This post is the perspective of one individual. My views do not represent those of The College of Saint Scholastica or the Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery.
I am proud of our College today. It took the difficult stance not to participate in a local campaign against racism – and I think they made the right choice.
Un-Fair Campaign Flyer
A consortium of local agencies, and most colleges & universities in the area, are supporting an anti-racism campaign in the region. We need it: Duluth is an unrelentingly white city (90%). People of color report that it’s not very friendly to them – and that white people are oblivious to the problem.
But how do you design a campaign to make people aware of privilege? This is different than the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which focused on public policies as well as bias incidents. It tries to generate a change of awareness, a change of heart. Delicate business, making people aware of their privilege.
Peggy McIntosh‘s article “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” inspired the campaign. I use her article often in my sociology classes, teaching about white privilege in a classroom where most students are white and middle class. I know just how tough it is to get the conversation going in a way that’s effective. This campaign isn’t it.
Racism: Engage the Head and the Heart
Any time race is the topic, the heart – the emotions – are engaged. Feelings can swamp cognitive processing – people don’t even take in the information. If the first message is received as “You’re a racist!” it’s likely to evoke defensiveness, not introspection. The image of photos defaced with writing evokes strong negative emotions. But not emotions in the service of inclusiveness and awareness.
The genius of Peggy McIntosh’s article – and her talk at UMD a decade ago – is her personal journey. She was unaware of white privilege: she was aware of male privilege in the English department where she taught. A colleague – a person of color – pointed out that she also had privilege based on her white skin.
Her first reaction was to say, “No, that’s not true.”
But then she went home and thought about it, and made a list of 50 forms of her own white privilege. Some of them state a subtle aspect of cross-racial interaction. Some of them are very factual statements “I can buy Band-aids that, to some extent, match the color of my flesh.”
In my sociology class, we read the list aloud, each person reading one item slowly and pensively. Then we talk about them. The setting, the conversation, the mixture of messages provide an opening to consider the reality. Students recognize the concrete reality of some of the items, and usually relate them to times when they experienced discrimination for being young. Awareness opens slowly and in dialogue with others.
But what can I do about it?
This class session is uncomfortable and unsettling. Students complain that they end up feeling guilty but they didn’t ask for the privilege – how can they be guilty? We shift our gaze to the future: Can we be aware of who was before us in line and make sure they are served first? Can our understanding of white privilege be the platform for equalizing voice or access with people who experience the downside of privilege? Can we refrain from exercising privilege even when the structure of a situation gives it to us? What would that look like?
This is a conversion of the heart and the head: awareness and willingness to change. It is slow. It is painful. It is never complete. New awareness springs up all the time, and with awareness comes new hunger for justice or compassion. Having a campaign is a good idea. But not this one.
The Undefended Stance
Dialogue that brings about change is most likely to occur when people are undefended and open. If a campaign causes discomfort immediately – as Mayor Ness predicts it will – it will be hard to get to that place of openness when the defensive barriers come down. People do not open their minds or their hearts when they feel criticized, berated, or attacked.
Someone told me that the Un-Fair campaign was designed to be “white people talking to white people about white privilege” and thus would not raise defensiveness. Just because the message comes to a white person from a white person doesn’t reduce its power or ability to elicit defensiveness.
For a real conversation to happen around the topic of white privilege, people – of all points of view – need to be able to listen to each other openly and in an undefended way. So far, that’s not what I’ve seen as the result of this campaign.
Privilege Happens in Relationship, Not in Isolation
The flyers and posters show only white people – it’s amazing how even the discussion of white privilege is determined largely by white people.
Distributed Graduate Seminar at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
The Un-Fair campaign lists the impacts, but doesn’t show them. The scribbles on the white person’s face simply deface it.
The same lines – with different photos – might open a conversation. Imagine the talk-bubbles that could contrast what a white person and a person of color might be thinking in a group like the one above. Then find a catchy – even edgy – thought bubble to portray it.
Privilege and Racism – Next Steps
Is the College of St. Scholastica dropping out of the discussion about privilege and racism? Not at all! But they made the choice – the wise choice – not to let the tone and tenor be set by a campaign that is, after all, designed largely (but not exclusively) by white people.* There are other ways to have the conversation, and our College hopes to find them.
*A colleague gave me better information than I had initially; there seem to have been several people of color involved in the planning group.
Related articles
- Twin Ports coalition launches anti-racism campaign (duluthnewstribune.com)
- Edgy anti-racism posters, billboards debut in Duluth (minnesota.publicradio.org)
- “I wonder if white people even know how lucky they are to be white” (atransparentlife.com)
- Unpacking the invisible knapsack (boingboing.net)
- White Privilege (gameofroles.wordpress.com)
- White people need to acknowledge benefits of unearned privilege by Robert Jensen (indigenist.blogspot.com)
Antisemitism is hard to see when you’re gentile. Just the word anti-Semetic was coined by the Nazi party to make killing Juddahas sound more scientific. Racisim will have dire effects if not delt with. I don’t believe making the message of white privilege easier to accept will be effective as as the blunt “on your face method”. After all, han’t Peggy McIntosh been successful in getting a lot of attention about cultural dynamics in Duluth. Text bubbles are just not shocking enough to get the communities interested. Good or bad, we are addressing a important issue that would not be noticed by the public with out shocking billboards.
