in order
to journey across the spirit bridge we can sacrifice our self to spirit on the
tree by fasting </i>(Valgerdur & Kremer, 1999)<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> And
here I find some guidance both literal and metaphorical, clear and esoteric:
Nourish and be nourished, give for the good of all, stretch myself into
different aspects of my being, and at the end a call for sacrifice to the
spirit through the practice of fasting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> In
the very writing of this paper, the very creation of this moment something
exciting and sad arises. If it is my true intent to hear the voices of my
ancestors, to heal the personal and philosophical dichotomies, to reclaim
wisdom thought forever lost, to get beyond the limits of modernism, I doubt
very much if I can escape sacrifice. I am suddenly aware of yet another cost, another
loss: the aversion to sacrifice that privilege engenders. Privilege rarely
necessitates sacrifice. Entitlement, a seeming natural side effect of privilege
could be defined as the expectation that one acquires <i>without</i> sacrifice. Sacrifice is a central tenant of communal health
in indigenous cultures. Fasting, traveling (leaving behind the familiar),
killing, and sublimation of personal needs are all hallmarks of indigenous
spiritual practice and nourishment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> I
cannot say that I truly understand this. In my own attempts to forge an
identity out of the darkness of being white, I have employed the spiritual
practices of a culture that is not my own. Buddhist meditation has given me
tools to forgive myself for my own unskillful enactments of privilege and
entitlement. It has given me a ritual with which to come home to my own being,
to notice the previously unconscious thoughts that ruled the moment and to
challenge my assumptions and beliefs. It has not however connected me with my
ancestors, my local ecology, my community, or the spirit world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u>Conclusion:
Sister Sky<o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">The elder says that if I want to be the
tree, I must sacrifice myself to it as well. </span><span style="line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I do not
know about my indigenous roots. However, I do have names of my ancestors and
mythological glimpses into <i>their</i> ancestors. The job of a collage artist
is to make one picture from parts of many others. So, I have taken to
collecting and recollecting. What I have to work with is sorted words and
phrases of stories shredded by progress, little movements of mythology, imaginal
mementos, and events from my own living experience. I find that there is hope
if I can get these estranged refugees to talk to one another, if I can continue
this process of participatory inquiry, of nurturing and being nurtured. I also
have a deeper understanding of myself <i>in relation</i> to something far bigger
than myself and more far-reaching than my own life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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It
is evening. It is spring. The wild oats are taller now and the perennial
ryegrass is yielding. I breathe in the nuance of nature’s pheromones, the
scents that come in the spring but imply summer’s eminent arrival. Soon, the hills will change. I spot a red-headed
woodpecker and it spots me. His call sounds like an alarm and my
anthropomorphizing ears hear him sound a warning, or maybe register a
complaint. I keep walking and soon
encounter a bobcat on a rock getting some sun. It tenses but is not willing to
give up the sunbath. I walk on. I look back and above the houses I see a family
of deer walking away from suburbia. I project a kinship and pretend that the
deer, the bobcat and the woodpecker are my community, at least for the duration
of the hike. Maybe I am not pretending. </div>
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I
have made small attempts at this new endeavor of sacrifice. Today, having eaten
nothing I walk into the fields, to my favorite oak and offer puffs of tobacco
before closing my eyes into meditation. I try not to expect something
miraculous and my expectations are summarily met. Nothing miraculous. No
visions, no insights, but instead, a gentle let go, a relaxation. Some time
later I open my eyes. The sun has dropped below the horizon and its red glow
illuminates the grey clouds passing through the fading blue sky. But this is
one solid image, Red Sky, Blue Sky, Grey Sky, three sisters, my dream
manifested in the dusk. There is a visceral sense of wholeness, a sense of
synecdoche, at peace with the whole, at peace with the parts. </div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>…memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now
survived, everything was scattered… But when from a long-distant past nothing
subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered,
taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more
persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering,
waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the
tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of
recollection… </i>(Proust, 1982)<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="ALL" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span></u></b>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><u>References<o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Barton, H. A. (1975). <i>Letters
from the Promised Land, Swedes in America, 1840-1914</i>. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Frager,
R., & Fadiman, J. (2005). Erik Erikson and the life cycle. In <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Personality
and Personal Growth </i>(Sixth ed., pp. 172-199). Upper Saddle <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
River,
New Jersey : Pearson Prentice Hall. (Original work published 1974)<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
McGill, A. (1997). The opportunity
of land. In S. Stotsky (Ed.), <i>The Swedish Americans</i> (pp. 31-50).
Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Moberg, V. (1949). By way of introduction. In <i>The
Emigrants</i> (p. xxvii) <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
[Introduction]. St. Paul, MN: Borealis/Minnesota Historical
Society Press.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Phillips,
B. U., & Difranco, A. (1996). Korea. On <i>The past didn't go anywhere</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
[CD].
Buffalo, NY: Righteous Babe Records.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Proust,
M. (1982). <i>Remembrance of things past. volume 1: swann's way: within a </i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>budding grove</i> (pp. 48-51). New York: Vintage.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Valgerdur,
B. H., & Kremer, J. W. (1999). Prolegomena to a cosmology of healing <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
in
Vanir Norse mythology . <i>Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and </i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Psychotherapy</i>,
(1998/99), 125-174.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Waits, T. (1990). Time. On <i>Rain dogs </i>[CD]. Los Angeles, CA: Island Records<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Image:<u><o:p></o:p></u></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Engles R. (1919) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ask_and_Embla_by_Robert_Engels.jpg</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<!--EndFragment-->cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-20225437066999182572013-03-23T22:04:00.002-07:002013-03-23T22:04:49.014-07:00She and I by O. Stevens<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
She asked, “can’t we just move past all these race issues?”<br />
She said, “all this race talk makes me feel uncomfortable.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “really, when was the last time someone was lynched?”<br />
She said, “racism doesn’t even exist anymore.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “How can I be racist if I love Beyonce?”<br />
She said, “I don’t see color.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “You’re only half Black, right?”<br />
She said, “That doesn’t really apply to you because you’re not even all Black.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “Your brother dresses super fly, is he a rapper?”<br />
She said, “I love gangster rap; Kanye West is so cute.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “Why can’t I say nigga too?<br />
She said, “My bestfriend in the 2nd grade was half-Black.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “How do you starve if you’re on welfare?”<br />
She said, “My check was only $925—I’m going to need Section 8 soon.”<br />
<br />
She asked, “What is wrong with you people?”<br />
She said, “Nigger.”<br />
<br />
and I just laugh.<br />
<br />
<br />cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-17273862020235613242013-02-01T10:09:00.002-08:002013-02-01T10:10:06.955-08:00The Effects of Racial Bias on Diagnoses of Psychological Disorders by Christopher Bowers<pre><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </pre>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The
focus of my paper is racial bias in the diagnosis of psychological disorders. In
the United States the majority of clinical psychologists are of
European/Caucasian decent. This paper considers the possible consequence of
Eurocentric clinica practices. Racial bias in this context can be seen
specifically as an increased or decreased likelihood of a particular diagnosis
based on the biological markers associated with the concept of race. The marker
of skin color is of primary focus. For hundreds of years people have associated
meaning and value with skin color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
paper is an investigation of how clinicians in the field of psychology might
misdiagnose a client based on the associations they have to the skin color of
their client and/or their misunderstandings of cultural language and behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The
majority of the source material for this paper were studies that specifically
addressed racial bias in the diagnoses of specific pathologies. In researching
this phenomena it became evident that racial bias is most commonly present in
the diagnosis of Axis I disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and
depressive disorders. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One study also
looked at diagnostic racial bias in developmental disorders such as
Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the studies focus on Axis I disorders,
we will see that racial bias may also affect Axis IV and V diagnosis. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the studies reviewed they were almost
exclusively contrasting the diagnoses of European Americans and
African-Americans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">These
studies had as few as a hundred participants and as many as over 1500. The
studies were conducted in several areas of the United States and most often
included more than one county. The studies were set in state-supported mental
health triage centers, other inpatient locations, as well as in outpatient
programs. The evaluative tools most often employed were the DSM-IV itself or
specific scales or tools from the DSM-IV. One study did use definitions from
the International Classification of Disorders (Simpson et al., 2007). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The
clinicians that made the actual diagnoses were most frequently psychiatrists or
psychiatric nurses though one study used counseling professionals with either a
Masters or Doctoral level of education. Only one study discussed the race of
the clinicians and they were almost exclusively white, other than one clinician
of mixed race (Schwartz, 2009). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">This
paper will also demonstrate that the abnormal psychology of an individual is
affected by the social and institutional manifestations of racism. It is important
to understand both how racial bias affects diagnosis as well as how racism
affects the potential for various pathologies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">There
are four themes that all the reviewed studies overtly or inadvertently address.
