Posts tagged white privilege
Cumulative notes for the Zōon Politikon
#1465
White privilege is dressing up in all black with a veil and performing burlesque to “Strange Fruit”, a song made famous by Billie Holiday about the lynching of African Americans in the South. Maybe she was trying to be political, maybe she wasn’t. But for a white Canadian to make lyrics about “black bodies swinging from the poplar trees” about how sexy she is while she gets her kit off is at best an egregious display of privilege. At worst, it’s just straight up ignorant racism.
“I went to a prestigious small liberal arts college in Maine. And like many other people of color who have gone to prestigious institutions of higher learning, I had a lot of white liberal friends. And I am sick of some of these white liberal friends telling me how guilty they feel all the time. How guilty they are, how their whiteness makes them feel bad.
“You know, I’m not impressed. Because if I had the choice between white guilt and racism, I’d take the white guilt every time! White guilt sounds great! Are you kidding me?
“Imagine this; you’re in a line, you’re about to board an airplane. All of a sudden security shows up. They pull a Sikh man with a beard and a turban off, they search his bags. You’re watching, what do you think to yourself? ‘Oh this is terrible, I feel terrible! This is again racial profiling. That man’s done nothing wrong. How ‘bout they search––they should search me, I’m a white man! I could be the next Timothy McVeigh. They don’t know that! Why don’t they search my bags? ‘Cause I’m white. I feel terrible. I feel so terrible. I mean, I’m still gonna board the plane, but I’m gonna feel bad about it, I’m gonna sit in my chair, I’m gonna feel gross- Oh! I’ll write Rachel Maddow an email, that’s what I’ll do! And I’ll tell Terry Gross, and I’ll read my bell hooks on the plane. Yes, see then, everything will be better. I’ll feel better!’
“…to any white liberals watching, remember this; your white guilt is a part of your white privilege.”
— Hari Kondabolu
(Source: youtube.com, via alexandraerin)
Do you know how many of my students can’t even say the word white? You all will talk about African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans all day long but at soon as it comes time to say white peoples’ voices drop. You ain’t have seen that? Come on man, people come up with crazy terms you have never seen before, they would be like: “And that Caucasoid…” You can always tell, you could always tell where the supreme power rests in the society because of the reluctance people have in naming that power.
Part of what privilege requires, guys privilege cannot operate without silence. It cannot operate without silence, and this tremendous silence around whiteness, if you are foolish enough to post a blog on your Facebook that mentions whiteness the amount of attacks that you will get, because privilege defends itself viciously, to maintain the silence that is required for its operation.
So, given this I would argue that the other thing that we need to do is coming off of James Scott’s idea of “anarchist calisthenics,” we need to practice racial anarchist calisthenics. What he, what Scott meant by anarchist calisthenics is that this society has ton of little rules that we all practice without thinking. And he argues that we need to practice breaking little rules consistently because one day this society is going to ask you to prosecute a horrifying rule, that I think we will long live to regret, and the muscles of resistance needs to be exercised, they need to be prepared for the time we need to make that big, big, big, big stand.
And so racial anarchist calisthenics, I would say, begins with all of us getting that tongue muscle back in to place and saying Saurons name. I challenge people; I challenge people every time you say African-American, Asian-American, whatever the group count it and say white just as much. And say white just as much. We don’t do it you guys, we don’t do it, we don’t do it. And yet if we were ever going to confront in a real way white supremacy, which is not only linked to white folks you guys. White supremacy is the racial order in all of us, but if we are not able to discuss whiteness as a category, as a critical way of looking at the world and even simply as just the racial group, we are in some serious trouble. The reality is even if we took every white person on Earth and put them on a space ship and sent them to outer space white supremacy wouldn’t miss a beat.
(Source: msleahhbic, via bad-dominicana)
Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards.
—Mychal Denzel Smith, “White People Have to Give Up Racism” (via thenationmagazine)
A very good definition of privilege.
