The privilege of being white

            For some time now, I have been an openly white male.  I’m not proud of it; I’m not ashamed of it.  In fact, I hardly think about it unless something happens to focus my attention on this particular attribute of mine.

            Earlier this week, though, I encountered a post that one of my conservative friends had made on the website Human Events.com (a.k.a. “Headquarters of the Conservative Underground”) in which she bashed “White Guilt Awareness Day,” more benignly disguised as “diversity day.”  Her argument is that since whites are inherently more “privileged” than racial minorities, elitists try and make my people recognize the effect our whiteness has on society in order for us to guiltily restrain the tendencies we have toward prejudice.  Furthermore:

Liberals want to make whites—men especially—feel guilty for being white, and to feel responsible for centuries of oppressing minorities. They want to show them that deep down whites inherently resent and hate blacks and other minorities, and college professors and administrators have taken it upon themselves to “help” students discover these deeply-rooted feelings.

            Although I appreciate the fervor with which this article was written, I can’t help but shake my head at the basic premise that underlies this: namely, that white people should not feel obligated to make amends for any so-called “privilege” in society.  To begin with, I would like to set the record straight and say that I do not feel guilty in the slightest.  I am not—or at least I try not to be—racist, and I have never intentionally targeted someone hatefully because of his or her race.  I feel like this argument could be made for the vast majority of my people because since the Civil Rights Movement, overt acts of racism by white people are no longer socially acceptable.  Likewise, it is unacceptable to believe that whiteness a necessary conduit to racism.

            However, the accepted form of racism (and sexism, for that matter) in 2009 is not stark, it is not as violent, but it is repugnant.  Institutional racism is a fact of life.  All one has to do is to look at the composition of Congress, the Supreme Court, the governors’ mansions and state legislatures, forty-three out of the past forty-four presidential administrations, Fortune 500 CEOs, financial institutions, academia, management, law, medicine—in short, all of the prestigious organizations that drive our economy and set our policy.  Who is largely in charge of these?  White men.

            Do I feel guilty?  No.  Do I think it’s unfair?  I do, actually.  White men have no monopoly on brain power, business savvy, or empathy (yes, empathy is a crucial part of any job in which you interact with other humans).  That fact is especially evident, given that the recent collapse of the financial sector was caused largely by my people. We merely have two-hundred years of enfranchised history on our side to give us a head start at success.  On the flip side, you could look at the statistics of people in prison.  Thirty-five percent of the prison population comprises black males.  Are these people more violent than white males, proportionally speaking?  It’s always possible. 

         But could the answer have something to do with how governments (which, remember, are controlled disproportionately by white men) prioritize social services, education, rehabilitation, job creation, healthcare, quality-of-living issues, etc. for non-white populations?  Maybe I have been brainwashed by liberal elitists, but I tend to think so.

         So, what’s a white man to do?  Well, it probably wouldn’t be productive to walk around all day thinking about how I have never been followed by security in a department store or never worried about buying “flesh-colored” Band Aids that didn’t match my skin.  But it wouldn’t hurt for me to think about healthcare reform by asking the question, how will this help racial minorities and women?  It wouldn’t hurt to phrase the terms of engagement on energy or educational legislation by wondering which populations are “losing out” and which ones are gaining…and why that is.

         It also wouldn’t hurt to notice the self-segregation that occurs in everyday life.  Or instances in which an element of our culture is dominated by “whiteness”. (To give an example, when we say “church,” the inference is “white church.”  Otherwise, we would not need to specifically describe the phenomenon of the “black church.”)

         I’m not advocating a cure for racism or reminding white people of the need to feel guilty.  I’m merely being realistic in suggesting that if there are not people in the world, white and otherwise, who recognize the structural privilege that accompanies whiteness (from homeownership, to overall wealth, to graduation rates), then we will forever resign ourselves to the fact that women and non-whites in this country will not be able to compete and win in a society where everyone is supposed to have equal opportunity to succeed.

Congress’s woman crisis?

            When watching President Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress, it was hard not to notice all of the brightly-colored suits and dresses of the 90 women in the House and Senate—representing seventeen percent of Congress and highly visible for the cameras.  In the 2008 election, more women won congressional races and consequently more women are now serving in Congress than at any point in history.