These four themes will be the lens through which we view the effects of racial
bias on diagnosing psychological disorders. The first theme is that of how
normalcy is constructed and how that conversely defines social deviance. This
will allow us to examine how culture can be mistaken as pathology. Second is
the issue of cultural competency, the lack of which many believe to be the
primary agent of racial bias in clinical settings. The third theme is that of
language, significant in client’s description of symptoms. Lastly, we will look
at the interplay of institutional racism within psychiatry and the
institutional racism of the society in which psychiatry is practiced. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Definitions of Normalcy </span></u></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">If
disorders are understood, in part, as a deviance of social norms, it is
important to consider that these norms were likely defined and reinforced by
the dominant group. There is historic evidence of treating cultural difference
as a disorder, intentionally or otherwise (Ali, 2004). This is presumably what
led to the development of culturally-bound symptoms in the more recent versions
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Diagnostic Statistical Manual
(DSM)</i>. However, do these culturally-bound symptoms sufficiently mitigate racial
bias? Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant
Disorder (ODD) provide examples of how definitions of normalcy could possibly
result in pathologizing cultural norms. These disorders are not culturally
bound and yet one study found that African American youth are more likely to be
diagnosed with disorders such as ADHD and ODD (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Schwartz
& Feisthamel, 2009)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">. The
authors noted that these were disorders of deviance and the authors were
concerned that certain cultural behaviors such as communication style were
being seen as deviant by teachers and clinicians from the dominant group. The
behavior of these youth might have also felt distressful or dangerous to
members of the dominant group, even if no harm was intended. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">These
so-called “disorders of deviance” also serve as an example of how racial bias
in diagnosing Axis I disorders may also affect Axis IV and V diagnosis. If a
youth is punished for this deviance by being asked to leave the classroom or by
being unnecessarily medicated this could lead to other life stressors or
decreased academic and social functioning. This is speculative on my part and
no studies suggested this to be the case. Never the less, these implications
are troubling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Another
article discussed the intersection of gender and racial bias in the diagnostic
process (Ali, 2004). For example, this author found evidence of sexist
descriptors of women of color in the DSM casebook. If white women’s sexuality
is viewed as the norm and other sexual values that are culturally specific are
seen as a form of dysfunction, this would suggest that implicit in the field of
psychology we find that different standards of normalcy are dependent on race. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">It may
be also that the sexualized descriptors are left over cultural assumptions from
racist constructions of ethnic identity designed to marginalize and objectify
women of color in colonial times. Colonialism offers us another perspective on
racial bias in psychology. In considering the question of normalcy we can also
look at the origins of psychiatry. Post-modern authors put psychiatric racial
bias in the context of capitalism, empiricism, patriarchy, and other modernist
ideologies (Fabrega, 2008). One of the blind spots of many modernist thinkers
is their ignorance or negation of an implied colonial narrative. That is to say
that in their observation, be it anthropological, pedagogical, or
psychological, there is a sense of supremacy and domination in their
evaluations and methods. Post-modernists suggest that western psychology is
inherently racist since it is based on the same colonial narratives of other
modernist assumptions and practices. As well, they would admonish us against
culturally bias definitions of “mental illness” and even “empiricism” (Fabrega,
2008). A post-modern critique of western psychology will note that it is a
field founded, developed and dominated by mostly white men. What has been
considered normal in this field may only be normal for the people who dominate
the field. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another study discusses the
potential consequence of psychiatry being dominated by a ruling class. In
addition to finding that youth of color were disproportionately diagnosed with
ADHD and ODD, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Schwartz & Feisthamel (2009) found that
African Americans were more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia or other
psychotic conditions than their white counterparts. Twenty-seven percent of the
African Americans in the study were diagnosed with schizophrenia as compared
with seventeen percent of the European Americans. Meanwhile, European Americans
were more likely to be diagnosed with non-psychotic mood disorders. This
suggests the potential that behavior that might be cultural and quite normal in
a given culture, may be seen as threatening and diagnosable in the dominant
culture. Put another way, when cultural behaviors deviate from a social norm
create by the dominate culture, these behaviors are more likely to be seen as
pathological.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
authors maintain that these findings are consistent with prior research. They also
suggest that part of the issue may be access. They suggest that suspicion of a
mental health system dominated by the ruling class combined with a cultural
stigma of mental illness may cause African Americans to be assessed at a later
stage of the disorder, therefore having a higher rate of a positive diagnosis. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford, and Muroff (2003)
further suggest that if this suspicion on the part of the African American
client manifests as despondence it could be mistaken for a flat affect thus
increasing the potential for a diagnosis of schizophrenia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is specific evidence that the
DSM-IV’s culturally-bound symptoms do not sufficiently mitigate racial bias. In
a study of racial differences in DSM diagnosis using a semi-structured
instrument, Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford and Muroff (2003) found that African
Americans were disproportionately over-diagnosed with more severe disorders,
usually schizophrenia, and conversely, African Americans were disproportionately
under-diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. If white people are more likely to get
less psychotic diagnoses or black people more likely to get more psychotic
diagnoses than this suggests a tendency towards “othering” people of color and
reinforcing the normalcy of white people’s mental health. Furthermore, if the
culturally-bound categories were designed to account for cultural differences
between races, then how could this discrepancy occur? The authors found that
separating subjective symptoms from cultural norms could be problematic: </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Distinguishing
hallucinations that indicate poor reality testing from culturally governed
interpretations of subjective experience may be difficult” (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford and Muroff, 2003)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">This
study came to the conclusion that using semi-structured instruments does not
eliminate racial bias in part because while the DSM is ostensibly and objective
tool, clinicians themselves are required to make subjective judgments about how
to apply these objective criterion and this allows a loophole for unconscious
predictive bias on the part of the clinician. One study exemplified this idea
by suggesting that how clinicians connect their observations of symptoms to
diagnostic constructs differed depending on if the client was African American
or European American (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Neighbors, Trierweiler,
Ford, & Muroff, 2003)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Cultural Competency<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The post-modernist critique maintains that the
same cultural insensitivity found in other modern, post-colonial disciplines
such as anthropology and economics is also found in western psychological
research and clinical application (Fabrega, 2008). Most studies suggest that
cultural competency is the culprit of a biased or adulterated diagnosis. Issues
of cultural competency suggest that the clinical interaction takes place in a
historical and social context and that the interaction between clinician and client
is not without the same prejudices that affect society at large. This is
evident in the analysis of normalcy. While it is suggested that racial bias is
a systematic and institutional problem, these biases are played out between
individual clients and individual therapists. Therefore, the cultural
competency of individual clinicians is a significant factor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">While
the study of racial bias in the use of semi-structured instruments suggested
that such instruments do not sufficiently mitigate bias the authors suggest
also that clinicians competency in using such instruments is also important. If
clinicians are trained on how to use sociocultural demographic information
appropriately ethnocentric bias may be diminished</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford, & Muroff, 2003). The
authors put particular emphasis on training clinicians to raise cultural
alternatives to perceived symptoms. The authors of this study also suggest that
symptoms of paranoia may actually be a learned response to racism, that clients
may be suspicious of a clinician or institution based on past experience with
racism. Part of cultural competency is to understand that social context in
which clinical interactions take place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Cultural
competency also refers to the clinicians understanding of how symptoms may
present themselves differently in various cultures. We will investigate this
idea more in depth as we look at language. Schwartz & Feisthamel (2009)
point out that symptoms of schizophrenia manifest differently for African
Americans than European Americans. If a clinician doesn’t understand this, a
misdiagnosis seems likely. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Several
studies suggest the need for better cultural competency training and research. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Schwartz & Feisthamel</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> state that there is a perception in the
psychiatric community that African Americans are more likely to have
schizophrenia. Regardless of if this is accurate, the authors suggest that the
very notion could predispose clinicians to demonstrating bias during diagnosis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Language<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A very important aspect to cultural
competency is language. Language is the key to understanding how a client
interprets their own condition. Particularly problematic is how to interpret
self-reported information. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">This is
important to the examination of racial bias due to the fact that how a client
describes a symptom may be bound by local dialect or cultural stigmas and the
meaning of either could be lost on an unskilled clinician. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sometimes
there may simply be a language barrier. Other times it may be a cultural
barrier that manifests linguistically. Sometimes clinicians misinterpret culturally
specific language as a pathological symptom. For example, studies on symptoms
that had previously been described as a cultural syndrome called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ataque de nervios</i> (attack of the nerves)
in mainly Latinas, was found to not be a “clinical entity” but instead a
problem of functioning in relations to certain social circumstances (Halgin
& Whitbourne, 2010). Similarly, Alisha Ali (2004) explains that women of
color may be more likely to describe psychological ailments in physical terms,
in part due to the potential of being stigmatized within their ethnic culture
for having psychological problems. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, I have learned in my own work in the field of HIV that in some Latino
families psychological manifestations of HIV are attributed to “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">el cancer”</i> (the cancer) due to the
stigma associated with HIV and it’s association with homosexuality in this
culture. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">One
literature review on studies that compared rates of depression across different
ethnicities found that family physicians and interns are less likely to
recognize indicators of major depression in Latinos/Latinas and African
Americans when using brief depression symptom questionnaires, and thus less
likely to diagnose this population with depression (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Simpson, Krishnan, Kunik and Ruiz, 2007)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">. While there may be several reasons for this, the
way that symptoms were described on the questionnaire may not have been
culturally relevant and/or the clinicians did not recognize the answers given
by these ethnicities as indicating depressive symptomology. How a question is
worded, be it written or spoken, may affect the validity of the answer. If the
question does not employ (or the clinician does not understand) the local
“idioms of distress” the answer will be less likely to represent a valid
response </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">(</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford, & Muroff, 2003)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">One
important aspect of cross-cultural language competency is that it applies not
just to ethnic cultures but youth cultures, queer cultures, and class cultures.
The more a clinician understands the slang of the cultures with which they
work, the more effective and accurate a diagnosis can be made. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Psychiatric Implications of
Institutional Racism <o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lastly,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it is important to consider the interplay of
institutional racism within psychiatry with the institutional racism of the
society in which psychiatry is practiced. Already apparent are several examples
of racism within the practice of psychiatry: disproportionately higher
diagnosis of more serious diagnosis in people of color, disproportionately
higher diagnosis of less severe disorders in white clients, insufficient
mitigation of bias in the DSM-IV’s culturally-bound categories, a field
dominated by white practitioners, lack of cultural competency by white
clinicians, and misunderstanding cultural descriptors of symptomology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The various explanations and
suggestions offered make an attempt to explain the discrepancies as evidence of
racial bias in diagnosis. However, there is one explanation which highly
undermines this hypothesis and in doing so sets forth a startling hypothesis of
its own. Looking at the possibility that higher rates of schizophrenia in
African-Americans may <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> be
attributed to a predictive bias, the authors consider the idea that perhaps the
diagnosis rates are actually correct (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Schwartz
& Feisthamel, 2009</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">). We
are then left to consider if there is something about being African-American in
the United States that contributes to higher rates of schizophrenia among that
population. In other words, can racism be the cause of pathology? By in large
the authors suggest that this is unlikely and that clinical bias is a more
likely suspect of the discrepant prevalence. None the less, these alternative
explanations are important to consider. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some
authors maintain that studies have shown that living in lower socioeconomic
levels can cause or exacerbate schizophrenia and that the life stressors that
poverty entails can contribute to triggering schizophrenia (Haglin
&Whitebourne, 2010). In the United States, African Americans are more
likely to be poor and to experience barriers to housing, employment, and health
care.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">What
this would effectively mean is that due to institutional racism, simply being
black acts as a genetic factor in a diathesis-stress model of dysfunction. This
does not suggest that the genetics that make up racial markers carry within
them a predisposition to mental illness, but that the environmental factors
predispose individuals with certain genetic racial markers to schizophrenia. One
author goes so far as to say that these diagnoses are a pathologizing of the
traumatic response of people of color to oppression. Furthermore, in a society
where people’s worth is associated with their ability to function in the
dominant construction of normality, this phenomena is akin to blaming the
victim (Ali, 2004).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other important issues that relate
to psychiatry and institutional racism is the fact that African Americans are
less likely to access preventative care, to receive psychiatric care prior to
hospitalization, less likely to leave a hospitalization with a specific
diagnosis, less likely to have health insurance, and less more likely to
experience the stressors of poverty (Sohler & Bromet, 2003). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Conclusion</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Working
from the assumption that a diagnosis is the first step of a treatment plan we
find that an exaggerated, diminished or otherwise mistaken diagnosis can lead
to inappropriate treatment and poor management of mental illnesses. If race is
a component of such a misdiagnosis, this raises serious issues of social
justice and accountability within the psychiatric community. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Situations
in which people of color are being misdiagnosed with psychotic disorders can
have serious and even irreversible affects on their lives. These patients are
likely to go onto intensive treatment in the form of hospitalization, strong
medication with strong side effects, or even Electroconvulsive Therapy. If they
do not in fact have schizophrenia or psychotic symptoms such so-called
treatment would be unethical. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The
other manifestations of institutional discrimination mentioned also affect
treatment. While not having health care can inhibit early diagnosis, it can
severely impact treatment. The Surgeon General has reported that African
Americans receive inferior and inadequate treatment for mental illness compared
to the population at large (Schwartz, 2009).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">One
study on diagnosis and treatment of depression in the Latino/Latina community
found that issues of language and cultural competence were mitigated in the
treatment of depression in states where patients were more likely to be seen by
physicians of their own ethnic groups. Furthermore, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>successful treatment rates would be higher if
education and intervention materials were presented in ways that were
culturally appropriate (Simpson, Krishnan, Kunik, Ruiz, 2007). The authors of
another study made a similar assertion suggesting that “race matching” between
client and clinician should be further explored (Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford
and Muroff, 2003). However, it is not likely that this would be viable in many
communities given the disproportionate number of white clinicians. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">These
studies offer empirical evidence of how clinical psychology has done a
disservice to people of color. Conversely, they offer guidance on how the field
of psychology and psychiatry can become more culturally competent and maintain
its empirical and altruistic integrity. Addressing these issues will lead to
better treatment for people of color and a strengthened sense of validity in
the field of psychology and psychiatry overall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">References</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Ali, A. (2004). The Intersection of Racism and
Sexism in Psychiatric Diagonsis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> In P. J. Caplan &
L. Cosgrove, <i>Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis</i> (pp. 71-75). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Lanham, Boulder, New
York, Toronto, Oxford: Jason Aronson. (Original work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>published 2004)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Fabrega, H., Jr. (2008, Summer). On the
Postmodernist Critique and Reformation <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> of Psychiatry. <i>Psychiatry,
72</i>(2), 183-196.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 13.5pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: -13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Haglin,
R. P., & Whitbourne, S. K. (2010). Chapter 2: Classification and treatment
plans, Chapter 9: Schizophrenia and related disorders. In <i>Abnormal
psychology: clinical perspectives on psychological</i> <i>disorders</i>
(Sixth ed., pp. 276-305). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. (Original work <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>published 1993)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Neighbors, H. W., Trierweiler, S. J., Ford, B. C.,
& Muroff, J. R. (2003). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Racial Differences in
DSM diagnosis Using a Semi-Structured Instrument: The <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> importance of
clinical judgment in the diagnosis of African Americans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Journal of Health
and Social Behavior, 44</i>(3), 237-256.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Schwartz, R., & Feisthamel, K. (2009).
