On White Pride and Other Delusions: Reflections
on the Rage of the Uninformed
by Tim Wise
This article originally appeared on white anti-racist
activist Tim Wise's personal site.
"The
price the white American paid for his ticket was to become white...This
incredibly limited, not to say dimwitted ambition has choked many a human being
to death here: and this, I contend, is because the white American has never
accepted the real reasons for his journey. I know very well that my ancestors
had no desire to come to this place: but neither did the ancestors of the
people who became white and who require of my captivity a song. They require of
me a song less to celebrate my captivity than to justify their own." - James Baldwin, "The
Price of the Ticket," 1985
It seems like every week I get an e-mail from someone
demanding to know why there's no White History Month, or White Entertainment
Television, or why whites aren't allowed to have organizations to defend
"our" interests, the way people of color are, without being thought
of as racists. One of these internet missives, which has been making the rounds
lately on MySpace and other popular networking sites, implies that whites are
somehow oppressed because whites can't get away with calling people of color
any number of racial slurs (a litany of which the author then proceeds to
recite, almost gleefully), while persons of color presumably call us names like
"cracker," "honky," or "hillbilly" all the time.
The e-mail
goes on to express anger over, among other things, Martin Luther King Jr. day,
and Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance day in Israel), as if these were
holidays that discriminated against whites. It then laments that white pride is
seen as racist, but for people of color to feel and show pride in their group
is seen as normal, natural, and even healthy.
The
Reverse Racism Ruse (Or How to Ignore Power, History and Logic)
That so
many people find this kind of argumentation persuasive would be humorous were
it not so dangerous, and so indicative of the way in which our nation has yet
to come to grips with its racist history. Had we honestly confronted racism as
an issue, past and present, it is unlikely that such positions would make sense
to anyone. After all, every month has been white history month, even if
they weren't called that. White history has been made the normative history,
the default position, and when your narrative is taken as the norm - indeed,
when it gets to be viewed as synonymous with American history - the need
to racially designate its origins is obviously a less pressing concern. White
folks' contributions have never been ignored, diminished or overlooked. As
such, to now demand special time to teach about the people we've already
learned about from the start seems a bit preposterous.
"White history
has been made the normative history, the default position."
As for
racial slurs, while it is certainly fair to point out that their use is always
inappropriate, no matter whom they're directed against, to think that a term
like hillbilly is truly equivalent to those used against people of color, like
"nigger," "spic," "raghead," or
"chink," requires one to exhibit a profound ignorance of history.
These and other slurs against people of color not only sound more hateful, they
have operated in a more hateful manner, by forming the linguistic
cornerstone of systematic oppression and institutionalized racial supremacy.
Hundreds of thousands were enslaved and millions have died at the hands of
those who thought of their victims as "niggers," "spics,"
"ragheads" and "chinks," and used those terms as they went
about their murderous ways.
American history, in its historic treatment of persons of
color has been an inter-generational hate crime, which didn't begin to end,
even in theory, until the 1960s. On the other hand, anti-white terms are
typically the end of the line when it comes to anti-white racism. People of
color control no institutions that are capable of discriminating systematically
against whites. They cannot keep whites from having jobs, or getting a loan.
Nor can black cops get away with racially profiling whites, even when whites
actually do lead the pack in one or another form of criminal behavior (serial
killing, corporate fraud, or drunk driving, for example). So no, the terms are
not the same, even as all are inappropriate and offensive.
"People of color control no institutions that are capable
of discriminating systematically against whites."
And the
idea that whites working for white empowerment or "white rights" is
no different than people of color working for the empowerment of their
group (through such mechanisms as the NAACP, or the Congressional Black Caucus,
for instance), also makes sense, only if one takes a fundamentally dishonest
glimpse at the nation's past.
