The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. (George Orwell, 1984)

Even in the context of the dystopian 1984, George Orwell’s message that the limits of our language are the limits of our thought is strikingly relevant to the contemporary discourse on race. The degree to which language informs consciousness sheds light on the danger presented by the idea of “white privilege” which has found a significant presence within contemporary academic dialogue on race. My interest and investment in the removal of what I will call the “White Privilege Dynamic” is based in my own experience, which has revealed to me the essentially racist sentiment of the idea of “white privilege” as it is used by a certain group of “progressive” and self-described “white anti-racists.”

During the summer of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans with a youth-run organization that brings New York City high school students to New Orleans to rebuild and do work in community organizing. I knew little of the organization when I signed up, and was surprised to discover, upon arrival in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, that the trip consisted largely of an ideological element and canonical indoctrination. The first night I was there, the organizers (a handful of teenagers who would soon become my good friends) delivered a lecture on Katrina and its aftermath. They described the interactions between the (primarily “black”) inhabitants of the Lower Ninth Ward and the (primarily “white”) inhabitants of New Orleans’ neighboring wards. I knew very little about Louisiana politics and the racism that still exists. 

The lecture was heavily radicalized in that it aligned the conflict of the Lower Ninth Ward with a dichotomous understanding of race. It should be acknowledged that while the inhabitants of the Lower Ninth Ward are predominantly “black” (99% according to the 2000 U.S. Census; of Haitian, Creole, Caribbean, French, and African descent and surely more) and that the French Quarter is run mostly by people with light skin, cases do exist which betray these stereotypes. The humble number of these cases does not render them insignificant. These few cases are indispensable and were systematically disregarded by the leaders of the organization, lending to an incomplete depiction of the racial politics in New Orleans. 

That first lecture was also my introduction to the idea of “white privilege,” an idea central to the canon being established by the organization. I had never heard this term before, and knowing nothing of its meaning, was hugely annoyed by it—this annoyance has not faded. My peers and I were told by the organizers that we had experienced “white privilege.” We were told, with no knowledge of our individual backgrounds, that “white people” are given significant privilege over an elusive group of  “black people.” We were told that we were all racist, even if we hadn’t thought so. Several of us argued, but the organizers insisted that we were “scared of black people” and our arguments only suggested a lack of self-awareness. 

I began to see their understanding of race as indicative of a larger ideology and demographic. Those who use the term “white privilege” are, in my experience young, “white,” intellectual “activists” and “community-organizers.” They are very concerned with being “politically correct” and very militant about their political views. 

All “acknowledge” a sense of perceived “privilege” that they attribute to their light skin and which they call, mock-apologetically, their “white privilege.” In that sense, it is something they own and identify with: the idea that they embody and represent a sort of social dominance that is attached to the lightness of their skin. Their identification with the idea of “white privilege” is indicative of their collective identity (as I see it): as a segregationist sentiment consisting of two racial groups which are different and definitively unequal—disguised as progressivism and political correctness, and dictated by a self-perceivingly “privileged” white group of young, intellectual “anti-racists.”

The act of “acknowledging” one’s “privilege” is a central experience to and point of orientation for this demographic, seen as a preliminary action to the achievement of social change and actualized racial equality.  Though as an action, the “acknowledgment” of one’s observed “privilege” conceals intentions that are not virtuous nor conducive to the paragon cited by the aforementioned demographic.

I am fascinated by the social implications that surround the use of the term “white privilege” and the way that it works against the ideals central to the movement as a whole (a racially-equal society in which social interactions are not hindered by racial boundaries.) Being told that I have “white privilege” upon my arrival in New Orleans ultimately detracted from my experience. The organizers’ insistence on my inherent “privilege” created a boundary that had previously not restricted me and afterward required work to overcome. Until that point, I can honestly say that there was not an ounce of me that felt superior to people with darker skin than my own. And resist as I tried, there is only so much that somebody can ignore a message of superiority (as it has been forced on them) without allowing it to influence their behavior or consciousness in some way.

Thus, it is primarily from my own experience that I have come to be so passionate about the need to eliminate usage of the term “white privilege” and the message that it promotes. What social purpose is served by a term that emphasizes difference—rather, differences which are obsolete? The truth about race in America today is that it cannot accurately be discussed or viewed in dichotomous terms. “White” and “black” in their pure forms refer to a very small population within America. 

It would seem that rather than using terms that emphasize the difference between groups, those who seek social change (and abide so militantly by the standards of political correctness) would adopt terms that do not isolate such a significant portion of their audience. Why would this group of people, political as they claim to be, promote a term that isolates more than it unites?

I asked the organizers several times what it means to have “white privilege” and was repeatedly directed to read a piece by Peggy McIntosh, professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College, entitled “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” This piece is definitive in the study of “white privilege” and referred to often by the demographic that I have previously described. Many have written about and elaborated on the process of “acknowledging” one’s “privilege,” notably McIntosh, who unforgettably compiled a list of the ways in which her intuited power is manifested in her everyday life. 

