Modeling Equity

This post is the third in a series on Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and organizational equity.

Mental Models are our understandings of how things work. They are the shorthand we use to make sense of the world. They can be simple generalizations or complex and specific. They shape how we act.

I made coffee for myself this morning. That’s what I did. But it’s not really what I did. What really happened was: I walked into the kitchen, found my cup, found, my conical plastic filter-holder, found the paper filter that fit into it, etc… But that’s not what I really did. Here’s what really happened: taking advantage of a subtle and tacit kinesthetic knowledge I have of my own body, I used my legs to convey my body into a specific area of my home. Turning my head in the direction that experience tells me that I am likely to find the ceramic object that I prefer to hold the coffee, etc… But that’s not what really happened. I won’t go into detail, but the process started with electrical impulses traveling within my brain and between my brain and certain impulse receptors in various parts of my body…

And thus we see the power of the Mental Model. If I didn’t have a Mental Model for “Making Coffee,” I would never actually be able to make it. I would be too busy trying to describe it to myself to actually do it.

Our mental models determine not only how we make sense of the world, but also how we take action. For example, I don’t make coffee with a coffee maker, but I’d be willing to wager that those readers that do envisioned a coffee maker as part of the process when I first mentioned making coffee. If you were at my house and I was a poor enough host that you were forced to make your own coffee, it may take you a moment to get on board with the no-coffee-maker method. That is because our Mental Models of how to make coffee would be different in that situation. To make life easier for you (without becoming a better host myself) I would have to give you some information about making coffee in my house. We would then have a Shared Mental Model of how to make coffee and the process would be more efficient.

How much more important and intricate are the Mental Models we have about how human beings and society work? Senge’s work on Mental Models addresses things like the way we work, what the culture of an organization can look like, and how we define success.

Senge also points out that Mental Models that do not effectively address the environment become liabilities because they hinder us from taking effective action:

“New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.” (P174)

Mental Models are often tacit or implicit instead of intentional and explicit. People work within systems and their shared understanding of how things are supposed to happen is learned and communicated unconsciously through the actions of others, what is rewarded, what is punished, what is ignored, etc… within those systems.

In the realm of racial equity, tacit assumptions about people of different racial and ethnic groups as well as our assumptions about the source of inequity shape the discourse and our actions. If those assumptions remain unchallenged we Whites are likely to play roles that perpetuate inequity. Challenging our assumptions and building new skill and understanding about the reasons for inequity can lead us into new, equity-building roles.

Here are some examples of relatively common mental models about race and how they can impact our decisions and behavior.

If we believe that racial inequity is the product of some kind of cultural deficiency in Non-Whites then the means of creating equity would be to teach Non-Whites how to act more like Whites.

But:

If we believe that racial inequity is the product of a historic and present-day system to which we are all socialized without or knowledge, then a great deal of very important learning needs to occur in the minds of Whites.

If we believe the system reflects “the way things are supposed to be” or “the best way to do things,” then we assume that conformity to the norms that are in place would be the goal, regardless of what our race is.

But:

If we believe that the system reflects specific White ways of doing things, then to create systems that are inclusive to all may mean that we assume that Non-Whites are already making personal and cultural accommodations within their organizations and that White people can learn to do things a bit differently, making some accommodation to others.

If we believe that talking about race just perpetuates our differences when what we really need to do is highlighting the ways in which we’re the same, then the reality of the lived experiences of other racial groups are actually shut out. As Whites, we can take this seemingly friendly and supportive view of race and minimize the realities of members of other groups. In so doing, we think we take ourselves out of he racial equation but we’re actually actively (if unconsciously) continuing the status quo.

But:

If we believe that there are important cultural differences (the Human Genome Project has already proven that physical differences based on race are superficial and impossible to define clearly) and that we can speak in overarching themes about different cultures, then we can begin to have frank discussions about race that can lead to new understandings and connections for all.

If we Whites are to be truly effective partners in creating equity then we have to seriously examine the systems that we help to create simply by going in the same direction as we always have and using the notions of race that we’ve always had. Not taking action is a decision. You can tread water in a river but that doesn’t mean you’ll stay in one place.

Mastering Equity

This post in the second of a series on Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline and Diversity and Inclusion.

The Discipline of Personal Mastery is highly appropriate to the practice of creating equity in organizations. Personal Mastery is an approach to individual learning that encompasses the entire person. It includes questioning our assumptions about the world we live in and finding ways of making meaning that embrace broader and broader experiences. It means taking a creative approach to work and life in general. Personal Mastery is grounded in competence and skill, but goes far beyond them. It is the kind of learning many of us Whites need to experience if we are going to be able to create true equity in the workplace.

