UC-Berkeley professor Elaine Kim’s documentary “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded” details the frictionless path by which pop fantasy transitions into real-world perception, with troubling real-world consequences. And, as the documentary points out, the same slippage that conflates media fictions with flesh-and-blood people also imposes imagery emerging out of the “exotic East” on Asian women in the West.
“Asian women as prostitutes – the oversexualization of our image – we have to live with that history,” DeAnza College Asian-American studies professor Christine Chai says in the film, which goes on to point out that virtually every Asian-American woman, regardless of how independent, educated, successful and strong she might be, has at one point or another found herself uncomfortably boxed into a stereotype by those whose primary exposure to “Asian” culture comes from cinematic blockbusters and pulp bestsellers.
The price can go far beyond discomfort. DePaul law professor Sumi K. Cho has linked the Asian-woman-as-prostitute stereotype to what she calls “racialized sexual harassment,” professional exploitation rooted in the expectation that Asian women are culturally amenable to sexual advances.
“Using Philadelphia as an example, this graphic compares the cost, both financial and societal, of education and incarceration. Designed by Jason Killinger for Maskar Design”
Stunning, unacceptable statistics in this powerful graphic. And unfortunately, as we all know, Philly is hardly the exception.
The judge in George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial revoked his bond and ordered him to surrender within 48 hours because he misled the court about his finances. Zimmerman’s wife testified during his original bond hearing that the Zimmermans had limited funds, and failed to disclose that more than $200,000 had been donated to Zimmerman through a website. Prosecutors argued that the Zimmermans conspired to lie about money. Zimmerman also failed to disclose the fact that he had a second passport, which he did not surrender to the court.
In a room full of American leaders and foreign dignitaries, Admiral General Aladeen, a fictitious dictator of an Arab country (played by Sasha Baron Cohen) gives this speech:
Why are you guys so anti-dictatorship? Imagine if America was a dictatorship! You could let 1% of the people have all the nation’s wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes and bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health-care and education. Your media would appear free; but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wire-tape phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. I knew this is hard for you Americans to imagine, but please: try!
Everything is so true. We live in such a pseudo-democracy that is corrupted by systems of severe social inequality. Special shout out to someone in a major film calling out America’s racist criminal justice system that disproportionately incarcerates Black and Hispanic men. (I bolded the comment if you didn’t notice)
Someone I know (who was White) attempted to argue that Abraham Lincoln’s contributions to the civil rights and the status of Black people in America through the Emancipation Proclamation was more important than any other person including Dr. Martin Luther King. Typical. A White person trying to unconsciously validate their people’s history and contribution to America, even in the civil rights movement.
So here’s what I had to let this fool know:
Yes, Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation was a highly important moment in American history and a very very good thing. However, Abraham Lincoln was NOT an abolitionist. He was even quoted saying the following: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” And guess what? He did the latter only for political reasons and not because he truly was an abolitionist who believed in racial equity or justice.Furthermore, the Emancipation Proclamation only prohibited slavery in states that seceded from the Union. Slavery was still allowed to take part in the border states or any area that was under the control of the Union. Slavery was not officially abolished until the passage of the 13th amendment, which came after the death of Lincoln.
Also, after the abolition of slavery, the status of Black people in America was still abysmal and pathetic. Black people were still largely disenfranchised and prevented from voting. Black people were still living in crippling poverty and under the constant fear of violence and terrorism from Ku Klux Klan and violent lynch mobs. Black people were suffering from segregation and marginalized to the point where they were legally and institutionally forbidden from accessing the same resources and privileges as their White counterparts. In many instances, former slaves remained as sharecroppers on the plantations of the masters they used to work for because of lack of other social or economic opportunities.
So yes, bravo to Lincoln for signing a document that kinda ended slavery, but left Black people still living in state of political, economic, legal, and social subjugation. Not until the Civil Rights Movement led by leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did we see serious strides being taken to achieve racial equity through the social, political, and economic advancement of people of color, most specifically African American people.
AND guess what? No rebuttal was given because the dumb fuck knew he was wrong. Over and out.
We’re white feminists. We aren’t white just because our ancestors were mostly European. We are white because we regularly experience being identified as such by individuals and institutions that systematically favor those who appear white over those who don’t. We aren’t feminists just because we have degrees and teach in Gender and Women’s Studies. We are feminists because we are committed to dismantling the structures that systematically favor men over women, heterosexuals over non-heterosexuals, the rich over the poor, and, amongst many other oppressions, white people over people of color.
In order to address that oppression, we try to get people to talk frankly about race – never an easy task in a cultural paradigm that has been described as ‘colorblind racism,’ ‘race-evasive,’ and ‘racism without racists.’ Talking frankly about race doesn’t just mean pointing out hostile attitudes and narrow stereotypes based on race, though; it also means being honest about our own experiences as raced beings. It means talking about how we are embedded in racial systems, not disembodied and dispassionate viewers of them. It also means talking about how being against racism doesn’t mean that we don’t say and do racist things.
