divided no longer: calling out white supremacy, understanding it, and dismantling it

Category: economic inequality

  • Why is it OK to Call Sarah Palin “White Trash”?

    As many people know, Sarah Palin and her family were said to have been recently involved in what the New York Times called a “brawl” at a party in their home state of Alaska. Sure, such an incident seems ripe for political jokes and satire. After all, Sarah Palin was a candidate for Vice President of the United States, and the media seems to have reported with glee about her blunders on and off the campaign trail.

    However, during social media’s response to the news coverage of this event, why is it acceptable for her to be labelled “white trash”? In addition, during the news coverage of this event, why is it acceptable to have thinly-veiled references to the label “white trash,” even by the New York Times? (If they quote someone making a comparison to The Jerry Springer Show, does that make it ok?)

    As soon as the news story hit social media, I noticed phrases and words like “white trash,” “trailer trash,” and “trash” get bandied about by some progressives as if those terms had no history, as if they were innocent words that did not have roots in a history that involuntarily sterilized thousands of poor white people and criminalized white poverty. Is it ok to use this term because Sarah Palin is wealthy? Will somehow the burden of history associated with this term be cast aside due to her wealth? Or is it ok to call her “white trash” because you don’t agree with her politics and you want an opportunity to mock her?

    I’m not here to defend Sarah Palin. I don’t support her conservative politics, and I certainly didn’t think she was a good political candidate. I just believe that we need to be much more careful about the stereotypes we continue to perpetuate through the language we use. I’m sure many of the people who breezily called Sarah Palin “white trash” in Twitter, Facebook, or a comment on a news article care deeply about poverty and social justice; however, I don’t think they’re connecting the dots. We have such a pervasive stereotype about poor whites in this country that we don’t even think consciously about it.

    The heart of the “white trash” stereotype includes an assumption of genetic inferiority, stupidity, laziness, and filth. The “racist redneck” stereotype reinforces this same emphasis on stupidity, ignorance, as well as extreme conservative reactionary politics, connected to the assumption of ignorance and backwardness, as if “these uncivilized people” don’t know any better. Maybe it’s amusing to apply that stereotype to someone like Palin who does have conservative beliefs but also a lot of power as a way to bring her down a notch. However, doing so just reinforces a pervasive belief system about people in poverty as inferior and undeserving of government support. Calling Sarah Palin “white trash” in the end contributes to the anti-poor platform she supported. The use of this stereotype does not advance social justice whatsoever; it does just the opposite.

    As I am trying to demonstrate with this blog (and my book project), stereotypes like that of poor whites as “white trash” or “redneck” are damaging; they are divisive, and they serve the interests only of those in power and the status quo. They keep different racial groups and economic classes separate, without an opportunity to form coalitions around common interests.

    Yes, it is certainly possible to use terms like “white trash” and “redneck” in ways that empower poor whites; however, the case of calling Sarah Palin “white trash” is not one of them. In order to use these terms in a way that empowers poor whites, there must be resistance to the idea that they are inferior; their humanity must be front and center rather than cast aside. A writer like Dorothy Allison accomplishes just that. She explicitly uses the term “white trash” to force us to question the status quo, to question negative, pervasive beliefs about poor whites. In her book Skin, she writes: “To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us – extraordinary” (36).

  • “Asian Privilege”? No. Model Minority Myth? Yes.

    In my last blog, I explored white resistance to the idea of “white privilege” in discussions about racism, post-Ferguson. I wrote that in late August, Bill O’Reilly questioned the existence of “white privilege,” and that I wanted to examine that but that I also wanted to look, this time, at how he introduces a question about “Asian privilege” to discredit the idea of “white privilege.” O’Reilly rattles off a bunch of statistics about unemployment, high school graduation, single-parent homes, and household income to show that every time, blacks were the least successful, whites in the middle, and Asians the most successful. O’Reilly then asks sarcastically, “So do we have Asian privilege in America?” He goes on to argue that Asian Americans are the most successful people in the US because they take personal responsibility, they overcome obstacles, they work hard, and their families stay together.

    First, I want to be clear that various writers have already responded to O’Reilly’s reference to “Asian privilege”; there have been several excellent critiques, including “Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Asian Privilege’ Disgrace” by Marie Myung-Ok Lee of Salon, “What Bill O’Reilly Gets Wrong about Asian Americans” by Kevin Wong, also of Salon, and “Bill O’Reilly and White Privilege” by Charles Blow of the New York Times.