Disproportionate Diagnosis of Mental <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Disorders Among
African American Versus European American Clients: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Implications for
Counseling Theory, Research, and Practice. <i>Journal of </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Counseling and
Development , 87</i>(3), 295-301.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Simpson, S., Krishnan, L., Kunik, M., & Ruiz,
P. (2007, March). Racial <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Disparities in
Diagnosis and Treatment of Depression: A Literature Review . <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Psychiatric
Quarterly, 78</i>(1), 3-14. doi:10.1007/s11126-006-9022-y<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sohler, N., & Bromet, E. (2003, March). Does
Racial Bias Influence Psychiatric <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> Diagnoses Assigned at
First Hospitalization? <i>Social Psychiatry and </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <i>Psychiatric
Epidemiology</i>, (38), 463-472.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-44347952007273459862012-11-29T17:11:00.004-08:002012-11-29T17:12:55.152-08:00Random Thoughts on White Privilege by Authortee<br />
<br />
Most of my blog posts at <a href="http://americasbirthdefectembra.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #5c65b8; font-family: Tahoma;">http://americasbirthdefectembra.blogspot.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: Tahoma;"> </span>are spurred by personal observations or experience. What spurred me to write this post today was watching HGTV for several hours. As I watched several shows featuring multi-million homes [one worth $185M], I again noticed that every homeowner was white. This caused me, once again, to think about white privilege.<br />
<br />
<br />
Some may ask for a definition of white privilege. Still others question its very existence. There are many who have written about white privilege and who have defined it. The concept of white privilege almost demands a discussion [and definition] of "race." I will save that discussion for another blog post. I like to define white privilege as the inherited ability to have access to resources that are: (1) taken for granted [often not even thought about]; (2) an inherited sense that one is not "the other;" and (3) inherited power. <br />
I must add that while white privilege is most evident in wealthy white people, white privilege also extends to non-wealthy white people. In North America, white privilege is the norm. Peggy McIntosh [a white woman], who travels and lectures extensively on white privilege describes it much more eloquently than I in her article "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."<br />
<br />
A white person born in the U.S. is born with access to many resources that remain unavailable, at least in large part, to non-whites. This includes better schools, homes in better neighborhoods, ability to gain job interviews and land jobs, lack of denial for resources solely because of skin color and automatic acceptance into a club that excludes non-whites. There are social norms and expectations, based on historical events and current practices, which elevate whiteness to be the norm. <br />
<br />
The advantages of being white are numerous. Probably the most important advantage is the sure knowledge that decisions made about you are not based on your race. You're confident in the knowledge that the reason you were denied housing, a job or college entry, was not because of your race. White people can choose to be around people who look like them most of the time. White people see themselves widely represented [positively] in all forms of media. A negative action, behavior or crime committed by a white person is not an indictment of the entire race, e.g., the white people on "The Jerry Springer Show" do not represent all white people. <br />
<br />
Some people argue that the problems are socio-economic based and not race-based. "Poor is poor," many say. While socio-economics do, indeed, play a role in access to resources, a child born with white skin is automatically a member of an exclusive club, a club whose members already have the advantage. Consider, also, two men in their fifties, one black, one white. The white man [born into white privilege] has already climbed the ladder of success. At a young age, he had access to better educational facilities, access to better, higher-paying jobs [with benefits], access to partners successful in their own right or with inherited family resources, the ability to purchase one, two or even three homes and the ability to pass on these privileges to yet another generation. By his mid-50's, he is no longer chasing the dream. He has lived and experienced the dream and is now looking forward to years of leisure - if he so chooses. The non-white man, on the other hand, is still chasing his dreams. He began his life as "the other," already behind, not a part of, the norm. He spends his entire life being pre-judged and then judged by the color of his skin. His skin color may deny him access to better schools as a child, prevent his entry into higher education, relegate him to entry-level jobs and deny him access to financial resources. In short, he has spent his entire life attempting to prove that despite him being "the other," he is capable, he is intelligent, he is not this, he is not that. Even in his mid-50's, he lacks the financial security of his white counterpart. Instead of looking forward to a leisurely retirement in a few years, he is still struggling just to make ends meet.<br />
<br />
Most white people do not recognize their white privilege. It is as much a part of them as their white skin, their grandfather's nose, their great-grandmother's blue eyes. You get up every day and its existence doesn't cross the mind.<br />
<br />
My intent in this post, and indeed on all the posts in this blog, is not to anger, but rather to make the reader think, examine and discuss. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-31101229098883032862012-05-05T08:55:00.000-07:002012-05-05T08:55:38.612-07:00White Privilege in the Tech Industry<a href="http://www.onlineitdegree.net/is-tech-racist/"><img border="0" alt="Tech is Racist" src="http://images.onlineitdegree.net.s3.amazonaws.com/tech-is-racist.png" width="500" /></a><br />Created by: <a href="http://www.onlineitdegree.net/">OnlineITDegree.net</a>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-77799178563734422672012-04-29T12:03:00.000-07:002012-04-29T12:03:24.854-07:00White Wash by Wendy-O Matik<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aug. 18, 2009</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While sleep escapes her</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
she lists her confessions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was conceived in part because of race</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
this was 1966</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was delivered in a white-walled hospital on white bed
sheets</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
beside the spirit of thousands of white babies before me</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
amidst white doctors</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and white nurses</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
while people of other races</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
held the janitorial jobs—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>scrubbing toilets, dumping garbage</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>serving food, doing laundry</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I grew up in a predominantly </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
white neighborhood</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because white privilege bleached the streets</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in the image of their choosing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I went to schools packed with a predominantly </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
all-white student body with all-white teachers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and all-white administrators and all-white textbooks</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>transcribing an dominant Eurocentric colonialist perspective</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
whose white privilege excluded the accomplishments</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
contributions of people of color</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because they were taught to do so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
White employers hire me</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
based on my privilege of white reflection</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I gain entry into places because of my white status—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>universities, clubs, bars, jobs, organizations of the elite</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>summer camp, student exchange program</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because of my whiteness </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am excluded and protected </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
from gangs, juvie, prison, military service, racial
profiling</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and other lower socio-economic traps</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am permitted unlimited entry</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to free drugs, parties, neighborhoods, stores, and gated
communities</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
without suspicion or second-guessing of my right to be there</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because I am a gold-card-carrying white person</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with detailed, specified entitlements</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
they serve me and my white brothers and sisters</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
without questions</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
respectively and accordingly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am alive and here today</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in this white-washed apartment</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
owned by my white landlord</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
holding this job, savings account, car, clothes, and all the
rest</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
thanks to my sweet little white ass.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And believe me,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when I tell you,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that I never forget it,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
nor the heavy responsibility </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that comes with it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wendy-O Matik</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stay with discomfort</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Monitor defenses: being humble and keep mouth
shut until you no longer feel defensive</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Allow guilt and transform it into motivation</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Think of racism as personal/interpersonal but be
clear that these interpersonal interactions happen within systems and
institutions- that the systems depend on people to reinforce them and that
people can also reinforce systems of racism and oppression</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Keep a both/and attitude (as opposed to
either/or). For example, many white people have worked hard to get what they
have AND they had a lot of help from the benefits of white privilege</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Be vigilantly mindful: at any given moment
consider how whiteness and privilege are playing out or have played out in this
moment.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Take active responsibility for the personal
behavior AND the systematic arrangements in your community. Do not enact the
privilege of being able to live seemingly unaffected by these issues- the
privilege of non-action</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Consider the costs of white supremacy/privilege
for the dominant (white) group.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Do your best to make racism and whiteness
visible by naming it when you see it- out loud, even if it may damage personal
bonds with other white people</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Get
comfortable with resistance and defensiveness- don’t let your ego be bothered
by people’s responses to your concerns.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stop
believing that addressing issues like this is an extracurricular activity
called “activism”- this is an issue of human and communal suffering, not
politics</div>
<!--EndFragment-->cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-77772177799327243102012-04-22T12:55:00.003-07:002012-04-22T12:55:55.443-07:00Segregated Sanghas: How Spirituality Is Connected to White Privilege<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
If you step into a meditation class
in The United States, the chances are the room will be filled with mostly middle-upper
class white folk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Often however,
the spiritual practice that is being taught has originated in a location with
very few white people. This is obviously not because Caucasians and/or
Americans of European decent are the only ones interested in meditation or
Buddhism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to strengthen
our spiritual communities, it behooves us to contemplate the state of our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sangha</i> as well as the state of our mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>First,
let us consider how Buddhism came to America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the beginning, Buddhist communities were affected and
changed by racism. The first Buddhist temples in the U.S. were Chinese temples
built in San Francisco in the second half of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century. These
temples were seen as suspect by the dominant white community. These prejudices
were based on ignorance and racial stereotypes. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
as well as the 1924 Immigration Act greatly curtailed emigration from Asian
countries and therefore the growth of Buddhism in the United States.