It means we need to have a conversation about white privilege.
But before we have that conversation, maybe we need to be clearer about what we talk about when we talk about white privilege—or, maybe what we really need to talk about is what we AREN’T talking about when we talk about white privilege.
What we mean is this: we’ve been doing this long enough to recognize some trends, first in our own reactions to being called out on our privilege and second, to see those reactions play out elsewhere. Therefore, we want to lay out some no-nonsense caveats that we hope can pre-empt some of these reactions, or at least make it so that we can move forward more quickly without having to keep copying and posting pieces of ‘Derailing for Dummies’ to get down to the stuff that lies beyond the defensive reactions.
So, let’s be clear. When we say that we/you have ‘white privilege’:
1. We don’t mean that we/you are intentionally acting in a bigoted way
2. We don’t mean that our/your biology is our/your destiny
3. We don’t mean that we/you aren’t oppressed in some other way
In the simplest way, recognizing one’s privilege is about recognizing that what you think, say, and do is affected by the fact that you have been and continue to be afforded certain unearned privileges on the basis of one or more parts of your identity. So, when you’re called out on your privilege, there’s one sure-fire tactic that you can use to keep the situation as productive as possible—LISTEN.
Chances are, the person isn’t trying to ‘out’ you as a racist, prove that you are stupid, or deny you your right to free speech. Chances are, the person is trying to get you to understand that there is a perspective other than your own and that your perspective is shaped by your experience and therefore cannot be expressed unilaterally or universally.
We know you didn’t ‘ask’ for privilege—but we also know that you can’t just give it up once you recognize you have it. You can’t just think really hard about it for a few hours, days, months, weeks, or even years and then one day stand up, dust yourself off, and yell ‘YES! I’m no longer privileged!’
Because of this, it’s worth acknowledging that those critical of talking about white privilege are right to say that these discussions alone aren’t going to solve the problem of white supremacy. Of course, it’s also worth acknowledging that nobody ever said they would. Rather, outing our privilege, reckoning with it, and addressing how the privileges that others experience affect us are all important elements for building the sorts of mass movements that will actually be able to challenge and overcome white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism and the numerous other forms of oppression that structure our lives.
These challenging conversations are necessary because, in the age of intensive plurality and diversity, any movement worth being part of is going to involve organizing across many forms of difference. Notice how we say ‘across’ and not ‘in spite of.’ We say that because it’s likely that most people in these movements will have at least one identity that provides systematic, unearned advantages – whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, citizenship, able-bodiedness, etc. – and those same people will have other identities that provide systematic, unearned disadvantages. We need to recognize that the vast majority of people are both oppressed and oppressive in different ways, in different contexts, and in different moments.
Therefore, if you are on the receiving end of a question, suggestion, or rant about your white privilege, don’t get offended. Nobody’s accusing you of Klan membership, a biologically determined inability to fight injustice, or being The Man/Big Brother/Whitey/Hegemon. And nobody who’s pointing out the way privilege over-determines many of our ideas, opinions, and desires thinks that a conversation with you about privilege will end state and interpersonal violence, equalize the wealth, and get the land back into the hands of Indigenous peoples.
You’re receiving this talk about white privilege because we want to work together to rid this world of the various oppressions that make life worse for so many people. Overcoming the challenge that these forces present will require working across multiple forms of difference, and to do this we mustn’t forget that the challenges lie not in difference itself, but in the oppressions structured around difference. As Audre Lorde said so beautifully…
[…]it is not the differences between us that tear us apart, destroying the commonalities we share. Rather, it is our refusal to examine the distortions which arise form their misnaming, and from the illegitimate usage of those differences which can be made when we do not claim them nor define them for ourselves.
As feminists, we don’t want to participate in the use of oppressive force or reproduce any system that legitimates this force. As white people born in the U.S. who work at a university, we’ve benefited enormously from this very system we oppose. These contradictions will not be resolved in silence and, unless we work on recognizing and addressing them, we don’t expect for it to be easy for anyone who hasn’t shared our experiences to work with us.
We’re on a journey, a trip with a destination that we don’t expect to reach tomorrow; a journey towards understanding how experiences of privilege turn into flat tires and roadblocks on the trips we want to take away from ugly histories of oppression.
So, next time somebody invites you along for the ride, don’t wave them along—hop on.
There are exactly three countries on Earth that do not provide guarantees for paid maternity leave. Papua New Guinea and Swaziland are two of them. Care to guess the third?
Don’t Freak Out About the White Babies
Jay Smooth helps America adjust to the news that for the first time in history, a majority of American babies born in the last year were “minorities”.
In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
If you don’t understand privilege, hopefully you understand video games. Then maybe this fantastic metaphor can help you understand privilege.
