Louis CK on White Privilege

The comedian Louis CK talks about the advantages of being white; a comedic look at white privilege



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

Beginning to Recognise White Privilege

I took a class this past term called "Ethnicity in a Global Perspective" which really made me examine ideas around race and question a lot more than previous classes had. Obviously as a third year anthropology student I have already studied the concept of race frequently and I’m fully aware that race is a cultural construct and that there is no biological grounds for different races. I also think anthropology has made me quite critical in the approach of the subject of race and has made me very aware of the institutional, social, class factors etc that play into ideas about race and that class and social standing has a lot more to do with the way one acts that race. The class definitely made me more aware of my own race and how it affects my daily life. Being white (and middle class) I am most definitely afforded the luxury of never really haven't to think about being white or question anything to do with my race. What the class and my research for it clearly highlighted for more than ever was the concept of white privilege and how as white people we are blind to these privileges of race; we accept that racism disadvantages certain groups yet we fail to recognize that it in turn advantages us. The idea of white privilege and white sense of entitlement began to be a recurring theme throughout the course as I began to look at things more critically; it was everywhere I looked, came up blogs, newspaper articles, films, and in people’s arguments. As I researched, read and thought more about the topic I started to recognize my own biases (in terms of my racial status) more. I had really failed to see my own racial privilege.

My race, my status as a ‘white person’ was something to which I had never really given much thought. I was most definitely aware of my socio-economic privilege; growing up in England where the class system is still so rife, I was aware that how being raised in a middle class family with certain values had definitely given me more opportunities someone from a working class background, but for me race had never really played into it. I am lucky to have been raised in a setting where I was taught the racial equality of all people, I was always taught that racism was wrong and bad; I never rarely heard racist slurs. I grew up in Manchester; a very multicultural city and my whole life I have had friends of different ethnic backgrounds (mostly of middle class families though). As a never saw it first had, I imagined that racism didn’t exist; that everyone thought the same way I did.

I like many Brits, used to question things like the MOBO awards (Music of Black Origin), or the existence of a National Black Police Association (NBPA). I used to think that this was being racist by segregating and highlighting the race of these police officers, rather than just considering them police officers primarily. This would probably be the case if we lived in the utopian world of my imagination, but I have realized that this is not reality. Complete equality for all is how it should be, but realistically of course this is not the case, within our society’s people of colour, ethnic/racial groups are sadly generally not equal in various ways. This for me is where white privilege comes in, it blinds you. As I have never been discriminated against on the grounds of my race I cannot of course imagine what people who do go through every day. Organizations for minority groups are spaces where people can feel safe from the usual prejudices in an environment where they know that they are not being judged primarily by their skin colour, accent or religious affiliation.  Its time we all began to think more critically about our white privilege and how our status as  white people affords privilege to us.

I AM COMPLICIT

Today my class did the installation of our "Anthropology of Art" group piece. The idea was for the whole class (40 0f us) to come up with an art idea, all together!...and bring it through from conception to completion as a group. The aim was to create not an art object, but art that had a message to tell and an idea to convey.

We came up the the idea of complicity; how we are all complicit in our daily lives in so many ways and that we were going to recognize this complicity and take responsibility for it. We screen printed the words I AM COMPLICIT onto T-Shirts and then decided that we would photograph ourselves wearing them in certain places, therefore moving the idea into the space in which we feel we have been complicit. We then wrote our thoughts on our complicity. We installed the T-shirts and created a group blog to go with it, bringing our personal stories of complicity into the light. The blog pretty much explains the whole project much better than I did.

Here's my story of complicity;

As a young woman, I feel that we are continuously bombarded with unrealistic ideals of beauty, ideals to which most of us will never live up. The beauty industry promotes a very narrow view of what beauty is; white, skinny, tall, perfect women. Most of the images we see have been retouched and manipulated in order to portray this unachievable perfection. We all know that most women do not fit this ideal, we are all different. A majority of us talk about acceptance of everyone regardless of appearance, I believe this too. I know that what the beauty industry portrays is a false ideal and I know that this ideal is so very damaging to the self-esteem of many young girls, myself included. I know that the goal of the industry is ultimately to sell more products and by creating this unobtainable ideal which we are lead to believe can only be reached through buying and buying more products, through changing ourselves, altering ourselves so that we fit this image we are  lead to believe that beauty equates happiness. I know how harmful, damaging and immoral the beauty industry is, I also think that people should be free to be themselves and that the immense pressure I feel as a woman constantly comparing myself with these ideals of perfection can be detrimental.Yet irregardless, I still buy into this ideal, I feel the pressure to conform to this ideal, I am a consumer of it all even though I think it is wrong, in this way I AM COMPLICIT

Anyway, go read! and hopefully it will give people something to think about and maybe question their own complicity and perhaps even make people want to make changes?