Personal Mastery entails the kind of learning in which we don’t “see what we believe” but rather take in external data and form hypotheses based on it. It includes an orientation towards learning that is continual, always striving and never arriving.

For many of us Whites who are socialized in a system that not only teaches us that the system treats all races and ethnicities fairly (while the data shows otherwise), but also teaches us to keep Whiteness invisible, this kind of learning will help us to meaningfully integrate others’ experiences of the system that contradict our own beliefs. Personal Mastery can be a way we approach our explorations of the nature of Whiteness, not only its dominance, but also its content: its symbols, preferences, and ways of understanding the world.

My own research is driven in part by the lack of any place or technique that I could find to help guide me through my own racial awareness development process. I have found some workshops, and plenty of writing about what racial awareness development looks like, but there are few resources available to actually help White people develop racial awareness. We often have to do this on our own. We often look to People of Color for help with this, and we can sometimes act as if they are responsible for our development. We sometimes form groups of like-minded Whites, but the racial development journey is so intense and fraught with guilt and shame for so many Whites that the dynamic of these groups can overpower their raison d’être. We Whites often have such deep needs to be seen as non-racist that we unwittingly start to police each other for racist thought, words, and deeds. We want to distance ourselves from anyone in the group who may be expressing what we deem as inappropriate behavior while all the while ignoring some of the realities of our own development as well as some of the ugly realities of what the learning process can look like: the fits and starts of it, the profound difficulty there is in trying to change deep-seated and unconsciously held beliefs, how we can trick ourselves into thinking we’ve grown when what we’ve actually done is gotten more sophisticated at rationalization and denial. Senge’s notion of Personal Mastery attends to the way that developing awareness must impact the non-conscious parts of lives.

In this discussion I think it’s also important to acknowledge that there are some resources for us Whites. One powerful tool that I’ve encountered is the various models of racial awareness development that do exist, models that, while they may not offer a “how-to” method of development, can offer an overview of what development can look like so that we can have some sense of direction or something for which to strive in our journey.

Milton Bennett’s Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (MIS) is one of a number of cultural awareness models that is available to diversity practitioners who want to help their White clients build awareness of themselves as racial/cultural beings. In the model, identity awareness development is manifested as movement from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism. There is also a secondary (though slightly less explicitly described by Bennett) movement which will be described here as movement from commitment (to a set of ethnocentric values), through stages of relinquishment of commitment (in the service of ethnorelativism), to a new commitment (to values that serve the integration of the self with an ethnorelative world and worldview).

The MIS is the product of Bennett’s extensive work with people who have had or are having encounters with other cultures. Its main focus is on the intercultural sojourner. Though not exclusively designed to describe the experience of Whites in a White dominated culture, it addresses the notions of dominance, ethnocentrism, and development. There is also a survey instrument, the Intercultural Development Inventory, that is based on this model and available to practitioners.

The MIS describes two main stages, ethnocentric and ethnorelative. Within each of these stages are three stances. They are described in brief here:

The Ethnocentric Stages:

Denial of Difference: The person does not or is not able to see difference. The person either experiences Isolation from members or experiences of other cultures or, more likely in a heterogeneous society, lives in Separation from them.

Defense Against Difference: The person is able to see difference and negatively evaluates that difference on some level. One can Denigrate other cultures or profess a belief in the Superiority of one’s one culture. This is similar the White identity models that show a sort of active racism/ethnocentrism in earlier stages. The MIS also has the stance of Reversal in this stage, where a person takes up a new culture and begins to Denigrate his or her culture of origin or claim the Superiority of the new culture.

Minimization of Difference: This stage is dominated by the belief that all human beings are essentially the same and that differences between them are superficial. This “sameness” tends to be seen in ethnocentric terms, so that the person in this stage sees universalism as all people sharing her or his values. Physical Universalism is an emphasis on the physiological commonness of all humanity. Transcendent Universalism is an emphasis on the belief that all human beings exist in context or relation to some universal experience such as one God, human nature, or supernatural law. This phenomenon can be likened to colorblind racism.

The Ethnorelative Stages:

Acceptance of Difference: In this stage a person begins to see as valid other ways of acting and believing. The context of human activity becomes central to its interpretation. Behavioral Relativism is understanding that all behavior happens in a cultural context. Value Relativism, which Bennett sees as a bit more difficult to accomplish and engage in than Behavioral Relativism, is the understanding that beliefs and values are held in cultural context. People in this stage can suffer from a lack of the ability to commit or take action.