After all,
groups representing persons of color were created to address the unique disempowerment
experienced by those groups' members. Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native
Americans have been systematically denied opportunities in the U.S. solely
because of their group membership. Their "race" was the basis for
housing discrimination, restrictions on educational opportunities, exclusion
from jobs, and other forms of mistreatment. Whites have never been the targets
of institutional oppression in the U.S., as whites, such that organizing
as whites would have made sense. Sure, whites have been marginalized on
the basis of ethnicity - the Irish, for example, or Italians, or Jews - and
have long organized around ethnicity as a support system, for job networking,
educational benefits, or other purposes. But as whites, persons of European
descent have been the dominant group. So to organize on that basis, would be to
come together for the purpose of providing collective support for one's
existing domination and hegemony. It would be like corporate management forming
a union to protect its interests from workers; or like the upper-caste in
India, forming a Brahmin support group to protect itself from the Dalits, at
the other end of the caste spectrum. Such a contingency would be redundant in
the extreme.
"Whites have never been the targets of institutional
oppression in the U.S., as whites, such that organizing as whites would have
made sense."
To have a
White Student Union, especially at a college where whites were in the clear
majority, would be absurd, for this reason. To have a Congressional White
Caucus, given the way in which white elites dominate the government would be
even worse. To have a White Entertainment Television would ignore that whites
already predominate on most all existing networks, and that shows pegged to
people of color are few and far between, and usually limited to a handful of
smaller networks and cable outlets.
Though many
argue that affirmative action has made whites the victims of massive
"reverse discrimination," and thus necessitated the rise of a white
rights movement to secure white collective interests, the evidence simply
doesn't support such a view. Although individual whites have likely experienced
instances of discrimination - and anecdotal data suggests this is true, though
far, far less often than the occasions when people of color experience it -
there is nothing to indicate that such incidents are a widespread social
phenomenon, against which whites now require organizations to protect them.
So, for
instance, whites hold over ninety percent of all the management level jobs in
this country (1), receive about ninety-four percent of government contract
dollars (2), and hold ninety percent of tenured faculty positions on college
campuses (3). Contrary to popular belief, and in spite of affirmative action
programs, whites are more likely than members of any other racial group to be
admitted to their college of first choice (4). Furthermore, white men with only
a high school diploma are more likely to have a job than black and Latino men
with college degrees (5), and even when they have a criminal record, white men
are more likely than black men without one to receive a call back for a job interview,
even when all their credentials are the same (6). Despite comparable rates of
school rule infractions, white students are only half to one-third as likely as
blacks and Latino youth to be suspended or expelled (7); and despite higher
rates of drug use, white youth are far less likely to be arrested, prosecuted
or incarcerated for a drug offense than are youth of color (8).
"The idea of organizing for white collective interests is
little more than piling dominance on top of dominance."
So when it
comes to jobs, education, housing, contracting, or anything else, people of
color are the ones facing discrimination and restricted opportunities, while
whites remain on top, making the idea of organizing for white collective
interests little more than piling dominance on top of dominance. Not to ensure
a place at the table, so to speak, but to secure the table itself, and to
control who gets to be seated around it, for now and always.
It is for
this reason that white pride is more objectionable than "black
pride," or "Latino pride." In the case of the latter two, those
exhibiting pride are not doing so as a celebration of their presumed
superiority, nor dominance over others. If anything, they are celebrating the
perseverance of their people against great obstacles, such as those placed in
their way by discrimination, conquest and enslavement. In the case of white
pride, whites as whites have not overcome obstacles in the same fashion,
because they have always been the dominant group. Although Irish pride or
Italian pride makes sense given the way in which persons of those ethnicities
have faced real oppression in the past (and even today, in the case of
Italians, who sometimes face negative stereotypes), white pride, given the
historic meaning of whiteness, can mean little
but pride in presumed superiority.
White Bonding as a Dangerous Distraction
But
especially ironic is that by seeking to bond on the basis of whiteness, those
pushing the concept end up ignoring the way in which white identity has actually
harmed persons of European descent, by causing most to ignore their real
interests, all for the sake of phony racial bonding. To understand why this is
so, it might help to have some historical perspective on how the notion of
whiteness came into being in the first place, and for what purpose.
