Middling to Fair

Pre-racial

2011-05-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

How can we be "post-racial" if we've never seen ourselves as racial beings?

I began this post wanting to write about the term Post-racial. It’s bandied about in the media and I’ve never been comfortable with it. But that’s no surprise: I’m usually uncomfortable with just about anything I see-read-or-hear in commercial media when it comes to race. So much of the US hasn’t ever taken a focused look at what race IS let alone the impact of race on daily life in the US. Most of us White folks don’t even realize that WE are racial beings (in as much as anyone is a racial being – race being a social construct- or as I like to call it, the most meaningful and important nonexistent thing in the US). When we Whites talk about race, we almost without fail talk about other people and not ourselves. With so little thought given to ourselves as racial beings, it’s no wonder we’re a bit simple in our outlook on race.

A web search of the term post-racial brought varied responses. Much of them had to do with Obama’s election and the notion that he transcends race as a politician (we White folks never seem to have to transcend race). Some talked about how his election ushered in a new post-racial era in which race is no longer (or at least less) relevant in the US. One self identified traditionally valued conservative web site near the top of the response list talked about the fallacy of post racialism and how Whites will continue to be blamed for Black peoples’ failings (such as the achievement gap) in the Obama era. I think that anyone who has read any of this blog will know what deluded, barely concealed bigotry against Black folks I consider that to be.

The fact is that I still find it easy to get fired up in exactly the way that the US commercial media wants me to get fired up when it uses such terms that lack any nuance. It’s easy for me to confuse the revenue-driven chatter of the airwaves (which the US government gave away for free a generation before I was born) with actual interaction and discussion on the matter, including the questions of how race is lived in the US today.

So this post is in a way a refutation of the term Post-racial. But is also hopefully a refutation of the process by which I collude with commercial media to short-circuit the important discussions of our day. That doesn’t mean that I will ignore the notion of post-raciallity. What happens in the media affects us all in different ways and post-raciallity is an idea that millions have taken into their consciousnesses. But I will acknowledge that without some kind of mutual interpersonal interaction with others, and without action on my part, my blogging is only one tiny photon bouncing between two vast mirrors: the commercial media and the US people.

When I think about race in the US, I don’t think immediately about People of Color. I think about White people. I do this because that’s where my experience has led me. As a White man, when I first began the process of my own awakening to multicultural values I started by focusing on everyone but myself. I wanted to reach out and help people of other races, ethnicities, genders, disparate abilities, etc… to be more successful, to have a better chance at their share of the American Dream.

As time passed I began to see and believe that much of the struggle of race in the US is one that must take place in the hearts and minds of White people. It is we who don’t see ourselves as racial beings. It is we who don’t understand the impact of race in the US. It is we who live in a system that reflects the values that we are socialized to have and in its complex way grants us greater access to resources because of our physical phenotype and so much of the identity that comes with it. And so few of us Whites spend much if any time thinking about Whiteness. I’ve found only two general groups that do, luckily only one with which I’ve come into actual contact.

The first group is White Supremacists. This is the group with which I haven’t had real contact. From what I’ve seen and read, they have created various mythologies of Whiteness designed to highlight their belief in the superiority of the White race as they understand it, mythology that underpins their assertion that White people should possess the power in society. They hold European, especially northern European, forms to somehow be the optimal forms of humanity, but from what I’ve seen, they take the forms they like and leave the rest. They often will say that they are under siege and only fighting for the existence of their race, but those arguments seem to me to be arguments for racial dominance, not racial survival they never question the meaning of the word race or its vagueness as a construct. They never discuss the fact that what they call the superiority of the White race is nothing more than their own preference for the things that are familiar to them. They never question their own authority to deem one thing inherently superior to another. They want to continue the dominance of White people and any threat to that dominance feels like a threat to survival. This is not my notion but comes straight from Paulo Friere and The Pedagogy of the Oppressed – the oppressor feels oppressed when he loses his ability to oppress others. I won’t spend any more time talking about this brand of White Supremacy because the majority of Whites in the US are repulsed by its blatant racism and violence. The fact that most people equate the word racism with this kind of behavior is the reason why I don’t use the word racism even to describe what many would call modern, aversive, or unconscious racism. This is a notion that was made very clear to me by a Black woman who works in, among other areas, the field of diversity. The term racism shuts too much of the conversation down. These days I lean towards the term racial partiality.