OBAMA-Joint Session, originally uploaded by lauren victoria burke.

            But that could potentially change in 2010.  In midterm election years, the president’s party typically loses seats in Congress.  Right now there is a huge disparity in the numbers: 70 women are Democrats; only 20 are Republicans.  Even during the 1994 election in which a net gain of seats held by Republican women occurred, more Democratic women were candidates than were GOP women.  In fact, while the number of GOP women running for House seats each year has more or less held steady around 40-45, the number of Democratic women has increased from 72 in 1994 to 96 in 2008.

            In the Senate the math is stark and simplified: of the 17 women, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 3:1.

            Last year, eight new Democratic women were elected to the House and, as freshmen, at least four of them from more conservative-learning districts are being targeted for defeat; it’s more than likely that their challengers will be men.  Why is it that more Democratic women run for Congress than Republican women?  Perhaps it is simply because more women are Democrats.  Or, as U.S. News and World Report’s Bonnie Erbe writes, Republican women view their role as being more of a traditional homemaker than an officeholder.

            I have no definite answer.  But it has been well-publicized that the GOP is not only having problems with recruiting women: blacks, Latinos, Asians, and other ethnic groups are either underrepresented or not represented at all on the Republican side of the aisle.  Many non-white women, though, represent majority-minority districts, so their seats are pretty safe.  But still, there remains a problem: if the U.S. Congress is intended to represent the American people, comprise many points of view, and achieve gender equality, then many more women must fill the ranks.  That is something most people can agree upon.

            While Republicans tend to be more suspicious of affirmative action, even in the broad sense, I would hope that they are actively recruiting female candidates in order to combat their image as the party of old, white men.  It would be a missed opportunity if, one year after a historic presidential race for women, the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, and the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the number of women in the national legislature actually deceased because of the dynamics of the political cycle.

Ending the era of firsts?

            Americans take comfort in thinking that we live in a society of equal opportunity—where if you work hard, you are rewarded in life (and if you cause an economic meltdown, you are still rewarded, but that’s beside the point).  There is a certain sense of pride in commemorating social achievements based on the “pioneering” credentials of race and gender.  At an ever increasing pace, we are seeing barriers broken down left and right.

            The first female Speaker of the House. The first black Attorney General. The first First Lady as Cabinet secretary.  The first openly gay man and woman to be elected in Congress.  The first non-male and non-white Justices on the Supreme Court.  And, of course, the first black man elected to the White House.  In the late nineteenth century on into the twentieth century, there was a slow trickle of people who were neither white nor male attaining positions of power.  The push for civil rights and women’s rights after World War II and the destruction of roles—women played the role of homemaker, minorities were subservient under white prejudice—opened the spigot on the era of firsts.

            But equality is not simply a series of firsts.  A barrier can be broken down, but if no one is willing to follow you through, it is as if the barrier were still there.  A fine example is the racially-tinged debacle in early 2009 when the Senate refused to seat Sen. Roland Burris, even though he would be the single representative of the black community in that body.  Burris was not the first black senator (perhaps he’s the first black senator to be denied recognition in the Senate, but that is not a favorable distinction) and certainly will not be the last.  The point of this episode is that the formal barriers to equal opportunity are long gone, but norms and attitudes have taken longer to adjust.  The ability of to be fully represented in government is still hampered by the “veil” which DuBois hoped would be lifted, allowing blacks to escape their legacy of discrimination or poverty and assert their equal station in society.

       The current generation of middle aged professionals has been raised with the belief that any opportunity is within reach by dreaming big and believing in one’s own abilities.  They have passed those values onto their children—the Chelsea Clintons and Malia and Sasha Obamas who are inheriting an unstable yet immensely prosperous world.  It is so important that no matter what type of family, in whichever level of the class structure, and with whatever level of hardship, that parents help their children not to become firsts or seconds, but to become equal partners in the leadership of tomorrow’s world.  Then it will be all the more easy to have a government that is not only a representation of who we are, but a reflection of shared experiences and with a sense of group identity.

       Still, there are a few firsts that we have yet to see.  There Supreme Court has not even made its first ruling on gay marriage, let alone has a gay judge been considered for a seat on the Court.  Even though a growing number of Americans claim to have no religion, the stigma of atheism will continue to erode the trust that must exist between politicians and the public, precluding the chance to elect an atheistic president.  And there are no fewer than three interracial marriages in the Senate, but it will probably take another generation before we could see an interracial First Family.