Furthermore, in an effort to be more accepted as U.S. Citizens many Asian
Americans converted to Christianity. This is especially true of Japanese
Americans during World War II. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Buddhism
began to have a mainstream appeal in the U.S. during the 60s as beat poets and
hippies began to practice the Dharma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While many young people of color were working hard towards civil rights
in the 60s, many young white people were on a more personal, spiritual
quest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some it was a passing
phase or just another consciousness-bending experiment but others took it very
seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of these more
ardent practitioners decided to go to countries like Japan, Thailand, and Tibet
to learn about Buddhism in the countries from which it came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of these sojourners, most were men and
most were white. These were the people that could afford the privilege of
traveling to another country for an extended amount of time. Some of these men
returned to the U.S. and began to spread the Dharma via a mass media system
that was dominated by white people. In doing so, they became iconic spiritual
leaders. It is important to note that this is not a critique of their intention
or sincerity. Nor does it take away from how hard these practitioners have
worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, understanding the
social conditions in which Buddhism and meditation have become popularized in
the United States will help us understand its lack of diversity.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though your accommodations at foreign monasteries may be
minimalist and free, it still takes money to get there and back. Racism and
poverty have been inextricably linked in the United States. A white person is
simply more likely to be able to afford such a journey. Furthermore, a white
person may feel safer traveling, even to a non-white country. In her article
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, Peggy McIntosh notes that
part of white privilege is being able to travel alone or with a person of one’s
own race without expecting embarrassment or hostility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this day and age of terrorism and
racial profiling, travel can be more difficult for people of color. Each year,
many young US citizens travel around the world. Many of them feel it is their
right to do so. Many white spiritual seekers carry with them this same sense of
entitlement. While there is nothing innately wrong with their desires, it
highlights an example of a privilege that should be available to anyone, not
just those with privilege. It is likely that white practitioners have to work
diligently to carve out the time and money to make these opportunities happen.
This does not mitigate the fact that a person of color would likely have to
work harder for the same opportunities. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
privilege that whiteness brings is the freedom to choose whether or not to
participate in social justice or anti-racist work. For people of color, the
choice is one of self-preservation and survival. The consequence to this is
that white people have the privilege to be more focused (energetically,
financially, and socially) on themselves and issues of personal significance,
issues such as spiritual growth. White people are more likely to have more time
off and more money to devote to their practice. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Money
is another difficult issue for postmodern American Buddhists. In Buddhist
countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka the culture is oriented towards
supporting spiritual practitioners. People of all sectors of society contribute
greatly to the proliferation and maintenance of Buddhism, similar to the way
Christianity is supported in the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Without that social or cultural support, Buddhist meditation centers
that are not tied financially or socially to Buddhist countries struggle to
exist. However, the United States is a capitalist country and the market place
has helped Buddhism flourish. Self-help books are among the most widely read
and best selling in the country. Buddhism, especially so-called Vipassana
meditation has, as it has assimilated to the western-conditioned mind, embraced
and integrated both western psychology and economics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any Barnes and Nobles will have a Buddhism or Self-Help
section with books by Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Susan Salzberg, Thich
Nhat Hahn, Suzuki Roshi and of course The Dalai Lama. The first of these three
authors are arguably the leaders of mainstream American Buddhism. Besides being
best selling authors, all three have founded the countries leading retreat
centers. Despite the fact that the traditions in which they practice come out
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>India, Burma and Thailand, all
three are of European decent, all three are white. All three lead several
retreats per year that cost hundreds of dollars per participant. More often
than not, it is white folks who can afford such retreats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is through their books and retreats
that many U.S. citizens discover Buddhism. It is through their work that the
infrastructure of what is arguably the most popular form of Buddhist meditation
in this country was created.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
poses a conundrum for these Buddhist leaders, a modern-day economic koan if you
will. How does Buddhism survive in a market-based society without excluding
those against whom the market discriminates [read: without excluding poor
people and people of color]? </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
their credit, most major U.S. Buddhist traditions, schools, and retreat centers
have some sort of diversity program. Some offer scholarships to people of
color. A few meditation centers now offer retreats and classes that are exclusively
for people of color. This segregated solution is no doubt important. Meditation
requires, above all, a place in which one feels safe and respected. These
groups offer people of color that safety as well as an opportunity to talk
about issues specific to non-white practitioners. After all, if meditation
brings to the surface our deepest wounds, who can argue against a space for
people of color to heal from the wounds of racism?</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>However,
this solution does not address why such groups may be necessary in the first
place, or why Buddhist teachers, monks, and authors in the United States are
disproportionately white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this
we look again at the institutional and systematic underpinnings of racism. The
leaders of many Buddhist retreats are authors. It has always been more
difficult for people of color to publish books, especially if they are not
related to racism or social justice. White privilege comes in the form of white
networks. Most authors get published in the same way many people get jobs:
through personal networking. White people are simply more likely to network
with other white people. Spiritual networks are not so different from any
social network. People tend towards people like themselves. Christians practice
with other Christians and Muslims with Muslims, etc. There are black churches
in the south and white churches in the suburbs. So, Buddhism has a similar
though less acknowledged segregation. These white networks offer not just book
deals, but job positions at retreat centers as well. It is rare to go to a lay
Buddhist retreat and see a person of color on staff. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
irony is that even though there are many, many Asian-American families still
quietly practicing Buddhism, and even though a white person may still be a
novelty in a Thai monastery, it is this white face that is now the face of
Buddhism in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Often when the term “American Buddhism” is spoken, it is not referring
to the generations of Asian Americans who have been practicing Buddhism in the
United States. While one cannot argue that spirituality is reserved for white
people, it seems clear that skin color affords one more opportunity for
spiritual development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Combined
with institutional and systematic discrimination within the media and market
systems, people of color seem to have less access to Buddhism classes or
retreats or may simply feel emotionally unsafe in such white-dominated
spaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just like in any spiritual
endeavor, there is no singular easy solution to fighting racism. However, in
upcoming articles I hope to explore these themes in greater detail as well as
discuss how white people on the path can be spiritual and social allies for
people of color on the path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christopher
Bowers</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> is an MFT intern and writer. He hosts a social blog about white privilege at </i><a href="http://www.whitepriv.blogspot.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">www.whitepriv.blogspot.com</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> and another blog of his own creative
fiction and non-fiction writing at </i><a href="http://www.cryingjustbecause.blogspot.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">www.cryingjustbecause.blogspot.com</i></a>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Feel free to contact him at </i><a href="mailto:cjbalive@hotmail.com"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cjbalive@hotmail.com</i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-25873563285552105632010-12-20T10:24:00.000-08:002012-04-22T14:59:13.561-07:00Privilege and Interracial Adoption by Anne Sibley O'BrienOur daughter Yunhee was adopted from Korea as an infant, joining a white American mother, father and older brother, who was born into our family. (One of our oft repeated family jokes is the story of her middle school classmate who asked me, "Does Yunhee know she's adopted?")
Race was an often daily topic in our family. I'd had fifteen years of anti-racism education by the time Yunhee came home, not to mention growing up in Korea as a highly visible person of racial difference, so I was certainly comfortable addressing the topic. But I remember on so many occasions, when Yunhee expressed intense emotion about the subject (often as the result of a comment by a classmate), and even as I might be giving her my full, sympathetic attention, I was aware of a little voice in my head asking, "Can it really be that bad?"
Of course, as Yunhee's mother, I had many tangled emotions and longings as I witnessed her distress. I didn't want my child to hurt - ever, for any reason. I wanted her to learn appropriate social customs, which include containing and channeling the expression of emotion in consideration of others. But that little voice was a result of my own conditioning as a white American: racially, I have had it easy.
Without my having done anything but be born with this color of skin, I have automatically (and usually unconsciously) been granted a measure of status, advantage and influence. I have grown up surrounded by social structures, media, interactions and institutions which reinforce the centrality of my racial identity, so much so that I don't even notice them. I have never endured a steady barrage of negation about my race. In general, the experience of being white in the U.S. is comfortable, unchallenged, affirmed and taken for granted. It's no wonder that I don't notice it, and no wonder if I can't imagine what it would be like to be a person of color in this society.
Privilege plays out in many concrete ways, some explored here, but it's also pervasive as a state of mind. This diminishing of the experiences of people of color, as expressed by them, is one of its more insidious aspects. There are so many versions of this avoidance:
"Why are you playing the race card?"
"I understand your concerns, but I have a hard time hearing you when you're so angry."
"I know there are some problems, but we elected Barack Obama!"
In other words, "Please reframe that so that I can stay comfortable."
***
Because it can be really tricky trying to see my own invisible patterns, I find it useful to borrow some awareness from other aspects of my life. I can get a clue about privilege in thinking of my experience as a self-employed artist.
I'm often made aware of the fact that people with salaried positions, benefits and health insurance don't seem to be able to imagine what it's like to live without these. (I'm fortunate to currently have health insurance through my husband's job, but have gone for years without it when we were both self-employed.) I notice that salaried people frequently make requests for unremunerated services or time that show that they're completely unaware of what it's like not to have a steady income. For instance, teachers' conferences expect presenters to pay for the privilege of attending, assuming, I guess, the support of a school district to cover registration and travel. Most writers and illustrators don't have the extra resources for this, unless they have other jobs as well. The feeling I often have is that salaried people can't even imagine what the questions are that those of us who are self-employed have to ask all the time.
(This is not to suggest that self-employed people are the targets of anything, but merely to point out an example of privilege in the oblivion of people who are salaried about the lives of people who are not.)
***
Once I've identified that part of my avoidance around race, particularly my discomfort in listening to people of color express their feelings about being mistreated, is a privilege I no longer want to participate in, I've made a start.
The next part is a human one. Open my heart, and let it break.
And keep listening.