Adaptation to Difference: In this stage the developing person begins to acquire intercultural communication skills. These include the effective use of empathy and taking multiple cultural perspectives. Empathy is the ability to alter cultural perspectives to act in a way that is culturally appropriate in context. Pluralism is the developing of the ability to shift between cultural perspectives without much thought or effort.

Integration of Difference: The person in this stage actually holds more than one cultural perspective. Contextual Evaluation is the ability to use multiple frames of reference to evaluate human activity. Constructive Marginality is a stance in which the person sees her or himself as a cultural being in context and in process. The person begins to identify more as a cultural sojourner than with any one culture.

Using a model like the MIS, we can begin to reflect on our behavior and attitudes and to compare them with the different stances of the model. We can also use the survey that is based on the MIS to measure ourselves on the scale and get better understanding of where we may be developmentally. People who have read other posts of this blog are aware of my support for the notion of private, individual coaching as a means of racial awareness development. If you can find someone willing (and skilled enough) to deliver this kind of coaching, that can be a starting point for this conversation.

Learning Organizational Inclusion

This post in the first of a series on Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline and Diversity and Inclusion.

Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline describes the path to creating what he calls The Learning Organization – “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future,” to quote him. Since my goal as a practitioner is to continually expand organizations’ abilities to create equity for all, the model of The Learning Organization can act as a resource. Senge describes five clusters of attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs: disciplines, he calls them. He asserts that these five disciplines are the essential ingredients to create The Learning Organization.

The Fifth Discipline, (which Senge, in a rare lapse of clarity, lists first) is Systems Thinking. This is also an appropriate place to start when setting out to build identity equity in organizations for a number of reasons.

One is that White culture is very individualistic and often does not acknowledge any system at work. Post-European thinking, especially in the sciences, has led to many great successes by reducing complex phenomena to series of simpler ideas. However, in systems, human systems in this case, the action of parts of the system that are not visible or obvious to the perceiver often impact others who are outside of our awareness. Or the parts of the system we experience may be impacted upon by other parts of the system that we do not know. Because so often systems in organizations treat people inequitably, Systems Thinking will help us to think about ourselves as parts of a greater system that we may not see in action but which we impact and benefit from.

A second reason that Systems Thinking is a good place to begin is that when Whites do acknowledge a system to be at work, they believe that those systems treat everyone equally. Many Non-Whites have painful stories about deep, systemic racial inequity that they have combated all their lives and, having not experienced it, many Whites believe it does not exist. Systems Thinking will allow many Whites to begin to explore the inequities they may not perceive. It allows us to start taking others’ experiences of inequity as valid data rather than minimizing their experience.

There are a number of aspects to Systems Thinking that Senge discusses, but the one I will focus on here is his notion of “Shifting the Burden.” Underlying problems cause symptoms that are stresses on the system. Often solutions that people devise to those problems shift the burden of the symptom from where it is to another place in the system. The underlying problem persists, but the new solution exists to bear the burden of the symptom. This is the proverbial “band-aid,” surface solution to a deeper underlying problem.

In a Systems Thinking approach, problems are addressed at their root causes rather than at their symptoms. This is achieved by using the right kind of leverage in the right place.

Organizations often address Diversity and Inclusion with a “Shifting the Burden” approach. They see that groups that are traditionally known as minorities are underrepresented in their ranks or are experiencing numerous difficulties in negotiating their careers in spite of their high levels of skill and task success. Positions are created to hold the task of recruiting minority members and helping them succeed in the organization. There are all kinds of remediation and support for them to succeed. Many of these do help and have some success, but still, there is often persistent inequity in the very organizations that are trying to build equity.

To use Systems Thinking to address inequity, we would seek to understand its underlying causes. If we believe that all groups of people are just as capable on average as the White male power majority, a statement that I believe most people would happily agree with, then we have to believe that the problem of inequity lies in the system rather than the groups who are excluded from it. That being the case, the point of leverage for change in the system is not in the people who are treated inequitably but in the people who have the power in the system to change it. None of this is to say that recruitment and support of traditionally minority people should stop. It should continue if it is happening and commence if it is not. But to create organizations that succeed at embracing diversity at every level and create cultures that continue to do so, the people who have power have to be just as skilled at diversity and inclusion as the people who have hitherto had no power. This tends to be Whites, White males in particular.