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks….I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence….I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions. (McIntosh, 189)

McIntosh’s conditions include:

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about ‘civilization,’ I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

17. I can speak with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color. 

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my entire race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race. (McIntosh, 189)

Disregarding for a moment whether McIntosh’s racial paranoias have any basis in Reality, one might wonder what purpose this list serves within racial discourse as a whole. What implication does this list have on the individual reading it? On the collective consciousness of a demographic informed by early “whiteness theory”? Does this piece inspire the open-mindedness, humbleness and lack of prejudice required to achieve authentically positiveinterracial interaction? It does not seem so. 

In fact, it does the opposite. McIntosh does no more than make tangible her own racial paranoias and fear of otherness so that they might be adopted by others. McIntosh may call the adoption of these “revelations” progressive, but they are clearly detrimental to the human interactions which directly inform the larger discourse and collective consciousness of a population. After reading his piece, how is one able to interact with a person of a different race without projecting McIntosh’s fears—which are in no way universal—onto the other person? Will a “white person” ever be able to look at a “black person” outside of McIntosh’s lens of prejudice? (After all: Are all black people smelly, heavy and late?) McIntosh has inserted within the developing canon of “whiteness studies” reason after reason why humans cannot, or should not interact with those who appear differently than them.

To state the obvious, McIntosh’s piece relies incredibly on the pretense of a “white essence” which is inherently more “privileged” (better/stronger/more attractive/the list goes on) than those possessing a “black essence,” echoing the Enlightenment-era belief that, of two biologically discrete races, “white” is inherently superior. 

Perhaps McIntosh’s piece would have a more meaningful, productive resonance if it had emphasized the similarities and overlap she perceives between her own experience and the experience of a “different” race; or perhaps a list of her positive everyday interactions with otherness. 

And what effect does McIntosh’s piece have on those “black” (or “non-white”) people who may never have considered that their smell, appearance, or manner of eating be a reflection of their entire race? Certainly this piece does not provide a catalyst for meaningful conversation. Instead, it isolates and dehumanizes those people who do not identify with McIntosh’s ridiculous fears and observations—regardless of their race.

It should be noted that while McIntosh seems to be referring to “white people” in their entirety within America, the demographic that I am concerned with, is a small subset of the group McIntosh refers to. One should also consider that McIntosh’s views on race are derived from her position as a feminist who felt oppressed by men. Perhaps Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack is McIntosh trying desperately to “be aware” of the ways she has oppressed others, as she fantasized that men would do for her. But what good is “acknowledgment” of one’s “privilege” and “dominance” if not followed with sufficient reaction and an attempt to adjust?

The term “white privilege” carries heavy, negative social implications and is indicative of the mentality that many race theorists from the early ‘90s and to date have adopted. (It has even served as the stimulus from which was born an entire ludicrous academic field called “Whiteness Studies.”) These negative implications establish that the term “white privilege,” particularly in a progressive context, is meaningless, completely counter-productive, and in fact, an object of racism disguised as anti-racism. Barbara Kay, columnist for the National Post, wrote:

[Whiteness Studies] teaches that if you are white, you are branded, literally in the flesh, with evidence of a kind of original sin. You can try to mitigate your evilness, but you can’t eradicate it. The goal of Whiteness Studies is to entrench permanent race consciousness in everyone — eternal victimhood for nonwhites, eternal guilt for whites — and was most famously framed by WS chief guru, Noel Ignatiev, former professor at Harvard University [sic, Ignatiev was a Ph.D. student and then a tutor at Harvard, but never a professor], now teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art: ‘The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race — in other words, to abolish the privileges of the white skin.’ 

Despite its politically-correct disguise, the term “white privilege” enforces and feeds in to the illusion of two “essential races” —white and black—which form a dichotomy, in which they are distinctly different and non-interacting. There is a group of race theorists called White Eliminativists who advance the position that the only way to respond to the issue of race is to eliminate the idea of whiteness directly as it is manifest in language and racial discourse. 

The White Eliminativist hopes to “expunge racial terms from our lexicons, laws and policies.” (Berger 148) It is from this position that I will argue that the term “white privilege” should be eliminated from racial dialogue. The Eliminativist positions often refers to scientific evidence that emphasizes interracial similarities in order to refute the Enlightenment-era belief in biologically distinct races. Science serves as an integral tool in illustrating that the concept of race has no genetic evidence. 

Let us consider for a moment the audience and perpetuators of this elusive “whiteness”  in America. What do these theorists say that it means to have “white privilege”? What is this “white identity” which has grabbed so much attention in the past 10 years? 

After claiming that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture,” Glenn Beck, conservative Fox News anchor and  had difficulty clarifying his thoughts: “What is white culture? I don’t know how to answer that that’s not a trap, you know what I mean?” (“Beyond the Pale” 69) Kelefa Sanneh, author of Beyond the Pale, suggested that the most appropriate answer to that question may be a joke, or a series of jokes.

The term “white privilege” is most prevalent within a small subset of what Beck calls “white culture”; it is the audience Christian Lander had in mind for “Stuff White People Like,” a list of what Lander perceives to be “white people’s” favorite things, but not all white people. 

His ‘white people’ are wealthy, urban, youngish, and thoroughly blue—they ‘hate’ Republicans, and although Obama hadn’t yet won the Democratic nomination, he placed eighth on the list….he sometimes defines ‘white people’ in opposition to ‘the wrong kind of white people,’ because his true target is a small subset of white people, a white cultural elite. (“Beyond the Pale” 69)

What is to be made of this cultural phenomena which injects self-deprecating humor into the “elite” cultural identity of “whiteness”? Is it productive to laugh about “white identity” because it is done in humor, or counterproductive because the topic still stands? The White Eliminativist would surely argue the latter, though one is left to wonder just how prevalent the distinction is between the elimination of the “white essence,” and the rejection of the established social group of which Lander writes. Biology has revealed the former as a myth, while evidence of the latter inarguably permeates Western culture.

Not surprisingly, the small subset that Lander describes refers to the same demographic that utilizes and embodies what I will call the White Privilege Dynamic.They are self-proclaimed activists and “community organizers,” the embodiments of Political Correctness. It is in the context of this demographical discourse that the term “White Privilege” has its root. The White Privilege Dynamic dictates wordlessly the way one approaches and speaks about the concept of “white privilege,” and by extension race in general, which is the essential problem.

In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison seeks clarification about the invention and effect of what she calls “Africanism” in the United States. American Africanism, according to Morrison, is an investigation into a non-white, Africanlike (or Africanist) presence or persona that was constructed in the United States, and the imaginative uses that the fabricated presence serve. 

Morrison traces the roots of “Africanness” to the late 1600s as America was being established. She cites the construction of the African identity as the embodiment of an othering by the white majority, the result of misreadings, misteachings and assumptions by a Eurocentric people. 

The Africanist presence that developed from this “white” appropriation has been represented in literature ever since in such a way that has lead to the pervasion of several central characteristics of American literature—individualism, masculinity, the contrast between the representative ideas of lightness and darkness. The Africanist presence in American literature stands as a testament to the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But not only do these qualities pervade literature and thought, they also contribute to the racial dynamic of an entire nation, centuries later. The emergence of Africanism (as a construct of American culture) was—and continues to be—strongly urged, thoroughly serviceable, companionably ego-reinforcing, and pervasive. (8)

Morrison argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division and human panic. The idea of “white privilege” has come to operate in the same way.

As a disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in the Eurocentric tradition that American education favors, both a way of talking about and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and reprehension, formations and exercises of power, and meditations on ethics and accountability. American Africanism makes it possible to say and not say, to inscribe and erase, to escape and engage, to act out and act on, to historicize and render timeless. It provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom. (7)

Morrison draws an interesting parallel between the othering and silencing of the American African identity and the “hysterical blindness” to femaleness throughout history. She notices that blatant sexist writings are on the decline and where they do still exist they have little effect because of what Morrison calls the “successful appropriation” by women of their own discourse. 

However it would seem that the methodical re-appropriation of sexist terms and concepts would be insufficient to alter the racial climate of an entire population. Movements of empowerment such as the feminist movement of the [early 1970s] have sought power in language. The feminist re-appropriation of “women” to “womyn” was an attempt to claim an identity independent of the powerful male identity. Replacing the suffix“-men” from the original word with gender-neutral “-myn” was intended to be representative of a shift in consciousness, of a claim of power and establishment of identity. Yet, it could be argued that this particular re-appropriation had little effect on its audience. 

The same idea has been used in the fight for racial equality. By eliminating the “Uncle Tom” connotations of the term “negro” in the 1960s and 1970s, “blacks” sought to alter more than a dictionary entry. The idea was that in altering language, one could alter the consciousness of an entire population. A strong effort has been made to eliminate usage of the N-word, although it has been re-appropriated in a different context, by (primarily non-white) youth as a colloquial expression of camaraderie, friendship, similarity. It is impossible to separate the reclaiming of the N-word from the controversy that surrounds it: after all, the word “nigger” is soaked in emotion in a way that “women” never has been. 

As in the debate over “whiteness,” there are advocates of countless perspectives that compose a wide range of views, from Total Eliminatavists to those dismissive of linguistic appropriation as a tool for social change. 

This tradition of renaming and reclaiming race is responsible for the idea of the “hyphenated identity.” In the 1980s the term “African-American” was constructed on the model of German-American and Irish-American in an attempt to give the descendants of slaves a definitive heritage and cultural base. The term was popularized colloquially by black audiences and then received mainstream acceptance after Reverend Jesse Jackson used the term before a national audience, granting it mainstream appeal in the early 1980s. (Out of the Mouths of Slaves, x)

Many self-identified black people expressed that they preferred the term as it was formed in the same manner as the titles of other ethnic groups in America. For many the term African-American is a platform for the uniting of all peoples having origin in any of the black racial groups of Africa, an embrace of pan-Africanism as it was described by W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. (The term has garnered some negative attention in that it has in many cases come to signify no more than a dark complexion, and has no basis in an identity that is actually derived from Africa.)

The Hyphenated Identity is significant in that it ideally forces its users to step out of the habitual racial dichotomy of “black” and “white.” The adoption of terms such as “African-American” has improved racial interaction by forcing us to recognize race for what it truly is—a distribution of color that is not only a simple combination of “black” and “white,” but encompassing infinite amalgamations of many colors.

It is in the context of the race complication that an academic discipline devoted to the study of “whiteness” has no significance nor social purpose. Whiteness Studies (the academic discipline) seems to be a perverse, empty mimicry of the black empowerment movement. Like the introduction of the term “African-American,” “African/Black Studies” (an academic department at many universities) had a social purpose: to empower an oppressed people through emphasis and celebration of a perceivably innate identity.

How, then, has Whiteness Studies emerged and developed into a legitimate academic discipline? Whiteness Studies claims to be “an attempt to think critically about how white skin preference has operated systematically, structurally, and sometimes unconsciously as a dominant force in America—and indeed in global—society and culture.” (Dr. Gregory Jay, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin)

What is problematic is the critical thought being devoted to this perceived sense of dominance and privilege. What are the social implications of devotion to a topic so riddled with negative connotations and so historically oppressive and isolating? 

It seems that the one central characteristic of the “White Identity” that fascinates these academics is its elitism and isolation from other races. What social purpose does a discipline serve that consists almost wholly of “white” people, studying the ways in which “white” people have oppressed, neglected and systematically dominated people of all other races? What reactions does discourse on topics such as “white privilege” and an “inherent dominance” attached to light skin provoke in people who do not identify as being white? What are the psychosocial effects of this discourse on “white” people, “black” people, and people who cannot (or choose not to) call themselves either?

Political satirist Stephen Colbert has jokingly claimed to be racially “color-blind,” though his claim does have some cultural referent:  “Now, I don’t see race … People tell me I’m white, and I believe them, because I own a lot of Jimmy Buffett albums.” Colbert’s membership to the new “Malan Race” was recently confirmed. The “Malan Race” is surely a product of what some have called our “post-race” society, an attempt to renounce racial stereotypes, definitions and boundaries—to “wipe the [racial] slate clean and chose to start fresh.” 

Malans are “color-blind,” but all human, and are classified almost wholly by ideology. Though there is no doubt this was Colbert’s execution of a reducio ad absurdum parody—the idea that America is “post-race” has been gaining popularity ever since America’s election of president Barack Obama, which has forced America to begin to see race for the complicated, perhaps obsolete construct that it has become. 

The “Malan Race,” like the white eliminativist position, may be seen as an intermediate step toward the realization of the “progressive” racial ideal. The eradication of the term “white privilege”may not have immediate effects on the achievement of an authentically equal racial climate, however it is in the spirit of George Orwell that we might hope that they are both indicative of something much larger. In a way, the Malan Race, though seemingly absurd, signifies a shift in consciousness and acceptance of the generally convoluted state of race in America today. 

Ultimately what is necessary for the achievement of these declared ideals is an alteration of the consciousness that informs the way that we understand race. We should not seek to be color-blind, but to acknowledge one another as different and also cultivate an appreciation for a colorful, multicultural, and racially equal society that we might one day contribute to. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Baugh, John. Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice. Austin: University of Texas, 1999. Print.
• Berger, Maurice. White Lies Race and the Myths of Whiteness. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999. Print.
• Christie, Frederic. “Racial Color-Blindness: Just As Bad As Regular Blindness | Red Room.” Red Room. 10 Nov. 2008. Web. 25 May 2010.
• Colbert, Stephen. “Color Blindness.” The Colbert Report. The Comedy Channel. Los Angeles, CA. Television.
• Kay, Barbara. “Blaming Whitey.” National Post [Washington] 13 Sept. 2006. Print.
• Lander, Christian. Stuff White People Like: the Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2008. Print.
• McIntosh, Peggy
• Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1993. Print.
• Orwell, George. 1984. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. Print.
• Sanneh, Kelefa. “Beyond the Pale.” The New Yorker [New York City] 12 Apr. 2010: 69-74. Print.