Whitewashed: Unmasking the World of Whiteness

so I have no problem admitting that I am racist. I don't think it's absurd to try to fight against that. I grew up in this society. He was conditioned by her. I think internally in my psyche I have grounded and ingrained those attitudes and I see it in myself all the time. I don't like being a white man and that's what it is, that's where I'm still at and working on it because I know what I've done. People like me have done part of being white is simply not recognizing in any way what it means to be white.

I have white skin and with that white skin comes a whole mess of privileges that I have and I don't ask. to them they're just there, you've started to break the code of silence a little bit when you start talking about white people and you start talking about these things and suddenly you find yourself completely alone, the family history as I understand it was really you know. , people come to the United States as a way to seek a better life and escape poverty. It has often seemed to me that that also meant escaping from their roots where they came from, that there was a kind of desire to separate themselves from that and to become something different meaning that I have Scottish Irish ancestry with a little bit of German.

I am European and I came 250 years ago. My ancestors are from England and Germany. My ancestors are German, Russian and Scottish on my father's side. He was Irish and my mother's side was probably English, but I don't know much about his side. I am French Indian. I guess you'd say I'm a little bit Cajun if you identify as Irish, no I don't actually identify as an American uh British Scottish Irish that's where my ancestors are supposedly from but it hasn't had any impact on me doesn't it mean nothing um I think pilgrims when I think about where I come from I think pilgrims but no, but I'm sure at some point I am because they were Irish, there was a lot of oppression, you know, because they immigrated from Ireland, so I thought a lot about what it was like. that for them as Irish, but I never thought about what it was like. to them and when they turned white, well you can only be something if there's something else to deny it, so I guess we turned white, I guess we're white because there's a bunch of other races that blew us up, so, what?

How did the English do it? the germans are delivered i came to america my assimilation for my life living in the US it's just morgan's board you know i have no idea honestly i have no idea do you know how they became british and scottish how they became converted those people? they became white people, no you never thought about that, I'm not a history buff, I think culture did, over time, like certain words that we use in our language or not, our words or other nations, other words that come from other languages, how did they do it?

The Irish became targets. That is a good question. I think a lot of it was early assimilation in the United States. Many European ethnicities assimilated for a variety of reasons, one of which was the desire to raise their socioeconomic status so they could get jobs to find places to live many of the Europeans altered their surnames to make them sound more conventional many of them changed their clothes which were the foods they ate, so there were some who might call it assimilation, I think of it more as Anglo-conformity to this type of dominant white culture, but the reality is that those people who are white and who are considered white and treated as such in this society by virtue of being white and treated that way they have had to give up who they really were if they were America my father's side of the family my grandfather's side great-grandfather came here from Russia in 1910 he had to give up what what it meant to be a Jew a Russian Jew from Eastern Europe uh to become an American, what it really meant to become white, the Irish had to do the same the Italians had to do the same the Greeks had to do the same all these European ethnicities who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants had to give up their real identities for the sake of

whiteness

, you know, I didn't really think about being white, I would say I grew up because mainly I think because I was part of the majority and maybe I wasn't forced to think about it.

I don't really mean, I don't think it means. anything, so you think it means better, but to me it means nothing more than the color of my skin. How often do you think about being white? Not very often. I don't really think about it much. Hardly. Is it ever just that it's just me racially? Do you see yourself as a white person? No, I see myself as a person. Do you ever think about being a white person? No, probably, not very often, not really. Sometimes I have many black princes. Sometimes we make jokes. about that and all, but I don't really care where I am white, pink, purple or black, I don't care, it depends on the social situation, sometimes I'll be the only white person in the room when it's reversed when things are reversed How do you identify racially?

Do you look like a white man? I believe that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Lord, so you don't look like a white person, not as much as most. people, I think when all is said and done we are equal and definitely the same inside and out, but I don't know if I ever considered myself white or thought so at some point, I'm sure I did, but I don't really have any memory of when it was, which I think is a total reflection of

whiteness

or never having to contemplate why people treat you the way they do.

Being white means being a member of a dominant racial group in a society I consider. white supremacist and being white in a white supremacist society not just a racist society because that is almost too generic to be white in a white supremacist society is to be able to have the luxury of oblivion to be oblivious to injustices to be oblivious to racial issues Privilege of being frankly alien to one's own identity, so in a certain sense it is being invisible to oneself. Well, I think being white in this culture means denying the reality of racism and it means denying the privilege we have as white people. most people who are white don't want to accept that they are privileged because they are people who don't want to talk about being white because they know that on a deep level, even if they aren't, some of them may never have.

