Whiteness
At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we believe that any productive conversation on race must start with honesty, respect for others, and an openness to ideas and information that provide new perspectives.

In that context, we recently unveiled “Talking About Race,” an online portal providing research, studies, and other academic materials from the fields of history, education, psychology, and human development. Our goal in doing so was to contribute to a discussion on this vitally important subject that millions of Americans are grappling with.

Since yesterday, certain content in the “Talking About Race” portal has been the subject of questions that we have taken seriously. We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended.

The site's intent and purpose are to foster and cultivate conversations that are respectful and constructive and provide increased understanding. As an educational institution, we value meaningful dialogue and believe that we are stronger when we can pause, listen, and reflect—even when it challenges us to reconsider our approach. We hope that this portal will be an ever-evolving place that will continue to grow, develop, and ensure that we listen to one another in a spirit of civility and common cause.

Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized.

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

Toni Morrison
White Privilege
Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept - but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin.

Stop and Think!
How does being white grant certain privileges? How might white people experience oppression through other social identities, e.g., class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, etc.?

White people can possess other marginalized parts of their identity, but their race is not one of these. To learn more about how race intersects with our other identities, check out the section titled systems of oppression.

Being white does not mean you haven’t experienced hardships or oppression. Being white does mean you have not faced hardships or oppression based on the color of your skin. We need to be honest about the ways white people have benefited from racism so we can work toward an equitable, fair and just society.

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” scholar Peggy McIntosh writes, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” Here are some examples she gives on what white privilege looks like in day to day living:

• I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
• I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
• I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
• When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
• I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
• If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
• I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
• I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race

Download “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh(link is external)

WATCH: White privilege and constructing white racial identity

 

Dogger! What happened to your four horsemen avatar?
You know...Christ, war and bloodshed, famine, pestilence and death.

 

• I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
• I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
• I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
• When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
• I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
• If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
• I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
• I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race

Download “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh(link is external)


Ya know, walking down this list, black people have all the same privileges. Well except for the fact that blacks make up 13% of the population,
but think they should get 100% of the news coverage?

And yeah, when you're responsible for making it what it is, you deserve the credit.

Bunch of whining is all that's going on. Gimme gimme gimme. Fucking Africans all walked around with their hands extended. gimme gimme gimme.
And looting and rioting is the norm if they don't get what they want.

Yeah I can afford to live in nice neighborhoods. I went to college and paid for it. It was not given to me. I worked hard for 34 years showing up every day
and not stayed home snorting crack. It's not because of the color of my skin goddammit.

 

Privilege, I must have missed that line. The line I got in required passing every test handed me if I expected the reward of accomplishment. Because someone else may have experienced discrimination, real or imagined, doesn’t constitute privilege on my part. We need to add another designation of person I guess....victim.

 

Hmp...

The only privilege that exists in the U.S. is for the ''minorities'', and the minority classification is a classification coined for political purposes.

While all along being a classification is only promoting a falsehood and creating a political victim...for political purposes.

Most generally these political classification are created out of emotion to narrate a false status of being non inclusive.

Communism and socialism can only thrive under these minority directives, it's much easier to create a subject of the State under these values, rather than inspire an individual.

The founding fathers understood this as they were creating a nation to allow individualism.

Yet, the system has been corrupted to allow certain people to hold corrupt power within.

 

JERIMIAH: Abstract-Figurative-Metaphorical,THE UNHEEDED

 

"Yet, the system has been corrupted to allow certain people to hold corrupt power within"-Interesting postscript!

ALSO...From another culturally subjective perspective
An aggregation of cultural wide acute and trifling anecdotal experience which ring 1st-2nd-and-3rd hand familiar so that a zeitgeist of being the outsider, unless celebrity status elevates one to a special patronized (for many of the "norm-making" culture/society) pedestal and status (short of some horrific accusation of circumstantial evidence-OJ-removes you from that patronized status of favor and affectionate respect)
So a counter-cultural narrative gains its own arguably, justifiable credence, THAT IS exploited by those with platforms of influence and power. Yet, the underlying affirmation of the anecdotals remain, b/c they define the invisible reality of what exists too frequently and not seriously addressed by those in power of the demographics that keep them in those positions. Thus commentary even more vitriolic gets dissemination by the aggrieved of extreme, too frequent anecdotal occurrences.
Now a confluence of events ties the abuse of the anecdotals to other operations of "[a] system [that] has been corrupted to allow certain people to hold corrupt power within"
AND HERE WE ARE TRADING RHETORICAL RATIONALIZATIONS ABOUT IRRATIONAL CONDITIONS AND THEIR PRECIPITATED CONSEQUENCES..