Contrary to
popular belief, the white race is a quite modern creation, which only emerged
as a term and concept to describe Europeans in the late 1600s and after,
specifically in the colonies of what would become the United States. Prior to
that time, "whites" had been a collection of Europeans with little in
common, and often long histories of conflict, bloodshed and conquest of one
another's lands and peoples. The English, for example, did not consider
themselves to be of the same group as the Irish, Germans, Italians, or French.
While most Europeans by that time may have thought of themselves as Christians,
there is no evidence that they conceived of themselves as a race of people,
with a common heritage or destiny.
"The white race is a quite modern creation."
But the
notion of the white race found traction in the North American colonies, not
because it described a clear scientific concept, or some true historical bond
between persons of European descent, but rather, because the elites of the
colonies (who were small in number but controlled the vast majority of colonial
wealth) needed a way to secure their power. At the time, the wealthy landowners
feared rebellions, in which poor European peasants might join with African
slaves to overthrow aristocratic governance; after all, these poor Europeans
were barely above the level of slaves themselves, especially if they worked as
indentured servants (9).
In 1676,
for example, Bacon's Rebellion prompted a new round of colonial laws to extend
rights and privileges to despised poor Europeans, so as to divide them from
those slaves with whom they had much in common, economically speaking. By
allowing the lowest of Europeans to be placed legally above all Africans, and
by encouraging (or even requiring) them to serve on slave patrols, the elite
gave poor "whites" a stake in the system that had harmed them. Giving
poor Europeans the right to own land, ending indentured servitude in the early
1700s, and in some cases allowing them to vote, were all measures implemented
so as to convince lower-caste Europeans that their interests were closer to
those of the rich than to those of blacks. It was within this context that the
term "white" to describe Europeans en masse was born, as an
umbrella term to capture the new pan-Euro unity needed to defend the system of
African slavery and Indian genocide going on in the Americas (10). And the
trick worked marvelously, dampening down the push for rebellion by poor whites
on the basis of class interest, and encouraging them to cast their lot with the
elite, if only in aspirational terms.
"The term ‘white' to describe Europeans en masse was
born, as an umbrella term to capture the new pan-Euro unity needed to defend
the system of African slavery and Indian genocide."
This
divide-and-conquer tactic would be extended and refined in future generations
as well. Indeed, the very first law passed by the newly established Congress of
the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which extended
citizenship to all "free white persons," and only free white
persons, including newly arrived immigrants, so long as the latter would make
their homes in the U.S. for a year. Despite longstanding animosities between
persons of European descent, all blood feuds were put aside for the purpose of
extending pan-Euro or white hegemony over the United States (11).
During the
Civil War, the process of using "whiteness" to further divide working
people from one another continued. So, for example, Southern elites made it
quite clear that their reason for secession from the Union was the desire to
maintain and extend the institution of slavery and white supremacy, which
institutions they felt were threatened by the rise of Lincoln and the
Republican Party. One might think that seceding and going to war to defend
slavery would hardly meet with the approval of poor white folks, who didn't own
slaves. After all, if slaves can be made to work for free, any working class
white person who must charge for their labor will be undercut by slave labor,
and find it harder to make ends meet. Yet by convincing poor whites that their
interests were racial, rather than economic, and that whites in the South had
to band together to defend "their way of life," the elites in the
South conned these same lower-caste Europeans into joining a destructive war
effort that cost hundreds of thousands of lives (12): their lives, in
fact.
"We would rather be absolute slaves of capital than to
take the Negro into our lodges as an equal and brother."
Then,
during the growth of the labor union movement, white union workers barred
blacks from apprenticeship programs and unions because of racism, encouraged in
this by owners and bosses who would use workers of color to break white labor
strikes for better wages and working conditions. By bringing in blacks and
others of color to break strikes, bosses counted on white workers turning on
those replacing them, rather than turning on the bosses themselves. And indeed,
this is what happened time and again, further elevating whiteness above class
interest in the minds of European Americans (13).