Have I talked to anyone about it or ever expressed it, they know they get a benefit from being white. If you're white in this country, there are certain advantages that come your way and it doesn't really matter if you want it or not. Whether you're in touch with it or not, I now know that there are privileges that I enjoy simply because I am white every minute of my life. I am aware of my white privilege of the fact that I have white skin and that with that white skin comes a whole mess of privileges that I have and I do not ask for them, they are simply there, there are things that come to me that belong to me that they give me and that I expect. just because I'm white, I never wonder about asking about arguing uh and that's the power of this is the privilege of hoping that I'm going to go to good schools and that I'm going to have options no matter what there will always be.

It will be a choice that will probably be quite reasonable and that will work quite well for me, for me it is about a privilege, a lot of people walk around thinking that we live in a meritocracy and thinking that their own hard work is the only thing you know is responsible for their achievements, I think it means you know he has an ex and I think that shapes everything. White privilege is probably the freedom to move through the

world

without fear in a way that black people can't move through the

world

than you. You can take advantage of opportunities with much less fear and with the assumption that you will be treated the same as all other white people.

Part of it is not having to even think about it, and in a way it's like the privilege of having that space. in your mind, free to think about other things and worry about other things, so you don't even need to think about race, it's part of the privilege. White privilege is being able to walk into a department store and not be followed by the detective. A friend of mine who is Asian American was treated very unfairly at a department store. She was at a cosmetics counter and had bought something that came with a gift, so the woman at the counter put the gift in the bag and my friend didn't.

He didn't know that the gift had already been put in the bag, so he grabbed the one that was on the counter and put it in the bag, uh, unknowingly, just like the sweetest woman wouldn't hurt a fly, just um and They called the called the police and took her to jail and arrested her. I put myself in the same position she was in and I know there is no way I could have been arrested. I know they wouldn't have arrested me. You know, it's a guess. that when you go to buy a car you are going to have the money, what is the assumption that when you go to the real estate office to look for a place to rent, unless you are wearing ragged clothes, you know you are going to go?

To want to go to this nice neighborhood, you can basically say what you want to be any way you want. You become privileged. You don't have to work so hard. You can slack off at jobs and still get a promotion and still not have to do it. Worry about someone coming after you, so to me whiteness is about privilege and access to information systems and people and power that you didn't earn. I went through a time where I was poor and I had to take care of my father and I worked with about a hundred African American men and I was the only white man in the shop and I was really horrible at this job it was a metal grinder, it would grind it too much.

I got up and was sure they were going to fire me, it was just a matter of time and about six months into the job, the boss and some of the managers came and they were all white men and I thought this is the day I'll be. They fired me and they came and told me that they had their eye on me and that they thought I was management material. I said what, uh, and they said yes, you're staying for a while and we think you have the potential to do it. being a manager here it's all embedded in every part of our country it's embedded in every structure we have it's embedded in our economy it's embedded everywhere when I walk into a bank or when I walk into someone's neighborhood or when I walk into someone's store that I am acceptable, I can go anywhere I want and I am seen as an acceptable person and the reason I am acceptable is because I am white.

I remember when I was going to renew my driver's license for the first time. I couldn't really see much without my glasses, I didn't have glasses with me, they made you go to one of these machines, you look and you know, you see what letter it is, etc., I couldn't see. anything, you know, I was one of the few white people there and the guy behind the desk was an older white guy, uh, and he just said, oh, don't worry about it, go ahead. I was like I was letting everyone in and me. I saw that it wasn't and I thought, "Oh, okay, it's the possibility of walking into the bank in Savannah when we were ready to build our house and borrow a hundred thousand dollars and neither of us were working, that's what I mean by my". which is so amazing that we could do that, I mean, of course, we had to present, you know, we had to give them facts and figures and all that kind of stuff, but you know, if you were a person of color and you walked in and you said, " Well, we're not working and they're going to lend you a hundred thousand dollars.

I don't think so. Simple things, I mean everything from the ease of getting a bank loan to knowing that I can drive." anywhere in the city and not be stopped by my police call when I'm driving down the street and a police officer pulls me over, it's probably because I've broken the law or because I get a flat tire and the police officer leaves me to say I'm going to get a flat tire, well, when I get stopped I don't get tickets, you know, I'm a middle-class white woman with a minivan. I get pulled over for speeding all the time and it almost becomes a joke and then you know the police officers apologized to me for pulling me over, you know, and I know if I was a person of color, you know that wouldn't happen, you know. , I know I would stop a lot more.

If I were a person of color because I speed every day and they stop me, look at my license and then let me go. You know, I have experienced whiteness on all three occasions that I was stopped by authorities. a car once ran a red light was turning red on the right again was speeding again had a headlight off and every time I came out with a warning I never got a ticket for any of those things, it was a privilege and the white privilege and whiteness, so that helped me get out and I think for the average person it would be a whiteness that would allow me to not even have to think about why I could escape and think, oh, I'm talking my way out of that.