    Second, I would like to add to this conversation by connecting O’Reilly’s comment to a larger pattern in our culture. O’Reilly is hardly the only person perpetuating this stereotype. We often hear comments about Asian American students being better at math than anyone else, and that’s just another manifestation of the same damaging stereotype.

    So, what exactly is the problem here? What’s wrong with celebrating Asian American success? In fact, that’s not really what is going on here. O’Reilly was using Asian Americans as a weapon against blacks, and that is the fundamental divide and conquer phenomenon that I am trying to examine, raise awareness about, and ultimately dismantle with this blog.

    To begin, O’Reilly’s words reinforce the stereotype of Asian Americans as the “model minority.” While a “positive” stereotype might not seem like a big deal because it’s positive, that very mindset just makes it all the more damaging because it goes under the radar. This stereotype was created in the late 1960s and clearly continues to be perpetuated to the present day. Many scholars have demonstrated this phenomenon, including Frank Wu, Neil Gotanda, Mari Matsuda, Sumi Cho, Robert Chang, Angelo Ancheta, Helen Zia, and Robert Lee. The media latched on to the notion of the “model minority” starting in 1966 (not coincidentally, the height of the black power movement), when two prominent news articles established the success of two groups within the Asian American community, Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans respectively, at the expense of other racial minorities. On January 9, 1966, the New York Times Magazine published an article titled “Success Story, Japanese Style.” Consider the words used to describe Japanese Americans here: “better than any other group in our society,” “exceptionally law-abiding,” acting with “perseverance” and “unaided effort,” with a “family life both strong and flexible.”

    On December 26, 1966, U.S. News & World Report published an article titled “Success Story of One Minority Group in U.S.” Again, consider how the very beginning of the article establishes the notion of the model minority: “At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans are moving ahead on their own—with no help from anyone else.” The article reinforces this idea throughout with words to describe Chinese Americans like: “obedient,” “model of self-respect and achievement,” who “depend on their own efforts—not a welfare check” with “traditional virtues of hard work, thrift and morality.”

    These articles unabashedly established Asian Americans as the “good” minority. And, if there is a “good” minority, there must be a “bad” minority. Both of these articles identify the “bad” minority and so does O’Reilly, but many other references to Asian Americans as the model minority are silent on the flip side of this stereotype, leaving unspoken the identification of the not-so-model minority that Asian Americans are being compared to. However, just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. That’s the particularly insidious dynamic of this stereotype.

    The stereotype of the model minority is shockingly powerful. In one move, it can perpetuate these powerful ideologies about race and class: anyone who works hard can be successful, our society runs on a meritocracy, racism is pretty much over, the federal government does not need to get involved in addressing racism (because it’s pretty much over), Asian Americans are a homogenous group who don’t experience any serious problems, anyone who continues to complain about racism is simply not working hard enough and spending too much time complaining, and we all just need to move on.

    Such a stereotype denies the existence of racism against Asian Americans. And if there’s any doubt that such racism continues, just take a look at Deepa Iyer’s piece from the other day on “13 Years After 9/11: A Reflection on Resilience,” which discusses the serious challenges that Asian Americans continue to face.

    I’ve written about the model minority myth, its origins and its continued persistence in our media and popular culture, in much more detail in my book project (still in need of a publisher). This stereotype does not get enough attention, and it is often still taken for granted as the truth rather than as a divide and conquer strategy that perpetuates systemic racism and the status quo. We need to raise awareness about this divisive stereotype, dismantle it, and build coalitions around common interests.

  • Unpacking the Resistance to “White Privilege”

    It’s not often that the concept of “white privilege” is the focus of the mainstream media. It took the shooting of unarmed black male teenager Michael Brown and the devastated community of Ferguson to show the world the brutality of systemic racism and economic inequality. Over the past few weeks, as the news media has highlighted incontrovertible data about the unequal treatment of African Americans, there have been several valuable articles and blogs about the way white privilege operates in our society today. To mention just a few, the New York Times, AlterNet, The Root, Salon, and Slate have published insightful commentary and analysis on the basic idea of whiteness and white privilege.

    However, not surprisingly, we’ve also seen a considerable backlash to this discussion of white privilege. As Bill O’Reilly said recently during his editorial, “Talking Points does not believe in white privilege.”

    This type of resistance to the idea of white privilege is what I’d like to focus on here.

