http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen09092005.html The Heart of Whiteness Race Stories By ROBERT JENSEN We use terms to label ourselves and others. We struggle over what the terms mean and how they should be applied. But we also define ourselves by the stories we tell. There are two different stories I could tell about myself. Which is true? Story #1 I was born in a small city in North Dakota, to parents in the lower middle-class who eventually scratched their way to a comfortable middle-class life through hard work. I never went hungry and always had a roof over my head, but I was expected to work, and I did. >From the time I started shoveling snow as a kid, to part-time and summer jobs, through my professional career, I worked hard. From the time I was old enough to hold a steady job, I have held one. I was a conscientious student who studied hard and took school seriously. I went to college and did fairly well, taking a year off in the middle to work full-time. After graduation I worked as a journalist, in non-glamorous jobs for modest wages, working hard to learn a craft. I went on to get a master's degree and returned to work before eventually pursuing a doctorate so I could teach at the university level. I got a job at a major university and worked hard to get tenure. I'm still there today, still working hard. Story #2 I was born in a small city in North Dakota, to white parents in the lower middle-class who eventually scratched their way to a comfortable middle-class life through hard work. The city I grew up in was almost all white. It was white because the indigenous population that once lived there was either exterminated or pushed onto reservations. It was extremely cold in the winter there, which was okay, people would joke, because it "kept the riff-raff out." It was understood that riff-raff meant people who weren't willing to work hard, or non-white people. The assumption was there was considerable overlap in the two groups. I was educated in a well-funded and virtually all-white school system, where I was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people. In those schools my accomplishments were applauded and could be seen as part of a long line of accomplishments of people who looked like me. I mostly studied the history of people who look like me. Indigenous people were mostly a footnote. I worked in part-time and summer jobs for which I was hired by other white people. One of those jobs was in a warehouse owned by a white man with whom my father did business. In that warehouse, we sometimes hired day labor to help us unload trucks. One of the adult men we hired was Indian. His name was Dave. We called him "Indian Dave." I, along with other white teenage boys working there, called him Indian Dave. We didn't give it a second thought. I went to college in mostly white institutions. I had mostly white professors. I graduated and got jobs. In every job I have ever had, I was interviewed by a white person. Every boss I have ever had (until my current supervisor, who was hired three years ago) has been white. I was hired for my current teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean, and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor. I have made many mistakes in my life. But to the best of my knowledge, when I have screwed up in my school or work life, no one has ever suggested that my failures were in any way connected to my being white. True stories Both of those stories are true. The question is, can we recognize the truth in both of them? Can we accept that many white people have worked hard to accomplish things, and that those people's accomplishments were made possible in part because they were white in a white-supremacist society? Like almost everyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit" alone, as defined by white people in a white-supremacist country, got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships. At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths, the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special. I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work are stacked in my benefit. Until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate -- that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose -- then we should expect to live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live encourages and allows us to be. We should struggle against the constraints that people and institutions sometimes put on us, but those constraints are real, they are often racialized, and they have real effects on people. This essay is excerpted from The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, City Lights Books. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu .
They should have titled this book, "White Guilt: Whities, you haven't accomplished **** on your own". Icehouse - what is your purpose in posting this? To make white people think that they've had it easy? To further discourage blacks that they can't make it in this society? To trivialize the accomplishments of white people? I'd love to hear why you think this article is useful.
From a compositional standpoint, I view the first paragraph as being composed horribly. The details in the first story are quite vague; he fails to detail what lower-middle class entails (lower-middle class to gates is different to Bill Gates than your average resident of the 5th Ward), what hours he would work (5 hours a week? 25 hours a week?), what working hard required of him (did he study 20 hours a week and work 40 hours a week?), what success means in college (Did he have a 3.0 gpa? a 2.0? a 4.0?), what modest wages are, and finally what was his fulltime job in the middle (did he wash dishes?). The second paragraph does a decent job in correcting the mistakes made in the first paragraph by switching the focus from hard work paying off to race being the quality that caused his success. He fills in the holes in the second paragraph, leaving little to the imagination. Of course, the second paragraph could also be improved upon with more details. Sigh... I never thought I would feel the urge to use my composition class again for the next 2 years...