That is certainly one possibility; I suspect the people who designed the campaign have a similar view.
Hello Sister Edith,
Thank you for your reply. You glided over the issue of how “white privilege” classes psychologically damaged white children like my son.Do you not care that there are sensitive young children coming home from school saying, “I hate my white skin” because of your ideology? Do they simply not count in your book?
I also do not understand why you publicly posted my email addess? Was this to shame me publicly for having negative ideas and experiences about the “white privilege” ideology? I did not realize that my email address would be posted, or else I would not have written such very personal comments here.
I would appreciate it if you would delete both of my comments here, as I submitted them in a good faith that I realize now was sorely misplaced.
I’ve learned my lesson; just because someone is a nun doesn’t make them trustworthy.
I had not realized that you wished your strongly voiced opinions to be anonymous. I have removed your email address. I did not realize that was your real name.
Hi Sister,
There’s an excellent article on the Daily Kos site that highlights the campaign:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/05/1061724/-Posters,-billboards-and-white-privilege?showAll=yes&via=blog_1
Hello Sister Edith,
First of all, just wanted to say how outstanding, intelligent and introspective this blog post is. My cousin made me aware of it. I actually wrote an editorial in today’s DNT that made some remarkably similar points.
I think one of the biggest issues of the Un-Fair campaign is that those who heavily support it do so because they feel that if they don’t they’ll be considered “part of the problem.” to me, it’s a case similar to our national elections: After all of the primaries, no matter who the final Republican or Democratic candidate gets the nod….the party supporters are going to support that candidate with everything they have. Why? Because they feel if they don’t support their parties candidate, they feel like people will assume they support the other side. In this case, I think people are blindly backing this campaign because it’s *something*. And something is better than nothing. But as someone who fully supports any effort to end racism/culturism, I just couldn’t do it. I think it’s creating disussion among people who understand inclusiveness and progress. But my two biggest problems are this: 1.) There’s no way you can even scratch the surface of white privilege via public service announcement, and 2.) If you only focus on recognizing white privilege without learning to recognize minority subjugation and discrimination…the message is pointless.
Anyway, while I very much enjoy the topic of race relations, I’m no expert. But I do know a thing or two about intercultural and interpersonal communIcation. And it’s that knowledge that’s made me take issue with the effectiveness of the Un-Fair Campaign.
Take care! – Mat Gilderman
Thank you for your comment. I’m just back from a trip out of town, so I haven’t yet read your editorial (or any of the DNT for a few days).
I am especially taken with what you write about the view that “anything is better than nothing” – which leads to criticism of those who choose not to support the campaign. I’m no political scientist, but it does seem to be the case that, after a big government-based push on an issue, it’s pretty hard for anyone to take it up again for a while. Race is already a very touchy issue in the US, so a campaign that revs up the neuralgia of the people who have the most stereotype racial views or least inter-cultural contact may have a negative overall impact.
I am beginning to think that Scholastica made a major contribution to the possibility that the campaign might bear some fruit by NOT endorsing it, while still taking a strong anti-racism stance. That opens a space for people to talk about campaign, racism, privilege – and explore the ideas from multiple angles. I hope so.
Thanks for the response, Sister Edith! I also want to apologize for a few errors I made in my above post…I typed it on my iPhone and not my computer. :)
As long as it’s readable, it counts. I sometimes write on a mobile device too.
Whites make up only about 8% of the entire world’s population. What’s wrong with having a few places that are majority white? Don’t you people encourage others to “think globally”? Whites are a small minority of people on Earth.
You make an interesting point. I would hope, though, that the world would be constantly moving to a place where whomever is in the majority in an area does not make life miserable for the minority.
Hello, I would like to share my experiences with the “white privilege” narrative/brainwashing session which my teen-age son was subjected to as a freshman in high school.
He literally came home from school that day and declared “I hate my white skin.” He then totally rejected his European heritage and our historical religon (Catholicism). A year later, he converted to radical Islam, and joined a radical mosque that is tracked by the ADL for its virulent anti-Semitism. The loss of my son to this conversion, and the subsequent events that occurred afterward, was literally the worst thing that has ever happened to me and my family, and brought so much misery and hearbreak into my life that I even considered committing suicide at one time. That was years ago, but I still suffer immense heartbreak because of it.
I am not saying the “white privilege” brainwashing was fully responsible, as my son and I had other issues, but it was definitely one of the major starting points for my 20 years of pain and misery.
My problem now is that my teen-age daughter is approaching high school next year, and I’m literally terrified that she will be subjected to the same type of brainwashing as my son, with the same results. I am at a complete loss as to how to protect my daughter from the racial terrorism of the “white privilege” brainwashing that has brought so much pain into my family. I have considered home-schooling her, but I don’t think my husband would go for that.
Is there a place where white people can go where we are not subjected to this Marxist-inspired hate campaign? They are even teaching it in Europe now where the whites are the indigenous population and told they must feel guilty about the “privilege” they have over non-white immigrants who voluntarily came to their countries.
