Posted by White privilege…
Racism…
Each of us assumes that our entire community is on code regarding the definitions of these two concepts, including when to accurately apply them. But frankly, we are far from united and consistent on this topic. I’ve noticed this not only in my personal observations over the decades in corporate America and life in general, but also after watching many police body cam videos on YouTube and other videos where some of us address this matter as social commentary. Specifically in the cop body cam videos, there have been so many times some of us misused the racist label that it is weakening our overall strategy to achieve financial equity and grassroots social justice.
For instance, the expression “white privilege” implies that white people inherently have an absolute advantage over every black person in the nation, simply by way of the color of their skin. On one level, there is truth to that because this nation was built on a silly skin color caste system. That’s why if you look at US Census records in the 1800s, they came up with bizarre race names for our people to divide us, while they only had one race, “white,” for all of them. This is evidence of a divide and conquer strategy that has worked till this day.
But on another level, if you look at the stats, particularly income and net worth, a different story emerges. Yes, the median incomes and net worth of our community is lower than whites. But there are many in our community, including myself, who make more than most whites. If absolute white privilege existed, then this would never happen. Also, what a lot of us overlook is that the median income of Asians is higher than that of whites. How can a system of white privilege allow this? Is there now an Asian privilege?
The fact of the matter is that the “white” label can be misleading. In fact, there are many tribes of Caucasians just like other groups. But only the elite of a few of these tribes (the 1%) run this current world system, though that is slowly changing. That means that most white people are not in this club, as the late comedian George Carlin famously quipped. So, can the concept of “white privilege” have two tiers: average white privilege and elite white privilege? Perhaps. It’s worth a discussion, so comment below your ideas.
I work in technology, which has some of the highest paid jobs in the economy. There was a time early in my career when I saw more white faces than all others. But over the past 10-15 years, I’ve seen more Asian faces, especially people from India, some of whom are of dark complexion like me. Two of the largest corporations I did work for recently are based in India. The current company I work for is headed by a sista. I bring all this up to advise us to revisit and dissect what “white privilege” means so that it is updated to the new realities. The 1% who run this current world system indeed have white privilege, but most white people don’t have anywhere near THAT level of white privilege.
The 1% are capable of what I call “macro racism,” which has overt and covert policies that specifically target our community adversely. We call this “institutional racism.” We witness this everyday with our once thriving neighborhoods remaining in a perpetual state of disrepair and economic despair: aka “the hood.” For the 99% of white people, some of those who are racially insensitive are guilty of “micro racism,” which is individual racism, not systemic or institutional like the 1% do. They may say the N word or try to get under our skin with silly, unintelligent stereotype name calling, but in the end, it’s not going to stop us from enjoying our lives. We can simply ignore them. Finally, there are a lot of poor white people, many of whom are homeless. If white privilege is absolute and guaranteed for every white person, then how do you explain this white poverty phenomenon?
By intelligently using allegations of “white privilege” and racism based on stats and facts, rather than emotions, our rationale and public comments on this topic carries more weight and are effective. But if too many of us keep claiming that every white person has “white privilege” or is “racist” without true facts and smart insight, more damage to our community will occur, to the point we will get ignored. In fact, this is already happening in the political world, where we have allowed ourselves to be marginalized and backed into a corner because we lack the median incomes, net worths, and credible debates on white privilege needed to be heard. By comparison, recently the top editors of Wikipedia declared that because of what’s going on in Israel, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) can no longer be seen as reliable on the topic of that country and antisemitism in general. In other words, the ADL kept crying wolf in such an untrustworthy way for so long that Wikipedia is essentially ignoring them. We want to avoid that fate. Let’s work on the economic-political fundamentals and strengthen our use of the race card.
Let us know your thoughts below!
Affluent Blacks of Dallas 