http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/16/1412489/-What-an-Expert-says-about-Whites-and-Race
Its been an interesting week. Its also be a fabulous learning opportunity about social dynamics in America and how far we've got to go. So what do the experts say about the prism white people view people of color through, a prism so many white Americans are blithely unaware of.
Dr. Robin DiAngelo explains why white people implode when talking about race.
By Dr. Robin DiAngelo
I am white. I have spent years studying what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race. This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sources—schools, textbooks, media—don’t provide us with the multiple perspectives we need.
Yes, we will develop strong emotionally laden opinions, but they will not be informed opinions. Our socialization renders us racially illiterate. When you add a lack of humility to that illiteracy (because we don’t know what we don’t know), you get the break-down we so often see when trying to engage white people in meaningful conversations about race.
Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to individual racial prejudice and the intentional actions that result. The people that commit these intentional acts are deemed bad, and those that don’t are good. If we are against racism and unaware of committing racist acts, we can’t be racist; racism and being a good person have become mutually exclusive. But this definition does little to explain how racial hierarchies are consistently reproduced.
Social scientists understand racism as a multidimensional and highly adaptive system—a system that ensures an unequal distribution of resources between racial groups. Because whites built and dominate all significant institutions, (often at the expense of and on the uncompensated labor of other groups), their interests are embedded in the foundation of U.S. society.
While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won’t be one of them.
This distinction—between individual prejudice and a system of unequal institutionalized racial power—is fundamental. One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.
This systemic and institutional control allows those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives.
Further, we are centered in all matters deemed normal, universal, benign, neutral and good. Thus, we move through a wholly racialized world with an unracialized identity (e.g. white people can represent all of humanity, people of color can only represent their racial selves).
Challenges to this identity become highly stressful and even intolerable.
mostly reasons that put any complicity at the feet of Whites most kicking in from a buzz word that comes well before the relevant dialogue and gets shut down with that hear none, see none and refuse to speak any, mentality that has turned into centuries of the same game with the same names racism and bigotry.
there has been hope a lot of Whites are not feeling responsible for but responsible to do something about it positive. so maybe reading the whole article will brighten the light and illuminate a path
