Lessons: Being white on St. Paddy's Day in Philly

One thing we white people don't have nearly enough of is conscious thought about what it means to be white. So whenever something emerges, it's good to read it and pass it along. And, as a white person, to deeply take in what it says. As in, "This applies directly to me."

So today's lesson comes from, Being White in Philly St. Patrick's Day Weekend by j.n. salters, a Black feminist writer. We white people have such a hard time looking at our own whiteness and associated privileges that it is no surprise this is penned by someone who is Black. Kind of like how women can turn the mirror on men to see their sexism, their privilege, etc. We have to battle it, fight the power of it, so we know it. 

In her article, she points out,

"As I walked down 15th Street in Center City this past Saturday night -- amidst drunken white girls in green mini skirts and green heels with green bows in their hair, and belligerent white boys wearing green beaded necklaces and funny-shaped glasses yelling and chasing after the girls -- I could not help but think, this is what it actually means to be white in Philadelphia...

... Seriously? You cannot be fucking serious. But, of course you're serious. You're white in Center City. As I continued to make my way down the shit show covered in shamrocks, I asked myself, what if all these people outside were black? If we are to go by recent Philadelphia policies and legislation -- many of which disproportionately target people of color (e.g., stop and frisk, "zero tolerance" policies, curfew ordinances, voter ID laws) -- I am almost certain that had these been masses of drunken black teenagers and young adults decked in matching colors, they would have been deemed gang members, looters, flash mobsters, and subsequently stopped and frisked, beaten, and/or arrested."

Go read the whole thing (link conveniently re-inserted).

If you are white, did you go out and party on St. Paddy's Day in large crowds of mostly white people? Or at some other street party in the last few zillion years? Did you for one second think about your relative safety and what she just said? Probably not. That unawareness is your/our privilege at work.

And now that you're more aware, what are you gonna do about it? (And please do think about what it means that one of the viable answers is "nothing.")

Review: "The Help" doesn't help white people

If you've missed the outpouring of negative reviews, tweets, and general outrage over the release of the movie version of The Help from voices in the African American community, you've had your head in the sand. To bring yourself up to speed, read these reviews before continuing with this post:

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help, by the Association of Black Women Historians

Black-and-White Struggle with a Rosey Glow, by Nelson George

And for balance, here is an interesting interview with Octavia Spencer about her role as Minnie Jackson, one the of maids, and the movie overall.

Another great source for ongoing discussion of the movie is to search the hashtag #TheHelpMovie on Twitter. All kinds of people have lots to say.

I finally saw the movie tonight and came loaded for anger after reading all of that outrage. I was shocked to find myself liking it more than I thought I would. I could see and understand that the movie was a sugarcoated, whitewashed version of what really happened during Jim Crow, but it didn't send me into a fury. It didn't go far enough, but it wasn't that bad, through my lens. I was disappointed I didn't hate it.

That got me thinking about how differently black and white people are experiencing the movie and wondering why. Is there a white perspective on the movie, and if so, what is it?

Let's start with comedian Louis CK, who sums up things pretty well here:


Sadly what makes this spot so hilarious is that most white people are pretty clueless about our privilege.

We are also pretty clueless about the varied experiences of African American people of all education and economic backgrounds, from slavery to today.

I came of age in the sixties and early seventies, during the time in which The Help is set, and when the civil rights movement was in full force, changing our country forever. But I barely knew it was happening.

The environment I grew up in was virtually all-white, middle class suburbia. Anything I knew about Black people, slavery, Jim Crow, or the civil rights movement came from the history I was taught in school, what I saw on TV, or from the very brief, infrequent conversations we had about those topics at home. Which means I knew Jack, and what I did know was mostly distorted, watered down, or an outright lie. This is true for most white people.

I didn't begin to get another point of view until college, when I had my first opportunities to meet Black people, say stupid stuff in front of them, be called a racist, and thanks to the beginnings of African American Studies and Women's Studies programs, take classes that deconstructed the hell out of my naive reality.

More than 35 years and thousands of experiences later, I am no longer clueless. Yet I am clued-in just enough to understand that what I know about being African American is only by proxy, despite the fact that my most intimate and important relationships are with people who are Black, including my children, my grandchildren, and my spouse.

But I'm fortunate. Most white people stay in segregated enclaves and never get the chance to grow or to understand anything outside of our distorted realities.

So the stakes are very, very high for African American people whenever a movie comes out about The Black Experience, especially if it is a white person trying to tell the tale. (There is also the Tyler Perry debate, but that's a whole other post.)

No wonder people are seething at how The Help falls short, glossing over the exploitation and brutality of the time, and appropriating the real story of Black maids in the Jim Crow south by making the central character a white person who saves the day.

Which is exactly why movies like The Help are not helpful for white people. Most of us have not had enough experiences or education outside of our white worlds to have any critical context and perspective about what we are watching. We falsely think it is The Truth. Liberal white people in particular have a hard time wrapping our heads and hearts around the ugly truth of our nation's racial history without becoming paralyzed with guilt. Many liberal white people want desperately to believe that things are almost all better now, especially since we elected a Black man president.

