March 27th, 2012
Still talking about privilege.
In my last post I started to explore the impacts of privilege. Privilege does not require any bad intentions or hatred to pit groups against each other.
Privilege makes it really easy for privileged folks to judge other groups based on stereotypes. Many, if not most privileged folks would vehemently deny that they are influenced by stereotypes in any way at all because they are “good people.” At least I know that is what I did.
In my lifetime I have said these things out loud and in public and I believed them when I said them:
“If African American males do not want to be disproportionately represented in prison, they should stop committing so much crime.”
“If gay people do not want to catch beatings they should stop being so gay in public.“
“Come on! Why would a young single female be in a hotel room at 2am with a professional athlete to begin with?”
I also would have told you when I said these things that I was not racist, sexist or heterosexist.
Based on my personal life experience, the justice system works fairly. I would even say that it is somewhat lenient. That is what I have seen.
So. When you say to me that African American men are a disproportionate amount of our prison population, I assume that my experience with the justice system is normal and this outcome has to be about African American males rather than the justice system. Privilege leads me to ignore, deny or not realize the role of the context / situation / system. I assume that my experience is “normal” and I end up accepting / internalizing / validating stereotypes that I swear up and down I do not believe in or agree with.
My opinion is not based on the stereotypes that African American males are violent or more prone to criminal behavior, I am saying that African American males are disproportionately represented in our prison population because they commit more crime. See? I’m not being racist, I am just talking about the facts.
But.
And it is a huge but.
There is no shortage of data showing that African American men are sentenced differently than their white counterparts, that they are found guilty at different rates, they are legally represented differently, charged differently, stopped and pulled over more often and predominately African American communities are policed very differently than other neighborhoods.
The context, and the fact that the context is different for an African American male than it is for me is a huge factor in this issue.
Blaming African American males for the biased outcome is also easier, safer and more comfortable for me as a white male. It leaves me out of the picture. There is nothing that I can do to fix it and I do not have to consider that I might benefit unfairly from a biased system.
Blaming a female victim of sexual assault for causing that sexual assault leaves me out of the picture as a man. I do not have to reflect on how I (or my male friends) treat women, think about women, speak to and of women…the responsibility is completely on them. Neat, right? Gender violence, which is predominately done to women is turned into a “women’s problem.”
Hate crimes done to gay people are their fault, there is nothing to be changed or challenged regarding the behavior of straight people.
It is all very convenient.
We have for an incredibly long time taken a binary approach to diversity and inclusion. Good people are not biased, not prejudiced and do not discriminate. Bad people are biased are prejudiced and do discriminate.
But.
And its another big one.
Most inequality is actually perpetuated by “good people.”
I am going to say it again.
Most inequality is perpetuated by “good people.”
Unwilling or unable to consider our own privilege, inquire into the role of situation / context / system we internalize stereotypes about groups that suffer from biased outcomes.
We do not go to work challenging the system we benefit from, because we see it as fair. After all it has treated us fairly, no work to be done there. Rather we take a patronizing stance towards those that suffer from systemic bias by showing them compassion and pity (especially in public), giving to charities and taking home humanitarian awards.
We advocate lower expectations for those social groups on the short end of disparate outcomes in education, income, justice, healthcare and other systems or we advocate fixing what is “wrong” with those people.
This is one of the reasons that so many people assume that conversations about increasing workforce diversity are actually about lowering the standards. Special treatment. Free rides. Conversations about women in senior leadership positions are about what women need to do differently rather than about challenging the system of senior leadership (and other systems around that one).
Any of this ring true for you?
Be good to each other.
Another great post, Joe. As a fellow person of great privilege, it took a long, long time to get these messages into my thick skull, and a lot of it had to do with the “Ladder of Inference” stuff that Argyris wrote about. Once I had made up mind that the system was fair and that oppressed groups were “asking for it,” all of the data that might point in the other direction was summarily dismissed, and so efficiently that I had no conscious memory that said data had ever been presented to me.
And I was one of those “good” people. Our brains are amazing little machines, but they are built for speed much more than accuracy, though oftentimes it feels otherwise.
Well said.
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