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White alliance?

03.04.06 | 12 Comments

There’s been something of a buzz lately in the bluugosphere about the recent creation of an anti-racist/anti-oppression (ARAO) organization disastrously named “UU White Allies.”  Scott Wells has an excellent reflection on the subject, and I encourage everyone to go have a read. My comment there was so long and involved, I decided it needed to be fleshed out into its own, incredibly long and involved post. (Apologies especially to ATLBloggers.net for the length.)

Scott’s summary of White Allies’ goals and claims, and his bullet-point analysis, is so good I’ll just refer you there (and the White Allies site) for catching up purposes. Or here’s the quick version:

On the other hand, I think there is a feeling by earnest people who don’t feel like they can express their concerns without being bullied, branded a racist, and disregarded. Let me be plain: a White Allies organization could easily stifle dissent, and if it happens I’ll call it out here.

In comments there, one poster said this:

And the white people who are “unconvinced” by anti-racism are those white folx that have been brainwashed by their parents and society to think colorblindness exists and is ok. […]

I used the term “brainwashed” because I have had used against me in regards to my AR beliefs.

The commenter underlines something that disturbs me about “ARAOism.” It truly is about “beliefs.” There seems to be something of a ARAO born again experience required. It requires something of a leap of faith, in such ontological goblins as “whiteness” and “white privilege.” And the evangelical-like certainty that the ARAO way of talking about race is the only legitimate one.

I’m certain that in my own life I’ve benefited from something you could call “white privilege,” and that saddens and angers me. But that doesn’t make “white privilege” an ontological reality, nor something that must be believed in for my social salvation.

That would be mere ideology. And those who demand1 assent to their ARAOist vision are ideologues engaging in ideologuery. I will be happy to be proved wrong, and by their fruit I will know them.

“Whiteness” isn’t really real. It’s a social fiction that we are taught, first as children, with continuing education courses to follow. I remember well the first confusing “teaching experience” I was given in “whiteness.”

I remember sitting in the car while my mother ran into the OTASCO2 when I was three or four years old. As she came out of the store, a black man walked by on the sidewalk.

“Look,” I excitedly called to her, “that man is brown! That man is brown!” It was fascinating and wonderful.

In her best stage whisper, my embarassed mother told me, “They don’t like that. They like to be called ‘black.'” My whiteness education had begun.

Or, on the cusp of puberty, when at family reunions the men in the family would tease me. “Now don’t you be bringing any cute little black girls home, you hear?” 3

I didn’t understand these experiences until I read Thandeka’s article “The Cost of Whiteness” (published in a year ago’s Tikkun and elsewhere.)4 Thandeka reveals how “whiteness” happens: it’s something that’s inflicted upon whites by other whites, in order to keep them in their role as the dominant “race” in America. It’s sin upon sin, to enable more sin.

These “whiteness lessons” my family gave me did not benefit me. They hurt, warped, and scarred me. Chris Coney, for example, always wanted to beat me up, though I never knew why. Now I wonder what stupid thing from my grandpa’s mouth I’d repeated at lunchtime. I never did, as another example, make good on my high school crushes on Lakisha Carter or Alice Cheng. In fact, I never had any non-white friends. The cost, at home, would have been too high.

Howard Zinn in his History of the United States talks about the the early formation of American racism during the colonial era. Faced with the possibility of a cultural melting pot between free Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and indentured poor whites, the “moneyed interests” (as Jefferson would have called them) split these three group from each other, giving them different social roles.

The role of Native Americans would be to be driven out of the colonies (and later the states and territories) at the genocidal whims of the colonists. The role of Africans would be to work as slaves. The role of poor whites would be to enforce the rules of this new social order whenever the moneyed interests deemed it necessary. The payment poor whites would receive for their compliance? Gun ownership (with which to enforce) and the privilege of being as “white” as the moneyed interests.

Now, the poor whites would not get to be quite as white as the moneyed interests, and would be reminded of this whenever they wanted to marry the doctor’s daughter or treat the owner of the town store as an equal. But it was something, and so my poor white trash ancestors in the South took the “at least we’re white” bargain and white privilege and American racism began.

Joe Bageant details what this Faustian bargain looks like today for us Scots-Irish “mutt people,” the first who took the “at least we’re white” bargain. We are a violent, cruel people, who are trained to be so from an early age. There’s even something of a de facto draft in place (today) for poor whites, who (along with African-Americans now) serve disproportionately in the US military.5 It’s worth noting that Bush is President today because his rich WASP ass figured out how to talk—and fail—just like us poor white “mutt people.”