The
effectiveness of racist propaganda to unite whites around race, even if it
meant overlooking economic interests, was stunning. Nowhere was this phenomena
better summed up than in the words of one white Texas fireman, who responded to
the suggestion that the ranks of railroaders should be opened up to blacks by
saying, "We would rather be absolute slaves of capital than to take the
Negro into our lodges as an equal and brother (14)."
White Bonding and the Continued Conning of the Working Class
Today,
whiteness continues to serve as a distraction to working class persons of
European descent. So in the debate over immigration, it is often claimed that immigrants
of color are driving down the wages of white workers, and that sealing the
border is necessary to secure jobs and decent incomes for the working class.
But such an argument presumes that the only thing keeping employers from giving
white workers a raise (or black workers for that matter) is the presence of
easily exploited foreign labor. As if closing the border would suddenly
convince them to open up their wallets and give working people a better deal.
In truth, however, were companies unable to exploit immigrant labor, they would
simply move their entire operations to Mexico, or elsewhere, to take advantage
of low-wage labor or non-existent regulations on their activities. And if they
were the kind of companies that couldn't move their operations abroad (such as
construction firms, for example), they would likely shift to more contingent,
part-time and temp labor, which would mean that whoever ended up with those
jobs would still have little or no benefits, and insecure wages. This is hardly
the recipe for real improvement in the conditions of working people.
"Thinking as whites has made cross-racial solidarity
virtually unthinkable."
White
workers would be far better off joining up with workers of color, including the
undocumented, to push for higher wages and better working conditions; and they
would surely be better off if those coming from Mexico were made legal and
organized into unions. But thinking as whites has made this kind of
cross-racial solidarity virtually unthinkable. Instead of focusing on the trade
agreements that allow companies to move wherever they can get the best return
on investment - agreements which have, even by the government's admission
resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs - white
workers are encouraged, by racism and white bonding to focus their ire on the
workers themselves. After all, the workers are brown, while the owners are
almost all white, which is to say that the latter are the ones with whom the
white working class has been convinced to identify.
For an
especially painful example of how destructive white racial thinking can be,
consider St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, next door to New Orleans. In the
aftermath of Katrina, St. Bernard was among the hardest hit communities. Next
to the ninety-four percent black Lower 9th Ward, in New Orleans, ninety-four
percent white St. Bernard was probably the most devastated part of the region.
Though racially different, the communities are both predominantly working class
and populated by families with moderate income; and when the federal
government, via the Corps of Engineers failed to ensure the proper construction
of the levees, or when the local levee board diverted levee repair funds to
build interstate off-ramps for the area's casinos, both the Lower 9 and St.
Bernard saw their communities utterly destroyed.
"In 1991, more than seven in ten whites from St. Bernard
Parish voted for neo-Nazi, David Duke when he ran for Governor of Louisiana."
But despite
the common interests of the two community's residents, if you had asked most
any white person in St. Bernard about the folks who lived in the Lower 9th,
prior to the storm (or for that matter today), you would have been treated (or
still would be) to an uninterrupted string of racist invective. To whites in
"da parish" as it's known, blacks from New Orleans are the source of
all the region's problems. This is why, in 1991, more than seven in ten whites
from St. Bernard voted for neo-Nazi, David Duke when he ran for Governor of
Louisiana. This is why the very first thing that Parish government did
upon returning home after the storm, and starting to rebuild, was to pass a
blood relative law for renters: in other words, you couldn't rent in St.
Bernard unless you were a blood relative of the person who was to be your
landlord. It was a clear attempt to block people of color from moving in, and
once legal action was threatened the Parish backed down, as they could offer no
non-racist reason for passing such a law.
And yet,
what has the racialized thinking of whites in St. Bernard gotten them? It
didn't keep them safe from busted levees. Indeed, had they been less racist and
less given to thinking with their color, they might have noticed how much they
had in common with their 9th Ward neighbors. But instead of joining hands with
blacks in New Orleans, and marching alongside them in Washington DC or Baton
Rouge, and demanding that their joint concerns be addressed, whites in places
like Chalmette have been content to sit around talking about the "niggahs,"
and how lucky they were not to have to live side-by-side with them.