For some Whites, simply taking a systems view of inequity would be a huge shift of mind away from the traditional individualism of White U.S. culture. Organizationally speaking, leadership that takes a systems view of diversity and inclusion will begin to create learning opportunities for members of the system who have the power to make the system truly fair.

The next post here will discuss Senge’s concept of Personal Mastery and some of the options for curricula that may help those Whites who can benefit from learning inclusion.

Little White Truths

Whites are ironically underserved in many diversity and inclusion efforts. This post is the first in a series on how we might address this.

One of the central assumptions of Middling to Fair is that the primary responsibility for ending racial inequity lies with Whites because it is we who run the systems that perpetuate it. Though many of the overt forms or racism that have existed throughout our history have become socially unacceptable for all but hardcore White supremacist, and in fact have been made illegal by laws such as the civil rights act, there is still a great deal of racial inequity in the US.

To combat this inequity we well-meaning Whites often engage in diversity and inclusion initiatives, especially in the business setting. The typical way this works is something like this: a member of one or more non-dominant groups will be hired to a position like “Vice President of Diversity” and it will be that person’s job to hold the task of “diversity” in the company. For example, a company with a mostly White, mostly male executive committee will hire a Black female to hold the diversity function for the company. She will be expected to create programs that highlight the “minorities” who work for the company, to help those people build skills so that they can be successful in the company as it is, and to recruit other members of non-dominant groups to help the company become more “diverse.” The mostly White, mostly male leadership of this company will openly support these efforts and join in on them when it’s deemed appropriate. Often there will be group work in which all are expected to contribute to the conversation and the people who are not considered “diverse” are expected to appreciate the people who are. The White male leaders will return to their day-to-day work having met their commitments to diversity and sometimes feeling good about having done it. The Non-White and non-male participants will be given continued remediation if it’s deemed necessary to help them be successful in the company. Power in the company remains with the same groups and meaning schemes don’t change.

There are a lot of problems with this model. While it is basically a continuation of the experience of inequity that members of non-dominant groups experience, and while ending that inequity is the goal of my work, their experience is not where my focus lies. It lies in how inadequate this model is at helping Whites learn how to view race and other aspects of identity differently.

Let’s use a very basic example: Bill is a straight White male who has worked pretty hard all his life and has the 80-hour workweeks behind him to prove it. He has finally achieved a leadership role that all would say is appropriate to a person of his career and skill level. He feels like no one has ever handed him a thing. He’s got a lot of people listening to him and not all of them for direction. As is inevitable, some people disagree with Bill’s methods and don’t think he should be in charge. Some want his job. Bill also doesn’t know what all the fuss is about when it comes to diversity. America is the land of opportunity and if you’re willing to work hard you’ll get a fair shake. People should stop complaining.

But Bill knows how even the simplest comment can get taken the wrong way. Joe Biden simply said Obama was clean and it almost ruined him. Bill is not going to make that mistake. So Bill goes diligently to the diversity seminar, listens to people talk about themselves, and nods approvingly. He never, never, would say, “I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.” The “PC Police” would surely come and take him away for that. Bill leaves the seminar without incident and doesn’t have to worry about diversity until the next round of seminars, hopefully not for a couple of years. The diversity manager can make sure the company hires enough of whatever minorities it needs to hire to avoid lawsuits.

It would be outrageous for me to tell people who are targets of identity inequity that they should be patient with “poor Bill” because he just doesn’t know any better. Bill makes decisions that materially impact people in profound ways and he doesn’t get a free pass for ignorance or good intentions. I respect and empathize with those who simply want a revolution to take the power away form those who have it and give it to those that don’t. The centuries that their people have waited for society to change is a compelling argument to which I relate. But the two extremes, the one where we Whites silently do nothing and the one where we Whites become silenced nothings, are flawed. Though it may seem fair to place Whites beneath other groups, to do so would not create an equitable society. It would simply shift the roles of oppressed and oppressor.

If White males are to be engaged fully in diversity, practitioners have to find ways to uncover and focus on Whiteness and maleness that respect and address their fears and concerns and also respect the content of Whiteness. This does not mean catering to their opinions. It means creating interventions that are culturally appropriate and empathetic. There are ways to measure identity awareness in Whites. In the next few posts I will discuss some of them and how they might be used. My own research (though yet incomplete) looks at the facilitators to racial awareness development in White males in an attempt to create better ways to help them move toward greater understandings of the role of Whiteness in their lives, work, and society.