I did, but it helped me that I'm white. They won't do a body check on me. They won't wreck my car. Looking for a reason to crawl. I'm not profiled. That's why it's a privilege. Basically, when I go to the city council or the county commission, I expect my representatives to take me seriously, and they do it for the most part because they know they have to be more accountable to the white community. Because thewhite community has more power and money and can vote them out of office, we as white people have an idea of ​​what our rights are, we have the right for you to know, live well, live safely, have health care and a police to answer us. having city officials pay attention to us, if they know the needs of our community, they will be able to meet them and I think if you talk to people of color or look at communities of color, that doesn't exist for people of that type. of that idea of ​​those rights, the more I know, the more it's like I really have to talk about privilege here, you know, although I mean, I faced a lot of things in my life, I mean, all these things really happened to me, but still I had whiteness in a way that has given me all these things, um, and it's all these things that not only give you privilege in the sense of things and access to them, but they also validate who you are, you know, so you have the feeling like you know I'm I'm important, I'm worth it because other people don't have it, you know you have it, they have to get it somewhere else, you know they could get it from their family or whatever, but I can get it from everyone you know with a few. exceptions taught me that you respected black people but not as much as you respected human beings, more like cats, dogs and cows, you wouldn't mistreat a cat or a dog in my family and you wouldn't mistreat a black person if I didn't have any problem admitting that I am racist I don't think it's absurd to try to fight against it I grew up in this society I was conditioned by it I think that internally in my psyche I have founded and ingrained them attitudes and I see it in myself all the time I mean, I'm always dealing with that I don't think that makes me a bad person you know, I don't think that means I'm you know I'm punished in original sin or something like that it just means that I've been well indoctrinated but it also calls me to do something about it.

I consider myself someone who does racist things and acts on the racism that I have within me because of the context of the world that I grew up in and live in so that I individually recognize and recognize that I have the power of race in me and that I am going to be . I don't think I ever have a moment where I look at someone. and I don't see their racial classification first. Oh, I hate to admit it, but I still have thoughts that I'm smarter than some black people just because of skin color. I mean, I'm sorry, but that still crosses my mind.

Stereotypes will appear. My head is like everyone else's. You know, when I see someone a stereotype appears and then I have to say no. You know, that's a prejudice. When I'm in a classroom full of students, I tend to look at the white students more than the others. Everyone looks at black students and when I realized I was doing that I was shocked and immediately tried to start training myself to stop doing that and it was surprisingly difficult, there was something about a natural tendency to look at white faces in a way that I didn't have the same natural tendency to look at black faces and I think it's a kind of ingrained innate racism.

That's all I can think about, as I remember I was talking to a young man named Sylvester and him. I was saying you're racist I'm going, I'm not going, you are, I'm not, you know, we were going back and forth like that for a while and then I had to go get refreshments, I said, wait and I went up the stairs and My mother turned to me. and she told me: Get a grip, you know you're a young white girl, you've grown up in a racist society, you're racist, accept it, move on, but that was, you know, that was an incredible gift. that my mother gave me because it allowed me to turn all my defensiveness about it into oh maybe I'm racism and prejudice are very different things and we've all grown up with prejudices some of us are prejudiced against people of color some People are prejudiced against people of color white people and some of us are downright terrible about it because so much of the focus is on personal biases.

That's how I think a lot of the American population likes to discuss race issues between different groups of people. I think it works the same way if black people feel that white people can be racist towards them. I don't see any difference between a black person being racist to a white person in high school. The high school I attended was probably 60 percent black and 40 percent white. and being white and in a mostly black class, I was picked on and made fun of because of it, sometimes you meet people who feel that for what happened in the past, we are responsible.

I am 30 years old. I wasn't present. When that was happening I know what it feels like to be subject to anger for something I personally never did if sometimes we are in the wrong place and it is obvious that we are in the wrong place or the wrong color to be in that place you will hear a comment you will hear one comment you'll hear some not-so-nice things you'd never think you'd hear you're too white to be in this neighborhood when I was teaching I wasn't privileged because I had to interact with a lot of stereotypes about white people and I had to deal with them on that level, but I was privileged in the sense that I got the job in the first place.

I think that was one of the key aspects. things to understand about racism is that you know, like Malcolm which is always changing, always mutating, so, um, people who say, well, there is no racism anymore, they mean racism as it existed in 1950, 1920 or 1910. Racism permeates every aspect of our society and you It has made known a world in which we live that is very unequal, it is not what you personally did or did not do and I think it is such a difficult leap for white people, it is as if it were not something that I personally did, but it is something against What I personally have to work on is not just a question of who I am as a person or what I think or feel about other people, I think there is a hierarchy in our country that is very clearly based on skin color and abilities. people's perceptions of what race you're in and whiter at the top and blacker at the top. the bottom ones and the Asians and the Native Americans and the kind of light brown people are in the middle and the Latinos are at the bottom, you know, and then the blacks are at the bottom.