In a final
irony, when students from historically black Howard University went to the New
Orleans area to do relief work earlier this year, they were assigned to work in
St. Bernard, rebuilding homes: homes that were it up to Parish leaders, they
wouldn't have been able to live in. When one busload of students arrived at the
site to which they had been sent that day, locals promptly called police.
Because after all, a bunch of black people in the neighborhood must be a sign
of trouble. So much for solidarity.
Conclusion: White Solidarity Illogical and Hurtful for All
It is
perhaps understandable that young whites, uninformed about the history of
racism in America, might fall prey to the lure of "white rights"
thinking. After all, without a full understanding of the way in which whites
have been elevated above people of color, and continue to be favored in
employment, housing, criminal justice and education, it would make sense for
whites to wonder why things like affirmative action or Black History Month were
necessary; or why groups that advocate for the interests of persons of color
were still needed. If you start from the assumption that the U.S. is a level
playing field, then these kinds of things might seem odd, even racially
preferential. But given the historical context, not to mention the vital
information regarding ongoing discrimination in the present, the importance and
legitimacy of these initiatives and organizations becomes evident to all but
the most unreasonable.
"For whites to organize on the basis of whiteness is to
codify as legitimate a category the meaning of which was always and forever
about domination and privilege."
What is
most important for white folks to understand is that their interests do not lie
with the racial bonding they are being asked to embrace. Indeed, the very
concept of the white race was invented by the wealthy so as to trick poor and
working class European Americans into accepting an economic system that
exploited them, even as it elevated them in relative terms over persons of
color. As such, for whites to organize on the basis of whiteness is to codify
as legitimate a category the meaning of which was always and forever about
domination and privilege relative to those who couldn't qualify for membership
in the club.
Finally, to
organize as whites in a white-dominated society, where whites have eleven times
the average net worth of blacks and eight times the average net worth of Latinos
(15), have unemployment rates half that of blacks, poverty rates one-third as
high as that for blacks and Latinos (16), and where whites run virtually every
major institution in the nation, is by definition to organize for the
continuation of that domination and supremacy. It is to seek to enshrine one's
head start; to seek the perpetuation of hegemony established in a system of
formal apartheid, as if to say that that system was perfectly legitimate and
worthy of survival. It is fundamentally different than for a minority group to
organize collectively so as to secure their interests, since minority interests
and opportunities cannot be assumed or taken for granted, as a function of
their lesser power, while those of the majority typically can.
"Whiteness
is a trick, but sadly one that has worked for nearly three-and-a-half
centuries."
And to organize on the basis of whiteness is to cast one's
lot with the elite, who desperately wish for working class people to believe
their enemies are each other, rather than the bosses who cut their wages, raid
their pension funds, and limit their health care coverage. The more that white
working people fight working people who are black and brown, the less they'll
be likely to take aim at those who pick their pockets every day they show up
for work: paying them only a fraction of the value of the products and services
they provide, all in the name of profits which they have no intention of truly
sharing with their employees. Whiteness is a trick, but sadly one that has
worked for nearly three-and-a-half centuries. Only when white folks wise up,
and realize that whiteness itself is their problem, will we ever stand a chance
of true liberation. Until then, whiteness will provide privileges and
advantages, but only in relation to those at the bottom of the racial caste
structure. It will provide a psychological wage, as W.E.B. Dubois put it, as an
alternative to real wages. Not a bad deal, until you're struggling to feed your
family and keep a roof over their heads. For in times like that, real currency
works a bit better.
Keep track of Tim Wise's lecture schedule and
new commentaries, at www.timwise.org
Check out Tim's books, White
Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative
Action: Racial Preference in Black and White at a bookstore near you, or
online at Amazon.com.
To comment on this story visit its page on the Black Agenda Blog.
