Cleo C's Open Salon Blog

The Problem with Preaching the White Privilege Gospel

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:06:19 -0400

This will piss an awful lot of people off. I know this upfront so I beg some patience here to read through this posting with an open mind. There is within the activist community in the United States, a bit of subculture within a subculture that probably is the stuff of nightmares among the FOX news crowd and the right wing Republican party. It's the cult of attacking white privilege in this country, it's often extended to the attack on what is basically white male privilege. There's books on this, even a national conference titled aptly enough the "The White Privilege Conference." You can even get college credit for attending.

Now try as they might to not frame themself selves as bashing or pointing fingers there really is only so many "nice" ways to say that white people are the root of all the problems in society. That a white euro-centric perspective and cultural dominance is the root cause of pretty much all our social ills. Sexism, racism, classism, pretty much any ism you can think of as well as let's not forget homophobia. Now I think you can make some points there yet I just have to take exception at their approach and it's effectiveness.

I myself am an activist, a minority (gay), and work in areas and have friends of friends where our circles overlap with the White (Male) Privilege crowd. I admitted live in two worlds, a white male world, and a minority world. So though many might discount my opinions outright just because of my genitalia and skin color, I'd like to put forth that I am uniquely qualified to comment on this since I can straddle a bit of a fence and see across toward both opposing worldviews here.

One of my big complaints about the White Privilege argument is that it's just too easy. I see people calling white privilege fouls at every turn. Yet I'd argue that much of what is pegged as white privilege is indeed class privilege, people love to talk about racism, sexism, but no one likes to talk about classism. Classism also includes many facets though of racism, status, wealth, religion, so it's harder to pin down and quantify sometimes. It's much easier to see a white guy doing well and say "oh yeah, another white guy making the big bucks and living in the big house." It's just not that simple.

Middle-class whites need to realize that they actually have much more in common politically, socially, with middle-class African Americans that they do with the upper 2% of whites that run this country. Certainly poor whites need to realize that they have much more shared values and shared stakes in politics with poor African Americans than rich whites. Yet, why don't these people realize that? Well here I would like to point out white/upper class privilege. It's a very effective tool to maintain racial tensions and keep all whites on the same team to keep a certain elite in power. Thus we get this rather twisted notion by poor and middle-class whites that raising the taxes on the upper 2% somehow is an attack on them. That class warfare means whites and against blacks, freeloading welfare moms against hardworking white males - which is just not the case. Most often the very people that I try to convince are on the losing end of the class warefare in the country, somehow think they're the ones having to defend the gates. We may never shake up the status quo here in this country with regards to jobs, equality, stopping this runaway income disparity unless working class peoples see their commonality.

Also, I'm just not sure that with the White Privilege crowd. That alienating even friendly, allies in the white community is a good policy. Part of the genius of MLK's civil rights movement, was that it gave white's a gracious exit strategy out of the status quo. Not only did minorities benefit, but the civil rights movement offered a huge benefit to whites as well. It painted a picture of a color-blind society where white's could see themselves as progressive, as more civilized and evolved. Let's not underestimate the power of liberal smugness, especially when it's deserved. Dr. King's vision of young children of all races playing together one day, was not only a win for the black child not facing discrimination it was a win for the white child as well who was living in a better society.

That is one of the big things missing in today's social arguments. That sense of a greater good and a striving for a better society for all it's members. We seem to have forgotten how to sell that big picture. So I'm just now sure how effective the approach is in trying to educate white people on just how privileged, how spoiled, and just how badly they've messed things up is going to work. Who would ever even be open to that argument, no one likes to be a scape goat, even if it's partially deserved.

People work in their own best interests. That's obvious in today's political environment. The tea party crowd doesn't want to pay for anything that they don't directly benefit from. No one sees the benefit in social programs, in safety nets. We seem to have just forgotten just how bad things have been in this country on so many fronts; race relations, labor laws, safety concerns, care of the elderly, healthcare, the list goes on. What we need is a bit more enlightened self interest. People who can once again sell the benefits to everyone on a society that looks after the least among us. We need to sell the benefits of [education, of the middle class, of a livable wage and job security. So that we all can see that we're working toward a better society, not retreating to some perceived American "Father Knows Best" society which never really existed.

Also, just on a practical note if you push the main problem with society as being white privilege, what is the solution? They'd have you believe that it's mainly just education, yet if you really believe that, it seems the only real solution is taking away some of that privilege from whites. Just how do you do that? No group in power is going to willingly give it up, that's just again self interest. So are we talking legislation, or just outright revolution, storming the castle with torches and pitchforks?