Maclean's "Too Asian" article: Challenging Racism in the Media

This is a piece that I wrote for an online blog for my "Ethnicity in a Global Perspective" class in regards to race. After attending an Anti-Asian Racism meeting to address the huge response that the Maclean's article received.
 
A recent article published in the November issue of Maclean's entitled "Too Asian" has caused a lot of controversy both nationally and specifically on the UVIC Campus. In short, the article suggests that there are too many "Asians" at top Canadian Universities, in turn making them "too competitive" for white students to keep up and hence having the result of segregating the student population along racial lines. I have heard many people debating the article and it got an enormous negative response from many readers who found it to be highly offensive and racist. The outrage was to the point that an ad-hock meeting was organised on campus in order to discuss the article and this week. A "teach-in" was organised in order to create both awareness of the article and the issues around Asian racism as well as aiming to create much needed discourse around this subject.

The article opens with the voices of two white female Canadian students; Alexandra and Rachel who are both graduates of private schools in the Toronto area and had decided that they would not attend the University of Toronto because "too many Asians" attended this University. The writers then go on to label U of T as an "Asian School"; meaning a school "that is so academically focused that some students feel they can no longer have fun" (Findlay & Köhler). The article continues to say that due to Asians being "strivers, high-achievers and single-minded in their approach to university" (Findlay & Köhler) that white students feel they can no longer compete academically with these students for places in the top schools and to do so would require "a sacrifice of time and freedom they're not willing to make" (Findlay & Köhler). I personally found it laughable at times and honestly ridiculous that this argument was deemed worthy of print. Isn't the point of university to gain an education rather than a social life?

I found the whole article to have quite racist undertones and so many aspects of it were problematic for me. Almost too many problems to mention; numerous implicit racist assumptions,  the reproduction of stereotypes and the disturbing re-emergence of old ideologies regarding WASP privilege. Firstly, the broad, sweeping generalizations of both "Asians" and "Whites" that were perpetuated. McLean's used Asian in this sense mostly in reference to East Asia; China, Japan and Korea. This reference to Asia, as if it were some homogeneous entity, rather than the culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse landmass that it is, I found to be quite ignorant. There is an overt use of stereotypes regarding both Asians and whites; that of the overachieving, quiet Asian student who is great at maths and science, but lacks necessary social skills versus the free-spirited, hard partying white kids who choose schools based soley on the social lives they hope attain. What is problematic here is the blatant racialization of both White and Asian students, perpetuating stereotypes that can be damaging and limiting, especially for marginalized groups.

These assumptions are indeed offensive and problematic, the argument at times is blatantly racist and really quite redundant; most people who live within a multicultural society would understand that people do not fit stereotypes and you can obviously not make generalizations like this about whole groups of people. If you 'live' race on a daily basis, through proximity and social interaction, then arguments such as this one honestly just sound quite ridiculous. I would hope that most of us know that not all Asian students are great at maths or computers, or are one homogeneous group, nor do we think that white students choose schools soley based on social life. I know I certainly didn't and neither did most of the people i attend school with. My fellow students of European background work very hard at school and I could definitely apply the argument of them being "strivers and high-achievers".
 
A major argument presented in the article is that Asian students are resented for taking the spots of white students. This argument to me holds the assumption then that these places should be set aside for white Canadians? This entire article embodies the notion of white privilege, a notion that is so frequently ignored in race discussions and was most certainly ignored in this article. It highlights more than anything, the sense of entitlement of white Canadians and the privileges afforded to them simply based on their race. I don't want to sound like I'm pointing the finger or playing the blame game here. I too, being white and British have been afforded the luxury of not really having to think about my race often. However, it is not about blame, it is about recognizing such unconscious and implicit assumptions in our daily lives. For me, this is what anthropology is about; understanding that we are all so completely enculturated into ways of being and thinking, we all make judgments based on our culture, our race, our socio-economic status etc and I think to suggest that we can ever be completely free from such implicit judgments is  unrealistic. However, educating ourselves, learning to recognize such judgments when we make them and then thinking critically about them once we have can be the roots of change in all of us.