Anne Sibley O'Brien is a writer and illustrator who writes about race, culture and children's books at "Coloring Between the Lines." Contact her at asob45@aol.comcjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-69784789676034962632010-02-03T21:17:00.001-08:002013-03-20T18:14:05.289-07:0010 Ways to be an Ally<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As I have gotten deeper into anti-oppression work I find that I discover more and more subtleties and complexities than I ever considered. Learning to be a good ally is not a linear education with some sort of graduation or certification at the end. It is a process full of experimentation, humility, confusion, challenge, and clarity. This list is by no means complete. It’s really just a few suggestions on how to turn your mind towards solidarity. </span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. Consider your position and how it benefits you to be in that position </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a white person, a heterosexual person, a person with money, a man, etc. one has certain privileges that are not afforded to others. Many of these privileges are unearned, meaning they are afforded to the person, simply because they are white, a man, a heterosexual. The idea of privilege is also bigger than just making a list of these unearned benefits. It is important to understand how these benefits affect your daily life, your career, your education, and your relationships with authority (landlords, police, bosses, teachers, etc.) among other things. The idea is not necessarily to make a hierarchy of oppression but rather consider how all our identities intersect. For example, if someone is poor but is also white they may not have class privilege, but as a white person, it is likely that they’ll have an easier time being poor than a person of color with the same income level. For more on white privilege specifically check out Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (</span><a href="http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. Do a personal inventory </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is helpful to understand how particular issues like racism, sexism, etc. have played out in your own life. One way to do this is to write about all the times that you can remember when some form of oppression affected your life. This could mean that you were the recipient or the perpetrator of oppressive behaviors. It could also be things that you observed or events with which you were personally involved. It could be painful memories from school, work, family, etc. A personal inventory may also include a very honest evaluation of your feelings, thoughts, experiences with, and beliefs about people who are different than you. As a heterosexual, you may discover feelings of discomfort about gay or as a cisgender person (a person whose gender identity matches the gender they were assigned at birth) you may feel some discomfort around people who identify as transgender. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It does mean that you have thoughts or feelings that could lead to perpetuating oppression. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3. Do your homework </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sometimes people from a dominant culture have a very sincere interest in understanding people from other cultures, races, genders, or sexual orientations. One way to do so is to be in conversation with those other cultures. However, there is a big difference between a natural or intentional conversation about oppression and simply asking someone who has experienced oppression to teach you about it. Asking one person of another culture to be your teacher is disrespectful for a couple of reasons. First, experiences of oppression are utterly personal and often painful. When a white person asks a person of color to share their experiences it could trigger some painful memories. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Second, this creates a false understanding of entire cultures and people. When we ask one person to speak for an entire people, this is what is known as tokenism. Humans are so wonderfully diverse, even within subcultures. Latinos are not just Mexicans and what one African-American person thinks about an issue may be different than what another thinks. When we tokenize someone, we run the risk of reductionist essentialism, reducing a whole group of people into one fixed idea about who they are. Curiously, white people are rarely, if ever asked to represent the ideas and beliefs of their entire race. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Third, there are so many other ways to get a multicultural perspective. Many, many books, articles, and videos are out there to give someone an understanding of other cultures. In seeking these things out one should consider looking into the history of a culture and understanding what role your own culture played in their history. For example, how did policy decisions by able-bodied people affect alter-abled people? Consider the books your read and the movies you watch. Are the others, actors, producers usually from a dominant culture? When one is in conversation with someone who is talking about their experiences in oppression, the best, most supportive thing they can do is to just listen and learn. While some things may sound difficult to believe it is important to remember that this person knows their experience better than we do and that our privilege may have made such experiences unthinkable in our own lives. Receptive listening also ensures that the experiences of people who have been oppressed, as well as the people themselves do not become invisible. Listening can be an act of solidarity. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4. Consider the difference between guilt and action </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Discovering that one has benefits that others do not simply because of circumstance can sometimes lead to feelings of guilt or shame. While it is certainly useful to have a sense of regret for conscious or unconscious ways that we have personally or communally perpetuated oppression, it doesn’t necessarily serve us to dwell in that regret. Oppressed people may not care if people in a dominant culture feel bad or guilty. However, they might very well care about how you act upon that guilt. If you want to make a difference, don’t be guilty, be active. Being active means interrupting oppressive comments or conversations but it also means active participation in the struggle. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5. Be clear on why you are involved in the struggle (against racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc) </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you do take action it is important to consider why. Sometimes people from the dominant culture get involved in a struggle in order to “help” or to take up a cause for other people, or to assuage their own feelings of guilt. Part of privilege is that one can choose to engage in the struggle or not. However, for oppressed peoples the choice is not as simple as being a part of a cause or not, it can be a matter of survival. Do we believe that oppression is a problem for the society as a whole or just a problem for it’s victims? While racism affects people of color in very detrimental ways, racism is a problem for white people because it is white people who need to act to change it. As well, it is good to consider how oppression benefits you and what you may get out of ending oppression, and what you may lose. If you’re involved simply to help, get a good internship, or take up a cause, you might be doing yourself and your community a disservice. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><u><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6. Consider the difference between charity and solidarity </span></b></u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As you do get involved in ending oppression consider not only your intent, but also the effectiveness of your action. Charity is a form of help. Examples of charity include volunteerism (short-term, limited participation in a cause) and philanthropy (donating money to a cause). Consider Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s admonishment: “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Solidarity is a different sense of involvement. It is a long-term participation in the struggle, understanding the part you play and how the issues affect you personally. As well, solidarity may very well mean not being the center of the solution, but just a small part. It may mean deferring your sense of authority and leadership. It can also mean dropping your own agenda for how change should be achieved. It can be very problematic when the leadership in an organization is people from the dominant culture. When people from the dominant culture define the issues or strategies for oppressed people it can be condescending and ineffective. So, an example of solidarity is being part of community organizing efforts led by people of color, womyn, etc in an active, but non-leadership role. Being in solidarity means seeing how you will benefit from the liberation of others. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7. Don’t be afraid to mess up or be to be uncomfortable </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is difficult work and it requires a lot of humility and vulnerability. It is important to realize that we are asking ourselves to challenge things we’ve believed since we were children. We were brought up with a frame of reference that has inevitable blind spots. We are trying to change behaviors that are well ingrained. We will mess up. Sometimes people will be kind in their response to our follies and sometimes they won’t. However, we can be kind to ourselves by getting support from other people and by attending kindly to whatever emotions arise. We can be kind to others by not letting these mess ups lead to give ups. Anyone who has been involved in anti-oppression work probably has one or many stories of being called out on some unskillful behavior. It is part of the process and something we can ultimately be grateful for, even if it is painful as hell in the moment. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8. Make Amends </span></u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If you do mess up, or if you recall some instance in which you feel you acted unskillfully, try to make amends. Apologize to your community or to the person/people directly. Realize that in doing so you may or may not get a positive response from the persons you hurt. Apologizing is not in and of itself the end of the situation. Either way, the best way to make amends might be to continue to be internally introspective and externally active. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underlinefont-size:small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">9. Don’t expect a pat on the back </span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is exciting to engage in social justice work. As we begin to change our internal landscape we may feel our self-esteem rise with our integrity. Sometimes our head may get a little big. Some people have experienced a feeling of being one of “the good white people”, for example. Don’t let this hinder your own self-evaluation and openness to being challenged on your stuff. And don’t expect oppressed peoples to acknowledge your internal or external achievements. If you do find yourself wondering why you aren’t getting more positive feedback for the work you are doing, it may be a good time to check your intentions. Are you doing the work for yourself and your community or because you are trying to be a good helper, feel less guilty, and/or get the respect of others? </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">10. Do the work within yourself, your own cultures and your own communities</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For people who are in the dominant group it may be very difficult to experience the anger or frustration of oppressed people. The level of emotion may trigger very deep wounds of our own and it can get really uncomfortable, really fast. It is important for us to do our own emotional processing work. It is helpful to be clear about our own relationship to anger and other strong emotions so that we are not defensive or shut down when we experience these emotions with people who have been oppressed. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Part of solidarity is creating active change within the privileged communities. This also creates allies for allies, meaning as an ally, it is important to have support from others who are trying to do the same. This helps keep you in check and gives you a place to explore some of the pain and challenges of this work. For example, as you do a personal inventory it can be good to have another person from your same culture to talk with about these memories. It can be transformative when men get together and talk about ways they have mistreated womyn or when white people get together and talk about ways that they could have handled racially insensitive remarks differently. Work within your own culture or community may manifest as a monthly support group or discussion group, a caucus or sub-committee within an organization, or a blog devoted to discussing such matters. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For more on being an ally: </span><a href="http://www.paulkivel.com/articles/guidelinesforbeingstrongwhiteallies.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.paulkivel.com/articles/guidelinesforbeingstrongwhiteallies.pdf</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85,85,85)font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Christopher Bowers is a social worker, student and writer. He hosts a social blog about white privilege at </span><a href="http://www.whitepriv.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.whitepriv.blogspot.com</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. He can be contacted at cjbalive@hotmail.com</span></span></div>
cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-72826135478566531552009-11-30T11:51:00.000-08:002012-04-22T15:04:17.112-07:00HOUSING and PRIVILEGE by Will FagleHousing, White Privilege, and Wealth Inequality
By Will Flagle
As a social justice issue, housing seems simple and relatively bland: people need shelter, what else is there to talk about?
A lot, actually.
Housing issues are related to a complex web of social justice concerns. Two related concerns that are particularly relevant to housing are white privilege and wealth inequality. In fact, understanding the history of discrimination in America—particularly housing discrimination—is indispensable to understanding contemporary economic inequality. What’s the connection between housing, white privilege, and wealth inequality? Here’s a statistic that might surprise you:
The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities.[1]
In other words, for almost three decades the U.S. government backed $120 billion worth of home loans and 98% (!) of those loans went to whites.
How did this institutionalized racism become possible?
Spurred on by massive mortgage foreclosures during the Great Depression, the federal government […] began underwriting mortgages in an effort to enable citizens to become homeowners. But the mortgage program was selectively administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and urban neighborhoods considered poor risks were redlined—an action that excluded virtually all the black neighborhoods and many neighborhoods with a considerable number of European immigrants. [2]
More important than this shocking history, however, is the relationship between home ownership, wealth, and opportunity—a relationship that links past discrimination to economic inequality today. To begin with, a home is one of the most important assets that a family can own. As Dalton Conley—associate professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University—explains in the PBS documentary Race—the Power of an Illusion, “The majority of Americans hold most of their wealth in the form of home equity.”[3]Therefore, because of the significance of housing as an asset, discrimination in housing directly contributed to inequality in wealth accumulation.
Wealth, in turn, is an important determinate of the opportunities that a family can provide for their children. As Larry Adelman has written, “a family’s net worth is not simply the finish line, it’s also the starting line for the next generation.”[4] A family can take out a second mortgage on their home, for instance, to finance their child’s college education or job search. Indeed, because of the way that wealth creates opportunity, “Economists have shown that about 50-80% of our lifetime wealth accumulation is really attributable, in one way or another, to past generations,” writes Conley. It is this intergenerational link between wealth and opportunity that explains why the effects of long past institutionalized racism—such as FHA housing discrimination—are still felt today. Wealth, in other words, provides a mechanism that transfers opportunity (or its absence) from one generation to the next. [*]
How are the effects of historic discrimination still felt? Take the “wealth gap,” for example. Thomas Shapiro, in The Hidden Cost of Being African American, writes that “The net worth of typical white families is $81,000 compared to $8,000 for black families.”[6] That’s a 10:1 difference! This present day racial inequality in wealth, however, must be understood in light of the history of institutionalized racism and privilege. And housing discrimination is a fundamental part of that history. As previously mentioned, a home is often a family’s most important asset or source of wealth. Housing discrimination, therefore, created inequality in the accumulation of wealth. Moreover, wealth has two distinct characteristics: 1) it creates opportunity and 2) is it inheritable. The combination of these characteristics produced a dynamic whereby inequality in wealth—initially caused by discriminatory practices—was often passed down and maintained from one generation to the next. So long past discrimination in housing affected the wealth and opportunities of later generations. In short, past housing discrimination is an important factor in explaining economic inequality today. Conley writes:
Today, the average Black family has only one-eighth the net worth or assets of the average white family. That difference has seemingly grown since the 1960s, since the Civil Rights triumphs, and is not explained by other factors like education, earnings rates or savings rates. It is really the legacy of racial inequality from generations past. No other measure captures the legacy – the cumulative disadvantage of race for minorities or cumulative advantage of race for whites – than net worth or wealth.[7]
Thus, the reverberations of long past institutionalized racism are still felt today. As a primary example, housing discrimination creates inequality in wealth and opportunity that is often inherited by succeeding generations. Tracing back the linkages between present day inequalities in wealth and past housing discrimination demonstrates that—as a social justice issue—housing isn’t simple. Yet these linkages also show that, in spite of their complexity, contemporary housing issues remain as important as ever.