I strongly advocate for an approach that, while it includes working in groups that are diverse, also offers White males the opportunity to connect with coaches who are also White males so that the men doing the developing are more likely to feel comfortable being honest and have the experience of other White males who can challenge their assumptions about themselves and about race. The role of “racial identity” coach or therapist is not one that can be taken up lightly by White males and such men would have to undergo a great deal of training, learning, and/or surfacing of their own racial identity development issues and have profound connections with people of multiple identities to help guide them away from falling into privileged thinking.

Most people want the system to be fair. We Whites are often mortified when we discover how unfair it is and how we benefit from that inequity. None of us were born wanting to be socialized into an unfair system. We are in the odd position of receiving both benefit and harm from the racial socialization of the US (as opposed to other groups who receive only harm). While growing up we have been acted upon by a system that was beyond our control. One of the differences between us Whites and Non-Whites is that, whether we know it or not, the system is in our control.

Equity’s ROI

There is a business case for equity, but do we really need one?

In a recent conversation a fellow diversity practitioner put forth the proposition that to be successful, diversity and inclusion efforts in organizations must be connected to the bottom line and deliver Return on Investment. Otherwise, the argument goes, there is no business case for diversity and inclusion. I find this argument interesting on a number of levels.

My first response is my most basic: at which point does maximizing profit become a liability? As I write this, the already ecologically compromised waters of the Gulf of Mexico are replete with the catastrophic fallout of oil company BP’s failures to stop one of its oil wells from spewing raw crude. This oil spew was the product of corner-cutting that BP did, using seawater instead of heavier sludge to manage the pressure of the oil well. Of course, this disaster is going to cost BP immense amounts of money in clean-up costs and public relations efforts, but what if that was not the case? What if BP could have somehow kept the disaster secret and the government was forced to pay for all the clean-up efforts and no one would know that it was BP’s responsibility? Would BP’s actions in cutting costs that led to this oil spill be considered a good thing? Is the business case of maximizing profits the only case for action in this instance? I find it hard to believe that the majority of executives, when faced with a moral dilemma this clear and simple, would say, “Yes, the profits in this case are what matters and the natural disaster that ensues is irrelevant.”

And in regards to the few who might respond so, how do the rest of us respond? Are we comfortable keeping people with that kind of decision making process in control of our businesses if we have any say at all in the matter? Or do we not feel justified, even compelled, to act to stop people like that from having decision-making power?

I know this is an extreme argument, but looking at the pervasive and destructive impact that social and economic inequity has on the groups who are the targets of it, is it that far fetched? In the US in 2010, we Whites often believe that other people do not have the same opportunities as we do. But we stop our analyses there. We don’t explore the systems that are in place that perpetuate that unfairness, and we have an even harder time seeing how that unfairness gives us Whites advantages, one of the biggest of which is the power to decided what the criteria for success will be many areas, including, ironically enough, our diversity and inclusion efforts. We are often the people who have the power to say, based on an incomplete understanding of the impact of race on People of Color, what inclusion will look like. And we Whites seldom ask ourselves “included into what?” If we are deciding what inclusion is then it goes without saying that we are already “included.” We seldom look at that directly - our own sense of inclusion, versus others’ being excluded. We focus on “helping” the excluded to be more like us rather than on our own development, on how often even our attempts at inclusion are exclusionary because they are efforts to make others be like us rather than make the system more welcome to difference.

The idea that companies need to have and pursue a moral purpose is nothing new, nor is it specific to racial equity in organizations. In its groundbreaking study of Sandler O’Neill Partners’ powerful response to their devastating losses on 9/11, TRIAD Consulting Group found that having a moral purpose was central to the company’s success in the aftermath of that disaster. And while these successes did show a remarkable return on investment, they did not occur out of the drive for ROI. ROI was a by-product of the surviving leaders’ need to do what was best for the members of their company, to care for them.

The book The Puritan Gift by Hopper and Hopper discusses at length the sense of working for the greater good that pervaded the US business mindset from the 16^th century onward (as destructive as US business was to racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation equity).

Both of the examples listed here are not divorced from ROI. Moral purpose and the greater good do show return on investment. I use these examples, however, because they show how ROI isn’t the only, or even primary, goal of healthy businesses. A striving for what’s best for everyone can be primary in robust, lucrative businesses.

I’d also like to point out that ROI is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s say for a moment that we could measure equity with a number. Let’s say that my company was at 85% equity—85% of what happens in my company turns out fairly for all people regardless of their identities. What if I could spend 1% of my profit this year to make my company 100% equitable? Isn’t that ROI? I’d bet the people who would have ended up in that unfair 15% had I not invested in equity think it is.