It seems though that if you take the approach that the problem is more class, then the answers seem more workable. There are obvious solutions to fixing class divides. Chief among those is access to education, education is the great equalizer. Education should be free, across the board. A college education should be a right for everyone that can make the grades. Yet we have just the opposite going on in the country today, education is getting more expensive, more exclusive. Students are saddled with years of debt, technical education is pushed over a broader liberal arts education. We even have the emergence of a growing private for profit education system that is both expensive and of questionable value. I'm not going to be surprised in the current environment if states don't soon start saying that it's not longer their job to provide education and just privatize education altogether.

There's other items as well, healthcare. We have the greatest healthcare in the world (or so we like to believe) until we actually need it and get sick. Or heaven forbid we lose our insurance. We can do better.

So the challenge is how to sell the benefits to all people of a more even playing field of a more classless society. So let's do better. I'm tired of being beaten over the head for all this supposed white privilege I have. I'm just not quite sure in this economy how much good that did me a I lost my job and didn't find steady work for almost two years. How I almost lost my house and my savings, insurance. I keep asking myself, now just where is all this white privilege I'm supposed to be enjoying. I think a lot of people are in my same boat.

My father as a person - The Deal with the Gun

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:06:06 -0400

I was born the youngest of four boys, boys spread out over a 14 year period. There was my two oldest brothers, then a big gap, then my next brother and then myself. It's in many ways like there were two different families, two whole different experiences growing up.

My older two brothers knew a vital active engaged father. A man with a sense of humor, a family man, a man engaged in politics and the community. However, I grew up with a father who'd pretty much closed himself off, had a number of strokes and a heart attack. A Dad maybe having second thoughts about his marriage, and struggling with a world changing quickly around him. A man who probably saw his best years behind him.

My Dad passed away when I was only 13 from a last fatal heart attack. I realized later that I actually knew very little about my father. His strokes had actually affected his personality from one attack to the next so the Dad I thought I knew would come home from the hospital at times a whole different man. He'd be quiet and reserved at times, then suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, he'd be oddly emotional.

One key aspect of my father was kept put away in a trunk at the end of our hallway. The top shelf was old family photographs, letters, and report cards. However, if you took that top shelf out, underneath was all of Dad WWII stuff. His uniform, odd mementos, photos of strange places and men. There was pictures from the front lines of Germany and Italy where he'd served as a Sergeant for a Bazooka squad on the front lines. There was pictures of my Dad as a young man in places I didn't even understand as a child, buildings with rooms full of emaciated bodies. I would learn later these were concentration camps that my Dad had helped to liberate.

My Dad though never talked of the war. Though looking back I can see that it had dramatically shaped him. Taking a rural NC farm boy and making him a bit of a world weary man war hero. It had also launched him financially, from the steady work and GI benefits to the extra money he made selling the home-made cigarettes made from the tobacco and rolling papers my grandfather would send him.

There is something though that I learned about after his death though that I now find very troubling yet humanizing. It was this deal about the gun. Now we lived in a big hunting family, one of my older brothers even raised and trained rabbit dogs. There were lots of shotguns of all types secured away in the house. I got my first bb-gun as a kid, my first 410 shotgun when I was 12. So guns were never a big deal in the house - except for some reason - this one that was only whispered about.

It came up during the settlement of the estate, that was the first I'd heard of it. Talk of what to do with Dad's pistol. A pistol I'd certainly never seen or knew anything about. It was talked about in low whispers though, so I picked up immediately there was some sort of story behind it. It seems that my Dad had bought this pistol perhaps covertly under a fog of suspicious circumstances.

Over the years I'd hear more about it. That my mom had found out about it, that she was concerned enough to call my older brother, now married and living on his own. My brother came and took the gun, I'm not sure if it was with my Dad's knowledge or permission or not. It finally dawned on me that what was causing so much concern was the possible intent of the gun.

However, looking back at it now, I think how absurd it is to take a gun away like that and somehow think that that "fixed" anything. But it was the 60s I guess and people didn't talk about stuff like that, about why someone might buy a pistol and why it would have to be hidden away. Again, what was the deal with that pistol, when we lived in a house full of shotguns and rifles. There was obviously some worry on intent. Perhaps the repeated strokes and heart attacks, the ever increasing periods of convalescing were having their toll. I'd find out later that there'd been talk of divorce, maybe that figured in, yet I never saw any overt problems, but only a huge lack of intimacy and love in the house.