[1] George Lipsitz. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Philadelphia:Temple University Press.
[2] William Julius Wilson. (2005 [1996]) “When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor,” in Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology. ed. by Susan Ferguson. New York: McGraw Hill.
[3] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available athttp://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm.
[4] Larry Adelman. 2003. A Long History of Racial Preferences – For Whites .http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm.
[*] Note that wealth, not income, has been the touchstone for economic status throughout this discussion. This is no accident. For wealth, not income, is a much better indicator of opportunity: “Even when families of the same income are compared,” explains Adelman, “white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one’s home, and how much one inherited from parents.”
[6] Thomas M. Shapiro. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
[7] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available athttp://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm.cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-6123135522454893422008-09-17T11:40:00.000-07:002008-09-18T12:57:37.548-07:00This is Your Nation on White Privilege by Tim WiseFor those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. <div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you liketo "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible,all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college),and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement,whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan,makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God"in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being atypical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W.Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people,you're an extremist who probably hates America.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light"burden.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W.. Bush 90percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">White privilege is, in short, the problem.</div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"></div>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-64450590237497181382008-08-05T13:30:00.000-07:002008-12-09T15:41:11.153-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTrqEatQlxyTL-glCrgtCsKBOv0z66CdJUvEtaKHLHrI-43yBWDZQVLLEcoUlXfiBFBT0SAZBQcyQn-HkuMiPNZPBf9bdK5EofS-l_k7VvJ8E4IrCx322pmPcdlciqvNoLB1L8vQ/s1600-h/mike.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231134593250281794" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTrqEatQlxyTL-glCrgtCsKBOv0z66CdJUvEtaKHLHrI-43yBWDZQVLLEcoUlXfiBFBT0SAZBQcyQn-HkuMiPNZPBf9bdK5EofS-l_k7VvJ8E4IrCx322pmPcdlciqvNoLB1L8vQ/s400/mike.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-39832208600513449802008-07-31T15:21:00.000-07:002008-07-31T15:35:05.383-07:00The Basics: Defining White PrivilegeSometimes racism can manifest in ways that seem almost invisible. Like fish born in dirty water, it is difficult to see our privilege. We may take it for granted and feel that the way we are received and perceived in the world is just "normal" or "how it is". <br /><br />One way to challenge the invisibility of white privilege is to ask yourself, in any given moment, how the situation might be different if you were not white. Of course, we cannot fully understand what it is like being non-white, we can assume that some things would be different. <br /><br />What may seem invisible is actually quite obvious and has been qualified and documented in study after study. Whether it is searching for a house, dealing with police, looking for a job, going to school, shopping in a store or many other everyday actions, white people have a different, usually easier, experience. The disparity between these two experiences can be defined as white privilege. <br /><br />I invite anyone else out there to email me their definitions of white privilege. I will post all sincere attempts at defining what White Privilege really means.cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-90059213627505684992008-07-21T15:49:00.000-07:002008-07-21T15:51:09.449-07:00How I Became White by Maureen PurtillCritical Planning and White Supremacy: A personal look at my political project<br /><br /><br />Maureen Gaddis Purtill<br />19 March 2007<br /><br />Critical Theory<br />Prof. Peter McLaren<br /><br /><br />Critical Planning and White Supremacy: A personal look at my political project<br /> <br />I am dedicated to understanding, deconstructing and overthrowing systems of white supremacy and the new imperialism. For years I have engaged in various processes and with communities of resistance where I have begun to challenge notions of white patriarchal power in the world and in myself. However, it is only recently that I have begun to learn about the theory behind this transformative work. As a newcomer to critical race studies; anti-colonial education and critical theory; I want to take this opportunity to ground future work that I will do as an Urban Planner in my experience as an anti-racist white woman. <br /> When I say ground myself in my experience, I mean to say that I hope to use this paper as a space where I can get personal; where I can challenge myself to think about how the readings and discussions we have worked with do and may inform my personal transformation and the evolution of my political projects against domination within the field of Urban Planning and ultimately in the world. This may not result in a traditionally “academic” paper, but it is my hope that it will lay the foundation for me to do meaningful work within academia and outside of it in the future. <br /> I believe that engaging in anti-white-supremacist work, as a white woman, will be a lifelong task and struggle. Without beginning that journey from an honest look at my own privilege, I fear I will not get very far. With that said, my goal here is to engage deeply into a number of texts that name, undermine and challenge white supremacy and the new imperialism; ground my discussion in my lived realities, fears, and struggles as a white woman attempting to challenge power and privilege in myself and the world; and hopefully offer some insights into how conscious urban planners may benefit from this internal critique as we engage in community struggles for social justice. <br /> I am specifically looking at two texts that we have discussed in our Critical Theories course, but will draw on a number of other important works in the field of critical pedagogy and critical planning to frame my discussion as well. The first book is What White Looks Like: African-American philosophers on the whiteness question, edited by George Yancy Jr. The second is entitled: Anti-Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Resistance, edited by George J. Sefa Dei and Arlo Kempf. I have specifically chosen these two books because together they provide both a discussion and critique of whiteness and white supremacy; AND they provide the link between challenging white supremacy and transformative educational processes. <br /> Urban Planning, in my view, is a field in which there exists great potential for community educational processes leading toward social change. It is the responsibility of the conscious planner to submit herself to the voices, power, and decisions of the community. Through dialogical educational processes planners and communities can learn and teach together in order to understand oppressive infrastructures in society, as well as the tools with which to deconstruct those forces. It is within this essential collaboration between planning and education that I situate myself with my community. As a critical planner-educator-community member, I hope to ground my work in the philosophies of revolutionary educators such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks – who argue for pedagogies of love, humanism, and transgression. <br /> What White Looks Like helps me to see myself, my privilege, my fears, and my greatest challenges; where Anti-Colonialism and Education informs my work as a planner-educator-community member. I have heard again and again that change starts from within, that the personal is political, and that if white supremacy is to be defeated, then white folks need to step up and acknowledge our privilege to show the injustice and hypocrisy that it inherently perpetuates in our society. Here is my humble attempt to answer that call.<br /> In his introduction, George Yancy claims that white folks who fail to locate our center of our power as whites perpetuate the “invisible center of whiteness (2004:4)” that continues to exert power over non-whites. Meaning, if we are able to declare ourselves as “good whites” instead of “bad whites” then we claim to disassociate ourselves from not only racism, but the inherent privileges associated with our whiteness. Ignoring this privilege ignores the historical processes which have served to include some as white, while excluding others depending on the power dynamics and given historical contexts. When the Irish first came to the United States, they were not considered white, but today one would be hard-pressed to find a descendent of Irish immigrants who did not benefit entirely from white privilege and white supremacy. As Yancy says, “whiteness is a form of inheritance and like any inheritance one need not accept it (2004:8).” Perhaps one way we can begin to not accept it is to understand how whiteness itself has been constructed. It is not naturally true that one group of people is superior to another, we have created that reality. For me to reject my inherited privilege, I feel it is important to look at the ways it was given to me in the first place. I do this first of all to call out the insanity and invalidity of whiteness, and second, to begin my discussion from the most personal and intimate place that I can: with the stories and histories of my ancestors.<br />How I Became White:<br /> There are two major examples in my family history that I can draw from in explaining the roots of my whiteness. The first comes from my two grandfathers, maternal and fraternal, who were both children of Irish immigrants. The second is from what I consider to be the story of the women in my family, which dates back to the early 1800’s when California was México, and my great-great-great-great-grandmother was born in Baja California del Norte. My only hope is that my family forgives me for the unavoidable inaccuracies of my story. I write only from what I remember, and I am certain that dates and names will not be completely perfect. But what I consider to be most important, is the ways in which my ancestors were racialized, shamed, assimilated and privileged over time because of both how they were seen by others, and how they strategically chose to identify themselves as white when the context allowed.<br /> In the early 1900’s my great-grandfathers on both sides of the family fled Ireland as a result of the violence raging there between the Protestants and Catholics. One came from the North, the other from the South. During this time, Irish immigrants in New York made up a significant portion of the working class, and were not yet considered white. Their subordinated class position, along with their racialization as non-white made it challenging for Irish immigrants upon arrival. My grandfather James Gaddis tells the story that when his father arrived in Ellis Island he was already aware of the discrimination that he would face because of his “race”. He chose strategically to change the family name that day from Geddes to Gaddis because he wanted to somehow shed the stigma associated with Irish surnames and Irish people and be considered fully human – or white. <br /> María Ignacio López de Carrillo, mother of nine children, was born in the early 1800’s in Northern México. What I know about her I owe to mother, as well as to my maternal great-grandmother Eleanora Marguerite de Carrillo de Haney (grandma Ellie), who decided to write a book about her family’s history. As the story goes, María’s husband died when they were living in Baja so she traveled with her nine children north to settle and found what is known today as the city of Santa Rosa in the 1840’s. She was given massive land grants from her son-in-law, General Vallejo, and exploited the labor of about “a thousand Indians” in the construction of the Carrillo Adobe de Santa Rosa. California at that time was a state of México, and the Carrillo’s were some of the most powerful land owners in the north bay region. Grandma Ellie’s book tells stories of the elaborate parties they would have, and decorations with which they would adorn their horses. It then explains what it was like as the Americans came and eventually took their land, power, and stigmatized their culture and language. <br /> This time in my family’s history is especially interesting considering the question of whiteness. Before the invasion of México, the Califórnios were the dominant group, exploiting indigenous peoples in massive proportions. They identified with their Spanish heritage and subsequent whiteness, as opposed to their Mexican national identity. They were white and powerful. When the Americans came and undermined that power they were racialized as non-white, subordinated, and powerless. It is told that in the building where María’s son once served as Mayor, he ended his life there as an alcoholic janitor. I am not sure if that is entirely accurate, but the sentiment shows the transformation and racialization that my family experienced with the shift in power dynamics. We lost our language in that process, and my grandmother today still identifies our family as descendent from Spain, even though we are at least eight generations removed from the first Spanish immigrant to México, and at least three generations of our family were born and lived their lives in México before it’s northern half was stolen by the United States. <br /> Whiteness, and the privilege that is constructed and thus inherited because of it, is powerful and destructive. I do not wish to undermine the importance of the discussion of how whiteness hurts those who are considered to be non-white today, but I do want to acknowledge that the process of becoming white is not only a process of acquisition, but also one of loss. My name is Maureen Gaddis Purtill, not Maureen Geddes Purtill. I have been taught to identify as Spanish, not Mexican. Those differences do not make me experience racism on a day to day basis, but they are representative of shame, fear, and self-negation that my ancestors experienced. The privileges that it has afforded me have taken me farther and farther away from the realities of how painful that must have been for them – and thus how painful it is for people who are racialized today. It may then become more difficult for me to relate to someone who is not-white. It may also become easier for me to separate myself from my whiteness and what it means: settle into being a “good white”, and allow the invisible center of whiteness that I benefit from to continue un-checked. <br /> As I mentioned, What White Looks Like is a good place of departure for me to look at my underlying challenges in dealing with my whiteness in my work as a critical planner today. After reading the book I came up with a list of questions that it provoked for me that I feel are helpful in trying to ground myself in the reality of this struggle:<br />• What can I do to deconstruct white privilege knowing that I have inherited it, visibly carry it, and may perpetuate it in many ways known and unknown to me?