The irony of what I’m arguing here is that the real struggle in all of this in not about the kind of “return” we are getting but the kind of “investment” that needs to be made on the part of us Whites in order for equity to have a chance. Learning a new way of seeing something as profound as the impact of race on people in the US is an intense, personal task that may offer many benefits and successes along the way, but never really ends. Much like People of Color often report never being able to fully let their guards down, that some form of racial inequity is often lurking in the most innocent of situations, we Whites likely never completely unlearn the racially limited socialization that we are subjected to in the US. The business of becoming an ally in equity is a lifelong investment.

Racing Arizona

Recent legislation is bringing to light an underlying racial animosity that many People of Color see clearly every day and many Whites fail to perceive for their entire lives.

I’d like to invite people to think about the recent legislation in Arizona regarding programs and curricula that are considered “Ethnic Studies.” The legislation prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

There are many rhetorical and philosophical contradictions embedded within this legislation that I will not touch on here. What I would like to discuss is the ways in which this legislation promotes and supports Whiteness. In other words, it makes all studies in Arizona White Ethnic Studies.

As mentioned above, classes are prohibited that:

• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Within these two statements lies the inherent contradiction that underlies so much of White Privilege and contributes to the current system of racial inequity in the US. It uses the fallacy of a race-neutral system to perpetuate White values and diminish or eradicate the values of others.

Individualism is a dimension of White US culture. The US, in fact, rates highest of all national cultures on the dimension of Individualism. And Individualism is particularly white. Other racial/ethnic groups within the US are more Collectivist in general than Whites. When we say that our classes must be designed to treat people as individuals, we are designing classes using the White worldview and as such these classes are designed primarily for one group: Whites. This may seem less explicit than the ethnic studies that the legislation is intended to address but, because these classes are designed using a White frame of reference, they build racial solidarity among Whites while at the same time diminishing solidarity among other groups. This is a means of making White students supreme among other groups and it is an example of how modern, unconscious racial inequity is perpetuated.

At the same time, these classes act to assimilate Non-Whites into the Individualism of Whiteness and ultimately Whiteness in general. Some Whites don’t see any problem with this. They believe that this is “America” (while forgetting that countries like Mexico are in “America” as well, or that Arizona was once part of Mexico) and that people who live within the US’s borders need to assimilate into US culture. I’ve heard the argument made that every culture imposes itself on others, that stronger cultures (in terms of holding power in a society) always dominate weaker ones, that people always want to have their worldviews advanced even at the expense of others’. According to this argument, these laws should be seen in that context, and the fact that the government was concerning itself at all with non-dominant groups is proof that the US is actually more respectful of other cultures than most. I have a few objections to that argument.

The first is the simplest: just because everybody does it doesn’t make it right. It is not acceptable, and it doesn’t make it ok to do nothing while inequity happens in my nation. I never hear people saying we should stop enforcing laws against stealing because “there will always be people who steal.” Why would we want to throw up our hands and do nothing about racial inequity simply because it’s very possible that it will always exist in one form or another?

Second: if some members of the White population of the US want to act in a way that imposes a certain set of cultural values on others, then we should not pretend that we aren’t. We should at least stop kidding ourselves that we are a society based on real freedom (we’re NOT kidding the Non-Whites, folks, they already know). This kind of blindness to our own lack of cultural sympathy not only allows us to do harm to others, it makes us hypocritical and is ultimately damaging to own collective psyche. We hurt ourselves when we base our view of ourselves on a lie. Let’s cut the bull and call our insistence that others share our worldview what it is.

Individualism, while it allows for some of the best aspects of US culture, such as the legacy of the visionary to buck convention and create new things, also acts as a means of separating people so that they cannot create common cause to promote their best interests.

The Individualism discussion is full of contradictions, especially when one powerful group works to impose Individualism on others. What if those being imposed upon don’t want to be treated as Individuals? What if they do feel solidarity with their own or other groups? As Individuals, do they not have the right to act and feel so? Do people who feel Collectivist have an equal say?

This legislation also seems to forget that there are millions of tax-paying, Non-White citizens who, while they may have a love of the United States, also have a love of their heritages. They have the right to have those heritages reflected in the curricula of their schools. Throughout our history, becoming “American” has meant leaving behind one’s cultural heritage to be able to participate as fully as one’s outward appearances would allow in the economic prosperity of the US.

