Scholars from around the United States discussed how white privilege helps maintain racial inequality in a panel that was part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Diversity Week in the USU ballrooms on Tuesday.
David Roediger, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed his paper “Whiteness, Management and Work,” which touched on how race has been used in managing the workplace.
Roediger presented a cartoon illustrating how those in management positions in the early 20th century pitted races against each other and used stereotypes to rationalize the work of one race over another.
“To get people to do these thankless, dangerous, low-paying jobs is very much the same pattern of playing one race against another,” Roediger said.
Roediger touched on how some historians choose to ignore the past practices of race management.
“The relationship between race and management of labor that was known in the early 20th century is lost to historians today,” Roediger said.
Karen Brodkin, an anthropologist from UCLA, presented her paper “Wrestling with Whiteness: On Beyond Denial.”
She discussed how the Jewish population has never viewed themselves as being racist, but became “model minorities” in the post WWII era. The privilege of whiteness they acquired during this time helped maintain racial inequality, according to Brodkin.
The United States is in a good place for change, Brodkin said.
“Dealing with privilege as an obstacle is a very critical effort,” Brodkin said. “We are now in an opening in the United States where change can easily be made.”
Signithia Fordham, an anthropologist from the University of Rochester and Robert Amico, a philosophy professor from the St. Bonaventure University, discussed how whiteness leads to isolation.
In her paper “Come and Be Black for Me: A Suicide Mission On a Whiteness-Only Flight,” Fordham stated that whiteness is never really recognized or acknowledged like other races.
By not acknowledging the privilege of whiteness, other races become isolated, Fordham said.
“To be black in America is to be constructed as the only person in the room,” Fordham said.
In his paper, “The Cost of White Privilege in My Life,” Amico detailed experiences in which the privilege of being white dawned on him.
Amico told about how he was promoted to executive chef at a upscale restaurant while his black co-worker, who was a better cook, ended up at a hole-in-the-wall café.
“I was the beneficiary of racism and he was the victim,” Amico said.
Upon realizing that his white privilege had led to his promotion, he was too embarrassed to go up to his former co-worker after seeing him at the café, so he left and excluded his once-good friend from his life.
“Isolation is too high of a price to pay for my white privilege,” Amico said.
Lynn Weber, a professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, spoke about her competitive tennis career and her first realization of her white privilege.
Weber was supposed to play against a black female in a tournament hosted at an exclusive country club. The official would not allow her opponent in the country club, so they were sent to a park across town to play the match.
“I had never been banished before,” Weber said.
In her paper, “Unmasking and Deploying Power and Privilege in the Cause of Social Justice,” Weber compared white privilege to a fly.
“Like flies, whiteness is easily missed and is an outsider within,” Weber said.
The panel discussion ended with Weber proposing ways to end racial inequality.
Weber said, “We need to respect people and listen to them, not just talk.”