 

How things compound themselves!
You react to the anecdotally, authorized rhetoric now (patronizingly) given space as if that rhetoric provided solace or practical path to the underlying angst of that rhetoric.

Sandra Blande's arrest and dramatized end would've been my choice for the museum's curator's display.

The toxic level of recrimination and counter-recrimination is part and parcel of this system that creates all these by-products as an 'obtw' to the operations for which Blacks-ADOS-erstwhile_American citizens can tangibly and easily see as some shit, along with the out-of-sight, but muted Aboriginal Nations, except in the continuing erosion of their Treaty "rights", or Asian-Americans who with a maintained cultural family unit have played the game well to achieve the material nirvana of the "American Dream', but find themselves-even now-as the objects of verbal vitriol b/c of the coincidental origin of Covid-19 and its political usefulness to the venally unscrupulous. Let's not forget the rising demographic of Mexican-Chicano-Americans who have been portrayed as both Jekyll (Cruz-Goya Ceo-Rubio) and Hyde (Gangs-Migrants-Refugees), whose standing is as perilous as OJ's was leading upto the killings.

As an aside of personal revelation. Me-a self-sufficient (military) retiree with cash-to-pay has to play games w/contractors who won't give service for b.s. excuses.. And I'm out of the street-public activism that fate took me for my present 4-Horsemen/Jeremiah karmic duties of fortuitous grace of non-materialistic function over the trappings of style as my affirmation and justification for my existence..


DOES ANY OF THIS SEEM FAMILIAR OR RELEVANT TO YOUR LIFE ROUTINE??

 

The big think that most blacks do not understand is the concept of hard work. They have been given just about everything in their lives but still demand more. They do not want to work for what they want, they want other people to give it to them.
The white privilege they keep talking about is a simple thing. People who want more in life will have to put out more effort.
It isn't a privilege, it is a desire to make more of yourself.
Today every child in the U.S. has the same chance of getting an education. Not every child understands that at an early age. Luckily they have parents who can instill in them a good work ethic and make sure they get the education they are allowed.
Some children do not have parents who will instill a good work ethic. They may come from a family where the father is absent, if they even knew who he was. They have a mother who has been on welfare all of her life and thinks her children should be the same as her. These children want the same things that every child wants. They are never taught that hard work can get those things they want. By the time they start school the gimme lifestyle has been ingrained into their lives. They do not work hard at school as they do not know how. They cannot expect help from their parents as the male is usually not around. They usually end up dropping out of school. Without even a high school education they find out they are not educated enough to get any other job paying higher than minimum wage. Such a job does not buy the things they want. They fall back to what they were taught, the gimme life style.

Blacks need to instill in their children a work ethic. The gimme life style is just not going to give them what they want.
They want respect and a lifestyle like the people they see. They cannot get either one.
Instead of blaming it on others it is time they start looking where the blame lays.
But the gimme lifestyle does not allow them to do that.

 

A two-pronged psychological hill of external as well as the internal conditions that Black writers pointed out more than 50 years ago(!), but has not received as wide dissemination due to the external censuring in public schools so that such analysis as this exist on the margins of awareness away from the masses to be inspired for MORE than being just components of a debilitating, censoring system:
Black social pathologies, ala 'Wretched of the Earth'-'Black Skins, White Masks' [Franz Fanon]
Particularly with the black-on-black killings, the acts themselves model present and historical behavioral models of those in formal, institutional or civic power roles who act with impunity. Those actions provide an amoral rationale for their social-fractal replication of 'If it's good enough for 'Them'..' as inspiration and motivation for those otherwise objectively or subjectively believing in the dispossession of their
self-empowerment. This rationalization triggers cathartic acts of asymmetric and destructive behavior on others as well as themselves.