I didn't notice anything about blacks in the piece. Hispanics now are the largest minority group in America. Asians are doing quite well with above average attendance in prestigious universities and with incomes exceeding other racial groups. Arguments should always be debated among blacks, whites, asians, hispanics. America is no longer a black and white society.
Ok, sure. I didn't mean to insinuate that there aren't other groups in America besides white and black. I guess after a while here you recognize the tendencies of certain posters around here and understand what they're really thinking when they post something. So how have Asians succeeded in our WHITE SUPREMACY society? How have they done it? According to the author they don't have a prayer in whitey's exclusive society. These are obviously rhetorical questions from me - no need to answer them.
I think its a pretty badly written article but the point of it is to show the opposite of what you said. Rather than diminish the accomplishments of caucasians, the point is to acknowledge that while the law for the most part recognizes racial groups equally and treats them equally, racism has not disappeared and that there are still structural barriers to equality that we really don't think about very much. Urban schooling is a great example. You can see how schools are unequally funded across the country. In some urban areas, (which many times are predominately composed of minorities) the schools are poorly funded and poorly managed. Even if they are getting money, many times school administrators are simply corrupt and mismanage the entire system. There is no chance for advancement in a school that serves you with no opportunities. In Kansas City, several urban schools have drop out rates above 50%. The highest level of math taught there is the pre-algebra we learned in 7th and 8th grade. Teachers don't care and the administration is so corrupt that there is a 1 to 1 ratio between teachers and administrators. Even with money, the administration goes out of its way not to spend it wisely, to the detriment of students. The point is that, the best and maybe the only way to combat this problem is simply awareness. In many upper end schools, pressure from parents and the public at large help hold the school administrations in line and provide a check on them. In these poorer school systems, many parents don't have the resources to put up a fight and the public at large is virtually oblivious to this issue. The point of articles like these is not to accuse caucasians of somehow being overt racists that trample all over minorities but rather to point out covert examples of structural inequalities that escape modern day discourse on race issues.
because there isn't institutional baggage of 300 years of slavery for asians. secondly many of them came here educated...so even if they didn't have the linguistic and cultural skills to succeed they had been educated and passed that on to their children. and like it or not. black family status is a problem. im no one to condemn them from a moral standpoint. but simply because nowadays an average home is a two income home. and since there are above average rates of single mothers in black households...there is necessarily an income deficiency.
Our country has not even been in existance for 300 years. I agree with bigtexxx on this one. This always turns into a black/white thing and its annoying. I'm tired of people wanting whites to apologize for being white. Guess what, I had just as much to do with me being white that you had in being another race. Also, almost everyone has problems in life. Stop making excuses as to why you/someone else can't make something of themselves. Everyone catches breaks in some way and everyone gets screwed over for whatever the reason. It is what YOU make of it.
Why is it though that you win in pool when the white ball knocks the black ball off the table? Is someone trying to tell us something?
Look you don't have to apologize for your ancestors anymore. I don't think that's the issue anymore You should at least acknowledge that society is not equal and that just saying "work harder" isn't enough. My example above about urban schools in Kansas City highlights the fact that some people simply don't have a very good chance to advance out of poverty. As annoying as it is when people turn everything into a race issue, it's equally annoying to hear people pretend like there's no issue at all.
Nope. Bowling is the counterpoint. A big, black ball knocking down all those white pins. And the kicker? They've all got red necks!