The other group of Whites who are doing a lot of thinking about Whiteness is the White antiracist movement (WAM), folks with whom I’ve spent a good deal of time. As a group they have done a great deal of powerful thinking about Whiteness as a system of oppression in the United States. I’ve learned a lot from my time spent in Undoing Racism workshops with The Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond and reading various White antiracist authors. But the thinking about Whiteness I’ve found in the movement stops short of thinking through the cultural realities of Whiteness. They define Whiteness only in terms of the role it plays in oppression. Whiteness has no actual cultural content in this viewpoint.

This is an ironic continuation of the classic notion in the White US that “we don’t have a culture, we’re just White.” In discussions with people in the WAM, when I talk about my cultural identity, I’m often told that I need to seek out my Italian heritage and reclaim it because it was taken away from me in the bleaching process that turned my grandparents White in the early 20^th century. To them, the fact that Italian identity was never something that was truly available to me and as such was never taken from me is only proof of my denial of who I am: The fact that I feel no desire to find a deeper affinity with that heritage is proof that I’m still a prisoner of Whiteness. What is lost on them is that I’m actually defending my identity as a culturally White person. They don’t see any irony in the fact that they are responding to the history of Whiteness’s obliterating others’ identities by attempting to obliterate White identity. Some will simply defend the obliteration of Whiteness as the only way to end racism and see me as clinging to my White identity in an attempt to avoid my own development and perpetuate racism. I return to Friere here and his notion that the oppressed can perpetuate the oppressor mind when they strive to become oppressors themselves. Turning Whiteness on its head and making it, instead of the be all and end all, an empty structure that does only ill, is trading White Supremacy for White Abasement. Not only is that a tough sell to a lot of White folks, but it perpetuates the cycle of oppression.

Without a frank look at the lived experience of Whiteness we Whites will remain Pre-racial: we will be people who have not yet begun to experience and express ourselves as racial beings and to understand the lived experience of others.

Stay tuned to M2F for some thoughts on the middle way to a White identity that respects the White cultural experience and relinquishes racial dominance.

My Maine Man?

2011-01-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

A recent New York Times article began:

Gov. Paul LePage of Maine directed a graphic insult at the state’s N.A.A.C.P. leaders on Friday after they questioned his decision to pass on attending Martin Luther King Birthday events in Bangor and Portland.

The article is very brief and worth skimming before you read on here (by clicking the hyperlink above).

I won’t dwell on the fact that the NAACP only said that it seemed that the Governor wasn’t concerned with their interests. It’s not a huge leap in logic for LePage to infer some kind of racial meaning to this statement since the NAACP exists to advocate for People of Color. But, from what I am given to understand in the article, it is, ironically, the Governor who “plays the race card” by bringing his Black son into the argument.

We can infer from the fact that the Governor has taken a Person of Color into his home and heart that he knows that racial differences are superficial, that the color of one’s skin is no indication whatsoever of the potential that a person has at birth. But is also seems clear, from the Governor’s response to the NAACP, that his understanding of the lived experience of race in the United States is superficial.

Governor Mr. LePage is doing what a lot of White people do. He is living in the belief that because he loves one Black person, or a small number of Black people, that his understanding of what it means to be Black in the United States is complete. Let me say this unequivocally: having a close relationship with a Black person, or a few Black people, does not mean you have rid yourself of your responsibility to work for racial equity as a White person. It certainly doesn’t mean that you do not continue to benefit from the system of inequity that favors White people. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t have any unconscious prejudices towards Black people in general (though in this instance, I will not explore another person’s unconscious after reading one brief article about him in the newspaper). Think about the number of incredibly sexist men who have wives and daughters, wives and daughters, I’ll add, whom they love and who love them. These relationships do not stop these men from pursuing sexist goals at work and leisure. We White men often have people who are members of other identity groups in our lives for whom we genuinely care, who genuinely care for us, but who constantly have to make allowances for our ignorance and insecurity, even though it is they who pay the very price for our shortcomings. The generosity of some of the people in our lives is truly staggering if we think about it.

