White Privilege II

PART 3 OF 3

I'm looking for a link to a good piece on white privilege for a piece I'm
doing responding to this article by Wendy
McElroy ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171249,00.html ). Unfortunately
I need a link--not just a name of author or title--since this is going
online.  Any help would be much appreciated.


Jessica Valenti
Executive Editor
Feministing.com

A number of good articles by Robert Jensen on white privilege are 
available on his website: 
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/racearticles.htm 

Rebecca Whisnant

The "classic" (and perhaps foundational) work on "white privilege" is
by Peggy McIntosh. There are a number of different versions--e.g.,
later revisions--of her essays on white privilege on-line; here's one
online version of her well-known "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
essay:

http://www.cwru.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf
(It's also available as an HTML file)

There are also on-online versions of her "white privilege"
questionnaire. If you do a Google search on "Peggy McIntosh White
Privilege" you'll find other versions of and discussions of her essays
and questionnaires. Marilyn Edelstein

Marilyn Edelstein
Associate Professor of English
Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara CA 95053
medelstein  AT  scu.edu

  I, a WoSt grad, am teaching Ethnic Studies 101 next semester at one of the 
most culturally-diverse universities in the U.S.  In developing my 
curriculum, I located this article by a historian that explains very clearly 
that the identity of "white" in the U.S. has a long and tortuous 
history--"white" is really just short-hand for "in the dominant group"--it 
expresses power relations more than skin color.  See:

http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice/sweet12.html

   In teaching ES101, I am taking a historical approach to ethnic conflict.  
I will not discuss "white" supremacy without not only relating how the 
reason people descended from northwestern Europe dominate other ethnic 
groups around the globe is that the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and 
France were the first people on earth to develop global navigation, cannon, 
and incentives to go around the globe to trade, conquer and settle.  For 
example, you really can't understand why the U.S. could seize islands from 
California to the Philippines (not to mention California) unless you know 
what the English navy of Elizabeth I did to the Spanish navy in the French 
port of Calais.
   I am using Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" in my class, because 
I think he provides one of the most accessible explanations for why "whites" 
dominate the Earth without arguing that they should dominate the people of 
Earth, or even that living one's life governed by technology, and 
highly-organized hierarchal organizations is a good idea.  I am also using 
"Sources of Japanese Tradition," vol. 2, because I think that studying Japan 
shows that imperialism and xenophobic superiority are not unique to western 
Europeans, but that the ability to voyage the seas and the power to kill 
with near impunity permitted both Europeans and Japanese to do what the 
Arabs, Chinese, Mongols, Norse, Huns, Goths, Romans, Macedonians, Persians, 
Incas, Babylonians--and need I go on?--all did in their day.

   Is anyone else using a similar approach?


Hannah Miyamoto
Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa
hsmiyamoto  AT  msn.com

I'm a little late for this thread, but I just got a new edition of a 
book that contains both the McIntosh essay and a Jensen one, along with 
many others. It's called /White Privilege/ by Paula S. Rothenberg (Worth 
2005). See:

http://www.worthpublishers.com/book.asp?id_product=1149000352&disc=SOC&disc_name=Sociology&@id_course=1058000023 


or, if that link gets broken:

http://tinyurl.com/7wkjg

-- 
"Food first, then morality." --Bertolt Brecht

Jessica B. Burstrem
M.A. Student, English Department
Teaching Assistant, University Writing Program
University of Florida
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~burstrem/
burstrem  AT  english.ufl.edu

Below is an announcement of a book I've just 
published on race and white privilege. It's like 
a lot of my writing on pornography and sexuality, 
in that I try to weave together data, analysis, 
and personal experience. Info about exam copies at the end.

Bob Jensen
University of Texas at Austin

------------------------

The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege
by Robert Jensen
Available September 2005, City Lights Books
ISBN 0-87286-449-9
Paperback, 124 pp
<http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html#4499>http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html#4499

An honest look at U.S. racism, and the liberal 
platitudes that attempt to conceal it. Excerpts of the book available at
<http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/racearticles.htm>http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/racearticles.htm

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois wrote 
that the real question whites wanted to ask him, 
but were afraid to, was: ôHow does it feel to be 
a problem?ö In The Heart of Whiteness, Robert 
Jensen writes that it is time for white America 
to self-consciously reverse the direction of that 
question at the heart of color. ItÆs time for 
white people to fully acknowledge that in the 
racial arena, they are the problem.
While some whites would like to think that we 
have reached ôthe end of racism,ö in the U.S., 
and others would like to celebrate diversity but 
remain oblivious to the political, economic, and 
social consequences of a nation founded on a 
system of white supremacy, Jensen proposes a 
different approach. He sets his sights not only 
on the racism that canÆt be hidden, but also on 
the liberal platitudes that sometimes conceal the 
depths of that racism in American ôpolite society.ö
This book offers an honest and rigorous 
exploration of what Jensen refers to as the 
depraved nature of whiteness in the United 
States. Mixing personal experience with data and 
theory, Jensen faces down the difficult realities 
of race, racism, and white privilege. He argues 
that any system that denies non-white people 
their full humanity also keeps white people from fully accessing their own.
This book is both a cautionary tale for those 
white people who believe that they have 
transcended racism, and also an expression of the 
hope for genuine transcendence.

"Very few white writers have been able to point 
out the pathological nature of white privilege 
and supremacy with the eloquence of Robert 
Jensen. In The Heart of Whiteness, Jensen 
demonstrates not only immense wisdom on the issue 
of race, but does so in the kind of direct and 
accessible fashion that separates him from 
virtually any other academic scholar, or 
journalist, writing on these subjects today.ö 
ûTim Wise, author, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

"With radical honesty, hard facts, and an 
abundance of insight and compassion, Robert 
Jensen lays out strategies for recognizing and 
dismantling white privilegeû and helping others 
to do the same. This text is more than just 
important; it's useful. Jensen demonstrates again 
that he is a leading voice in the American quest 
for justice." û Adam Mansbach, author of Angry 
Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay
Jensen is an associate professor in the School of 
Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin. 
He is the author of Citizens of the Empire: The 
Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 
2004) and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas 
from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 
2002); co-author with Gail Dines and Ann Russo of 
Pornography: The Production and Consumption of 
Inequality (Routledge, 1998); and co-editor with 
David S. Allen of Freeing the First Amendment: 
Critical Perspectives on Freedom of Expression 
(New York University Press, 1995).

City Lights offers examination copies to faculty for $5.
Send a check to City Lights Books Attn: ChantT Mouton
261 Columbus Avenue San Francisco, CA 94133
For credit card orders, contact ChantT Mouton at
chante  AT  citylights.com