Society is never equal, it never has been equal, and it never will be equal. I'm not at all saying that it doesn't exist because it does. I just feel that this type of attitude is another crutch that people (of all races) use to b**** about why their life sucks and how they got screwed. Great, you have established that you got screwed, now what are you going to do about it? b****ing doesn't make it any different. There are plenty of people that have had it bad that have done well and plenty of people that didn't have it bad and screwed it all up. It's just what you make of it and excuses won't change your situation. Should we work towards making it more equal? Absolutely but it will never, ever be completely equal for everyone. Stop whining and quit the bull****, look how great the whitey's have it. Life sucks for everyone in some way. Deal.
they haven't. They may attend Universities, and make a decent salary. They haven't succeeded, and they aren't afforded equal respect and protection. Look at the LA riots after the Rodney King trial. Initially after the riots started police units and forces surrounded Korea town to protect it from rioters. However before long phone calls were made, and the units were moved back to protect Beverly Hills instead. The rioting then spread and did large scale damage to Korea town. The reason is because the Koreans didn't have any power, pull or influence which is the real factor of success. They mistakenly believed that if they followed all the rules, worked hard, sent their children to good universities that things would be ok for them. It wasn't. When push came to shove, they were abandoned. Until they have real power and representation, they haven't succeeded.
I disagree. I agree people many times overplay the race card or make too many excuses for their problems. But there is a limit. I'll highlight my example above for purposes of explaining my argument again. We DO NOT ever hear enough about how bad urban schools really are, and how many kids there will never get a fair shot at an education because of innate corruption and a lack of accountability. The only way to foster any sort of public awareness is to "b****" and "complain" about crappy schools or about a lack of funding for law enforcement etc... You, me and almost everyone else on this board lives a "privileged" life. We have everything we could want. We are afforded the best education, the best food, a great family etc, and I find those in our position who continually tell others to quit "b****ing" have a limited understanding of what a "hard life" really is. There is a limit for everything and I agree some people really do complain too much but to make blanket statements that go as far as to say "It's just what you make of it and excuses won't change your situation." is just ridiculous. I would've never learned about Kansas City urban schools if a friend of mine who went to one of those schools "b****ed" and "complained" to me. And after doing further research on the topic and reading articles on the subject, everything he said was in fact accurate. So yes, "b****ing" creates awareness of a subject that no one knows much about. My friend also made it out of Kansas City and goes to school, and yes it was no picnic. But he still has every right to complain and people who don't make it out have that right too. Many try and many fail. The answer is to actually try holding those in charge accountable. Something that hasn't been done for years because a lack of knowledge of the subject. Now you can either admit that some "b****ing" can be good, or you can just tell kids who live in hellish neighborhoods with schools that no one gives a flip about to go "work harder."
Here's the reason for the post, and all others like it. Many people simply say black failures are their own fault and their own problem to deal with, and that society doesn't have a responsibility to try to deal with these inequalities. They act as those racism is gone and there are few lingering effects and that any black person today has equal opportunities as a white person, where that's simply not true.
You're arguing that an incident in Los Angeles 14 years ago by the LAPD means that Asians haven't succeeded in the US? Give me a break. Take a look at their average incomes - they're doing fine. Nobody's going to have a fairytale life where everything is perfect - including Whitey.
Do you believe it would be different today? Please show me a significant way in which Asians have more influence in our govt. now than they did then. I am arguing that the incident in LA is a manifestation of lack of representation and power in govt. As the incident in LA has shown us, salary doesn't mean squat if the govt. won't protect you, because it goes to protect the groups that have power and influence. Show me how much representation in govt. there is and I will let you know how their pathway to success is going. A high salary doesn't do anything if rioters and looters are allowed to kill you or threaten your safety. Whitey has not had protective forces moved from their neighborhoods to go and double check an unthreatened neighborhood populated largely by a different race. Since they hold the majority of power positions in govt. it is unlikely that it will ever happen.
Well, when's the last time Asians have been rioted against and looted? 14 years ago? You have one lame example. That doesn't convince anybody. Try harder.
the example isn't the argument. The argument is that they don't have influence or power. You have yet to show any increase in the influence and power with government. I have an example of what happens without that influence and power. chop chop, my man, get busy. Show me how much influence, power, and pull, Asians have with govt. todya.
