White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (2 page)
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Authors: Tim Wise
Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race
BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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So whenever I’m asked this, I naturally recoil for a moment, assuming that those inquiring about the matter likely want to know
what happened
to me, only so that they may, having obtained the answer, carefully avoid at whatever cost having it (whatever
it
may be) happen to them. In my case, however, the cynicism with which I greet the question usually turns out to be unwarranted. Most of the persons who ask me “what happened” seem to be asking less for reasons of passing judgment than for reasons of genuine confusion.
what happened
to me, only so that they may, having obtained the answer, carefully avoid at whatever cost having it (whatever
it
may be) happen to them. In my case, however, the cynicism with which I greet the question usually turns out to be unwarranted. Most of the persons who ask me “what happened” seem to be asking less for reasons of passing judgment than for reasons of genuine confusion.
As a white man, born and reared in a society that has always bestowed upon me advantages that it has generally withheld from people of color, I am not expected to think the way I do. I am not supposed to speak against and agitate in opposition to racism and institutionalized white supremacy. Indeed, for people of color, it is often shocking to see white people even
thinking
about race, let alone challenging racism. After all, we don’t have to spend much time contemplating the subject if we’d rather not, and white folks have made something of a pastime out of ignoring racism, or at least refusing to call it out as a major social problem to be remedied.
thinking
about race, let alone challenging racism. After all, we don’t have to spend much time contemplating the subject if we’d rather not, and white folks have made something of a pastime out of ignoring racism, or at least refusing to call it out as a major social problem to be remedied.
But for me, ignoring race and racism has never been an option. Even when it would have been easier to turn away, there were too many forces and circumstances pulling me back, compelling me to look at the matter square in the face—in
my
face. Although white Americans often think we’ve had few first-hand experiences with race, because most of us are so isolated from people of color in our day-to-day lives, the reality is that this isolation
is
our experience with race. We are all experiencing race, because from the beginning of our lives we have been living in a racialized society, in which the color of our skin means something socially, even while it remains largely a matter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Race may be a scientific fiction—and given the almost complete genetic overlap between persons of the various so-called races, it appears to be just that—but it is a social fact that none of us can escape no matter how much or how little we may speak of it. Just as there were no actual witches in Salem in 1692, and yet anti-witch persecution was frighteningly real, so too race can be a falsehood, even as racism continues to destroy lives and, on the flipside, to advantage those who are rarely its targets.
my
face. Although white Americans often think we’ve had few first-hand experiences with race, because most of us are so isolated from people of color in our day-to-day lives, the reality is that this isolation
is
our experience with race. We are all experiencing race, because from the beginning of our lives we have been living in a racialized society, in which the color of our skin means something socially, even while it remains largely a matter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Race may be a scientific fiction—and given the almost complete genetic overlap between persons of the various so-called races, it appears to be just that—but it is a social fact that none of us can escape no matter how much or how little we may speak of it. Just as there were no actual witches in Salem in 1692, and yet anti-witch persecution was frighteningly real, so too race can be a falsehood, even as racism continues to destroy lives and, on the flipside, to advantage those who are rarely its targets.
A few words about terminology: When I speak of “whites” or “white folks,” I am referring to those persons, typically of European descent, who by virtue of skin color or perhaps national origin and culture are able to be perceived as “white,” as members of the dominant racial group in the Western world. I do not consider the white race to be a real thing, biologically, as modern science pretty well establishes that there are no truly distinct races, genetically speaking, within the human species. But the white race certainly has meaning in social terms, and it is in that sense that I use the concept here.
As it turns out, this last point is more important than you might think. Almost immediately upon publication, this book’s first edition came under fire from various white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who launched a fairly concerted effort to discredit it, and me as the author. They sought to do this by jamming the review boards at
Amazon.com
with harsh critiques, none of which discussed the content—in all likelihood none of them had read the book—but which amounted to ad hominem attacks against me as a Jew. As several explained, being Jewish disqualifies me from being white, or writing about my experiences as a white person, since Jews are, to their way of thinking, a distinct race of evildoers that seeks to eradicate Aryan stock from the face of the earth.
Amazon.com
with harsh critiques, none of which discussed the content—in all likelihood none of them had read the book—but which amounted to ad hominem attacks against me as a Jew. As several explained, being Jewish disqualifies me from being white, or writing about my experiences as a white person, since Jews are, to their way of thinking, a distinct race of evildoers that seeks to eradicate Aryan stock from the face of the earth.