The concerns of Black people and other People of Color in the United States have to do with the many inequities to which they are subjected. Maine’s NAACP and Black community are actually losing out because the Governor has a Black son. Because he loves his son he seems to feel that he can ignore the concerns of the Black community. He seems to think that not only has his own personal racial awareness development progressed enough, but that is own development is sufficient: that if he can somehow prove that he is not motivated by basic bigotry then he can be excused from taking direct action to address racial inequity in Maine in his role as its Governor. The fact that he may have inherited a state that perpetuates institutional inequity doesn’t seem to concern him and that leads me to fear that his understanding of the impact of race in how life is lived in the US is limited. And since the Governor has brought his son onto the fray, I’ll ask: “What can you do, as Governor of Maine right now, that can make the system more fair for your son and his own children in the future?”

One last non-racial point that just sticks in my craw: the spokesman for the Governor made a statement along the lines of “the Governor has always been combative and his response in this situation is what people have come to expect.” To me, this sounds a lot like, “The Governor has always been a jerk so it’s ok for him to be a jerk now.” Wrong answer.

Update 1.17.10: LePage ultimately changed his mind and the tenor of his speech and did attend an MLK Day event. Keep up the self-reflection, Gov, and listen, listen, listen to your constituents of color!

Mutually Inclusive

2011-01-14T09:02:00.000-08:00

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

Shared Vision and Team Learning are the final two of the five disciplines that Peter Senge espouses to be the facilitators of The Learning Organization.

Shared Vision is logical to follow the previous discipline of Shared Mental Models since the both disciplines involve shared meaning making. Shared Vision is, in a way, a Shared Mental Model of what we are trying to create. Our vision will flow from our mental models. Yet, as with any attempt to move a group of people from one way of doing things to another, it is key that the group has an explicit goal or destination in mind. Senge states that people who share a vision are “bound together by an aspiration.”

To quote Senge further: “At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question, ‘What do we want to create?’” An explicit Shared Vision is essential when we gather together to create racial equity. People have such disparate ideas about what race really is, how it impacts our lives, and what should be done about it that without a Shared Vision, we could spend a lot of time and energy working at cross purposes. We could also have members of our group who have visions for our future that are based in assumptions that do not include the perspectives of non-dominant groups and unwittingly perpetuate the dominant discourse. It’s very important that we Whites internalize other groups’ perspectives to avoid this, and work in active and honest communication with them to be sure we’re inclusive. (I guess what I’m saying here is that to be inclusive we had better be inclusive. An inclusive future starts with an inclusive present!) In fact, it is often advisable to have non-Whites leading the drive to create more equity in organizations, but we must be sure to guard against two habits that White led organizations often have: 1) to “outsource” diversity to members of non-dominant groups in such way that Whites are not responsible or accountable for building equity, and 2) having members of non-dominant groups lead in the diversity drives but nowhere else in the organization.

The final of the five disciplines is Team Learning. Team Learning is a way of creating alignment among members of a team so that their individual visions become extensions of the team’s Shared Vision. Team Learning calls for all members of the team to be skilled in dialogue and discussion. These two words have very specific and different meanings in this context. In dialogue, the goal is to build understanding. People in dialogue suspend their own opinions or beliefs while they deeply listen to others’. By practicing this, people are able to internalize others’ perspectives and build communication within the team. In discussion, different views are presented, defended, and the preferred view is chosen. These two types of communication practices can be highly complimentary. They allow the best ideas to surface and synthesis to occur in a way that a final decision is truly made by the team rather than some subset of people who may have the most power, or who may be the most verbally dominant. In groups where racial equity is the subject of their focus, Whites often have a hard time stepping back and allowing Non-Whites to express their experiences , views, and aspirations. Practice in dialogue as it is defined here could help minimize this dynamic in groups. On the other end of the spectrum, discussing race can be such a heated and frightening experience for some Whites that a team with good discussion skills might be a place where they can express their views and get the kinds of developmental feedback or support that can facilitate their own racial awareness development.

