fabrisse

Let me start this by saying, I'm 5'2" (about 164 cm for those of you who are metric), blue eyed, and white. I went to boarding school, for heaven's sake. There's not much more white privilege I can have.

I think I have the Ur-example of white privilege to give you all.

About five years ago, my sister called me. Someone with our last name had called her. I'll refer to him as M. He explained that he knew all the others with our surname in the Los Angeles area, mostly because he was their father, grandfather, or cousin, and was interested to know if this new person might also be a relative. It's a very uncommon surname.

Being good southerners, both sides carried complete genealogies in their heads. It was determined that of the four brothers who came to this country around 1789, we were descended from the one who settled in Maryland and they were descended from the one who settled in Tennessee. An hour and a half later, they were finally getting down to maybe saying goodbye -- we'd already been invited to the family reunion -- and M asked, "Are you black or white?"

Sis answered, "White, of course."

M said, "There's no 'of course' about it."

It's the "of course" which makes it art a pure example of white privilege.

This is what I can't get through to people.

A few years ago, I was mugged.

The friends who weren't in Boston or on LJ that I told, including my sister, assumed the muggers were black. Sis actually went on a long diatribe about how black people resented white people and about the time she said, "I don't know why they didn't just shoot you," I told her I had to hang up. I shook for an hour.

To another friend who made the assumption a few days later, my answer was, "Yes, and so was the housemate who comforted me. Your point?"

I have been told "You'll never be hired by the District because you're not black. They only want their own." To which I've said, "How does that differ from the all white offices I've been a part of?"

We, who are in the position of privilege, don't seem to understand that we get away with the very things we try to call other races on.

I think the single most appalling thing I can remember someone suggesting to me (yes, even beating out the married professor who tried to get me to better my grade by sleeping with him), is that I use my Native American heritage to get funding for college. The person making the suggestion kept saying it was unfair for minorities to get help for college and not white people.

Damn, this sounds self justifying. I don't mean it to. I'm sure I've done some horribly kack-handed things. But part of White Privilege is never having to recognize your own stupidity.

What's the emoticon for an eyeroll?

IBARW stands for "International Blog Against Racism Week" and I found out about it through sparkymonster on my friends list. I hope I'm doing this right.

I've just finished watching a History Channel documentary about the sexual revolution and how 1969 was a seminal (arrrgh, not the best pun, but unfortunately the best word) year for the evolving mores. Just as we can point to 1968 for the political side, pretty much worldwide, in the United States at least, it's easy to point to 1969 for firsts or lasts about sex.

All of this is well and good. I would have liked a little more background, although, among the "fun facts to know and tell" I came away with: DC had laws on the books that forbade anything other than the missionary position. I really hope that's changed, otherwise a girl could get arrested.

Why is this an IBARW post? Because from what I could tell, other than the first ten minutes of the second hour, only white people had sex. Mostly only men and blonde women had sex (Seriously, there were surprisingly few brunettes shown, and I didn't see a single redhead.).

In some ways this could be justified, Gays got about the same amount of time, mostly devoted to Stonewall, at the end of the second hour, and the Women's Liberation Movement didn't get too much more in the middle of the second hour.

But sex for POC was A) limited only to African Americans and B) related to black men and white women. Oh, there were a couple of comments about young black women being allowed to get laid, and in the later segment about gay liberation there were pictures, no spokesmen, of young gay black men, but most of the segment revolved around the film 100 Rifles, and how Jim Brown being allowed to act like a lover rather than a rapist with his white co-star was a bench mark.

Some little bits were discussed about about miscegnation, but they used Birth of a Nation as the relevant cultural touchstone. One would think that the Supreme Court ruling in Loving vs Virginia in 1967 might be mentioned, but one would be wrong. Everyone, including Jim Brown, harped on the fact that the big fear was how much black men wanted to rape white women.

Not one mention was made of the oppression black women suffered from white men, nor of the possibility of a loving relationship between a black woman and a white man. For that matter, there wasn't a mention of a loving relationship between a black woman and a black man.

More than any other segment, this seemed tacked on. The only time we saw black commentors was during this segment. While the legacy of slavery was mentioned, it was predominantly about the oppression of black men. And the one black woman seen commenting talked about how there were ten white women for every black man. (In fairness, I believe she was answering a question put to her. We never hear an interviewer, but the framing of many of the "talking heads" sections was such that I'm fairly certain they were responses to specific questions.)

In 2009, this should not be how we frame our discourse about race or sexuality.