The great racial divide is alive and well. Same country, two different worlds. And it's all playing out in reactions to this movie.

Read the screen grabs below from actor Wendell Pierce's Twitterstream. He recounts watching the movie with his mother, who was The Help at one point in her life, as was his grandmother. He sums up the great divide perfectly, 140 characters at a time. Especially this: "Watching the film in Uptown New Orleans to the sniffles of elderly white people while my 80 year old mother was seething, made clear [the] distinction."

Read from the bottom to the top:

Pierce: "The story was a sentimental primer of a palatable segregation that is Jim Crow light."

Yes. The The Help lets white people off the hook. It creates a partial truth that allows us to feel less guilty about Jim Crow and all the bad things our ancestors did during slavery because the feel-good outweighs the feel-bad, to keep our heads collectively in the sand about how we still benefit from all our privilege, and to be in denial about the incredible racist backlash caused by President Obama's election and how bad things still are for most Black people today.

There is an opportunity in all of this. White people, if you were moved by the movie (thanks in part to the amazing actors who play the maids) and are curious about the vocal controversy surrounding it, seek out knowledge about what it really meant to be The Help. We share this history. We need to understand it.

I recommend these books as a place to start:

Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

And here is a list of books offered up by Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) after she did some scathing live tweeting while watching The Help. A great recounting of her tweets and an interview with her about the movie can be found here.

(Again, read from the bottom up.)

Note to readers: In all the searching I've done for reviews and responses, I've not found one critical piece by someone who is white. If you know of any, please leave them in the comments sections. Thank you.

Sept 18 Update: Read this great post by 74 year old Janet Cheatham Bell, an accomplished author who once worked as a maid. 

Unpack your white privilege with LOLcats!

In the late 80s Peggy McIntosh penned her now famous essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." 


Ever since then, white people have had the most serious, earnest, difficult conversations about white privilege, unpacking our personal knapsacks, and, well, being white. I have led or sat in many such sessions, so I can attest to how hard this work is for we white people and how seriously those of us who engage in it take it. Seriously serious. As in makes-me-wonder-about-white-people-and-our-collective-sense-of-humor-or-lack-thereof serious.


Don't get me wrong. This work is important and necessary. Doing the work changed and continues to change my life. But seriously white people, can we learn by laughing at ourselves once in a while?!


FOR EXAMPLE....


This week, thanks to my friend the amazing Erica (AKA Swirlspice) I learned about the invisibul backpak LOLcats. They were spawned in 2008 so I'm late to the table, but maybe you are, too.


Check out the whole thing here, but I have to post a couple of examples to give you a taste:

See we can be funny! (That is, if the creators of most of these kittehs are white. Maybe they're not.) 


But seriously, I do wonder this: Do white people have to have read the essay, have to be engaged in the work, to get the humor in this? 


Maybe we have to get serious before we can laugh.


Check our this post on the same topic on the blog "Stuff White People Do." Be sure to read the comment thread.


Related posts:
My Big Fat White Privileged Life
Louis CK on being white

Do I Look Illegal?

May Day mug shot. Do I look "illegal?" I could be. (Actually my ancestors are the original "aliens.") Think about the privilege in action here. Would I be stopped in Arizona? Audre Lorde said, "Your silence will not protect you." Some day your/our skin color privilege will not protect you/us. In solidarity against AZ SB 1070 and immigration rights protests planned across the country today.

Related post: "By the Time I Get to Arizona," Toki Wright Style

Post Racial America: Black kids booted from swimming pool

Today cries of pure rage could be heard across the Blogosphere and Twitterville when folks began to post and share this dispatch from "Post-Racial America"

Pool Boots Kids Who Might "Change the Complexion"

More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.

"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.

The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately..."

"They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything," said camper Simer Burwell.

The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.

"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

So angry you could scream? Me, too. But what fuels a deeper rage is the harsh reality that if you are a black child in America, this is your story, too, and some version of it has happened or will happen to you. The election of Barack Obama does not and will not protect you. The illusion of a post-racial reality is dangerous to your well-being.

Here's what my friend Quiana said about that truth: "A black president is not the same as the end of racism...We have to worry about the kids, white, black and those who live somewhere in the middle... messages about body, skin and self are painfully branded in moments like this. No matter what the club does, I hope all these kids have a caring adult who can support them to learn and heal instead of hurt and grow hard."

I remember with clear precision the first time my daughter was on receiving end of an overtly racist remark/action from an adult -- she was three. A mother on our block told her she couldn't come in their house because she was black and left her screaming in the front yard two doors down from me as the other children went inside. One of the children she let in was a very light biracial girl who must have "passed" to this woman. I ran and grabbed my child, not knowing why she was screaming. As soon as I knew (she told me), I raced and got that other girl's mom who snatched her child right up out of the that house. Our daughters had played like neighbor kids do on the sidewalks with the two little white girls from that home without prior incident. Who knew?

