Word Problems
Over the past few years, I have often been baffled by people’s wildly different responses to the term “white privilege.” Why is it such a contentious term? Why does it land on people so differently?
These questions have compelled me to think about when it was that I first encountered the term and how I came to understand it. It was during graduate school in 1990, just after women’s-studies scholar Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” was published. Wow! I remember thinking, so much to think about and yes, so many things I hadn’t considered.
In the article, McIntosh argues for the idea that “white privilege” is a set of unearned—and often unrecognized—advantages that whites have and which non-whites do not. She makes her case by offering tangible examples that expose the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that people of color experience challenges in everyday life that whites just do not. There are many powerful truths in that article, but I remember being specifically—and oddly—outraged by the fact that, at that time, bandaids labeled flesh-colored were always a beige-tan color and that greeting cards that featured people, even cartoon people, were always white. There were, of course, other more profound insights in the article, but they all added up to the same thing: Unlike the racism of yesteryear, the racism of now is insidious and it is exactly this insidiousness which makes it so hard for people who don’t experience it to recognize and understand.
The article didn’t make me feel culpable. Or guilty. It helped me to understand that being white in America was considered normal and that being a person of color was not. Whether buying a greeting card for my sister, finding make-up that matches my skin tone, or seeing people like me in the books I read in school, as a white person, I could expect an easier experience than people of color could expect.
This article was important for many reasons, not the least of which was that the late 80’s was a time when many people were insisting that we were living in a post-racial America, a time in which our country had moved past racism. In a few powerful pages, McIntosh reminded us of the large and small ways, often invisible, that racism still manifests in everyday life. I began to understand my own white privilege to mean that while everything didn’t necessarily come easy to me because of my skin color; I also didn’t face specific barriers or challenges because of my skin color. This was my privilege.
Now it is 2021 and I am beginning to understand that everyone does not process the term “white privilege” in the way I describe. In fact, in the past 5 years or so, the term has been interpreted—or maybe reinterpreted—to suggest that those who use the term are trying to place blame on white people for taking advantage of their “privilege” and even that their successes in life are due to this privilege, rather than to their hard work or their good choices. I am learning that some people see the term as a way to blame race for every societal problem and to these people, the term encourages people to avoid personal responsibility and instead blame their problems on a flawed system. Many people don’t believe that white privilege exists and believe instead, that it is an idea created to sow racial divide. Ultimately, some argue, it insults white people, especially those who have overcome significant economic hardship, to be successful, and marginalizes people of color by suggesting that they are living in a rigged system in which they can not be successful.
Whoa, Nelly! That is a lot of misunderstanding between the two camps. And, to make matters worse, it is such a volatile and emotional topic that people often double down on their positions when confronted with opposition. People who believe the term is useful will insultingly point to “white fragility” as the reason others don’t embrace the term while people who dislike the term will oversimplify it by suggesting that people who use the term are making everything about race and undermining our country’s central ideal of unity and equal opportunity for all.
How can one term mean such different things to different people? To me, it is a question that leads to another question: What happens when language gets in the way of meaningful discourse? What happens when the words are a problem?
I posed a question like this to my 12th grade honors students last week. We are in the middle of our study of Zora Neale Hurston’s seminal novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. If you know the book, you know that it is a beautifully rendered story of a black woman navigating a difficult world and finding herself. The story takes place in the early 20th century American South and relies heavily on the informal dialect and colloquial language spoken by its main characters, most of whom are black. It is a difficult read for many students, due not only to its unconventional language, but also because of its difficult themes. There is so much to say about this book and its unique contributions to the American literary canon, but I will stop here and just say that there is a lot to unpack in this book and it is both necessary and terrifying to do that in a high school English classroom, in America, in 2021.
Nonetheless, there we were last week talking about colorism, an idea that is introduced in the novel by one of the characters. In the novel, Mrs. Turner is a light-skinned Black woman, who disparages most members of her own race, and specifically, the dark-skinned members. We talk about why Hurston would include such a character and what she might be trying to say about racism in America. Some of my students were unfamiliar with the idea of colorism and our discussion led quite naturally to a conversation about internalized racism and then to privilege—and then to white privilege. As the conversation took this last turn, I noticed immediately that a few of my students bristled and one or two looked down, as if to escape the conversation. I quickly realized that they had been down this road before and to them, the term “white privilege” was part of a larger political conversation, a conversation that had been so acrimonious and emotional in the past few years that not only did it make them uncomfortable, but worse, it made them shut down.
And then the bell rang. Ugh.
On my drive home from school that afternoon, I lamented the fact that I wouldn’t see my students until Monday and immediately thought of all the resources I have to help my students understand the framework of unconscious bias and white privilege more meaningfully. There was McIntosh’s article, a myriad of other great articles and a Ted Talk or two. Every education journal I read is filled with resources to help with this subject and yet, I still felt like I needed to do something a little different.
That’s when I decided to pivot. Instead of leaning into the language that I understood to be most useful to frame this topic, I decided to disrupt that language. I deliberately resisted my impulse to help my students to better understand the meaning of “white privilege” and instead asked them to interrogate the term itself. What is it about the term that makes it so contentious? Why does it land so differently on different people?
The optional weekend discussion on my Google Classroom was thoughtful and inspiring. Instead of immediately retreating to their ideological corners—or worse, retreating altogether—my students engaged deeply in the question at hand. Multiple students wrote about people’s understanding of the phrase being significantly impacted by their personal frame of reference. Other students wrote that the term was divisive and that because it has become conflated with other issues, like Black Lives Matter, it tends to make people feel polarized and separate from one another. One student wrote about how race privilege can never really be separated from socio-economic privilege and that for white people who experience severe economic hardship, the idea of any kind of privilege seems absurd. Many students wrote that while they can acknowledge the existence of white privilege, its lack of visibility to them makes it difficult to substantiate or prove and this leads to a greater divide between those who experience it and those who don’t. One student framed the whole question in terms of the deep philosophical chasm between Individualism v. Collectivism, an idea that is so smart and compelling that I am still thinking about it as I write this.
The bottom line is that this work is hard and as a teacher deeply interested in helping my students to become confident and effective critical thinkers, I need to consider both the power and the possibility of the words I use to frame the conversation. I also need to acknowledge the problematic ways that language has been used in recent years as a weapon for battle that often stifles conversation and obscures understanding. To be flexible and responsive to the students in front of me does not mean to abandon the difficult conversations, but it might mean to interrogate my own use of words. By doing this with—and in view—of my students, I hope to help them understand the important ways that language both reflects and shapes the important issues of our time.