<br />• What insights into my whiteness do Black philosophers have that I may not be capable of seeing because of my positionality?<br />• At what moments in reading the book do I feel defensive? I ask this because I feel that those are the places where I need to look deeper at my investment and therefore my stake in the system of white privilege / white supremacy.<br />• Considering the first question, what are the authors’ suggestions for me? What are things that are out of my control? What are my limits in combating white supremacy?<br />• Looking at my experience as white: What has felt fake/ false about whiteness to me? Historically and through my personal story, how do I see these processes playing out in my family and the creation, perpetuation, and investment in our whiteness?<br />• What are white people lacking / overcompensating for in our humanity such that we mistakenly strive to deny that of others to make up for what we are missing within ourselves? Is that perhaps a place from which to start for me? Healing the parts of myself that have been hurt by white supremacy / denial of diverse cultural contributions and experiences of my ancestors in the socio-historical process of the creation of my whiteness?<br /><br />Reading over my questions now is especially interesting after considering my family’s experience of becoming white. We may perpetuate our privilege because we didn’t always have it. Whether conscious or not, we know that we have something that others want, that others are denied, and that makes us feels superior and entitled to that superiority. In the United States, we are taught to be individualistic, to win, and to be “better” than the other. Along with that, the privilege afforded to me because of my skin has been re-framed as having been a result of “hard work” - not race. We have created ideological justifications for our comfort – which is manifest in our social and economic wealth. <br /><br />Radical Planning:<br /> As planners, and specifically as planners with white privilege, it is imperative that we challenge the ideological blinders that inform our acceptance of racial superiority. For those of us who work in multi-cultural settings, and are dedicated to racial and all forms of justice, it is hypocritical to our cause if we are not real about how we are in the positions we are in to begin with. <br /> In her book Community Development: A Critical Approach, Margart Ledwith calls on radical planners to engage with communities in struggles for social justice. Drawing on theories of critical praxis, community empowerment, concientização, feminism, and other critical approaches, she bases her work on five major points:<br />• Radical community development is committed to collective action for social and environmental justice<br />• This begins in a process of empowerment through critical consciousness, and grows through participation in local issues<br />• A critical approach calls for analysis of power and discrimination in society<br />• The analysis needs to be understood in relation to dominant ideas and the wider political context<br />• Collective action, based on this analysis, focuses on the root causes of discrimination rather that the symptoms (2005)<br /><br />Her call for a critical approach that includes an analysis of underlying power dynamics would not be complete without a personalized and politicized discussion of whiteness, white privilege, and white supremacy. <br /> <br />Challenging White Supremacy:<br /> Looking critically at my privilege is only the beginning of a life-long process of challenging white supremacy and the new imperialism. Those of us who are dedicated to this work are often frustrated because we want a simple answer to the question: “But what can I do about it!?” The reality is that there are certain things we can not change. We can not erase what we have inherited from our families in terms of class and skin privilege. We can, however, begin to look at the underlying structures and historical contexts that have placed us where we are in history.<br /> I do not claim that understanding my privilege alone will end it – nor that it would be easy to shed it if I could. My whiteness is something that I have not only inherited, but also something I have perpetuated. I have stake in my whiteness. My education, my health, my opportunities are all intricately connected to the way my “race” is privileged over others. I operate in a world that ideologically values whiteness. That structure needs to be dismantled. It is my hope that my personal work to name the absurdity of whiteness will contribute to its destruction as a concept of superiority – and that the communities in which I work will welcome me into a collaborative process of re-humanization to create a society that is more just for all of us.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />…hasta la victoria siempre<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />References<br /><br /><br />Dei, George J. Sefa and Arlo Kempf eds. (2006) Anti-Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Resistance. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers<br /><br />Freire, Paulo. (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.<br /><br />Freire, Paulo. (1990) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum<br /><br />Freire, Paulo. (1998) Politics and Education. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center <br /><br />hooks, bell. (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge<br /><br />Ledwith, Margaret (2005) Community Development: A critical approach. UK: The Policy Press <br /><br />Yancy, George (2004). ed. What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question. New York: Routledge Press.cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-32069030254439205942007-02-08T13:03:00.000-08:002007-01-24T09:00:19.934-08:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">White privilege is not a judgement against white people as much as simply an institutional analysis.</span> </span>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1161650233788847312006-10-23T17:31:00.000-07:002006-11-03T12:09:30.510-08:00Race: Fact or Myth? by christopher bowersIn Critical White Studies they talk about race as being much more a social reality than a biological reality. "Race" as a concept is not seen, even scientifically, as a biological reality. There are biological differences, obviously, but those are less than 5% of our genetic make-up. However, we attatch certain meanings to those minut differences and that meaning becomes more powerful than the reality of biology (that 5%). This means that two white people could have less in common genetically than a European-American and an African-American.<br /><br />Race, as a concept, comes out of a political/social context, particularly in this country. People could be defined not by their biology but by a political definition of race. The whiter you were, the more likely you were to be offered citizenship, the more property you could have, acceptance... and often your race was determined by the amount of property you had (Mexicans were considered white on the west coast because they owned property). Still today, race manifests much more as a social reality.<br /><br />This is not to invalidate body memory and racial pride. However, that scientifically this would be attributed more to an environmental experience manifesting through the body, not specifically to race. For example, Jewish people (of many races) may also have pride and genetic memory as a result of oppression. Identity politics is still necessary.<br /><br />What is quite left out this discussion is culture. Cultural differences are huge, but still not strictly biological. This makes them none the less valid. The whole idea of race as a biological myth is intended to confront the long history this country has of oppressing people through a huge process of "othering" which often took the form of scientific inquiry (ie, Eugenics) or making the case that people are less due to INHERENT differences, that actually are not inherent, but percieved.cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1161649881326228152006-10-23T17:28:00.000-07:002006-10-23T17:31:21.343-07:00Vonnegut on Privilege<span style="color:#ff0000;">"This is a conservative nation. It continues to treat nonwhite people badly. It has always done that. It will continue to let its writers run free, no matter what they say. It's always done that. It's lazy about change. I'm lucky to be the color I am and to do what I do. This is the place for me"</span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">-Kurt Vonnegut's address at Wheaton College Library, 1973</span>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1161276348605321042006-10-19T09:44:00.000-07:002006-10-19T09:45:48.623-07:00Flipping the Script by Christopher BowersWe often don't want to ask what social dysfunction might say about the perpatrators . Yet, if we do not, we may not understand how oppressive and hierarchial belief systems begin. For example, last year we heard many ask"What does hurricane Katrina mean for black people?", an important question to be sure. However, as anti-racist activist Tim Wise points out, another important question is what does hurricane Katrina mean for for white people? For black people it may have meant the devistation of their communities and for most white people in the area it meant their continued insulation and entitlement to safety and wealth, despite mother nature. Granted some white people were also devistated by the hurricane, most of them found it easier to relocate, get trailers, and to get their lives back on track. Why don't we ask more about why that is?<br /><br />In the process of understanding social identity we must understand that aspects of race and gender are formed not in a vacuum but in contrast to it's so-called opposite. Therfore, white is defined, and has been historically, as everything that black isn't. Men also are defined against women. However, it is often the privileged group who is doing the defining. In fact, it is a part of privilege to define the world around you and to have that definition be considered reality. So with the privilege of definition, dominant groups can create a reality in which they are not culpable, a reality in which the problems of society, are the problems of certain sectors of society. For example, let's look at sexual violence and rape. It is most often defined as a problem for women. But, what if we flip the script and ask not how many women are raped, but how many men have raped? If the stats are correct, at least 1 in 3 women have been raped and about 95% of the rapes are committed by men. Therefore, taking into consideration that some men violate multiple women, approximately 1 in every 5-10 men are rapists. How many men do you know? How many men do you work with, go to school with, party with? Likewise, homophobia is seen as a problem for gay people. This, despite the facts that the most deadliest hate crimes against the queer community were committed by self-identified straight men. So whose problem is this? Furthermore, by this scape-goating logic, racism is a problem for black people and white people then, as always, are off the hook. This despite the fact that it is white people who harbor most of the wealth and power, and white people who are most often discriminitory and abusive to people of color.<br /><br />This understanding of power and privilege is not intended to shame or demonize men, heterosexual people, or white people. Instead, this understanding gives us an opportunity to take responsibility if we find ourselves in a dominant social group. It is an opportunity to realize that reality may be different than we had been braught up to think, that we have a part in the ills of society and that in fact, we truly have the power to stop oppression in it's tracks. To be an ally isn't just to say "how can I help you with your problems". To be an ally, to be a human, is to say "This is my problem too".cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1160066851607258272006-10-05T09:47:00.000-07:002006-10-06T09:48:20.236-07:00How White Privilege Shapes the U.S. by Eric Stoller<a href="http://ericstoller.com/blog/2005/12/01/white-privilege-shapes-the-us/" rel="bookmark"><span style="font-size:85%;">“White privilege shapes the U.S.” </span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I just finished reading Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by </span><a href="http://www.allaboutbell.com/"><span style="font-size:85%;">bell hooks</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">. bell hooks is amazing. Her writing is pleasantly painful. I wish I could write as eloquently as hooks. Her words are completely accessible yet they have meaning that can take days to process.<br />One problem that plagues our society that has been stirring my mental pot is white privilege. Thanks to bell hooks, </span><a href="http://spelman.edu/administration/office/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Beverly Tatum</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">(</span><a href="http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465083617"><span style="font-size:85%;">Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">) and </span><a href="http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/people/profiles/cdep/Helms.htm"><span style="font-size:85%;">Janet Helms </span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">(</span><a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3935/is_200407/ai_n9414143"><span style="font-size:85%;">White racial identity </span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963303600/qid=1133424967/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-3195754-0960902?n=507846&s=books&v=glance"><span style="font-size:85%;">A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person or Understanding the White Persons in Your Life </span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">), I now have an awareness that is light years from where I started. Self awareness can be challenging and very frightening. I wrestled with Janet Helms until I could finally understand what she meant when she says that all white people start there lives as racists.