White Privilege II

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I'm not sure we should quickly judge racism, sexism, classism to be all
bitter fruits of the same evil tree - unless the latter metaphor is meant to
characterize human nature.  After all, these traits are present in just
about every human society and in all times.  Of course I don't mean to imply
that they can not be altered by decent social arrangements, or that they are
identical in all times and places, but it seems to me naive to teach
students about these "evils" without even a mention of  primatology and the
*fact* of the existence of hierarchies among all primates (and surely no one
wants to argue that those are "socially constructed).  Perhaps women's
studies teachers should ask themselves frankly what is the point of
exercises in "white privilege" and what they are really doing when they put
their students through these, and why such social engineering should be
accepted in higher education.

A realistic classroom discussion of the role of domination, hierarchy, and
inequality, totally devoid of guilty confessionals and "sharing" of
oppression narratives, would be a valuable thing.  But it seems to me, from
reading this list, women's studies mission statements, course descriptions,
and books on feminist pedagogy, that  women's studies courses have a long
way to go - away from the practices that have become routine and that are
indeed celebrated in women's studies - before such a discussion could take
place.

Maybe it's time for women's studies to rediscover why a dertain amount of
distance and non-partisanship in the classroom is appropriate (and not a
male fraud).  Maybe that can provide the measure of "safety" - by not making
personal identity the issue - that students seek. Until that happens, it's
hard to see much of what counts as feminist pedagogy as anything other than
abusive of (some) students and (some) groups.

Daphne
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  AT  spanport.umass.edu

Regarding DP's and other's comments on this exercise -- Mcintosh wrote an
article, not an exercise. One handles it as one handles a piece by
Descartes or any other college reading: discussion, written review,
critique, etc. I don't see how this reading in particular is suddenly an
exercise in indoctrination; however, if it is then we must ask ourselves
how every article is an exercise in indoctrination, and not just this one.

Because an article possesses aspects that are uncomfortable, or strong, or
even wrong, does not make it indoctrination. To start censoring our
readings choices based upon loose notions of indoctrination is a dangerous
practice, and one that invalidates the basic freedom of speech in the
classroom that I am sure DP wants to uphold. One cannot call for free
speech with one side of one's mouth, and the curtailing of certain readings
with the other.

Linda D. Wayne
University of Minnesota
wayne005  AT  umn.edu

It seems to me that this discussion assumes that students cannot think
for themselves. Very little of what we read is objective. All those
years that I spent learning only about white men on the frontier was
hardly non-biased, though I figured something was wrong with the
picture. Its also very easy to negate the concept of "white privilege"
if one does not feel the effects, or if one is uncomfortable with
introspection. Finally, I often hear that argument, that "it has always
been this way." Yes, war has always been around, and so have the other
"isms" that are mentioned. However, that conveniently defuses the
argument and prevents us from looking at cause and effect, which as a
historian is at the very heart of the discipline. As one of those
so-called retired persons who has had to go back to work, this time at a
school for at risk students who know nothing about white privilege, as
very few of them are, but do know what it means to be thrown away by
society, I would hate to see those disciplines that are concerned with
making a change give in to what is easy not only in the classroom but in
the larger of professional advancement. The real abuse is to ignore that
inequalities exist, both in our classrooms and in the world beyond them.
Benay Blend

No, this discussion does not assume (or should not assume) that students
can't think for themselves -- nor is anyone saying that the McIntosh article
is an exercise, any more than the writings of Kristeva are an exercise. What
is of concern here is the fact that - judging just from the posts to this
list, that (1) lots of people are *using the article as an exercise,* or to
perform certain kinds of exercises and that (2) this creates an atmosphere
in the classroom that would make it very difficult for students to develop
other (more complex) approaches to understanding social reality.

If we're reading McIntosh to be able to talk about such things as whiteness
and privilege, AND then to draw from that discussion something other than
white guilt and narratives of confession; indeed, if we're willing to
critically analyse the current trend in *some* social science programs to
name-and-blame whiteness & confess privilege (and then do what? I'm not
really sure) as itself a historical-political phenomenon, I'd say that was
more in the spirit of academic inquiry. It seems to me that any
straightforward use of McIntosh in the classroom lends itself to a political
education -- which may be important, may be life-changing for our students,
but CANNOT in the end be the *sole* aim of teaching in the academy.


Deepa S. Reddy
Anthropology & Women's Studies
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Email: reddy  AT  cl.uh.edu
http://coursesite.cl.uh.edu/hsh/reddy/

--- Daphne Patai <daphne.patai  AT  SPANPORT.UMASS.EDU>
wrote:
> A realistic classroom discussion of the role of
> domination, hierarchy, and
> inequality, totally devoid of guilty confessionals
> and "sharing" of
> oppression narratives, would be a valuable thing.
> But it seems to me, from
> reading this list, women's studies mission
> statements, course descriptions,
> and books on feminist pedagogy, that  women's
> studies courses have a long
> way to go - away from the practices that have become
> routine and that are
> indeed celebrated in women's studies - before such a
> discussion could take place.


I'm not so sure about that.  First of all, even if it were desirable,
I'm not sure such a discussion could *ever* take place without *any*
"guilty confessionals and 'sharing' of oppression narratives."
Second, I'm not sure it's desirable; bell hooks writes about the
danger of overreliance on these personal testimonials, and personally
I like to limit them (though they are useful under certain
circumstances).  I share some of your concerns, and also Jennifer
Gore's concerns, about using (insisting on) the "confession" in the
classroom.  But I also think that reacting to these issues with guilt
and/or the desire/need to share stories is a natural reaction, and
that there are times when such a reaction can be a useful, positive
part of the learning process, and not just in Women's Studies.  (I'd
be happy to elaborate on this further.)

Anyway, I've been in MANY Women's Studies classes where we've had
realistic, useful discussions of these issues, and many of these
discussions did not involve this sort of personal story.  (I've noted
over the years that this list frequently attests to the diversity of
teaching approaches in Women's Studies.)

Incidentally, Critical Pedagogical methods use many of these same
approaches, some of which they have "stolen" from Women's Studies, and
some of which developed along the same lines as Women's Studies
approaches.  So I have found personal stories and "guilt
confessionals" in other disciplines, as well.  I believe that the same
debates are taking place in those areas.

Jessica Nathanson

Jessica Nathanson
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
Concentration in Women's Studies
State University of New York at Buffalo
janathanson  AT  yahoo.com
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jan3

Daphe Patai wrote:

>I'm not sure we should quickly judge racism, sexism, classism to be all
>bitter fruits of the same evil tree - unless the latter metaphor is meant
to
>characterize human nature.  After all, these traits are present in just
>about every human society and in all times.  Of course I don't mean to
imply
>that they can not be altered by decent social arrangements, or that they
are
>identical in all times and places, but it seems to me naive to teach
>students about these "evils" without even a mention of  primatology and the
>*fact* of the existence of hierarchies among all primates (and surely no
one
>wants to argue that those are "socially constructed).  Perhaps women's
>studies teachers should ask themselves frankly what is the point of
>exercises in "white privilege" and what they are really doing when they put
>their students through these, and why such social engineering should be
>accepted in higher education.

There's a great deal to unpack in the paragraph above, but I shall try
to be brief.  As some of you may realize, Patai is drawing on
evolutionary psychology, albeit implicity, in making her arguments
above.  In doing so, she has conflated hierarchy with "racism, sexism,
classism".  I don't think this is the point that other list
correspondents were making in discussing isms and privilege.  One can
imagine hierarchy without sexism or racism, just as one can imagine
sexism or racism operating in non-hierarchical systems.  For example,
teacher-student is a hierarchal structure.  It can be affected by
sexism and racism, but there is nothing inherent about the
hierarchical relationship of teacher-student that necessitates or
calls into play any of the various "isms".

However, conflating "isms" and hierarchy _does_ allow for the move
that Patai makes above, in calling on evolutionary psychological
interpretations of primate societies as all exhibiting hierarchical
characteristics.  (This is in spite of extensive data from field
observations that have shown that there are many different kinds of
social arrangements in the primate world.)  Evolutionary psychology
claims that hierarchy is part of our evolutionary inheritance, not
socially constructed - and therefore not something that "social
engineering" can do away with.  This stops just short of the
naturalistic fallacy - that is, claiming that since hierarchy is our
evolutionary inheritance, it must be "good".  But it does commit a
different sort of error of scientific understanding, and that is the
assumption that knowing what has happened (evolution) is the key to
knowing what will happen (development.)  Even if Patai were correct in
her reading of primatology data, the conclusion that hierarchy cannot
be done away with, or its nature modified, by "social engineering" or
what I would call teaching and learning, does not follow.  A more
extensive analysis of the way in which non-scientists and evolutionary
psychologists use the look and feel of science to promote conservative
ideology can be found in my essay in a forthcoming book edited by
Cynthia Burack and Jyl J. Josephson, "Fundamental Differences:
Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives", to be published by Roman
and Littlefield in 2003.

>I'm not sure we should quickly judge racism, sexism, classism to be all
>bitter fruits of the same evil tree - unless the latter metaphor is meant to
>characterize human nature.  After all, these traits are present in just
>about every human society and in all times.

This statement obscures more than it clarifies. It's one thing to
recognize that ethnic hostilities have existed historically all over
the world, and another to collapse this phenomenon together with the
highly organized modern systems of racial domination, particularly
those rooted in colonialism as in America, Australia, and so on. To
elide the differences between these is not only academically unsound,
it is itself ideological. The ideology of "it's always been that way"
has typically been used to dismiss inquiry into the workings of
social hierarchies that are historical developments.

As to whether we "quickly judge" the relationship of racism, sexism,
classism: there is another alternative, which is to inquire into the
complexities of their interaction, or as the current buzzword has it,
their intersectionality. What these isms undeniably have in common is
that they are systems of domination. But there are other
correlations, such as those being explored in studies of female
captivity in early slavery, or of the origination of  female
seclusion, corsets, footbinding, and other restraints among elite
classes, as two examples.

As for going to primatology, beware of biological determinism.
Sociobiological constructions of innate human hierarchies do more to
shore up current realities than they do to explain the full range of
societies on this planet. If you are going to be critical of
doctrinal verities, better reevaluate the old chestnut that male
domination is a given from the primate past. I would caution that a
historical perspective (and that would include much that is
classified as "ethnography" or "anthropology") is critical to any
analyis of domination relations in human societies.

--
Max Dashu   <maxdashu  AT  LMI.net>
<http://www.suppressedhistories.net>
Global Women's Studies

To refer to biology is not to genuflect to "biological determinism."   True,
there's the habit these days in many circles of pretending biology has no
role in anything human, but  I should think that as teachers we should be
careful about passing this view, however fashionable at the moment, on to
students. Surely they should also be invited to think critically about
social constructionism, and not simply accept it as dogma.  Domination is
connected to hierarchy, and the various -isms are certainly forms of
domination that, when they work unchallenged, maintain hierarchies in place.
But the underlying tendency to create to distinguish among groups AND to
create in-groups and out-groups is not a social construct, though it may
indeed be exacerbated or contradicted by human action and beliefs.  Humans,
and not only humans, seem repeatedly to recreate such structures.  In
addition, since biology is of obvious importance and HAS to be dealt with in
the real world (where genetic diseases exist and people have to deal with
the reality of biology on a daily basisd),  to dismiss biology is to invite
students to doubt the intellectual integrity of the teacher (or the field).
Finally, being myopic is a biological characteristic that can be easily
corrected with proper lenses.

 Burying one's head in the sand hardly helps - and attributing to me views I
don't hold and didn't express is also unhelpful.  We have now had two
responses which boiled down to: biology is referred to by people who are
conservative, ignorant,  and opposed to social change.  Is this an example
of how some teachers on this list  react to students, also, or only to
colleagues on the list??

Daphne
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  AT  spanport.umass.edu

Daphne Patai wrote:
>Burying one's head in the sand hardly helps - and attributing to me views
>I don't hold and didn't express is also unhelpful.  We have now had two
>responses which boiled down to: biology is referred to by people who are
>conservative, ignorant,  and opposed to social change.  Is this an example
>of how some teachers on this list  react to students, also, or only to
>colleagues on the list??

Since I am author of one of the responses to which Daphne refers above,
I thought it might be helpful to let list members who are not familiar with
my background know something about it.  I am an engineer and a scientist
by training (biomedical engineering in particular, with a specialization in
cancer research).  It is certainly odd, therefore, to find myself accused
of being anti-science, or at least anti-biology.

But then again, this is a familiar move that Dr. Patai has used in the
past - change the terms of the debate to avoid addressing the critique
that was made.  In my previous post, I called attention to the fact
that Dr. Patai was using evolutionary psychology to bolster a point
she was making, and she was using it in a particular way that has been
widely discredited by scientists in general and primatologists in
particular.  This is not the same thing as being anti-science,
especially since many genuine scientists are unwilling to classify
evolutionary psychology (which is just sociobiology in a new disguise)
as a real science.  It is also not the same thing as being
anti-biology, since biology and evolutionary psychology are not the
same thing, though evolutionary psychologists attempt to draw upon the
credibility of biology to bolster their social conservative agenda as
being scientific.

Dr. Suzanne E. Franks
Director, Women in Engineering and Science Program
125 Seaton Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS  66506-2905
email sefranks  AT  ksu.edu