Of course, on the one hand (and ignoring for a second the Hitlerian undertones), it is absurd to think that uniquely “Jewish genes” render Jews separate from “real” whites, despite our common and recent European ancestry. And it’s even more ridiculous to think that such genes from one-fourth of one’s family, as with mine, can cancel out the three-quarters Anglo-Celtic contribution made by the rest of my ancestors. But in truth, the argument is irrelevant, given how I am using the concept of whiteness here. Even if there were something biologically distinct about Jews, this would hardly alter the fact that most Jews, especially in the United States, are sufficiently light-skinned and assimilated so as to be fully functional as whites in the eyes of authority. This wasn’t always the case, but it is now. American Jews are, by and large, able to reap the benefits of whiteness and white racial privilege, vis-à-vis people of color, in spite of our Jewishness, whether viewed in racial or cultural terms. My “claiming to be white,” as one detractor put it, was not an attempt on my part to join the cool kids. I wasn’t trying to fool anyone.
Whiteness is more about how you’re likely to be viewed and treated in a white supremacist society than it is about what you are, in any meaningful sense. This is why even some very light-skinned folks of color have been able to access white privilege over the years by passing as white or being misperceived as white. Whiteness is, however much clichéd the saying may be, largely a social construct. This is a book about that construct and how it plays out in the larger culture. It is not a scientific treatise, and thus it is quite impervious to whatever science may or may not have to say about race, now or in the future.
As for the concept of privilege, here too, clarification is in order. I am not claiming, nor do I believe, that all whites are wealthy and powerful. We live not only in a racialized society, but also in a class system, a patriarchal system, and one of straight supremacy, able-bodied supremacy, and Christian hegemony. These other forms of privilege, and the oppression experienced by those who can’t access them, mediate but never fully eradicate something like white privilege. So I realize that wealthy whites are more powerful than poor ones, white men more powerful than white women, able-bodied whites more powerful than those with disabilities, and straight and cisgendered whites (the latter being a term for those who are not transgendered) more powerful than gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered whites.
But despite the fact that white privilege plays out differently for different people, depending on these other identities, the fact remains that whiteness matters and carries great advantage. So, for example, although whites are often poor, their poverty does not alter the fact that relative to poor and working-class persons of color, they typically have a leg up. In fact, studies suggest that working-class whites are typically better off in terms of assets and net worth than even middle-class blacks with far higher incomes, due to past familial advantages. No one privilege system trumps all others every time, but no matter the ways in which individual whites may face obstacles on the basis of non-racial factors, our race continues to elevate us over similarly situated persons of color.
The notion of privilege is a relative concept as well as an absolute one, a point that is often misunderstood. This is why I can refer to myself as a “privileged son,” despite coming from a dysfunctional family that was not even close to wealthy. Relative to persons of color, whites receive certain head starts and advantages, none of which are canceled out because of factors like class, gender, or sexual orientation. Likewise, heterosexuals receive privileges relative to LGBT folks, none of which are canceled out by the poverty that many straight people experience. So too, rich folks have certain privileges on the basis of wealth, none of which vanish like mist just because some of those wealthy persons are disabled. While few of us are located only in privileged groups, and even fewer are located only in marginalized or oppressed groups—we are all occasionally privileged and occasionally targets—the fact remains that our status as occasional targets does not relieve the obligation to address the ways in which we receive unjust advantages at the expense of others. As my friend and colleague Jacqui Wade puts it, “We all have a couple of nickels in the quarter.” This book is about my nickels. They are not the only ones, but they are the only ones over which I can take ownership.
There would be nothing wrong with someone writing a book like this and dealing only with male privilege, straight privilege, class privilege, Christian privilege, or able-bodied privilege. Likewise, those in other countries could write about privilege and oppression systems there: Japanese privilege vis-à-vis ethnic Koreans and the Buraku caste in Japan, upper-caste privilege in India and the oppression of the Dalits there, or Jewish privilege in Israel and the institutionalized mistreatment of the Palestinians. Those would all be illuminating. But this book is about white privilege in the United States, because it is real and must be confronted. It is not more important than the other types of privilege, but it is important enough to merit its own examination.
Once again, I would like to thank my loving, supportive, and patient wife, Kristy, for all she has brought to my life. Also, I have to thank our two wonderful daughters, Ashton and Rachel. I hope that in my desire for a better world for all, I haven’t neglected the world that is closest to home and to my heart. In that regard, I will try to do better.