<br />On that note, I would like to start a discussion with my readers. I want to ask a question and attempt to elicit responses via comments. I will moderate comments so that hate does not appear. Dialogue is good, but hate has no place on my blog.<br />Feel free to add comments to the following question(s):<br />Does white privilege exist? and if you answered “yes”, how have you become aware of it?</span>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1160066791217067342006-10-05T09:46:00.000-07:002006-10-06T09:48:34.620-07:00Affirmative Action by Eric Stoller<a href="http://ericstoller.com/blog/2006/03/04/affirmative-action/" rel="bookmark"><span style="font-size:85%;">Affirmative Action </span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted on Saturday 4 March 2006<br />Six years ago while I was nearing graduation for my undergraduate degree I was asked the following question, “Aren’t you afraid that you won’t be able to get a job?” I was not immediately certain as to the context of the question, but upon further inquiry, I soon found that the questioner was worried I would not be hired for jobs because I was white (and a man). This was the first time I had really thought about what affirmative action was, and what it might mean to me. My thoughts regarding affirmative action had mainly been influenced by my family and the media. For the most part, I thought that affirmative action was a good thing, but I did not know why I thought that way. Doubts about affirmative action being a positive policy seeped into my head while I was conducting my first job search. I believed that reverse-racism and/or reverse-discrimination existed and that I would have to “watch my back.”<br />Today, I have read, thought, and conversed about affirmative action. I feel that I use to believe in the myth of meritocracy. “Everyone can succeed as long as they work hard,” floated around inside my head and veiled my mind from the truth. I believe that the United States is not a meritocracy and that affirmative action is extremely necessary. Why is it necessary? Because the United States is a system built upon the backbreaking labor, systematic abuse, and marginalization of people of color, women, and other subordinate groups. Affirmative action is a program that seeks to provide equity for these marginalized groups. It helps to create a balance against the white supremacist patriarchy in which we live.<br />Several arguments exist which seek to discredit or devalue affirmative action. Two arguments that I hear frequently include: 1) Affirmative action gives jobs to people of color who are not qualified and they only receive said job due to this program. 2) White men are discriminated against because of the inherent reverse-racism within affirmative action programs.<br />The first argument seems to stem from the belief that the definitions of what makes for a “qualified” employee are usually in the hands of white folks. Most of the institutions in the United States are chaired, governed, and otherwise presided over by white people. When a person of color is hired for a job, how often is their competency called into question? Let’s consider the following scenario: A white person interviews and is consequently hired for a job. I would posit that no one says to themselves, “wow, they must have been hired because they are white.” It does not happen. However, if a person of color goes through the same process there will be doubters. I think that a lot of people will say quite negatively, “Yep, here’s another example of affirmative action hiring a person of color. I hope they can do the job.” The white person is given an air of competency simply because of their whiteness. Affirmative action opens up spaces for marginalized individuals to combat the inequalities of white supremacy within the realm of employment.<br />The second argument against affirmative action is constructed within a context that is void of a historical context and knowledge of the existence of institutionalized racism. Historically speaking, white men have been in positions of power over everyone. This “power over” has saturated the United States for over one hundred years. White privilege exists because of racist tactics, strategies, and actions of the dominant paradigm. The dominant paradigm is hierarchical and white men sit atop this ladder. To say that white men are discriminated against during hiring processes due to affirmative action is like saying white men are not in power. It is a falsity that is used to erode affirmative action and to maintain the ladder of white supremacist power. I believe that racism is something that white people perpetuate. Racism is institutionalized and spread into white consciousness like a virus. White men can be discriminated against, because discrimination is different from racism. It is true that I might be discriminated against in my lifetime, but not by affirmative action programs. Affirmative action programs will take a look at my qualifications and the qualifications of a person of color, a woman, etc. and if our qualifications are the same then I will not get the job. For racism to end, white people have to be willing to give up their unearned privileges and power. The same principle applies to sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and lookism. I feel that it is part of my anti-racist philosophy to rejoice in the fact that I did not get a job because of the mere fact that I am white. There are plenty of jobs that I can get.<br />So, rejoice in the knowledge that affirmative action exists. Affirmative action helps to restore the dignity of people in oppressed groups as well as people in oppressor groups. Affirmative action places all those who seek to work for the government at the starting gate of employment processes, instead of allowing the dominant paradigm to start ahead of those who have been, and currently are, marginalized.</span>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1160066705653044932006-10-05T09:43:00.000-07:002006-10-06T09:48:58.383-07:00The Problem of Privilege by Eric Stoller<a href="http://ericstoller.com/blog/2005/02/09/the-problem-of-privilege/" rel="bookmark"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Problem of Privilege </span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">1: White Privilege #1 - I can speak of my own experiences regarding diversity and be seen as unique or vulnerable when I am in a room full of white people.<br />White Privilege #2 — I am never asked if I am from the United States or if I just moved here. It is assumed that I am a citizen because of my skin color.<br />2: In privilege # 6, McIntosh writes about the lies that are spread via our educational system. One way that I believe that I can give up the privilege of ethnocentric education is to read history books that accurately portray the history of marginalized groups. I can also pass on these books to friends and family members as potential sources of re-education. Howard Zinn and Ronald Takaki are excellent sources of accurately written historical texts. I think I am working towards giving up privilege #6 and in some ways, beginning to share or extend new information to other white folks.<br />I am currently choosing to not align myself with the first privilege that McIntosh writes about. This privilege is the privilege of “arranging to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.” I am working on developing networks of friends who are of color, LGBT, and any other members of oppressed groups. I’m doing this to be a better person and to do what I can to lead by example. I think white folks need to see and hear white men talk about diversity.<br />I currently identify as an anti-racist, a feminist, and an ally. These identities are causing me to give up the 21st privilege. This privilege is one that I am struggling with giving up because I am unsure what it will mean to my psyche. The idea of coming home after “meetings of organizations I belong to, and feeling isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared,” is not a pleasant thing. This feeling of isolation has already started to happen on a limited scale. It is a new experience for me in my efforts to subvert the dominant paradigm. I feel like the system wants me back and that my punishment is going to be isolation. Fortunately, I have an excellent support system of folks whose views align with my own.<br />3: I believe that it is accurate to call something a privilege that is imposed upon a person by our social structure, that they do not want and can’t get rid of. McIntosh makes it very clear in her article that it is important to distinguish unearned privileges which are part of unearned advantages. It is important to discuss privileges that are unearned; because within that discussion comes the reality that institutionalized oppression creates unearned advantages for some, while simultaneously disadvantaging someone else. Unearned privilege comes from institutional power.<br />4: The second we truly realize that we are privileged means that we also realize that our privileges come at the expense of someone else and that these privileges do damage to those who are privileged. Systems of oppression like racism, sexism, and heterosexism could not exist if heterosexual white men gave up their privileges and to do that, they would have to give up their power. If temporarily able-bodied folks realize that they benefit from the institutionalized oppression of persons who are disabled then all TABs would be forced to create new institutions that create systems where buildings would be accessible and technology would be usable for all people regardless of visual or motor impairments</span>.cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1159978748171417792006-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:002006-10-04T09:19:08.173-07:00Why Bother?<span style="color:#ff0000;">White people cannot be fully human while they participate and benefit from a system that denies others their own humanity. The struggle against racism and oppression is faught knowing that our own liberation and integrity is also at stake.</span>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33867341.post-1159977940912991142006-10-04T09:05:00.000-07:002006-10-04T09:17:29.956-07:00Critical White Studies<span style="font-size:85%;">(Courtesy of </span><a href="http://toteota.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Bill</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">)Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America Peter Kolchin The Journal of American History Vol. 89, Issue 1 (posted by </span><a href="http://www.historycooperative.org/"><span style="font-size:85%;">History Cooperative</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> and </span><a href="http://www.uwm.edu/People/gjay/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Gregory S. Jay</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">)<br /><br />Suddenly whiteness studies are everywhere. The rapid proliferation of a genre that appears to have come out of nowhere is little short of astonishing: a recent keyword search on my university library's electronic catalog yielded fifty-one books containing the word "whiteness" in their titles, almost all published in the past decade and most published in the past five years.1 All around us, American historians and scholars in related disciplines from sociology and law to cultural studies and education are writing books with titles such as The White Scourge, How the Irish Became White, Making Whiteness, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, and Critical White Studies.2<br /><br />Although the term "whiteness studies" might at first glance suggest works that promote white identity or constitute part of a racist backlash against multiculturalism and "political correctness," virtually all the whiteness studies authors seek to confront white privilege—that is, racism—and virtually all identify at some level with the political Left. Most of them see a close link between their scholarly efforts and the goal of creating a more humane social order. 1 Whiteness studies authors manifest a wide variety of approaches. In many of the disciplines outside history, prescriptive policy goals assume a central position; writing on whiteness in education, for example, Nelson M. Rodriguez calls for the creation of "'pedagogies of whiteness' as a counterhegemonic act" predicated on the need to "refigure whiteness in antiracist, antihomophobic, and antisexist ways."3<br /><br />Although such didacticism is far from absent in the work of whiteness studies historians, their focus has been on the construction of whiteness—how diverse groups in the United States came to identify, and be identified by others, as white—and what that has meant for the social order. Starting from the now widely shared premise that race is an ideological or social construct rather than a biological fact, they have at least partially shifted attention from how Americans have looked at blacks to how they have looked at whites, and to whiteness as a central component of Americans' racial ideology. In doing so, they have already had a substantial impact on historians whose work does not fall fully within the rubric of whiteness studies but who have borrowed some of the field's insights, concerns, and language.4 2<br /><br />This essay represents an effort by a sympathetic but critical outsider to come to grips with this burgeoning field. I will deal primarily with historical literature, although I will refer to works in other disciplines, and I will pay particular attention to two books that are among the best and most influential of the whiteness studies works: David R. Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness and Matthew Frye Jacobson's Whiteness of a Different Color.5 Because the two books differ from each other in important respects, they reveal both the diversity within and the common assumptions behind whiteness studies, and they suggest some of the insights and potential pitfalls of the genre. My aim is to produce not so much a final evaluation of a finished project as a tentative progress report on a literature still very much in evolution </span><a href="http://www.uwm.edu/People/gjay/Whiteness/kolchinreviewessay.htm"><span style="font-size:85%;">To Read the Rest of the Essay</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> or </span><a href="javascript:ol("><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.uwm.edu/People/gjay/Whiteness/kolchinreviewessay.htm</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> Also check out:</span><a href="http://www.uwm.edu/People/gjay/Whiteness/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Whiteness Studies: Deconstructing (the) Race</span></a>cjbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01358150461887650698noreply@blogger.com