Confronting and dismantling white privilege
Illustration by Lesley Wang
Katie Sperring shares some educational resources and actions that can be taken to address white privilege and systemic racism.
The racist murder of George Floyd in Minnesota has prompted a renewed conversation across all forms of media about racism and the absence of racial equality, particularly for black Americans. As each generation has moved through society, structural racism has either been denied or insufficiently confronted by white people as individuals and by the power structures which they dominate. One only has to look back through history at discussions led by the likes of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis to recognise the timelessness of their discourse, and ultimately how little progress has been made since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Structural and institutional racism remain absolutely pervasive; the structures governing society were constructed by, and remain dominated by, whites and continue to confer disproportionate benefits upon them whilst failing to protect the basic human rights of other racial groups. The existence of white privilege is a chief symptom of structural racism. I want to focus on how each white and non-black person can contribute to confronting and dismantling white privilege. One of James Baldwin’s most famous quotes is “ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” It is through educating ourselves, translating knowledge into action, and countering existing power structures that we can move towards a more just society with regard to race.
EDUCATE AND LEARN
To educate fully and properly on these issues is to first educate yourself and then educate those around you – family, friends, colleagues and your community. Prior to this, it is necessary to acknowledge your “racial illiteracy.” This illiteracy comes from an education system that, as Robin DiAngelo points out in White Fragility, fails to provide the necessary perspectives needed to develop informed opinions. So, acknowledge that your perspective is possibly and probably tarnished by the structural racism present in educational systems and the media and bear it in mind as you study different resources.
Along with confronting racial illiteracy, you must recognise and address the “emotional disconnect” that Reni Eddo-Lodge explains in her book. Summarised, this is the experience of growing up as a white person without ever being confronted by the racial inequalities POC experience daily. Being subject to institutions that have been designed with a systematic bias means that many white people are unconscious of how the design of these institutions is so detrimental to other races. Consider whether this lack of consciousness might be contributing to an emotional disconnect.
Finally, ensure that you understand racism as a system rather than a series of individual acts of racial prejudice and discrimination. Making progress on dismantling racism requires a proper understanding of the fact that it pervades the roots of socialisation rather than being individual acts against the grain of an otherwise benign system. An understanding of these three things means your engagement with and understanding of the resources you then consume will allow you to better understand and confront your white privilege.
The next step is taking that mindset to the resources you engage with, whether that be books, articles, podcasts or YouTube lectures. For a brilliant list of resources, Gabby Menezes-Forsyth and Miri Bennun, two students at the University of Manchester and UCL respectively, have put together this document. Members of Pi Media have put together this list of resources too. Studying these resources should be an active process, whether that means taking notes or utilising any method by which you can ensure you absorb and understand the information you are reading. For me, this often means writing responses to pieces I have read, picking out key arguments and engaging with those. What many of the resources above do effectively, and what we should endeavour to understand, is the articulation of racism as a systematic phenomenon. It is this understanding that enables the translation of education into action.
Having accumulated a body of knowledge and consumed sufficient resources with which to express informed opinions, impart this with others. This is two-fold. Collaborate with friends and family who are similarly engaged to see what you can provide one another in terms of new knowledge. However, do not neglect the more difficult conversations, with those members of your family or community who are more disengaged. Having hopefully dismantled your own, look to dismantle what DiAngelo calls the “white fragility” of those around you, the resistance or discomfort that often surfaces once conversations about race become more tricky to navigate without challenging one’s own role in systematic racism and one’s own identity. “Racial illiteracy” and “emotional disconnect” are often even more potent in our parents or grandparents - you can compel them to address those aspects of their identity.
UNLEARN
I address this separately because I think it is particularly important to challenge the narratives that have been promoted as positive in the past but are in fact damaging. The most obvious of these is colour-blindness; the denial of racial differences and individuality as a solution to racism. Reni Eddo-Lodge articulates this perfectly: “Not seeing race does little to dismantle racist structures or improve the lives of people of colour. In order to do so, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is affected by negative stereotyping of theirs, and on whom power and privilege is bestowed – not just because of their race, but also their class and gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.”