Much of what’s happening in Arizona right now, such as this legislation or the recent new immigration laws, are attempts to deal with huge amounts of strain that are being put on a system called upon to deliver services to a sizable group of untaxed people during the worst economic downturn in a generation. Of course, paying taxes isn’t the only way that people contribute to an economy, but even given this context, this is yet another example of how when the going gets tough in the USA, People of Color are told to get going.

Built for Guilt

For most Whites, racial guilt is unavoidable. How we deal with it makes all the difference.

Nobody likes White guilt. For us Whites the reasons are obvious. Guilt feels bad. We don’t want to go through life with the weight of racial guilt on our hearts, minds, and spirits.

For People of Color, the perils of White guilt are even greater. Well-intentioned Whites who are driven by their unconscious sense of guilt often attempt to “help” Non-Whites in ways that reinforce unconscious racial stereotypes and, while meant to help create equity, create and perpetuate inequality.

Most of us Whites, if we are to develop our racial awareness, will have to have some kind of experience with feelings of guilt. The processes that many of us need to go through, and the realizations that we need to have about how the system treats the races differently, are bound to push our guilt buttons and few things are more important to the development of racial identity awareness in us Whites than how we deal with it. This is because guilt not denied, not avoided, not wallowed in, but, dealt with appropriately, can grow to become a sense of personal responsibility.

To avoid feelings of guilt, some people throw out both guilt and responsibility. I used to say, “My family wasn’t even in America when slavery existed. I didn’t benefit from it at all.” Volumes have been written on the impact of slavery on the US economy and how all of that created wealth went on to fuel the post-slavery economy, which eventually did benefit my family which, by virtue of our European descent and physical characteristics, was able to “become White.” More immediately, the belief that I have to connect my privilege to slavery denies the relationship between those today who are disadvantaged by the system and those who have advantages in the system.

To avoid feelings of guilt, some people become hyper-vigilant or “politically correct.” They take an intellectual approach to race, and focus on surfaces and symbols, as if,  once everyone says "the right thing," there would be no problems. The problem with “political correctness” is that it does not go far enough to address inequity. Many people in the social service field struggle with this. They “just want to help.” They think that by focusing on the people who are defined as “underprivileged” they are doing good work. Social programs are notorious for often exacerbating the problems of populations that are the targets of racism through their paternalistic approach to the problem of race. In the end, unconscious guilt contributes to the continued disempowerment of target populations and the entrenched power of those who already have it.

Rather than avoid guilt, some people wear it like a suit of armor. They reject any legitimacy of White society or culture, often taking on only Non-White modes of thought, action, and cultural symbols such as dress, food etc… They cannot separate the very real dominance of Whiteness from any other aspect of it, which is discussed at greater length in Stuck in the Middle without You elsewhere on this blog. This approach leaves Whites who might otherwise learn to practice social justice no legitimacy for their own cultural experience. I’m sure there are numerous other ways not mentioned here that people act to avoid guilt.

But where does this leave us? How do we deal with our racial guilt without somehow infusing our actions with it? The first thing we have to do is get honest about our thoughts and feelings about race in a nonjudgmental way. No one was born hoping to be a racist. Our society has trained us to act and think in certain racial ways and we are only doing what we were taught to do. There are no such things as bad thoughts or feelings, only harmful or helpful actions. Give yourself room to see the racial stereotyping you may do without judging it. Accept it if, for now, you feel frustrated with how much people talk about race. There are powerful forces at work on us Whites every day trying to convince us that there is no race problem. A look at the numbers: who lives in poverty, unemployment, life expectancy, and a host of other indicators, show that certain racial groups are having a tougher time of it than others in the US. You can either “blame the victims” or decide that society needs to move and change to create fairness.

As a developing White person, I struggle with finding people I trust to talk with about my Whiteness and my needs to develop my own racial awareness. We Whites are so averse to being seen as racist that we often automatically judge our fellows who may be struggling with their racial identities. Even when gathered to discuss racism, we police each other’s statements, if only to distance ourselves from any utterance a fellow White may make that strikes us as not reflecting the precisely correct viewpoint, as if we’re all supposed to create ourselves into perfect Non-racists with no mistakes along the way.

If you can’t find others to talk to about race, write me at this blog. I’m always up for a chat about Whiteness.

Stuck in the Middle without You

Separating Whiteness from Privilege is too radical for some and too conservative for others.

My introduction to the world of racial identity development was through the study of Multicultural counseling and psychological models of racial/ethnic development. Most of the models that focus on White identity development include a final, ongoing phase or stage in which the developing White person sees and understands White dominance, ethnocentrism, and/or racism in his or her life and the broader world, but also has a sense of the value of White culture for himself or herself and society as a whole. Whites are a group that is dominant, and that dominance is in some ways central to Whiteness while not being the entire content of Whiteness. Actual White culture is viewed as a value-neutral culture that, in its dominance, is imposed unfairly on others.