    There is a knee-jerk reaction by many whites to the notion of white privilege, and they think, “But I don’t feel privileged…” That’s where the resistance starts to develop because I’m not sure that anyone actually feels privilege as a sensation; therefore, it’s easy and convenient to deny. The resistance can build further when whites compare themselves to other racial groups. Even if they do recognize that they are treated better than members of other racial groups, they can chalk it up to deserving that benefit because of working hard, being smart, somehow earning this privilege. Anything else would fly in the face of the basic notion of the American Dream, that one has control over one’s destiny through hard work.

    Bill O’Reilly proclaimed that “African Americans have a much harder time succeeding in our society than whites do” not because of white privilege but because they lack “stable homes and an emphasis on education.” He argued that if African Americans “overcome obstacles” and take “personal responsibility,” they would be successful. The problem, he maintains, is with them, not with white privilege or anything systemic. (I will save his reference to “Asian Privilege” for a future blog post because it will take some time to critically examine the model minority stereotype he upholds.)

    So, where does that leave us? I don’t anticipate ever changing Bill O’Reilly’s mind, but I do think for many other whites, we can get past this resistance. What makes the difference? I think history helps. I think if more whites understood the history of whiteness, and the way that whiteness has been used as a weapon, that would help. No white person alive today created whiteness or white privilege; it’s not about holding white people today responsible for inventing whiteness. Acknowledging that white privilege exists and that you benefit from it is not the same as saying you created it. In addition, acknowledging that white privilege exists does not minimize a recognition of how whites can also be marginalized, via socio-economic class, gender, sexual orientation, etc.  However, denying that white privilege exists is a problem.

    If we take the time to look at the history of whiteness, we will see that whiteness is not a stable, monolithic category; it’s crucial to understand that the question of who is allowed to be white varied from one historical period to the next, from one law or court case to the next. That history shows us that whiteness is not something natural or innate but something that society created, more specifically that those in power created to hang onto their power. White skin is not inherently meaningful, just like the shape of one’s ear is not inherently meaningful. Meaning had to be created and attached to whiteness, and that meaning evolved. For many years, the Irish, for example, were not considered white, and then that changed for a variety of social, political, and economic reasons. The same goes for Italians and many other groups. The definition of white evolved, and it’s still evolving. That means we can have some say in what it signifies; that means we can resist it, separate “white” from “privilege” and build a more just society.

    (A few excellent resources on this history include: The History of White People, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, How the Irish Became White, and Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror.)

  • 3 Things Every American Should Know About Race

    The history of race is the history of an idea, and we must learn this history if we are to see justice.

    1. Race is not real. Racism is real. Race is an invention, but we take it for granted and fail to understand that what is real is racism, the beliefs and actions that develop based on the invention of race. (Resources include: The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America; Race: The Power of an Illusion; Race: Are We So Different?)
    2. Race was invented at a particular time in our history for a particular purpose. More specifically, race was invented in the late 1600s in colonial America as a divide and conquer strategy to perpetuate the power and status quo of a small group of elite white wealthy landowners. The invention of race as a method of identifying and categorizing people on a hierarchy divided poor whites, blacks, and Native Americans from each other to avoid their alliance against those in power. The vast majority of people living in the colonies were not well served by the invention of race. (Resources include: The History of White People; Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century; The Invention of the White Race)
    3. More than 300 years after race was invented, we are still breathing the toxic fallout of its invention; this fallout is called racism. We breathe it, absorb it, become contaminated by it. We witness its fatal impact in Ferguson. Only when we recognize racism’s power can we start to resist it. (Resources include: Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class; The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement; Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge; “The Case for Reparations”)

    Just like the Occupy movement highlighted how the vast majority of Americans do not benefit from our country’s economic policies that protect the ultra-wealthy, we need a parallel movement to highlight how the vast majority of Americans do not benefit from the invention of race. In discussing the invention of race, the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion says the following: “We made it. We can unmake it.” Please read my future blogs as I continue to explore these ideas.

  • Let’s do this! “Constructing a Conversation on Race”

    Please read this exceptional column by Charles M. Blow in the NY Times. He does a phenomenal job of outlining how race has been socially constructed to divide and conquer us, which is exactly what I’m trying to get at in my work. At the end, he says:

    We can talk this through. We can have this conversation. We must. Hopefully this provides a little nudge and a few parameters.

    Yes! Please join me.