NOTES:
(1) U.S
Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the
Nation's Human Capital. (Washington DC: Bureau of National Affairs, March
1995).
(2) Fred L.
Pincus, Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2003), 18.
(3) Roberta
J. Hill, "Far More Than Frybread," in Race in the College
Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics, ed. Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen T. Reddy.
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 169.
(4) Sylvia
Hurtado and Christine Navia, "Reconciling College Access and the
Affirmative Action Debate," in Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope,
ed. Mildred Garcia (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 115.
(5) The
State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male. (NY: National
Urban League 2007).
(6) Devah
Pager, "The Mark of a Criminal Record," American Journal of
Sociology 108, 5 (March 2003): 937-75.
(7) Russell
J. Skiba, et al., The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender
Disproportionality in School Punishment (Indiana Education Policy Center,
Policy Research Report SRS1, June 2000), 4.
(8)
"Young White Offenders get lighter treatment," The Tennesseean.
April 26, 2000: 8A; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
(SAMHSA), Results from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
(Office of Applied Studies, Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville,
MD, 2004), also, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999. Summary of Findings from the
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse; United States Department of
Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, 2001.
(2002); Coramae Richey Mann, Unequal Justice: A Question of Color.
(Indiana University Press, 1993), 224; Jim Sidanius, Shana Levin and Felicia
Pratto, "Hierarchial Group Relations, Institutional Terror and the
Dynamics of the Criminal Justice System," in Confronting Racism: The
Problem and the Response. eds. Jennifer Eberhardt and Susan T. Fiske,
(London: Sage Publications, 1998), 142; SAMHSA, 2003 (see above): Table H.1.
and calculations by the author. According to the SAMHSA report, as of 2003,
there were 19.5 million current users of illegal narcotics. According to the
data in the report, there were 165.4 million whites age 12 and over in the
U.S., that year, and 8.5 percent of these were current users, which translates
to 14 million white users. 14 million as a share of 19.5 million is 72 percent.
According to the same report, there were 26.8 million blacks 12 and over in the
U.S., of whom 9.7 percent were current drug users. This translates into 2.6
million current black drug users, which, as a share of 19.5 million is 13
percent. According to the report, there were 29 million Hispanics, of whom 7.2
percent, or 2 million, were current drug users. 2 million as a share of 19.5
million is 10 percent. Combined then, the black and Latino users come to 23
percent of all drug users; Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice:
Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs. (Washington, D.C. Volume 12, No. 2,
May 2000); Michael K. Brown, et al., Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a
Color-Blind Society. (University of California, 2003), 144.
(9) Rubio,
Paul. 2000. A History of Affirmative Action, 1619-2000. University Press
of Mississippi; Loewen, James, 1995. Lies My Teacher Told Me, New Press;
Gutman, Herbert and the American Social History Project. 1989. Who Built
America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture and
Society. (Volumes 1 and 2) NY: Pantheon; Allen, Theodore. 1994. The
Invention of the White Race, Volume One: Racial Oppression and Social Control.
NY: Verso; Allen, Theodore, 1997. The Invention of the White Race, Volume
Two: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. NY; Verso.
(10) Rubio,
2000; Thandeka, 2000. Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America.
NY: Continuum.
(11) Rubio,
2000; Ignatiev, Noel, 1994. How the Irish Became White. NY: Routledge;
Guglielmo, Jennifer (ed), 2003. Are Italians White? How Race is Made in
America. NY: Routledge.
(12)
Manning, Chandra, 2007. What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery and
the Civil War. NY: Knopf.
(13)
Loewen, 1995; Gutman, et.al. 1989.
(14) Brown,
Michael K, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer,
Marjorie M. Schultz and David Wellman, 2003. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of
a Color-Blind Society. University of California: 207.
(15) Shawna
Orzechowski and Peter Sepielli, Net Worth and Asset Ownership of Households:
1998 and 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current
Population Reports, P70-88, May 2003), 2.
(16)
The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male. (NY:
National Urban League 2007)