When people come together to make meaning, there are often members of the group who have unconscious needs that they seek to gratify. We Whites who do racial work can be so ambivalent about what we’re doing. We are raised in a society that teaches us to act according to the dominant discourse and these habits of mind are often slow to leave us despite our best efforts and intentions. We can be so determined to avoid our own racism that we become the “racism police,” projecting our own unconscious racism onto others, seeing them as the bearers of racist thinking that, if we were to be completely honest, we still harbor in a dark corner of our own minds. We can create a sort of “hegemony of the oppressed” by rejecting all things White as bad. Seeking to share a vision can become cover for squashing dissent and disallowing a certain kind of open diversity. Dialogue and Discussion can act to keep the group form doing this as well.

One of the reasons I chose to use The Fifth Discipline as a framework for creating racial and ethnic equity in organizations is because of its pragmatic transcendence of the usual individualistic approach of US organizations. In our attempts to be objective in how we approach organizational life, the emotional, intuitive, and interconnected quality of human performance is often ignored or deemed too personal to discuss at work. Senge’s work makes room for the emotional and intuitive in the organizational setting. How often do we try to acknowledge and address our lived experiences of work? Some people don’t want to be bothered, thinking it’s all a waste of time. Some don’t trust their organizations to respect their more personal experiences, often with very good reason, having suffered in one way or another for any kind of personal disclosure. Add working on racial equity to the mix and the emotional stakes get even higher. Most people believe that their own approach to racial issues is the best way to create fairness for everyone. When one of my fellow White males says that the best way to deal with racial differences is to pretend those differences don’t exist, he truly believes, at least in his conscious mind, that he is advocating for equality for all. How can one intervene to move another person from a belief which is destructive to others but that he believes is truly generous and liberating? Is it even possible? Can we afford to believe that is isn’t?

Modeling Equity

2010-11-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-09T10:19:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

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 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 were everyone to say the right thing, there would be no problems. The problem with “political correctness” is that it does not go far enough to address inequity. Social service organizations are bursting at the seams with people in this stance. 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 is 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, the hardest thing for me has been to find 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

2010-02-11T19:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Differently the Same

2009-12-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Our similarities are fundamental and our differences are central.

The study of genetics has shown that our racial differences are entirely superficial. There is actually more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. The vast majority of physical differences among us are simply in the shape, color, texture, etc… of our outer coverings.

In some very real ways we are “all the same under the skin.” And yet, many people I know shiver when they hear that statement uttered. “All the same under the skin” is one of the ways that people who “don’t see skin color” describe their attitudes about race. This “colorblindness” to race confuses the ways we are the same with the ways we are different. While the genetic-based differences between us are superficial, the cultural preferences and lived experiences of people who are of differing racial and ethnic groups can be vastly different.
This is the fundamental reason why I choose to focus so much on the differences between races in my strivings to contribute to building racial equity rather than how we are “all the same.” Many Non-Whites have been brave and generous enough to risk frankness about race in the face of White dominance. If I listen to them I can hear how their lives are different from mine because of their identities. As a White man, I strive to understand the impact of my own race on my experience and the impact of the collective and individual behaviors of Whites on others if I am to have any chance to be a positive force for racial equity in my world.

Another reason to focus on our differences is something more specific to US culture: we often have a sense that we have no culture, that we just see things the way they are and do things in the way that makes most sense, especially us Whites. This is a bit different than what many people in other groups may feel about their own cultures. People who come from cultures that are not as dominant as White US culture often have a sense of what culture is and how all of us use culture to make meaning. They may prefer their own or denigrate others’ cultures, but the concept of culture itself exists in their psyches. In White US culture, the sense that there is no culture means that we can’t even have the conversation, or that if we do, we are arguing from a stance of superiority that is greater than most. We are the enlightened ones, standing above the quaint concept of culture, showing respect for the concept because other people seem to need it while we don’t ourselves. It dampens our ability to invite cultural differences into our experiences and makes us less skilled at inviting culturally different people into our lives.