Even the title of the piece, "too Asian" is so laden with this white privilege ideology; saying  that something is "too Asian" implies it is a deviation from the norm, the norm of course, once again, being white. Tying in with the concept of white privilege is the idea that universities are becoming "too Asian" and too segregated racially. This holds the implicit assumption then that universities are assumed to be white spaces, with the need for predominately white students; anything else is troubling? Rather disturbingly then, this all leads back to ideas of white racial privilege and superiority which I think the article clearly highlights; the common 'us' vs 'them' argument ('us' being white Canadians) and the assumption that Canadian-ness equates whiteness. This is of course very blatant in the hyphenated forms used for non white Canadians; Indo-Canadian, Asian-Canadian, even the native population finds themselves marked in this way as Aboriginal-Canadians. Canadian (without hyphenation) then just seems to refer to people of European decent, ignoring and hiding the fact that everyone besides the aboriginal population is foreign to this land and just as Canadian, or in fact non Canadian as each other.
 
This all made me think back to a comment which a classmate made at the beginning of the term, a comment that really struck a chord with me. She mentioned that on a regular basis people ask her where she is from and are simply not content with the answer that she is Canadian. It of course ties back to the notion of white Canadian-ness and sadly it seems that Canadians who are visible ethnic minorities within Canada are constantly having to justify their status as Canadians in a way that white Canadians never have to. Additionally, the article ignores all the other aspects that come hand in hand with racism. Racism and prejudge based on skin-colour never stand alone of course, it intersects and is tangled with other prejudices; classism, sexism, ideas about gender and etc.
 
Obviously reading articles like this critically, especially when using an anthropological framework help to examine and expose deep set ideologies that may be overlooked under everyday circumstances. For instance, the implicit assumption about Canadian-ness equating whiteness, who 'belongs' in Canada and what being Canadian really is, assumptions which I believe to be highly problematic and damaging within Canadian society. The idea of not recognising white privilege and and of the problematic assumption that Canadian-ness equates whiteness was what I found most troubling in this article.
 
-Shannon Turner-Riley
December 1st, 2010

Findlay, Stephanie & Köhler, Nicholas.
    2010 "Too Asian". Maclean's, November 10.

Share The Knowledge

This is my first ever blog! I'm not really one for blogging but I decided to do this in order to share the wonderful things I learn everyday as an Anthropology student. Now I know not everyone may be familiar with what anthropology is, but broadly it is defined as the study of people in all times and all places. Very broad I know! This is because it encompasses so much. People usually think of anthropology as the study of exotic peoples in far of places, however anthropologist also study within industrialized settings and western cultures too. Anthropology is about the study of all people, regardless of time, place, culture. It involves broad questions about what makes us human and what it means to be human, questions that can bee addressed from numerous angles. Through evolution for example; the study of primates, or ancestral humans or how our language and culture shapes our thinking. It obviously points out our differences, but in many ways continues to show just how similar we all are as humans. The discipline is divided into sub-disciples, including the fields of archaeology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, forensics, primatology, linguistic anthropology etc.

For me anthropology is about learning new ways of thinking and of being. It is about addressing our implicit assumptions about the way things are, it is about keeping our judgments in check by turning a critical lens on to ourselves. It is about respect for other peoples beliefs, ideas and cultures. It is about understanding that we are not the norm, there is no 'normal' way of doing things. We are all enculturated to the same degree and everything we do, everything we assume as normal is so culturally constructed. We are all as cultural as each other. When we realize and address this subconscious and implicit thinking I think that it creates an environment in which change can start to happen and change that benefits all. I honestly feel that anthropology has made me a better person, i feel like it should be mandatory for everyone! I really hope to use my degree to make changes in the world, to make things better.

The idea behind this blog really came out of the thought that as students we put so much time and effort into our studies; writing essays, listening to lectures, reading books. Yet most f this knowledge learnt and generated seems to never leave the department. Most of the anthropology students I know, like me are very passionate about anthropology and about the things we learn. Then I thought, what really is the point of it all if we don't use the things we do and learn for the benefit of others, if it just sits in a filing cabinet and as an overall grade on my transcripts. I think our knowledge and learning should be used to create changes, that is really what anthropology is for me. Otherwise what is the point of putting so much effort in, learning new ways of thinking about things if we don't share it with each other. So I have decided that I will post my essays, course work and things that I find interesting or important related to my degree. It may not be much but I hope that I can make someone, somewhere think differently about something and maybe want to make changes too. I want to share the amazing things I learn everyday through anthropology and hope that they affect you in the same way they have me. So although it may be minimal, I think that even if we all try to make small changes maybe we can make the world a better place? Learning should really be a communal and cooperative experience...so SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE!!

Happy learning, Shannon