Since the “at least we’re white” bargain started, other European ethnic groups also signed up, such that whiteness grew and the original oppressive social order was maintained despite Emancipation and Civil Rights. And of course the situation of Native Americans has remained largely unchanged since it was inflicted upon my rumored Cherokee ancestors some two centures ago.

ARAOists seem to see all the privileges of being white and none of the costs. But race is not as simple—not as black and white—as the ARAOists would lead us to believe. Whiteness is a Lie6 created to keep “whites” and candidate immigrant groups in line by placing them over and against persons of color, who suffer all the more. This all started because of the “pursuit of property happiness” during the colonial era, and it continues in much the same gestalt to this day.

Do privileges come with whiteness? Certainly. But so do costs. Calling “whiteness” only (or primarily) a privilege tells only half the truth and thereby gives power to the Lie that ARAOists seek to defeat in the first place. And acting like a bunch of teenage ideologues (or being one) won’t help.

There is one major amendment, however, to the original “at least we’re white” bargain, an amendment ratified last century. As I said earlier, some white folks are more white than others, with so-called wealthy “WASPs” symbolizing the epitome of American whiteness.7 But there is a way to become more white, to become securely (if only “virtually”) white, to do an end-around the whole game no matter your skin color.

That exception clause is college education,8 and we reward folks in it with titles like “middle class” and “professional.” As a barber’s son whose friends’ fathers were doctors, geologists, city bureacrats and engineers, I learned this lesson full well by the time I’d solved my first 2x=4 equation. You may not be a Bush or a Roosevelt, but with a college degree you’ll at be eligible to join their ranks, maybe even date one, and you’ll at least be middle class. And then maybe your grandchildren will be able to pass as Bushes and Roosevelts, if all goes well.

We UUs appear to have bought into this “at least I’m educated” version of the “at least I’m white” bargain hook, line and sinker. We are a religion full of what grandpa called “college boys,” and UUs of color are no exception. Philocrites’ recent post on class-based notion of choice, for example, starts to get at this very well. Unitarians, and Episcopalians, have the WASPiest history of American denominations. We prefer not to talk about this, though: it isn’t polite to do so in “educated” company.

The “at least I’m educated” exception clause to American racism is still, profoundly, just as much of the American racist Lie as the rest of it. Let me say that more clearly: The Education Exception Clause is racist too. It acts as a pressure release valve, allowing the nonwealthy to study their way out of their station in life, allowing the privileged to say, “Well, why didn’t you go to college?” What’s worse, the Education Exception Clause allows those who sign on its dotted line to pretend they’re outside the racist Lie9.

And in case I haven’t been provocative10 enough already, here’s this: The only-the-privileges-and-none-of-the-costs version of whiteness of ARAOism is something only “college boys”—that is, something only those who’ve signed up for the Education Exception Clause—could come up with.11

The ARAOists want seem to want their ideologuery recognized as a “spiritual path” within UUism. And they are right. It is a spiritual path: a self-serving, sadomasochistic,12 and just-as-racist-as-those-they-accuse spiritual path.

I will be happy to be proved wrong. But, again, ARAOists, be aware that by your fruit we will know you.

  1. Yes, demand. [↩]
  2. I mention OTASCO to give a sense of my family’s economic place in society. [↩]
  3. And, of course, that’s the more polite version. [↩]
  4. I’d encourage ARAOists to read through this article and take it to heart. [↩]
  5. I’m awaiting, for example, the funeral of my half-deaf, somewhat mentally retarded cousin, who was recently shipped overseas to patrol the streets of Baghdad. [↩]
  6. In the Walter Wink and Scott Peck sense. [↩]
  7. See the history of Boston, for example. [↩]
  8. It’s not wealth, though that certainly gets the second or third wealthy generation into virtual WASPhood. For example, JFK’s whiteness was suspect in 1960, though the issue was painted as suspicions about his Catholocism. And no one would mistake a Ross Perot or Sam Walton for a card-carrying WASP, although their grandkids can probalby pull it off now. [↩]
  9. If that’s the sort of thing that gets them off. You can usually find them by their claims of being “colorblind.” [↩]
  10. Being provocative, by the way, is considered a party foul in Education Exception Circles. I’m fully aware of this, so there’s no need to point this out. I learned all too well watching my father that being provocative is punished by Exception Clausers with silence, shunning, and whispers. Please, go back to the party. [↩]
  11. The working class persons of color in my neighborhood, for example, are not ARAOists, nor do they want to be. If you could get them to be honest with you, I suspect they’d tell you the whole thing sounds very white. [↩]
  12. Jeff Wilson correctly diagnoses it as a new flavor of secular Calvinism. [↩]

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