The way we are most fundamentally the same is that we are human beings with 100% valid cultural and identity experiences that deserve equal consideration.

The Invisible Everything

2009-10-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

Houston, we have a problem (and we don’t see it).

I love the movie Apollo 13. Every time I see the scene in which (Spoiler Alert!) the parachutes open above the command module to the understated “nasa-speak” of Tom Hanks saying, “Hello Houston, this is Odyssey: good to see you again,” I grow a little teary for this triumph over adversity and the profound group effort that made it happen.

I respect the accomplishments of the space program, accomplishments that may lead to a greater good for humankind, but also for their own sake, even as I understand (and in part agree with) those who think that the space program is wasteful or superfluous while we have so many troubles here on earth.
The space program is in many ways an apex of US accomplishment. It is also a specifically White accomplishment in two distinct ways. First, it is the outcome of the White value system and mindset: it is structurally White. Second, it is the product of the labors of White males to the near exclusion of all others: it is restrictively White.
Here are a few of the ways in which the space program is structurally White: it is highly scientific and technological in nature. Technology is not the sole providence of White US culture, but it is an important aspect of it. White culture has tended to work to wrest accomplishment from the grasp of the natural world with technology for leverage; to subdue nature rather than submit to it. One can also see reductionism, another aspect of White culture, at mission control where each specialist sits in front of his screen focusing on his area of expertise and adding to the whole. At the same time we see White individuality in the instances where each expert in his field can offer input that affects the decision of the group; or when the character Ken Mattingly pushes and pushes to find the right sequence to restart the command module; or, even more pointedly, in how the entire nation becomes swept up in its concern for these three astronauts. Even the form of the movie itself has a linear narrative thread that is very native to the White literary tradition.
It is restrictively White because it is the product of the White male exclusivity of the time in which the movie takes place. Apollo 13 Director Ron Howard has, I believe, captured this accurately. My own rather unscientific study was to watch the movie looking for non-White, non-males, looking at their roles in the story, and then to view footage from the actual mission. I found the race and gender make-ups of each similar. The movie has three Black people who have lines. All are males. To be fair, other identity groups are given short shrift as well. White women are represented as cast members in the movie, but there is not one woman with any kind of official authority represented. Beyond that, homosexuality is not even referred to in the movie and apart form Jim Lovell’s mother, who has had a stroke, all people we see are able-bodied. This is not an indictment against Ron Howard’s film direction: I believe that he captured the reality of the mindset of mainstream USA at the time.
At one point in the film Jim Lovell is asked by a reporter, “Why go back to the moon? We’ve been there already?” He responds, “Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the New World and no one returned in his footsteps.” What could be more ironic? From a White perspective, it captures the sense of exploration, expansion, growth, and vision for the future that is central to the White legacy of its European roots. But imagine what would not have happened to the indigenous people that were in the Americas before Columbus if no one had followed in his footsteps. I imagine Jim Lovell’s question has a very different meaning to them.
The Whiteness of Apollo 13 highlights the dilemma of many Whites who see racial inequity and want to work for a fairer society: how can we feel good about being White when our greatest accomplishments are tainted by exclusion and exploitation? It often seems like we have the choice of two opposites. Either we can feel “White Pride,” a concept that has been co-opted by groups who feel that White dominance is a good thing, or we feel “White Shame,” and reject Whiteness as being only a means of oppression. Either way, we cannot be White and working towards a healthy, fair racial identity. Many people in the White anti-racist world reject White culture out of hand because of its ingrained inequity and exploitation. Frankly, they continue to do very good work in my opinion. I respect it because its focus is on fairness for others rather than on Whites protecting themselves. It is other-centered rather than self-centered.
But while the rejection of all things White is morally preferable to White supremacy, it may not be the best of all worlds. I don’t know an answer to this dilemma that works for everyone but I can speak for myself. I try my best to keep a “both/and” mindset. I try to respect my own perspective, a decidedly White perspective, while not insisting that it hold primacy. I try to be honest about what I like and dislike about other perspectives while still making room for them in the discourse, especially when they are the perspectives of people from non-dominant groups. As a White male I owe them my ear. I treat Whiteness like a beloved brother who is a drug addict; I love the good in him but will intervene to stop his destructive impulses from harming others. I try to love Whiteness while not allowing it to do the bad things it does.
Just like all people, I remain a cultural being. I don’t insist, however, that my culture dominate. In fact I insist that it does not. What should I call this perspective? Perhaps, White Dignity.