Also, I would like to say, shame on you for participating in this Marxist-inspired hate campaign invented by the taxpayer-funded academic fraud, Peggy McIntosh. She is a Marxist who studied under Frankfurt School leader Herbert Marcuse, one of the most evil men who ever lived. As a Marxist, she supported an ideology that murdered 100 milllion people in the 20th Century, yet like most Western Marxists who supported red terrorism, has escaped all accountability for her actions.
Dear reader, I’m sorry to hear about the problems in your family. I don’t experience the discussion of ideas in the clear-cut “good guy/bad guy” way that you do. In this instance, the insight that social structure has an impact on the way people think and act – which derives from Max Weber as much as from Karl Marx – has to match up with what the Church calls Christian anthropology – an understanding of what it means to be human and how we live that out.
The reason that I do NOT like this campaign is that it highlights one form of privilege, and there are dozens. Dr. Temple Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State and a woman with autism, spoke at our college last night. As a person with autism, she experienced just how difficult it is for a visually-oriented concrete thinker to succeed in an academic environment developed by verbally-oriented abstract thinkers for other people like themselves. Students like her – and other less-verbal or less-abstract learning types are at a disadvantage while people who are verbal and abstract in their thinking will find everything well-organized and “normal.” The idea of Universal Design suggests that schools and colleges should be designed so that all types of learners have an equal chance at success – which seems like fairness. The current method gives advantage – privilege – to one kind of learning over other kinds.
Is it Marxist social structural materialism to think this way? Or is it the call of the Gospel to see the needs of each person and try to make sure they have a fair chance at success? At least for me, it’s the latter.
Good Morning Sister-
I love reading your viewpoints. Very well thought out and kind. When I went to college, white privilege was a topic discussed in many of my classes. It took me a long time to understand the issue or even accept it. I know that many people in Duluth do not understand that topic or even what the words mean. I see a LOT of people using the word ‘privilege’ in regards to money, affirmative action, ‘hard work’ and so on. This tells me, and others that are educated on the topic, that those people are very misled or just plain uneducated. Or are they?
I see many people enlightened on the concept, whom afterwards, just don’t ‘want’ to accept the idea. Or, they still don’t understand it. Or, they are of lower economical class and feel threatened that this is just another ploy to help minorities get ahead while they have to ‘work so hard’. I think the concept of white privilege is a jagged pill to swallow for many ‘white’ people. Why is that?
There is a website dedicated to stopping this campaign, or at least removing or re-wording the slogan. http://www.facebook.com/groups/Stopunfaircampaign/ As I read what many of these people are saying, it becomes apparent that many of these people are angry about their current personal situation and not the billboards directly. One person is directly upset about the monetary situation of the campaign and how much people are being paid. Then there are the people that are strictly political and think this is some worldwide conspiracy being ‘tested’ in Duluth. Next, we have people that just want to ‘belong’ to something just to complain, but would never show up in person to voice those concerns. Lastly, there are a handful of people that may have an actual point worth listening to. This group of 400 people has grown very little over the past few days. There are hardly any ‘minorities’ in their group from this area. Why? Are we fooling ourselves into thinking this campaign has negatively affected everyone, when really, it’s affected very few in a negative way? I hope so.
There is another website with supporters of the campaign. They continue to have more people in their corner within the first few days of the topic exploding than the opposition can muster up in a week and a half. Only 1/4 of those people opposing have even gone as far to sign their petition. Why? It IS possible that the other 89,000 people in this town either agree or just don’t feel threatened?
So, do we call the campaign unsuccessful because 400 people, many of them not even from this area, have voiced that they don’t like it? This town has almost 90,000 people, 400 is hardly the majority. We know that the ones most likely to speak out are the people that don’t agree. The people that do agree or that just aren’t affected negatively with the billboards aren’t out yelling “I LOVE those Billboards!” The posters of the billboards were up at UMD, UWS and LSC long before the billboards went up in this town. There was little opposition. Why? Was it because of the venue in which those posters were presented? A school of educated people that are already enlightened on the topic and do not fear the concept or feel threatened?
In conclusion, while I agree that the wording of the campaign can cause people to feel threatened or unhappy, does re-wording it to make those 400 people feel warm and fuzzy cause many people to not even glance at the billboard? Does it take the ‘impact’ away? Race campaigns have been in place for a long time, however, I can’t recall a single billboard that has stuck in my mind over the past 20 years. Just like the Pro-Life billboards. I see the cute babies and think, “Huh, another Pro-Life sign” However, when I see the signs adorning bloody, ripped apart babies, I think “WOW, I can’t believe people are allowed to do that!” While one strikes a warm part in the heart, doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable and doesn’t cause much anger- it will produce little conversation. When you see people picketing outside Planned Parenthood, what picture is on their sign? It’s the one that strikes the nerve.
I thank you for your time to listen and participate in this conversation. You’re viewpoints are widely respected.
It’s my hope that, given the fact that the campaign happened, the discussion about it is fruitful. It’s certainly much too soon to count up the balance sheet to call it a success or failure. Thank you for all the information you provided.