It is the ineffectual modeling of a submission to a psychological meme of their own victimization as a general tool for their behavior on others, and needs a public health and cultural paradigm evaluation of inner-value versus extrinsic value

 

First, there will be a required mutual agreement that there is in fact such a creature as white privilege...I, do not believe that there is.

Secondly, there will be a required mutual agreement that there is in fact such a creature that suggests a person is a classification, that belongs to a community.

Those 3 terms alone create the intended divisiveness constructed through political events, essentially...there is not one mother fucking instance in most recent history that has not been corrupted through the lens of politics.

That is evidence based...take note of all the name changes that have been instrumented.

I have argued for many years on this site about this very subject, the intended separations of the individual, placing the individual into classifications, for political expediencies, it is even more heightened today.

There isn't a citizen of the U.S. that is not afforded all the rights that have been afforded every individual citizen of the U.S., upon the creation of United States Constitution.

I personally do not subscribe to classification of folks, every individual is a keeper of their own, free to make choices, good...bad...or indifferent.

 

I, too, believe in the absolute functional unity of existence of all entities, not just humans.

Cultures as they exist as derivatives of social expedience create those fabrications for their unique secular purposes of the moment.
As one-in-the-same 'in essence', as immortal energy forms, we have with each transitional incarnation to express and implicitly proclaim such-even if our temporal constructed limits prevents an explicit proclamation of that proposition.

For me, it comes down to how greatly we're invested in the present temporal camouflage of our energy to what is our indistinguishable essence, as energy.

 

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) of 'Grapes of Wrath'-fame had this as part of the script, as he talked about his Okie peoples treatment as migrants to and in Cali at the end of the Depression.. Shows how time just has folks exchanging wardrobes of circumstances as the energy of behavior migrates and incarnates as a repeating narrative of human nature and angst. [Plus prescient of my thoughts 75-80 years later]

 

I was born and raised in Indianapolis, IN, and lived and worked in close proximity with black people all my life. I was not raised to be racist, but there were times when I suffered because of the color of my skin. Downtown Indy is totally surrounded by black, and blacks permeate the city and its activities and occasionally cause problems, just because of a different mind-set. Take KFC for instance. All the KFC franchises in Indy were black-owned and all workers were black, without exception. We would go to KFC and be talked to like dogs. be made to wait until all black customers were served, even those who entered after us, and I often suspected that the chicken we were served was that quality that had been rejected by black customers. One night, I was walking my then-wife home after her shift at a restaurant ended, when I was attacked and beaten by three young black thugs, no warning, no provocation, just come up behind and punch right behind the right ear. I read an interesting book once that revealed the underbelly of Indianapolis. It was called Pimp, and was written by a man known only as Iceberg Slim. A very real eye-opener.

 

Well, lets see here;

• I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

This applies to everyone. Blacks can be in the company of their own "race" just as Mexicans can find their own "people" any time they want to. ​

• I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

Again, blacks are not forced to spend time with anyone, nor are Mexicans or Orientals or anyone else.​

• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

Well, first, has anyone checked out housing costs in Denver or LA or San Francisco or New York? Who the fuck can afford those prices? Anyway, renting or purchasing "in an area which I would want to live" is highly subjective, same with "I can afford". Pretty much a meaningless statement in Shooter's opinion. There is no housing barricades keeping minorities in only certain parts of a community anymore. If it does exist it is patently illegal and whoever sues over it will be able to buy their own McMansion.​

• I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

Fuck. Everyone should meet Shooter's neighbor, a bitch if ever one existed. And we're both white. At least, Shooter thinks the bitch is white. Anyway, Shooters neighbors are; a white retired military guy and his Mexican wife. A white couple with two kids. A retired black couple. An Oriental family with, Shooter thinks, 4 kids. Another white couple, Shooter thinks he is retired, she works. A single widow woman of indeterminate heritage. She could be Mexican, or maybe black, or perhaps Russian. Just can't tell.
And we all get along very well, except for the bitch, who no one likes and barely tolerate. But, it ain't about race, it's about bitch.​

• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

Alone or in a group, harassed may be in the cards for minorities, but damn! what a law suit, you know, what with all the cameras out there now so we can see exactly what happens.​

• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

This is very true today, no matter what race one is, well, except for maybe Alaskan natives and Russians. Hell, even sexual preference is widely represented.​

• When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

Shooter remembers that starting in High School in the mid 60's and continuing through college, it was normal to see not just white heritage, but national heritage no matter what color or whatever.​

• I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

Shooter's kids are unsure what their "race" is. They know some about their mother, nothing about their father, and nothing about relatives. They identify as white, but certainly have other stuff in there as well. Say, how about instead of worrying about identifying race in history or science or whatever, we talk about accurate history and stuff, not that Pablum we were fed.​

• If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

Wait. Publishers now base business decisions on the "race" of the subject and/or author??
Shooter always thought they based those decisions on the potential for profit.
When did that change?​

• I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

The only thing stopping one's voice from being heard in a group is one self. Shooter would like to see the group that would silence any "minority" because they are a "minority".​

• I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race

Wait. what? "I can be casual (the fuck does that mean) about whether or not to listen to another person's voice" ............. Really. What the fuck does this even mean?
​

So, if this is the shit in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, it is, in Shooter's opinion, a waste of Goddam time and space. And how come we aren't covering what the real issues are, like job discrimination, and driving while black, and all those other "hot" issues of the day, in this museum?

 

@shootersa , It's the sense of quite a number in the black community who are through with cultural and political processes of even pluralism (acceptance to the point of transactional contacts), for a separate cultural enclave , i.e 'Black American Homeland' . Cultural separatist and not necessarily racial in their rhetoric or ethos as
'The Nation of Islam', whose rhetoric is definitely racial and could be taken as racist by Caucasians. There is the spectrum of sympathizers within those two poles. who've had it with having to deal with the incomprehension to dismissive, non-historical and contextual view of their 'grievance' as individuals and as people of a group of a darker complexion.

Even an earlier post on here, which I've seen posted at other sites, thus rendering the poster here as having ulterior motives in their less-than-honest representation of themselves, gives those former groups the fuel for their skeptical to antagonistic views of appeals of the insistent 'innocent', white non-racists. As I noted of that C&P post; the toxicity in the social system is pervasive and insidious upon all-in the most tangent and indirect ways. The gal who posted that she could deal in a dog-eat-dog, dystopia with no sentimental conscience of doing whatever is necessary (to anyone) w/o any regrets would have a more favorable dialogue with the formerly noted groups and attitudes, because no pretensions of good will or benign intent is claimed.

My own attitude is that out of a psychological crutch we lean on our caste of behavioral associations which bests justifies their perspectives. MINE being a non-anthropomorphic and misanthropic view of the body serving the adventures of the meditative or somnolent, non-pedestrian focused mind. The body being the logistical supplier for the mind-trips of connection to the 'Mothership' source of psychic communication throughout the Cosmos. Thus social structures being at best bothersome superfluous constructs of energy diverting, drama distractions.

As Herr Trump, accurately, said, "IT IS WHAT IT IS.."

 

I remembered this from your descriptions of commonly thought of 'assholes'!

One unique thing about the general neighborhood in which I was brought up was that our parents were either Holocaust survivors, Fathers (or Mothers) who fought against the holocuast evil doers and saw the atrocities done to those survivors and victims of the Holocaust, plus those AFAm's who served and saw both the atrocities while being treated as second class citizens in WWII. We might have mentioned off-hand or bragging-if not shown the tattooed concentration Camp ID numbers on the survivors arms-about our parents stories of WWII and what it meant to them, thus to us in our own ethics and morality going forward.

It was never a conscious thing with us, but we had each other's back. Especially when some ASSHOLE picked on one of us for no known reason other than their own issues with whoever they harassed individually. We weren't 'justice-warriors' as a group as a rule, maybe individually if obviously someone who was being bullied had no one to stick up for them against one big one (or usually more).

