The fact that race is socially constructed does not negate the fact that systematically different patterns of outcomes are produced within a racially stratified society.-- Michael C. Dawson
Black women are a prism through which the searing rays of race, class and sex are first focused, then refracted. The creative among us transform these rays into a spectrum of brilliant colors, a rainbow which illuminates the experience of all mankind.
This is a great oped piece which provides solid examples of the oft-overlooked and illunderstood phenomenon of White Privilege: This is Your Nation on White Privilege. You should read it.
Here's a highlight:
White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she’s disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you’re black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called “terrorist fist bumps”
And if you aren't familiar with White Privilege in the first place, you should read Peggy McIntosh's essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, in which she sets out to define the phenomenon:
As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.
As a white girl who has attended an HBCU for several years, and lived in one of the most racist states in the nation for almost a decade, I've become all too aware of the privileges bestowed upon me by virtue of my pale skin, so for me this is interesting stuff.
A little over 45 years ago, on a humid June night in Jackson, Mississippi, Medgar Evers was gunned down by a White Power Asshole. Medgar was unpacking "Jim Crow Must Go" tshirts from his car at the time he was shot, while his wife and three children waited for him to return home from a long day's work as Field Secretary for the NAACP.
Last night I spent an hour in the house where Medgar was shot. I heard the story of his life's work for racial equality in Jim Crow Mississippi and the ways his family coped with the dangers associated with that work. I saw his blood on the concrete in the carport, and heard the tale of his unjust treatment the night of his death: how there were no ambulances nor police patrol cars available to transport him to the hospital, how his family and neighbors made a makeshift ambulance by placing one of his children's matresses down in the back of a station wagon, and how he was refused treatment at the hospital once he finally arrived.
A 1942 law segregated facilities at hospitals in Mississippi. In 1963 white doctors did not treat black patients to save their lives and the life-saving blood of white folks was withheld from those with black skin. Such pernicious racist practices culminated on the night of June 12, 1963 with the death of Medgar Evers.
It took 30 years to convict the racist son of a bitch whose bullet killed Medgar and left Myrlie Evers a widowed housewife with three small children.
At the Evers' home last night, my husband and I were the only white people present.
Some Many people think that in the year 2008 racism doesn't matter any more; that the problems of slavery and Jim Crow have been left behind as the years have passed, but I'm convinced that these people are wrong. They are either ignorant or blind to the fact of the matter: that racism still plays heavily in the day-to-day lives of many Americans.
So it goes that I'm convinced that racism in America is the second-most insidious socio-cultural innovation to be implemented by humankind for the exploitation of one group by a more powerful group. (The all-time winner of that esteemed honor is, of course, gender.)
I have witnessed the presence of different cultures all my life. In the cultural milleau of South Florida, I had the good fortune to grow up among a diverse population of black and brown Carribean islanders, Jews from the Eastern Seaboard, and brown people from Asia, the Middle East, and other far-flung locales – all interspersed with black and white Americans. I have always found cultural diversity interesting and intriguing. I believe it was partly this exposure to so many different cultures in my formative years that I quickly and easily learned of the mutability of culture and the subjectivity of morality. For this happenstance I am forever grateful to the Universe.
Only when I moved to Mississippi, at the tender age of sixteen, did I come to realize that what I embraced as cultural diversity was associated by others many with fear and malice. Here in the stagnant swamp of the Great River, the vast social divisions are drawn along strict color lines. Race is a potent, narcotic feature of the cultural landscape in this place. Now, at the age of twenty five I find myself deeply immersed in this Mississippian black-and-white abyss, and yet I’m compelled to dive deeper before migrating to the Cold White North.
My undergraduate post-secondary Liberal Arts education at a Historically Black College has profoundly shaped my world view in a way that inspires my scholastic endeavors. To that end I shall travel this summer to UCLA to study the connections between institutionalized racism, ethnocentrism, and the formalization of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. My research is being supported by the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies. This fall, I shall extend my tenure at JSU to encompass graduate studies there until the designated time for the Big Move in summer 2009.
I’m eagerly anticipating the Summer Research Institute experience. There are many reasons for this: I’ve never before lived in a “dorm” situation before, and I’ve never been so far away from my husband for such an extended amount of time. If the demographic of participants of previous years is any indication, I’ll likely be the only white girl in the Humanities program, and I’ve chosen not to disclose my race to the University. As my career progresses, I’m continuously convinced that navigating the socio-cultural landscape of academia shall indeed prove a worthwhile occupational endeavor.
For history 383 –
Reconstruction era marriage and divorce patterns in Mississippi.
The majority of my primary sources would be precedent-setting Court cases, although I could also search the archives for letters, diaries, and the like. Other legal miscellanea, such as correspondence, motions, and memorandum, could also serve as primary sources if only I could get my hands on such.
For sociology 455 –
Race, Gender, and Otherization.
I still have a lot to consider here. This is on the verge of being yet another “broad, overarching idea” !
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I’m suddenly struck by the realization (and the thought: why didn’t I think of that sooner?) of a contradiction inherent of academia. Scholarship is said to be built upon the sharing of ideas - the recitation and criticism of other’s ideas. Why, then, is there the pressure to come up with “original scholarship”?
Last night I had an epiphany: I realized where I’d gone wrong with this blog! I had thought of blogging here as a chore, and associated it with something I needed to be doing as a conscientious aspiring scholar, but I now see that that was all wrong, because this blog isn’t a chore at all; it is a tool!
Yay for me for discovering this.
I have now officially begin my last semester as an undergraduate, on a good note, too. Good, that is, other than the fact that my first class of the semester - Logic - didn’t meet because of a tornado warning.The five classes which will round out my undergraduate studies are: (1) Logic, (2) Contemporary US History, (3) Sociology 455 or, Race and Ethnic Relations, (4) Creative Writing, and (5) Women in US History. So far it’s shaping up to be an interesting semester. I’ll have to get to write a lot, which will be a fulfilling challenge that will allow me to expand and hone my skills as an academic. No worries, just learning new stuff.
The two things I must fret about now are: (1) the GRE, and (2) my UCLA application.
I’m struggling to come up with a feasible research topic. My mind seems stuck in broad, overarching-theme-mode, and I don’t know where or how to pare down. An alumnus of the institute advised me that the research doesn’t have to be self-contained, that it can be part of a larger research project, which is encouraging indeed.
Race and Gender are what I’m stuck on. Specifically, the ways that race and gender are both used to oppress segments of society. These two — for lack of a better description — soci-cultural technologies have profoundly shaped the course of history. This seems so obvious to me that I don’t know where to begin to try to prove it.
Then the thought of socio-cultural technology brings me back to that other historical truth that I have convinced myself of: that human culture - and, accordingly, its myriad assorted mechanism and functions - is a technological innovation just like any other that has made our existence on earth that much easier and efficient-in-a-primitive-sort-of-way.
So I’ve much to mull over.
In the meanwhile I need to do a little sociology 101 review.