Working for Racial Fairness as a White Man

2009-09-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

Our responsibility is to clean our own house rather than tell people of color how to keep their own.

White people approach racial injustice from different angles. Some of us have an easy time accepting that U.S. society treats different races inequitably while others take a very long time and struggle to come to that realization (if in fact we ever do).

But if and when we decide we are going to do something about it (because part of being a member of the dominant group means you can decide whether or not you want to deal with racial injustice) we very often take a single tack. We try to work with not-Whites to help them in their struggle for equality. It’s easy to understand why. I come to the realization that I need to stand up against racial injustice, find the people who are being targeted by it, and stand with them. It’s an admirable undertaking. But it can also be a problem and here’s why: most of us are socialized in a society that imposes unfair racial stereotypes on us. Our early environments often teach us inaccurate things about non-Whites that become embedded in our view of the world. When we begin to work towards racial justice we often, without realizing it, take an approach of assimilation toward non-Whites. We unwittingly work toward helping them be “more like Whites” rather than to build a society that is inclusive at a level where non-Whites are full partners as well as fully themselves. Non-White activists say over and over that this is the case.

What, then, are we to do? Here are a few suggestions:

Get to know ourselves. In the book “Overcoming Our Racism” author Dr. Derald Wing Sue discusses the need to accept that we have been socialized to engage in racial stereotyping and to learn to manage that tendency. I use the word “manage” here purposefully because I firmly believe that most of us will never be completely free of stereotyping, just like we are never completely free of any other socialization from early childhood. If we convince ourselves that we don’t have some stereotypes in our thinking we only drive them further from our awareness and make it more likely that we’ll act on them without knowing it. We can know that none of us wanted to be socialized like that, learn to be aware of when we’re thinking in stereotypes, and then NOT act on them. We can also get to know the impact that being White has on our lives (see the next suggestion).

Get to know Whiteness. Whiteness didn’t always exist. It has a genesis, a history, an evolution, and a purpose. Once we understand these things we are better able to discern how Whites and Whiteness act to affect the distribution of wealth and power in the U.S. Here are a few sources that I’ve found that have helped me.

Books:

Howard Zinn’s “People History of the United States”
James W. Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me”
Winthrop D. Jordan’s “White Man’s Burden” and the much more detailed “White Over Black”

Films:

“Blue Eyed,” a film by Jane Elliot
“The Color of Fear,” a film by David Lee

There are others, of course.

Get to know others. We can find like-minded Whites and share our processes among ourselves. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. When we start stepping outside of the normal racial understanding in our society, we can come into conflict with some people. It’s also a very emotionally complex thing for Whites to do this work and when we come together to do it we can come into conflict with our fellow Whites in process. We can also take stock of our relationships and ask ourselves how many people we are friends with who are not White. If we honestly ask ourselves how many non-White people are close to us and find ourselves lacking, what can we do? Should we run out and ask a Black person to be our friend? Should we start getting close to the Latin people in our office? I don’t know how good an idea that is. One thing I’ve done and offer as a suggestion, is to try to attend art and cultural events that I can attend that are “owned” by non-Whites. Try a Latina poetry reading, or an American Indian art exhibition. And just go to listen and witness. We don’t have to be experts and we don’t have to prove we’re “the good guys.” We can, however, respect the fact that what we are experiencing is likely generated from an experience that is different from ours, that is a nuanced and necessary expression of the identities of at least some of the people involved, and is just as 100% worthy of our respect as a more "traditional" or "mainstream" event, even as we are honest about whether or not it suits our own tastes.

As a White man, my goal is to work with other Whites to co-create a new racial reality among us. When we can see how we benefit from a system that is skewed in our favor, learn to respect other perspectives as no less valid than our own, and learn to redefine our identities in ways that do not deprecate others’, we're working for racial fairness.