Racism is not simply about how we get along on an individual level, it has to do with it. with who has institutional and social power, white people have political and social power in our society and that is a fact and if you analyze certain social and political situations, you can see that very clearly, I think it is quite obvious. White people get privilege and experience advantage from being in a system that thinks white people are better than they think people of color are, so there's all this unearned advantage that happens all the time, especially in a society like the America, it is difficult to confront racism unless you understand how if you are racialized as white you benefit from racism just because I am white and have these privileges.

I participate in a racist system and that doesn't mean it's not my fault. I can't help it. I was born into it and you know, that's what it means to be white, but I believe and assume that white privilege is, in fact, the kind of racism that you can't avoid. All I have to do is sit back and close my eyes and things are just going to move forward and in some ways in broad interests and there's a way in which I'm complicit, I'm colluding, I don't say anything, I don't do anything to stop it or challenge it in any way. that way.

I really think that's how racism works and that's one way that I'm racist and the difference now is that I'm not trying to prove to anyone else not even myself that I'm not racist, I kind of assume that I know that. that and continue doing anti-racist work as best I can. I think the deepest understanding of racism is understanding that process of becoming white, you know, historically becoming white and exactly what that means to be white and how. a lot of our humanity that we've lost because I think the only way that we white people can really regain our humanity that we've lost to the extent that we've bought off white people is by doing anti-racist work in whatever we do as a A lot of people start to learn exactly how messed up our society is in terms of racial disparity and realize that you're in the privileged class, you know?

And especially for me, being a queer feminist woman, I in no way wanted to identify with her. an oppressive society, an oppressive group, and that was very difficult for me, but calling myself white, that has been a heart, saying that I am a white person took me longer than recognizing that I was a white person, you know what I mean with that. Say I'm white, be comfortable with this, like I'm aware that I'm white. You know, throughout this whole process, but you know, it's been a process of being able to say the whole time, you know I'm a white feminist. it's about taking the onion and peeling the onion, you know how, how racism permeates everything around us.

I'm white, I'm middle class, I speak English, and I see it as a tool that I can use and also claim my identity. communally as part of this white community and seeing that you know the work that I need and want to do is in the white community, what we have to do is use the power that we have because of the privilege to tear down those things in the system that hurt others people for me, I haven't been able to give up white privilege because you can't until the system is eradicated, it will be there, but fighting it, fighting it, By consciously making the decision to turn against it, I can free myself, I can tell myself to myself, you know what I'm still getting these benefits and that's horrible, but at least I'm out there doing something about it and so there's a sense of freedom. a sense of really reclaiming my humanity as a white person I have an influence it's kind of funny because it's a poor person I never had influence but as a white person I have influence and as a woman I didn't have much influence either but as a white person I have influence among other white people, They don't, they take what I say as more valid, they don't find it selfish, I mean, I have a connection, I have connections with the judge I have. connections to the guy at the bank I have connections everywhere with people who have power who can make decisions about policies, you know, procedures, all kinds of things, so at that level I can use my influence, which has been a challenge for me and where my biggest challenges have been how can I personally use the positions that I hold to help change institutions in ways that allow them to be truly allied with communities of color and accountable to communities of color and where people who coming to work in those institutions you can start to approach them without feeling like you have to code switch or without feeling like you have to adopt someone else to survive, there's this whole world out there that you had no idea about and from what I can see, the people of color, that I've been around and the communities that I've been with, have discovered a lot more about how to be human beings than white people, I think, because we're chosen.

As oppressors we have had to get rid of many parts of ourselves that are human and that has greatly desensitized us, I mean, it has desensitized our sympathies, our empathies and our hearts towards other people. I think not knowing that you coming into this world with all this privilege makes us um you know, it doesn't make us good people in the sense that it doesn't make us, I take it back, it doesn't make us the people that we could be, it takes away from us what are. We really are real human beings, um, when we start applying this, this when you start benefiting from something that you didn't earn and you don't recognize and you don't do something about it if you agree with the status quo. and you're not doing something to make a change, you're part of the problem and I think a lot of white people don't want to have that discussion when we pretend that our school systems are fine and the criminal justice system is fine. and the media representations are fine and we just accept it, we are part of the problem if I do nothing in this world because it is set up for me and mine and because the systems operate for my benefit then I am perpetuating that system.

Letting it continue and I'm benefiting every day from it so that you