Funny how when we were mixed with the kids from more well-heeled and homogeneous neighborhoods with their pre-frat/soror mentality many got co-opted, wanting to fit in w/the trends of the more numerous and socially controlling (until the post-MLK assassination disturbances occurred) ethos.

Before that the assholes could be any uncivil or (intentionally) rude person. Being a racial version of an asshole was just a subset of the larger asshole set-universe.

Get to college and get w/folks who had predominantly to exclusively non-white daily contacts, those 'assholes' racial tinge was more the reflection of the anecdotals and second hand reports you get from those here with bad experiences w/blacks and other people of color.. That's how it is what it is when you've grown up in a silo of insular and homogeneous rather than heterogeneous intimate and personal buddes/buddettes.

Yeah.. the uncivil ARE assholes, but also we hear the wide-spread tales of the structural consequences, than just the personal, too frequent annoyances most, from necessity, must blow off..

You're right. They're assholes that can and should be blown off. For some, the history as it has affected the legacy of their knowledge and attitudes towards groups and therefore conflated to random individual is too emotionally motivated.

Like I said before. I've become a socially weary misanthrope of all sorts of provincial, narrow-minded and experientially myopic groups of people-across races..

 

11/22/21- [(Point of Me digressing)->T00 bad it's not '2023)-the 60th Anniversary of JFK's Assassination]
My own modification to my previous perspectives:
As for 'White Privilege', I think of it as a socially constructed appendix attached unwittingly for most to their status as Caucasion-identified in this society. When one thinks of the pre-and-post-shooting events (which I viewed as 'manslaughter' than 1st or 2nd degree murder) in Kenosha surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse, I see an inherent psychological presumption of entitlement that VERY FEW, if any black or other minority persons would have taken as a feasible, let alone imperative action to undertake: going across state lines with an long gun to support people under threat. As well as a much more doubtful expectation that ANY minority of woke-antifa sympathies would have been received as graciously at the police lines with such a person carrying a long gun-let alone report a shooter out in the street

I DO see that the generalizations of racial chasms does not match with the personal, more than transactional interactions with even those who might see themselves as a 'woke' minority and their Caucasian counterparts as this post clearly shows.... .This picture is of a high school homey of mine and her friend in FLA. That pic coincides with a September convo I had w/a good ol'boy at a beac out in a mostly VA Trump-Youngkin region. He had recently lived in FLA and was missing the similar cosmopolitan camaraderie, similar to this picture. What exists between any two or more people and what can occur. Also, the experience away from that nest of cordiality would be a different psychological, if not tangibly empirical experience. With that, having multiple psyches of functional schizophrenia is the default adaptation and accommodation beyond what I see as a general bi-polarism ALL have with what they are socially obligated to behave and what they may personally aspire to be 'the expression of their soul'. Non-woke-persons have difficulty accepting this comparable with accepting the genuineness of an inherent transgenderism.

My view of CRT theory is more common knowledge with Black people that's been handed down in the different narratives. W/ the unique exception of those w/skills and talents that make them prospectively, highly marketable in the general culture's order of status of wink-n-nod credibility within the confines of that status [NOT a Kapernick]. Should it, CRT, be applied to give white kids the SAME neurosis of an inherent deficiency of in-born character that black and minority kids experienced from unthinking and ignorant whites? NO, of course not.

The reality of US History beyond the air-brushed superficial pablum received in elementary and secondary school is a sobering pill of 'the ends justifying the means', unless your heritage was on the wrong end of those means.

 

Ol Dogger has been at the Kool aid again;

"......going across state lines with an long gun to support people under threat. As well as a much more doubtful expectation that ANY minority of woke-antifa sympathies would have been received as graciously at the police lines with such a person carrying a long gun-let alone report a shooter out in the street,,,,,"​

So, first of all, the media propaganda that Kyle crossed state lines with a gun has been proven a lie, nor does it particularly change the outcome. Since when is crossing state lines with a gun ILLEGAL? But a reminder, Kyle did NOT cross state lines with any gun. Secondly, Kyle was already known to police before the shooting occurred, so his approach of them carrying a rifle wasn't, by itself, particularly an issue. Nor would the circumstances have changed materially if Kyle was black when he approached the cops.