Is it productive to repeatedly remind white people of how privileged they are?

[BainsBane]

63. The point is to encourage people to pay attention to racism

Last edited Mon Jan 6, 2014, 07:00 PM - Edit history (2)

rather than perpetuating it. Either one examines the ways in which race and racism influences society and themselves, or they perpetuate discrimination. We each need to choose whether we value equality or insist on denying the reality of discrimination in order to justify its continuation. When people don't want to examine racism and sexism, it's because they benefit from it. Yet they consider their privilege to be so natural and so deserved, that they refuse to consider the reality. This impetus of refusing to examine racism is part of denying it. The denial of racism (and even notions that whites, or men, are persecuted) comes from far right-wing groups and has now gone mainstream. It emerged as part of the opposition to affirmative action. Opposing affirmative action was key to maintaining white privilege. The resistance to examining racism, to insist it wasn't important, would have been unheard of among educated, progressive people 20 years ago, but that people now feel entitled to pretend that white privilege has no bearing on their lives is part of the reactionary turn in American society. That people don't realize the origin of ideology they are repeating doesn't change what it is.