Of White Privilege and Conversations about Race

Yesterday, Yale Divinity School held an all-day, all-school conference on race and inclusivity.  Over the course of the day, which saw students come and go due to classes or other, I estimated that about 1/3 of the Divinity School was present for at least some portion of the training.

The training was well-advertised, with a little bit of word-of-mouth peer pressure to attend thrown in.  The Dean of Berkeley Divinity School cancelled the Friday class for Berkeley seniors so that we could attend, which I think speaks to the institutional support this training had garnered.  Yet, I did not decide whether or not to go to the training until Friday morning.  Early in my deliberations, I considered that I had a mountain of work to do (and I still do, since I’m taking the time to write this); and I thought that as important as the training may be, it may also be important to pass my courses.  By Thursday, I considered attending a portion and skipping out to do the aforementioned work.

There were many good reasons to attend the training.  Sunday morning is still the most segregated time of the week.  We are training to be ministers with a theology that absolutely all people are made in the image of God, and therefore deserve our consideration.  We need to be able to navigate complicated situations in order to bring some healing to a world broken by racism.

In the end, I am incredibly grateful that I went to the training, and stayed the entire time.  I’ve seen large group conversations about race go very wrong (including at YDS) — conversations after which many people walk away emotionally and spiritually wounded.  While this program was not perfect, it was the healthiest conversation I have personally seen.  Typically, in large anti-racism programs, the ground rules for the conversation can be presented in such a way that people are scared to talk.  The high stakes lead to silence, and people end up in fear of making a mistake in conversation.  In contrast, the explanation of the guidelines in this program left me with a sense of hope.  I thought the facilitators did a good job of trying to develop a space for careful conversation, while allowing space for mistakes in a conversation that can be incredibly messy. 

Further, when a facilitator overstepped some boundaries with a participant, she and the participant modeled apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. 

Over the course of the day, I was able to go back over some my personal history, and describe how being a straight white man has tangibly benefited me in concrete ways over my 29 years on earth.  I mean, tangibly benefited me— not just an anemic statement that whiteness has been good to me.  By this, I mean that because I am white:

·         I had a college recruitment officer tell what degree programs "would set me ahead of women and blacks.”  I didn’t take his advice.

·         There are conversations I have gotten to be a part of among other white people that nonwhites are not invited to. Typically these  conversations had been white men bemoaning loss of privilege  and how to maintain privilege (they do not use this language).

·         I avoided chemical burns on a construction job because the foremen sent the older, poorer black men into a hazardous situation.  To send me into that same situation would have been riskier because I had the social capital to say something.  Luckily, the foremen were caught sending people into a hazardous situation without the proper gear.

·         I am a safe hire in churches both traditional and progressive; whereas being a woman, nonwhite, or gay would limit the pool of congregations in which one can serve (in practice if not in policy).

I greatly benefited from the conversation yesterday, and yet the discomfort I felt during the program was not coming from the program.  My discomfort was coming from thinking about who was not at the inclusivity program.

I do not mean that I am judging everyone who was not at the training as being uncommitted to racial justice.  School work is important.  Other personal engagements called to people.

Still…

Friday morning, before the program, I overheard a white male pontificate to a few other people that he “hopes they take note of who is not there, and why.”  By context, I made—and hold—the assumption that he, as a white person, would not go the meeting.  And it would be the fault of the organizers of the meeting that he is not going, because white people tend to get “beat up” during those programs.  This man probably represented the position of a few others at YDS.  But more generally, it represents a position that white men may hold in regards to any conversation about race.

This man’s statement troubled me because a) I felt angry that the person was so dismissive of the program and b) I felt uncomfortable because I believe in bringing everyone to the table, and so I wondered if I would need to bring the narrative of the contrarians to the training.

I got over my discomfort of the lack of the contrarian position by mid-morning; by the afternoon, I came to greatly resent the statement that the person made.

Why?  The man's statement actually assumes his narrative of contrariness has a privileged place. And his statement that he “hopes they take note of who is not there, and why,” shows his assumption of personal privilege.  Even without his being present at the program, he hoped his narrative would factor into our conversation.  For the dominant group (white men) to absent themselves from the conversation about oppression—and thereby not listen to others—and then expect the rest of us to do the work of interpreting the absentee contrarian's narrative for them—and then to seriously consider it—is extremely upsetting to me.  I became even more upset  because I almost thought I carried the burden of making the contrarian position heard, particularly because it was couched in terms of ‘white victimization’ by others.

But, no.  Members of oppressive groups (and in the U.S., that is still white men as individuals and participants in social systems) do not have the right to absent themselves from conversations on race and expect their position to still be heard.  If there is a manner of white privilege to be dismantled, it is the belief that conversations white people choose not to attend must still reference white people’s objections to those very conversations.