I had the good fortune to study under Derald Wing Sue who uses the example of ethnocentric White psychotherapists who judge Asian and Asian American people as being underdeveloped if they have a more collective and intense connection to their families than an individualistic White person may have. In a multicultural perspective individualism and collectivism are two worldviews, each of which has benefits and drawbacks. Ask one of my Japanese friends living in the US about the relief of not needing to worry so much about the collective, or come with me to visit their families in Japan, and experience the warmth that a stronger collective can offer, and you’ll understand my own experience of the two opposite and valid worldviews, each of which encompasses some tradeoffs.

Or another example: the White dominated academy may hold European and Euro-derived art forms above other art forms as the standard by which all art is judged. A multicultural perspective is that there is a White artistic tradition that is value neutral and it is the dominance of that tradition that makes it a destructive, dehumanizing force for people who hold other cultural traditions.

Or a final example: Whites who do not believe in White Privilege might see any perceived inability to succeed on the part of Non-Whites as stemming from some kind of racial, ethnic, or cultural deficiency. The multicultural perspective is that Whites often do not see how their own successes are often much more dependent on the goodwill of other Whites who hold power than they would like to believe . Multiculturalism would say that growing up culturally White bestows upon a person the types of behaviors and attributes that other Whites find familiar and therefore value. It’s not the behaviors and attributes themselves that are oppressive; it is the system’s (often unconscious) use of those behaviors and attributes as selection criteria that makes them oppressive. It's not only White people, but the system itself, created by Whites, that reinforces Whiteness as "the way things should be."

Of course, this is not only an "either/or" proposition. White cultural preferences themselves can play a role in perpetuating White dominance. For example, the White preference for individualism is not only a cultural attribute, but also a reinforcing mechanism that helps allow Whites to see only individual causes for failure and success when there are often systemic contributors as well. Individualism in and of itself plays a role in oppression, but this is still within the context of individualism being a trait of the dominant group. If Whites were not dominant, there would be no dominance to reinforce.

I am White person who sees racial significance everywhere and believes that White Privilege is central to success or failure in the US. Whites who do not share my perspective often see me as misguided. They hold to belief that the U.S. is the land of equal opportunity for all and they point to successful Non-Whites as proof. They see Non-White exceptions to the norm as proof that the exception IS the norm.

As a racial activist who sees White culture as being more than oppression, other activists who often believe that Whiteness is only racism often view me as an apologist. Some would have me seek out cultural identity in the immigrant experience of my grandparents and great grandparents, an experience that holds little power to the way I make meaning in my daily life.

Whiteness was created in the US by English settlers trying both to differentiate English bonded servants from African bonded servants (and oppress the latter more fully) AND to hold on to an English identity in their post-English lives. The process of assimilation to which subsequent immigrant groups have been subject is no less than oppression. But, though I am the descendent of non-Anglo immigrants, I am not and immigrant myself. I was born into Whiteness and for better and/or worse, I was not assimilated but socialized to Whiteness. I have very little desire to seek out identity in the national or ethnic identities of my ancestors. In fact, it is in and of itself a trait of Whiteness to break with one’s ancestors in matters of identity and as I am often heard to say: I am White and I have White cultural preferences for my personal life. While being forced to assimilate by the dominant group is oppression, and was oppression to my grandparents and parents, to have my own desire not to seek identity in their experiences devalued by anti-racism activists risks what Paulo Freire might call a continuation of the oppressor mindset.

It tends to be People of Color who give me permission to remain culturally White as I engage in dialogue and action aimed at dismantling White Privilege (or perhaps BECAUSE I do so). As I once heard Peoples Institute co-founder Ron Chisolm say, “White people doing this work will tear each other apart.” Of course we will. It often feels like we Whites are so busy trying to distance ourselves from our own unconscious racism that we begin to project it onto other Whites and start to act as thought-police for each other.

I don’t police my thoughts. I know I often make bigoted assumptions. I have come to believe that there are no such things as bad thoughts or feelings, only constructive or destructive actions. What I try to do is manage my words and deeds, to decide what attitudes merit action and which merit continued silent repose within my psyche. As Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki says, “If you want to control your cow, give it a large pasture.” This is the mechanism by which I build a White identity that doesn’t oppress and still allows me my cultural identity.