Analysis Paper on Black Awareness/White Privilege Assignment
Analysis Paper on Black Awareness/White Privilege Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to express the view that the color of skin is extremely relevant in our daily lives. This paper will examine the importance of being aware of skin color, specifically black awareness and white awareness and the privilege or negative connotation that comes with each. I will use literature from author Ta-Nehisi Coates to emphasize reasons for black awareness as well as excerpts from the documentary, Race: The Power of an Illusion. Readings by author Allan Johnson will be used to explain the relationship between privilege and being white. Finally, this paper will point out the relationship between black awareness and white privilege.
The world we live in is filled with people of all colors and ethnicities living side by side. Despite the civil rights movement and improvements in race relations, the color of our skin is still a factor. Recently, the spike in shootings and killings of young black men and women in the United States has made this point profoundly more evident. The disparity between men and women of color being incarcerated, assaulted or murdered by the police, in comparison to Caucasian men and women is alarming. In Allan Johnsons’ book, Privilege, Oppression and Difference, he discusses Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking work on which social settings white privilege arises. It appears daily in almost every social setting. There are several mentioned in the book, some of them are: “Whites are less likely than blacks to be arrested. Whites, for example, constitute 85 percent of those who use illegal drugs, but less than half of those in prison on drug-use charges are white. Whites can succeed without other people being surprised. Whites have greater access to quality education and health care. Whites can assume that race won’t be used to predict whether they’ll fit in at work or whether teammates will feel uncomfortable working with them. Whites can generally assume that when they go out in public, they won’t be challenged and asked to explain what they’re doing, nor will they be attacked by hate groups simply because of their race” (Johnson, p. 25-26, 2005). Analysis Paper
There is a trend that traces back to the roots of slavery that automatically assumes that the black man is less than the white man based purely on color of skin. This perpetuation of racism, either blatant or subliminal, continues to enforce the negative stereotypes of black men and sustains the privilege of white men; whether they are aware of it or not. “But all our phrasing-race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy-serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence upon the body.” (Coates, p. 10, 2015). Analysis Paper
In Ta-Nehisi Coates book, Between the World and Me, he writes an open letter to his 15 year old son explaining the rules that go with being a young black man, “black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.” Coates stresses the notion to his son that although he is living in a time of “Dreamers”, he still has to be highly aware of his skin color, because others still are. Others including, employers, teachers, policemen, and even his friends. Coates (2015) states to his son, “I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world” (p. 108). Conscious citizen being the imperative phrase. Coates wants his son to be aware of his history and how it shaped his present. Coates wants his son to know the oppressive and heinous crimes committed against the bodies and souls of black men and women during slavery and present day. He tells his son, “You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton and gold.” (Coates, p. 71, 2015) Coates needs for his son to understand the injustices that exist based purely on skin color. He does this by explaining the history African Americans. He also gets his point across by reliving stories from his own life and past.
A crucial story is the murder of Coates’ college friend Prince Jones. Jones was a twenty-four-year old African American young man who was followed through 3 different states by an undercover policeman and killed for mistaken identity. The policeman received no repercussion. The story aligns with the spike of recent assaults and killings of black men and women at the hands of the police. This includes Eric Garner who was choked to death for selling cigarettes, Marlene Pinnock, a grandmother who was beaten on the side of the road, and twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. Throughout Coates book he lays priority on the notion of the body of the black man and woman. The body that was abused, raped, beaten and maimed in slavery times. The body which served in the armed forces and was not allowed GI benefits on return. The bodies that were lynched, spit on, hosed and beaten on during the Civil Rights movement. Coates (2015) discusses the pride in the black body by saying, “Black is beautiful-which is to say that the black body is beautiful, that black hair must be guarded against the torture of processing and lye, that black skin must be guarded against bleach, that our noses and mouths must be protected against modern surgery. We are all our beautiful bodies and so must never be prostate before barbarians, must never submit our original self, our one of one, to defiling and plunder” (p.36).
The theory of white privilege goes hand and hand with the oppression of the black man. One of the most visible consequences of white privilege is uneven distribution of wealth, jobs and income. “The average white household has more than 14 times the net wealth of the average African American household and the average annual income for whites who work year-round and full-time is 44 percent greater than it is for comparable African Americans” (Johnson, p. 32, 2005). Spanning many years Europeans and whites have conquered, plundered and committed genocide. They have committed these atrocities in order to obtain land, labor and power based solely on the illusion that they were owed this things because they were white. They were of a better race. In the documentary, Race-The Power of an Illusion, Episode Two: The Story We Tell, historian Robin D.G. Kelley states, “race was never just a matter of how you look, it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” To support this point, Johnson (2005) explains, “to justify such direct forms of imperialism and oppression, whites developed the idea of whiteness to define a privileged social category elevated above everyone who wasn’t included in it” (p. 46-47).
The privilege that goes along with being white is consistently there, regardless if the person is aware of it or not. Whether they minimize it or deny it, it still remains. It is an ideology which has become the standard of comparison and power. Johnson (2005) states, “those who don’t look like people in power will feel invisible and in fact be invisible, because they are routinely overlooked” (p. 95). Hence, if those in power are only white it is assumed then that this is the correct way of being and people of color do not belong in power. The white man will conclude, regardless of his class, that he is entitled to power. Those that deny that white privilege exists are exalting a form of privilege within their denial. Johnson (2005) explains, “When people in dominant groups practice this kind of denial, it rarely seems to occur to them that they’re in a poor position to know what they’re talking about. For them to act as though they know better than others do about what they are up against is just the sort of presumption that privilege encourages. Privileges invites them to define other people’s experience for them, to tell them what it’s like to be them regardless of what they say it’s like” (p. 109).
In conclusion, it is important that whites are aware that there is a certain privilege that goes along with their skin color. Whether they want to acknowledge it or not. It is directly associated with the oppression of black men and women. In turn it is imperative that black men and women be aware of themselves, because society is. “In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body-it is heritage.”(Coates, p. 103, 2015)
Analysis Paper – Bibliography
- Coates, T. (2015). Between the world and me. Melbourne: Text publishing.
- Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
- (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm