[This post continues where Part I left off]
I should clarify that I was not technically the only white person in the class. There were about 20 people enrolled, and I was actually one of three white people. So I was a statistical minority, which for a white person in the U.S. is an extremely atypical experience. Plus, the other two white people rarely said anything, and more often than not they didn't show up. So many days it felt as if I were the only white person in the room, or, somewhat regularly, I was the only white person in the room.
And I was very, very aware of this. And so were my classmates. Although they were friendly enough to me, I often felt observed, or every comment and critique made of white people at first led to glances in my direction. I also often wondered how much my presence affected their ability to speak freely - I know I influenced the space, but the exact degree to which is unknown. For example, I was surprised that the students mostly used "European" and "African" instead of "white" and "black." They would say it tentatively, with a pause - "...Euro...European" - as if they were unsure if that was the right word, or maybe were unsure of whether to say it at all. Was this because of me? Were they afraid to say "white" because they thought I'd take it personally? I soon realized that this trepidation would have probably occurred regardless of my presence, as I learned that the students' analysis had been cultivated with an African/European lens, not a black/white one. Nevertheless, "European" was taken to mean me, that one random white woman in the corner. This I know because of the number of times a black student would begin to say something about "Europeans" (or, on the odd occasion, white people), then pause, look directly at me and say, "I'm sorry," turn back, and then continue on with their critique of whites.
In that way, I was singled out as the white person representative of all "Europeans." More than that, these were black people who still felt they had to apologize to me, a white person who represented all white people, before critiquing whiteness. I had become so accustomed to open, unapologetic critique of whites by radical people of color (and radical whites) that such a sudden, overt awareness of my potentially being offended caught me off guard.
But whiteness was indeed complicated in this classroom. This was a third discovery - black people do not automatically have a deep and nuanced understanding of white privilege. Or even of the difference between and intersections of race and class. "Black" was spoken of as almost exclusively as "low income" and "white" was presumed almost exclusively to be rich. To have white privilege was considered by many of my classmates to have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth. What made this most laughably ironic was how wealthy many of my classmates were. Most of them dressed in expensive fashions, and although clothes are not necessarily markers of wealth, many of them had bachelors degrees from private or pricey public schools. Some of them referenced neighborhoods and parent occupations that further marked their class status, or they whipped out the latest technology for notes and texts. But when the professor asked the class what white privilege meant, one man volunteered "they get checks and money from their parents; they get a car when they are 16." Such a simplistic flatlining of white privilege and class privilege allowed for the students to conceive of a monolithic blackness that superseded class lines, and, more importantly, to not be accountable for their own class privilege, which they might share with many wealthy whites. I do not say this to diminish the reality that part of white privilege is greater access to inherited wealth, but to point out the inconsistencies that result when white privilege is presumed to guarantee class privilege.
This was not the only surprising gap in the students' explanations for white privilege. For one, they treated white privilege as synonymous with white racism. White privilege is not white racism! For my classmates, it was all one lumped concept. When asked for examples of white privilege, they consistently provided examples of racist acts whites had committed against them. The problem with this is that, if we don't see how white privilege still occurs regardless of outright bigotry or overt racism, then ending acts of overt racism won't actually change the underlying structure of white supremacy. Making white people stop acting racist won't change the fact that we still benefit from racist structures.
Second, my classmates regularly saw "whiteness" as something experienced by anyone who is not black. If anything, the black folks in the room felt some kind of occasional racial solidarity with Latinos and Latinas, but saw Asian Americans as white. This grossly overlooks the core reality that the primary qualification of having white privilege is being white. But my classmates routinely drew on examples of discrimination they experienced by Asians as examples of "white privilege." (One man said, with a perfectly straight face, that "Asian people try to look like white people, but black people dress different...we all look different, different sizes, you know." The irony of his Sears-catalog appearance of an argyle sweater, pressed collared shirt, and carefully tied wool scarf was lost on him.
I realized that my classmates saw Asian-Americans as getting all the goodies of whiteness, but had no understanding of Asian-American discrimination, of Asian-American social or political history, of Asian-American poverty, variety, nuance...although I knew of the beef between blacks and Asian-Americans before taking this class, I had never before been privy to a space where blacks openly expressed disgust and anger towards Asian-Americans. This was partly due to xenophobia. This was partly due to ignorance (one woman noted that "we [black people] built this country"...well, who built the railroads? Who drained the swamps?). But largely it was a manifestation of racism. As my partner so eloquently put it, the race hierarchy makes it so that Asians are afraid of blacks and blacks hate Asians.
I found myself, a white woman, in the very strange position of defending the material reality of Asian-Americans to black folks who believed it wasn't possible for Asian-Americans to have it bad. In my naivety, I was baffled. It reached the point of ridiculousness when a woman said that because Japanese-Americans (most conversations focused on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean-Americans...all other Asian groups were, presumably, subsumed under those three ethnicities) are honorary whites, that was proof they have white privilege! How is it at all logical to say that a Japanese-American is treated exactly like a white person? To be an honorary white means just that - it is honorary, temporarily bestowed via benevolent racism, and can be taken away at any moment. But the racial hierarchy - and the myths it fuels - are not based on ration or logic.
It's not that my classmates were meaning to play the Oppression Olympics, where their oppression as blacks was deemed more severe and more worthy of remedy than anyone else's, but that a limitation of their Africanist education was that they had never learned about the oppression of any other racial group at the hands of the same system that oppressed them, too. And so it seemed that one of the most illuminating discoveries I made was how limited blacks can be in their movement-building when their misdirected anger and self-centering at all costs prevents them from 1) accounting for class privilege or accounting for inequality amongst them, 2) building coalitions with white people, and 3) most importantly, building alliances with other people of color.
I saw the manifestations of racism within the room: this is what racism looks like when it colonizes the minds of the oppressed. My classmates were focused on a singular identity - blackness - at the expense of all other identities, including gender, class, and sexuality. And the anger they felt, rather than being a motivating, driving force, seemed to be stalling them, confining them, and fixating them on a black/white lens. I was shocked to realize how flawed and limited their proposed solutions to racism seemed to be.
And this brings me to my final discovery, which I touched on in Part I. Most personally and humbly, I made a painful, poignant discovery of the flaws in my own anti-racism. I had, perhaps, over-romanticized the perspective of black people, and, in turn, over-demonized whites'. I had extrapolated my experiences with a group of radical people of color and applied it in blanket fashion to all people of color. I thought that, in centering the experiences of people of color, that meant they had all the answers, and that I, as a white person, would be wrong. I was so prepared to not have all the answers that it was bewildering to me to discover that I often had more (and better!) answers than they did.
It is with great caution that I write this because I do not want it to be misinterpreted. What I am trying to say is that I had to be accountable for the way I had centered the experiences of people of color without recognizing how messy and complicated those experiences would be. That there would be baggage to unpack. That there would be demons to destroy. That being born a person of color does not necessitate a radical analysis, just like being white does not mean being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. We are all complicated, complex creatures who are trying to untangle the webs we were born into.
Although I expected this class would challenge me, it challenged me in an entirely different way than I had envisioned. I was a politicized white woman in a class with unpoliticized people of color. And that provided me with the greatest insight to my beliefs than being surrounded by a class of like-minded people, regardless of race, ever would have.