My son was five, in kindergarten, the first time he experienced the sting of a racist taunt from a classmate (I don't think I need to explain that one further). I will say it was a very racially mixed school that praised itself for its diversity and welcoming environment.

As a young, naive white parent I was shocked at each of those experiences. My Black friends just shook their heads and said to me, "So what did you expect?" They understood what I still needed to learn -- that it was just the beginning.

That was the 80s. Now here we are, a generation later, and even after we elect a Black man President of the United States, for some kids in a pool in Philadelphia, it's the same old same old same old.

Related posts

Womanist Musings: Black Kids Change the Complexion of a Pool

Harriet's Daughter: The Longer I live in post-racial America

Pam's House Blend: Black kids booted from Philly club's 'whites only' pool

Jack and Jill Politics: 60 Black Kids Booted from Philly Pool for Being Black

My Big Fat White-Privileged Life

White privilege, or at least how to blog about my take on it, has been on my mind of late.

I'll start here: This morning I was going about 75 on a freeway with a speed limit of 55. So were most of the folks around me. We were on a stretch of freeway that is a known speed trap. I was distracted and wasn't thinking. So I swore at myself when I flew by the traffic cop and saw him pull out and turn on the lights. Then I breathed a big sigh of relief when he pulled over another car and not me. I tried to look to see if the driver was black, but I couldn't tell.

The fact is that if he was black, he was much more likely to be pulled over and ticketed than me. Driving While Black (DWB) is all too real (Click on that link! It goes to "Why it Matters: The Connection of Driving While Black To Other Issues of Criminal Justice and Race," by David A. Harris).

Driving While White (DWW) is also a fact. Here are the two ways white privilege plays into this story. First, as already noted, I am less likely than a black person to be pulled over and ticketed due to my white skin. Second, I can drive around every single day with less worry about being pulled over for speeding, a broken tail light, a trinket hanging from my rear view mirror. This makes for less stress and anxiety in life, which in turn improves my over quality of life and well-being. And we wonder why diseases like high blood pressure are higher in African American communities? Come on.

True story: My daughter called me in tears a couple of months ago because a cop had pulled her over for a broken side mirror, and while she was stopped, her four year old daughter unbuckled herself from her car seat and he slapped her with another $150 fine for having a child not properly secured in the car. She's fighting that one in court. But did that happen because she is black? Or poor and in an old car with problems? Both? Yes or no. That's the crazy making. You both know and don't know. Every time.

As anyone who is a person of color knows implicitly, these driving stories are a couple of about 100,000 examples I could have pulled out about how we white people have it easier because of unearned racial privilege. But because most white people live in a place of complete unconsciousness about this privilege, we are clueless we are enjoying it each and every day.

Or if we do become aware of our privilege, our first reaction is to feel guilty, or to get really defensive, which is such a waste of energy. It is what it is. We could make so much more progress if we could just get over our guilt and stop running around trying to prove we aren't prejudiced.

When my kids were little (over 20 years ago), I flung myself passionately into "Racism 101," driven by my desire to be a good mom for my biracial children. (If you don't know what "Racism 101" means, read this great post at Racialiscious. It's also the title of a terrific book by Nikki Giovanni.) I was on a mission to become culturally competent. To not be one of "those" white parents of black children. I was over the top. I even recall tallying up the racial mix at my kids' birthday parties, making sure there was good representation. Ouch.

But all that effort was, in the end, a good thing. I obsessed my way, slowly, into real cultural competence. I get racism and privilege in a way that most white people don't (but almost not at all in comparison to a person of color, who lives with that oppression).

My life over the last 30 years has slid from a mostly white world and worldview to a place somewhere on a bridge between black and white. When a friend who is black tells me, "You're really just one of us now," I take it for the huge compliment that it is meant to be but I also cringe.

Privilege, at its core, is about power and choice. The truth is, I could choose at any time to walk away from the life I've made and disappear back into the great wide world of white people (not that I would do this, but the choice is there).

Which brings me to this: Having privilege of any kind feels good, even if we don't want it to. It is benefiting us even as we work to dismantle it or at least to put it to good use. Think of what could happen if we would just 'fess up about that truth and get on with it.

The racist right gets this of course, and it's why they are is so terrified of Obama -- he symbolizes a threat to their privilege. Our privilege.

I will end with a nod to the comedian Louis CK. Please take another few minutes and watch this video of his bit on why it feels so great to be a white male -- the first funny thing I've ever seen a white person do on white privilege. He speaks the truth and it's funny as hell.

Louis CK on being white -- check this out!

Louis CK on being white -- the first funny thing I've ever seen a white person do on white privilege.

Review: "From his latest stand-up "Chewed Up" - Louis CK tells people why it's great being a white male. It's advantages and it's futuristic disadvantages" DVD is out. He cut his chops writing for David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Dana Carvey and Chris Rock. He is best known for directing and writing the feature-length film Pootie Tang, starring a character that he created for The Chris Rock Show. See more on Wikipedia