       The firsts have been extraordinarily important in showing how traditional minorities can move into positions of power in this country.  But unless there is significantly greater representation of women and other racial groups in our government, that says more about a handful of outstanding individuals with ambitions, rather than a society that truly enables equality.

Women in politics: few and far between

            Consider this passage from The American Voter (1960), part of a ten-page section about gender in politics entitled, “Sex”:

The wife who votes but otherwise pays little attention to politics tends to leave not only the sifting of information up to her husband but abides by his ultimate decision about the direction of the vote as well.  The information that she brings to bear on “her” choice is indeed fragmentary, but it is second hand….We believe this bias arises largely because of the female willingness to leave political matters to men.  The ultimate behavior of the dependent wife springs from the more sophisticated concepts of her husband.  On the other hand, the independent woman may well fill in a set of political concepts more parallel in quality to those employed by men.

            Now, given our more enlightened mindset and the presence of several prominent female politicians—not to mention one high-powered female almost-president—we can look back on the Leave it to Beaver era of timid housewifery and shake our heads with a combination of humor and embarrassment.  But despite legal advancement on women’s issues such as abortion and equal pay, the fact remains that women are severely underrepresented in our multiple levels of government.  For instance, the Supreme Court has a 1:8 female-to-male ratio; and obviously that rate is still a big fat zero for the presidency.

            Here are some other figures for female occupancy of various elected positions:

Governorships: 16%

U.S. House: 16%

U.S. Senate: 17%

Virginia House of Delegates: 16%

Virginia State Senate: 20%

            There will likely continue to be a slow trickle of women into federal and state elected offices in the next election cycle: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison wants to become the governor of Texas; former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is ramping up to take the same office in California; and Rep. Jan Schakowsky will look to grab the Senate seat that may be up for grabs in Illinois (depending on how soon Roland Burris will be pressured to depart).  In Virginia, no woman has yet been elected to statewide office.  Furthermore, our congressional delegation is all male and overwhelmingly white; all of the four candidates competing in the governor’s race this fall are middle-aged white dudes.

            Does it really matter that the realm of politics still remains largely a [white] man’s world?  As we saw in January during the outcry surrounding Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Burris and the racial implications of not seating the only black member of the Senate, distinctions of race and gender still matter.  We acknowledge that women and minorities may bring unique perspectives to certain issues that white men of privilege have not experienced or may not be sensitive to—which may include questions on military force and social welfare, for example, which are not explicitly “gendered” but where we might expect women to feel differently than men.

           And even if there is no ideological difference between the sexes, people expect their officials to not only represent their concerns, but also to represent them personally.  Black people and young people had the right to be especially excited about Barack Obama’s election because they perceive him to be a member of their “in-group,” and as such, embodying unique characteristics—like having experienced the black church (for the former group) or being technologically-savvy (for the latter).  Our most obvious indicator of political similarity is party identification, but age, race, religion, region, occupation, etc. all factor into the decision of how well-qualified a particular person is to represent you.

           As long as women have access to the traditional channels of political entry—primarily in the white collar labor force or through local legislatures—we will see more competitive female candidates winning statewide or federal office.  This may need to be accomplished by legal prodding, such as making it easier for women to reenter the workforce and resume their careers if they decide to have children; but it may also require a psychological adjustment among Americans, who still see a woman’s responsibilities to her family as her primary duty.

           Hopefully, the current generation of female political heavyweights—Clinton, Palin, Sebelius, Boxer—will inspire future or current professional women to consider knocking down the barrier to equal representation in positions of power.

Phunny Fotos

2g1c, Anglican Style

After the Anglican Church’s General Synod passed a solution on Monday to allow the ordination of women as bishops, the Vatican has called the decision unfortunate and unlikely to mend the rift between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.  Opponents of the decision cite that Jesus chose only men for apostles and as a result may opt to leave the church if a reconciliatory provision (such as allowing some parishes to not recognize their female bishop) is not proffered.  While Jesus did value women and in this era of equal opportunity it would seem natural to afford women positions of power in the church, traditionalists point to their mistrust for female bishops stemming from the infamous “2 girls 1 cross” video tape of 2007: