A Dialogue on Race with Dave Winer, Part One

Dear Dave,

It's nice to meet you. I've been reading you for quite a while, well before late January, when you announced your support for Obama in the California primary. I noted the hunger for a shared vision in your criticism of the Clinton campaign for race-baiting tactics during the South Carolina primary. You also rightly condemned the fear-mongering tactics being used against Obama.

Since the controversy erupted over Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright's recorded remarks, I have appreciated the directness with which you have expressed yourself. In particular, I thought your essay, I am a white male, 52 years old emphasized that point as a way of noting that your perspective is partially shaped by your specific social location. I appreciate that, as I have also written
about the way my particular social location affects my perspective.

I say all of this because I want to understand what you mean by this:

In all my years, I've only heard two images of whites from blacks. 1. The man. We control everything. We're privileged. The oppressor. We coordinate to keep blacks out, to keep blacks down. 2. The silly do-good liberal. We look for approval. We want to be hip. But we're naive and shallow. There is no third view of whites in black folklore. And you wonder why we never connect.

I am familiar with discourse on white supremacy and white privilege. Neither of those assume that individuals who are raced as "white" consciously "coordinate to keep blacks out, to keep blacks down." Rather, proponents of this discourse argue that we are all socialized to participate in society in a way that perpetuates certain kinds of hierarchies.

To put this in terms of a different kinds of privilege, I am sighted, and I assume that you are too. We live in a world that is constructed for the convenience of sighted people. Most of us who are sighted don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about the effect of our individual and collective actions on people who are not sighted. Although we may not consciously participate in oppressing blind people, we may participate in a social system that excludes them from equal opportunities. Some of us may also harbor cultural beliefs that blind people are somehow deficient because they are blind.

So I can not relate to your typology, but I accept your description of your experience.

As for a "third view" of whites in black folklore, perhaps you have not read Du Bois' biography of John Brown? or heard any of the African American artists who covered Abraham, Martin and John? (My favorite is Moms Mabley's, but here is Marvin Gaye's:



This is a type that I know from my study of African American history: the principled reformer who allies himself or herself with the cause of social justice. I've been privileged to know and work with a lot of people like that, and I've studied and taught about many people like that in my classes: Elijah Lovejoy, Helen Keller, Mary White Ovington, Joel Spingarn (for whom the prestigious NAACP Award is named), Viola Liuzzo, on down to my friend and Princeton classmate, Robert Kinloch Massie. I could go on and on.

Here is a comic version -- Alan Alda's character in the Ossie Davis play, Purlie Victorious

Here is another "type" that I grew up fearing, but have labored to understand: the white working-class ethnic, the "Whitetowner".
That term comes from a 1970 book by Peter Binzen about the residents of a neighborhood in my hometown, Philadelphia. The abstract summarizes it nicely:

Lower middle-class whites who support their police, who paste flags in their car windows, and who comprise a most volatile political constituency are the subject of this book. In particular, Kensington, a blue-collar neighborhood in Philadelphia, is examined: Irish, Italians, and Poles are found to be as angry and disaffected as their neighboring blacks. In the schools, some of the lowest reading and arithmetic scores are found in lower middle-class neighborhoods. The young people often manifest symptoms of alienation. One chapter, "The Schools of Whitetown--Then and Now," concentrates on the history of white ethnic groups in public schools. The white working class has used the public school system to move upward in American society; these people are now afraid that all resources and energy will be channeled toward the black community and away from them.

So, when you speak about generalizations about white people, that's what comes to my mind. Perhaps, given that, you'll understand my curiosity about what you mean?

Sincerely,

Kim