(via blueandbluer)
(via sara-huynh)
#1279
casanova-frankensteins-monster:
White privilege is writing an unauthorized sequel to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun focusing on white characters and white viewpoints and receiving universal glowing reviews for your “original” and “daring” take on race relations. White privilege is your play winning the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, while Hansberry’s play was snubbed for both.
THIS HAPPENED??? THIS ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED????
….
….
…..
WHAT
you’ve got to be fucking joking
American narcissism is telling immigrants that they should be grateful to live here, when it’s, more likely than not, some form of American interference that destabilized their home nation.
OMG THIS. OH MY FUCKING G-D, THIS.
(Source: maarnayeri, via deafmuslimpunx)
#1146
White privilege is driving through the abject poverty of inner-city Baltimore and thinking “wow…cool, this would make a great art project!”. Our suffering, pain, hunger, insecurity, and neglect is not meant for your profit or titillation.
i remember when one of my good friends went to grad school (for studio art) and he was the only black student in his MFA program. he told me about how they went on a “field trip” through the slums of Detroit and seeing all these “poor black folks.” It made him feel angry seeing the other art students (all white, middle upper class folks) gawking at the hood and taking photos for their stupid art projects. yeah, this stuff really happens.
#1146
White privilege is driving through the abject poverty of inner-city Baltimore and thinking “wow…cool, this would make a great art project!”. Our suffering, pain, hunger, insecurity, and neglect is not meant for your profit or titillation.
#1089
White privilege is never having to hear people asking your White family members if you were adopted, because why else would a White man have a non-White child?
Submission from (The Silly Soliloquy)
On Graffiti, Women of Color Writers, & Yarn Bombing
Anonymous asked: what do you have against yarn bombing?
I’m p. sure I’ve briefly discussed this topic before. I’ll check if i tagged the original text and repost, but essentially my disdain with yarn graffiti is that it is a phenomena whose origins are an exercise in privilege. White feminists used yarn bombing as a way to ‘counter male-dominated realms of street art and graffiti’ (see here, here, here, here, here and here.) and forcefully insert themselves into a subculture made up of poor people of color, primarily black and latino youth.
The lumping of graffiti and street art alone raises red flags as it fails to acknowledge how the emergence of street art has negatively impacted women writers of color. While I don’t want to get into an in-depth discussion between graffiti and street art (because it is a ton to delve into), we must note two important and relevant distinctions which separate these realms—race and class. Graffiti (graffiti as an element of hip hop and not solely the act of writing on surfaces w/o permission) has always been an art attributed to kids of color from a lower socio-ecomomic background and is for the most part looked down upon as vandalism. While ‘street art,’ a relatively new art-form, has long maintained a white middle class majority artists as well patrons and is considered a legitimate art which has gained prominence as well as commercial succe$$.
Now, white feminists ignore these important distinctions and offer yarn graffiti as an alternative w/o understanding that although sexism is a problem that persists the graffiti world, we cannot ignore the problems of racism and classism that are contributed by these co-optive side-graffiti arts which both street art and yarn graffiti can be included in.
If there is going to be a change that challenges these issues it should be done from the bottom up. Women of color exist in the graffiti world. It is insulting that these feminists believe they’re solving our problems as women when they have no idea what it is to be a woman writer at the bottom of the graffiti hierarchy, especially when their solution is one that will never be criminalized/looked down upon but instead be seen as cute and edgy but most importantly an art that will be welcomed by mainstream culture.
in the end, yarn graffiti is simply yarn art made by probably racist women (first yarn art was attributed to a group who went by the name ofknittaplease—that name is questionable AF) who got bored and thought just because they liked a life that was foreign to them they would create a graffiti offshoot to cater a need of belonging while at the same time writing off women of color who have long participated and fought against misogynistic attitudes in graff culture.
It ain’t cool, and I ain’t down with it. Sorry for the long response, but i hope this answers your question.
(via deafmuslimpunx)