I also need to thank a number of other people, including my parents, LuCinda and Michael Wise, and my friends, most notably Albert Jones, my best friend for roughly thirty-five years, for all of your support and wisdom, and for serving as a sounding board for my politics all these years. And finally, thanks to everyone who has inspired, supported, and influenced my work as a writer, activist, and aspiring antiracist ally. These include, in no particular order: Bob Zellner, Dorothy Zellner, Anne Braden, Lance Hill, Larry Powell, Ron King, Ron Chisom, Barbara Major, David Billings, Diana Dunn, Marjorie Freeman, Sharon Martinas, Chris Crass, James Bernard, Francie Kendall, Michael Eric Dyson, Derrick Bell, Kevin Powell, “Coach” Jimmy Coit Jackson, Angela Davis, Ray Winbush, Molly Secours, Betita Martinez, Felicia Gustin, Jean Caiani, Lauren Parker-Kucera, Catherine Wong, Eddie Moore Jr., Victor Lewis, Michael Benitez, Hugh Vasquez, Joe Feagin, Ted Quandt, Kimberle Crenshaw, Peggy McIntosh, Jesse Villalobos, Judy Watts, Donna Johnigan, Olayeela Daste, Haunani Kay-Trask, Justin Podur, Brian Awehali, Richard Davis, Mab Segrest, Horace Seldon, Paul Marcus, Robert Jensen, Randall Robinson, Paul Kivel, Rose Jackson, Caroline Blackwell, Rev. Johnny Youngblood, and the entire St. Paul Community Baptist Church family in Brooklyn.
BORN TO BELONGING
“People who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world. This is the place in which it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. Impaled. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence.”
—JAMES BALDWIN, “THE WHITE MAN’S GUILT”
Ebony
, August 1965
Ebony
, August 1965
IT IS NOTHING
if not difficult to know where to begin when you first sit down to trace the story of your life. Does your life begin on the day you came into this world, or does it begin before that, with the lives of your family members, without whom you would never have existed?
if not difficult to know where to begin when you first sit down to trace the story of your life. Does your life begin on the day you came into this world, or does it begin before that, with the lives of your family members, without whom you would never have existed?
For me, there is only one way to answer the question. My story has to begin before the day I entered the world, October 4, 1968, for I did not emerge onto a blank slate of neutral circumstance. My life was already a canvas upon which older paint had begun to dry, long before I arrived. My parents were already who they were, with their particular life experiences, and I was to inherit those, whether I liked it or not.
When we first draw breath outside the womb, we inhale tiny particles of all that came before, both literally and figuratively. We are never merely individuals; we are never alone; we are always in the company of others, of the past, of history. We become part of that history just as surely as it becomes part of us. There is no escaping it; there are merely different levels of coping. It is how we bear the past that matters, and in many ways it is all that differentiates us.
I was born amidst great turmoil, none of which had been of my own making, but which I could hardly have escaped in any event. My mother had carried me throughout all of the great upheavals of that tumultuous year, 1968—perhaps one of the most explosive and monumental years in twentieth century America. She had carried me through the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, through the decision by President Johnson not to seek re-election in the midst of the unfolding murderous quagmire in Southeast Asia, and through the upheaval in the streets of Chicago during that year’s Democratic Party convention. I think that any child born in 1968 must, almost by definition, be especially affected by the history that surrounded him or her upon arrival—there was too much energy floating around not to have left a mark.
Once born, I inherited my family and all that came with it. I also inherited my nation and all that came with that; and I inherited my “race” and all that came with
that
too. In all three cases, the inheritance was far from inconsequential. Indeed, all three inheritances were connected, intertwined in ways that are all too clear today. To be the child of Michael Julius Wise and LuCinda Anne (McLean) Wise meant something; to be born in the richest and most powerful nation on earth meant something; and to be white, especially in the United States, most assuredly meant something—a lot of things, truth be told. What those inheritances meant, and still mean, is the subject of this inquiry, especially the last of these: What does it mean to be white in a nation created for the benefit of people like you?
that
too. In all three cases, the inheritance was far from inconsequential. Indeed, all three inheritances were connected, intertwined in ways that are all too clear today. To be the child of Michael Julius Wise and LuCinda Anne (McLean) Wise meant something; to be born in the richest and most powerful nation on earth meant something; and to be white, especially in the United States, most assuredly meant something—a lot of things, truth be told. What those inheritances meant, and still mean, is the subject of this inquiry, especially the last of these: What does it mean to be white in a nation created for the benefit of people like you?
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