Who is responsible for addressing racism? A Message, mostly for White People.
In short, we all are. However, power is uneven. The affluent white man holds the most power in society. Affluent white men, and white men in general, are privileged with the power of Knowing the Truth. I capitalize Knowing and Truth because the way power operates among knowers of truth is as an absolute. They go unquestioned. They are assumed to be right whereas I as a peasant woman am assumed to not know despite my doctorate in sociology. If a white man challenges me and what I know outside the context of the classroom, I am assumed to be incorrect and I question myself. But responsibility for this phenomenon does not lie with me. It lies with the white man that questioned my ability to know. White men have authority over every other social group in society. In questioning me, he asserts dominance and power over me rather than respecting my knowledge.
Whether in print or in person, I have seen white people eschew responsibility for their participation in the perpetuation of racism. One assumption they and those that participate in the social-political system of white-supremacy is that because they are not consciously and explicitly racist, they therefore have no responsibility for it or for undoing the damage is causes. A practice they use to defer responsibility is to assign blame to the victim. After a racist incident on campus while studying for my doctorate at Binghamton University, senior administrators from the president to the so-called diversity and inclusion office sent a letter around announcing that those that felt targeted by such actions would have access to counselors. No actions were taken to address find the perpetrator(s) or address the cause of such an incident. Assigning blame to the victim is a classic strategy society engages in that upholds the dominating authority of white men. When young black (Latinx or indigenous) people are harassed and murdered by the police it becomes a game of how can I find fault with these disrespectful savages rather than questioning the antagonistic officer. This is especially true in all white spaces, where white people all too frequently make the claim that if there is no diversity in the social groups and geographies they inhabit then racism is somehow irrelevant. This could not be further from the truth.
As a structure of systemic power, white-supremacy is enforced not only through individual language and action. Even in the lily white hinterland of New England I everyday experience racismâas someone perceived to be a white womanâthat offends me every bit as much as it detrimentally impacts the lives of those not privileged by perceptions of whiteness. Race is a product of the social imagination that has real effects on peopleâs lives, individually and collectively. Race does not exist as a biological reality, it exists as a social construction. Just because there are no people of color present does not preclude the possibility of racism and does not mean you can not take action to undo the racism ever present in your life. Privilege and entitlement means not having to think about how racism is present even in excessively white spaces.
Another practice people engage in to deflect responsibility for taking action are language games. Racism becomes a game of words and knowing. The word racism implies individual responsibility and while individuals are responsible for perpetuating racism the real problem lies with the social structures that maintain domination over. I am referencing white-supremacy. What I mean by white-supremacy is not the Klu Klux Klan, the fascists, or the white power groups that explicitly advocate for various forms of white-supremacy in social and political life. We cannot hide behind the extremes. We need to address white-supremacy as it manifests in our everyday lives. Thus, we must recognize that white-supremacy is a social structure, a structural institution we are born into that invisibly informs everything we think, act, do, and say. We are taught and we learn white-supremacy. We must learn to recognize the unrecognizable, to undo the damage we inflict upon society. As a society, power is wielded individually over Others and it exists in our organizations of government, law, education, churchâŚany and everywhere. As a social-political structure of power, white-supremacy is a practice that everyone, regardless of race, class, gender, age, sex, ability, etc. actively participates in. It is a model of domination that sees whiteness as superior, as a reference for gauging that which is good/bad, and as a way of thought that shapes interactions with the world around us.
White supremacy is a system, it permeates every aspect of our interactions and it does not matter whether there is someone of a different race present. It is systematically enforced in our language and practices. It is systematically enforced in our schools, churches, healthcare, sports, media, retail, etc. It is ever present in our everyday lives, invisibly manifesting in ways we fail to recognize. When a white man asks the muscular black man if he plays football, he is asserting domination over and assuming he knows something about that black man. The same analogy could be made for a tall black man and basketball. Physique matters, but this confluence of factors is a question of intersectionality and the complexity of social life. There are no hard and fast boundaries, everything exists in a gray area. The point here is that white people have so little interaction with non-white peoples that their interactions carry assumptions that heavily weigh on the ethno-racialized other. From a white perspective, assumptions may seem harmless, but then again white people have never been at the receiving end of historical, systematic, and structural oppression.
Because white people control the institutions of power, they determine who has access to their world. If non-white people call them out and white people are offended, people of color (POC) are excluded from those white spaces. The exclusionary spaces of white power and privielge translate into a universal homogenization of the other where white spaces are legitimized through the paternalistic gifting of access to polite, well-behaved others that must subject themselves to the demeaning behaviors of white people in order to remain in white spaces. This is just one way white-supremacy is perpetuated. It matters not whether this is in the context of a social event, in a job, or in any other context.
White people fail to recognize their spaces as white, as spaces of privilege for people like them. If we are to move beyond blaming victims for their oppression, then white people will need to look for ways that advance equality, equity, inclusion, diversity, or whatever label they prefer (note: these referents are analogous to âcorrectional institutionâ as a popularly accepted referent for prisons). Below are a few actions white folk can take to decolonize themselves.
I do not get to choose what is best for people.
Too often white people want to paternalistically determine what is best for communities of color. They promote things like education when it is POC in their own country or development when it is POC in other countries. Another popular solution they offer is policy. Policy is an after thought to real efforts at achieving equality which must begin from the individual in their everyday interactions.
I must be willing to give up privileges.
Far too frequently the argument goes that enhancing the social position of others is not going to infringe on the privileges and entitlements of white people. This argument is wrong. White people need to let go of their unearned privileges and entitlements. They need to accept the same type of competition they impose on everyone else. They must reject nepotism in order to advance equality.
I must be willing to challenge the dominator model.
It is the responsibility of white people to challenge the dominator model. The dominator model, according to the ever so brilliant bell hooks, references an organization of social life âin which the authority figure is deemed ruler over those without power and given the right to maintain that rule through practices of subjugation, subordination, and submissionâ (hooks 2004: 24). This model is essential to organizing social life whether in private or public life. Accepting the organization of social life as is will no longer suffice. We must accept that to create a better world, domination cannot be accepted. Respect for life, respect for well-being must be extended to everyone because everyone is damaged by white-supremacy. This is not to discount the damage done to POC by the violence of white-supremacy. The damage they experience runs much deeper than the accumulated privileges that eat away at the white personâs soul. The detrimental impacts of white-supremacy on POC have much deeper and historical roots, brought into the present through white-supremacy. White people on the other hand are treated anew each generation with weak links to their past. The dominator model depends on this.
Know history and accept responsibility.
The history of global society is a history of not only white-supremacy but patriarchy and capitalism as well. White-supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are the dominant structures of systemic power by which global society is organized. It is a trinity of oppression. As experienced in everyday life we might call them race, gender, and class respectively. Understanding sociology is critical to knowing history because sociology is a field that studies relations of power. History is a power-laden process. It does not matter that history is written by the victors. Even so, we must know and objectively seek an understanding of inequality in society in order to create a better world for ourselves and the future. Undoing structural systems of power is not easy, it takes a great deal of time. Things will not change overnight. They will change but only with a concerted effort to address the problems as they exist now and not let oppressive behaviors transpire unchallenged. We all come from different backgrounds and in engaging issues as they arise we can change the world.
snowghoul
blakekathryn
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
