Browse By

vikkiage: the white privilege of white anti-racists

vikkiage: the white privilege of white anti-racists:

karnythia:

This is one of the things about white allies that can occasionally piss me off. I appreciate the help, but I get tired of needing them as faux translators so that our voices can be heard. The words coming out of their mouths this week aren’t any different the ones that came out of my mouth last year. In many cases, they learned about anti-racism from POC & yet they get the credit for the work that was done.

deafmuslimpunk:

a very, very good article worthwhile reading. Here’s my favourite part:

Another white privilege Tim Wise and other white anti-racists carry is the ability to emotionally express their views about racism without having that expression dismissed as “angry” or “too emotional”. When Wise speaks passionately and fervently about racism, his expression is understood as a sign of a person standing up for what he believes. As such, it is championed even when he is derisive or sardonic in his remarks. When we, people of color activists, speak passionately about racism, we are maligned and ridiculed as being angry, militant, even hateful and dangerous. If we wish to be heard (let alone understood), we are expected to speak calmly and politely about our experience and analysis regarding racism. Otherwise we are demonized. White moral indignation is justified. Black moral indignation is vilified. This has long been the case.

The third white privilege that Tim Wise and other so-called white anti-racists enjoy is the privilege of being honored for their anti-racist work as their Black activist counterparts and other activists of color are denounced and derided. Case in point: Several years back I spoke at a school in Massachusetts for their annual Dr. King Day commemoration. As I spoke about King’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for racial justice, I was met with outright hostility from the students gathered in the auditorium. The following year I would be contacted by an Arab faculty member at the school. She would inform me that for that year’s King Day event, the school decided to invite Tim Wise to address the student body. She went on to inform me that Wise was received with profound admiration by the very same students that heckled me the year before. Isolated incident? Chance circumstance? To my knowledge, similar events like this have at occurred on two more occasions since.

On one of the other occasions, I was contacted by a Black student organization that had to petition a reluctant administration to gain the necessary approval to invite me to speak. Just one semester following my presentation they would inform me that Tim Wise had just spoken at their school, where he received the red carpet of administrative respect and welcome. When this occurred at a third school, a Vietnamese student emailed me and rhetorically but sincerely asked, “Isn’t this what Tim Wise is supposed to be against?”. In all three cases, persons and groups that reached out to me expressed a level of frustration at witnessing the hypocrisy of the institutions they were working at or attending.

From The Angry Black Tumblr | Comment below or Reblog @ Tumblr

One thought on “vikkiage: the white privilege of white anti-racists”

  1. Pingback: Magical linkspam sparkles (26th May, 2011) | Geek Feminism Blog
  2. Trackback: Magical linkspam sparkles (26th May, 2011) | Geek Feminism Blog

Comments are closed.