In this case, the colour-blindness narrative only insulates us from the fact that our institutions both harbour and are founded upon structural racism. It is a suboptimal alternative to addressing institutional bias and it should be debunked and replaced. This means acknowledging yourself, as well as others, as a racial being rather than abdicating that responsibility by disengaging from the very idea of race. This is another idea that you must bear in mind when engaging with anti-racist resources.
TRANSLATE EDUCATION INTO ACTION
There are multiple ways that we can translate this body of knowledge into action. One small action I’d like to point out is sharing social media posts on platforms like Instagram or Twitter. Social media is an asset for aiding the dismantling of racist prejudices and practices, but social media activity must be preceded by, or at least accompanied by, active research. Sharing a post does not constitute sufficient engagement with these issues. The least visible aspect of your engagement - your research - is most important. Posting on social media might express opposition to one racist act but does little to confront racism as a system. Social media can be utilised far more beneficially if those engaging with the issues are well-informed and have been mobilised by proper research rather than social media hysteria. It can be used to coordinate movements, give petitions traction and direct those who are able to donate.
Along with this, engage in active opposition. As DiAngelo explains, if you “partake in the systems that confer disproportionate benefits upon whites without endeavouring to challenge those systems,” you are complicit in their racism. To remain silent or inactive is to abdicate your responsibility as a human as well as a citizen to challenge systems that withdraw rights from certain racial groups whilst facilitating disproportionate benefits for others.
To act in support of movements in the US, signing petitions and donating what you can are two simple ways to contribute. An exhaustive list of petitions to sign and funds to donate to is here. Pay attention to where to direct your donations to ensure that your contribution is optimised; this means donating directly to funds rather than using platforms like change.org. Pi Media’s collaborative resource also contains links to petitions and donation points.
However, even these actions can be completed mindlessly, without necessarily utilising the resources you have consumed. To be more active, you can pick out other nuances in the wider issue and create petitions or funds based on those. This could be in support of a certain community or a certain organisation operating in the US or could concern a certain event or incident that has occurred without drawing mainstream media attention. You could do the same for communities and organisations in the UK.
Furthermore, utilise that ability to articulate a well-informed, powerful opinion to write letters. Write to the government, write to the Education Department, write to your MP. Argue that education about white privilege should be embedded in school curricula and workplace training, for example. Write to other influential figures, like university provosts and business leaders, and challenge them to take more action. This direct appeal is an effective mode of action that you could undertake individually or collectively. Dom Borghino, UCL student and PiTV Editor-in-Chief, has created a template letter for students to send to their universities that can be found here. Do not confine those arguments to letters; it is imperative that we mobilise this discourse within our communities, and in our schools, universities, and workplaces. Confrontation of leadership in universities and workplaces is a medium by which it is possible to activate those challenges to the institutions that harbour and are founded upon racial prejudices and unequal distributions of benefits.
As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues in Racism without Racists, it is absolutely necessary that there are white activists in the struggle against racism. A process of proper education and translation into action can facilitate the build-up of a body of white activists that can make a more productive contribution to pressuring for the necessary institutional change so that white privilege is dismantled systemically and, in the interim, can amplify the voices of their black peers. This same process also enables white individuals and communities to make more productive contributions in everyday situations to dismantling their own white privilege.
A potential problem does arise when we discuss white people’s role in relation to discussions about race. DiAngelo exemplifies this: “in speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am yet again centering white people and the white voice. I have not found a way around this dilemma, for as an insider I can speak to the white experience in ways that can be harder to deny. So, though I am centering my white voice, I am also using my insider status to challenge racism… I would never suggest that mine is the only voice that should be heard, only that it is one of many pieces needed to solve the overall puzzle.” To centre the white voice is not to centre white people but to emphasise how their voices can be used to amplify those of their black peers.
In short, it is necessary that we uncover and challenge the “roots of socialisation” to realise and then seek to change the institutional structure of our societies that facilitates structural racism. This means educating yourself and then utilising that knowledge to combat your own white privilege, support a systematic dismantling of these privileges, and encourage others to do the same. Acting contrary to this is an abdication of responsibilities as humans and citizens to dismantle structural racism in our societies so that the just protection of rights and distribution of resources prevails for all.