But whatever, the gun was taken away, no one ever seemed to talk about it, or talk about anything to do with it or around it again. Then later my Dad would have his last final massive heart attack. Yet it still haunts me, since I lived in that house, with these people. Should I have known something, picked up something? What was the deal with the gun?

"Philadelphia" in Nine Languages and Going East to "Go West"

Wed, 11 May 2011 17:05:06 -0400

It had been a rough year, my partner of 10 years had just passed away from AIDS. This was back in early 90s too when the deaths were grisly, long-drawn out, movie-of-the-week affairs. He'd been in and out of the hospital for three years, until he finally got sent home when there "wasn't anything left to do." We set up a bedroom with a hospital bed and arranged for around-the-clock nursing. He was given a couple of weeks to live that ended up dragging out to an excruciating 3 months. The whole time I was having to get suited up every morning to go to work. A workplace where I really couldn't discuss what was going on at home, much less with me.

After he finally passed away I had a come-to-Jesus meeting with my doctor. Everything for the past 3 years had been all about David, I'd been put on the back burner. "So Doc just how long do I have?" With AIDS there's a number of tests and things to look at. One is your CD4 count and below a certain level, well things start to kick in. My Doctor told me I could maybe expect another 6-months of good health "at most."

At the time, AIDS was pretty much a death sentence. Statistically with the blood work and all, I wasn't all that far behind my partner's progression. Yet it proved to be a critical small difference. As new drugs became available he was always too sick to take them. I was always just in time. Yet still at the time, my prospects were dim. So I did what I think a lot of people would. I took his insurance money, some time off, and planned a summer in Europe. I'd never even been outside the country before and it was the big thing on top of my bucket list.

Nothing extravagant mind you. I got my Eurail Pass and my guide book with all the best one and two star lodgings. In Amsterdam I actually stayed in a five floor walk up, where I had to climb a ladder and go through a trapdoor to my attic space. I'd later visit the Ann Frank House, "OMG, her whole family stayed in the exact same space as my hotel room."

There were two things though that got me through the trip. First was the movie "Philadelphia", it had already come and gone in the States, but was all over Europe that Summer. At first I went just to see what it would be like dubbed in a foreign language. Yet, with my recent loss and my own situation, I found myself weeping uncontrollable. An odd thing though, in that movie, an ocean away, in a strange place, with strange people that I'd never see again, I just let the tears go. I felt so much better after the movie. Something had definitely been purged. The same thing happened the next time when I saw it, I think in German. Sure I got glances, but people would let me sob in piece. It's also hard to really "shush" someone when they're sobbing without looking like a jerk. All-in-all over the course of that summer I saw "Philadelphia" at least 8 or 9 times. Sometimes it was English language with foreign subtitles, most often it was just dubbed into a foreign language. But it didn't matter, I got to know the movie so well, I knew exactly what they were saying, no matter if it was in Italian, Austrian, Spanish. Over time as well the sobbing grew less and less. I had actually come through my European tour of grief to get a lot out of my system. Leaving much of my grief and pain behind as well as tear stains all over theaters across several countries.

At the same time that Summer there was another bit of pop culture that seemed to be running through ever place I visited, every bar, every restaurant, like a theme song. I'd always been a big fan of the Pet Shop Boys and that summer they'd released "Go West" an peppy euro-dance cover of the old Village People song. Most people realize today that most of their songs are thinly veiled references to gay culture. "Go West" was a celebration of leaving oppressive small-minded towns and moving out to California where there was acceptance and promise. The Pet Shop Boys had even expanded that meaning to include gays from overseas moving to the U.S. With everything else that was going on, I found myself latching onto this song with a vengence. Just as "Philadelphia" allowed me to work through my grief a bit, then "Go West" allowed me to discover a small bit of hope and optimism.

"There where the air is free
We'll be what we want to be
Now if we make a stand
We'll find our promised land."

Yeah, yeah, the whole song is pop kitsch, yet the words, the beat, the tone of the song was something I could cling on to. I was hearing it constantly, especially as this was in the midst of the video bar craze and it had such flashy pop graphics.

I learned a lot that summer. I had this crazy notion that I had to see every church, every historic spot in every city. Then realized after collapsing from exhaustion, one can only do what you can do. I found beauty and grace in many places I expected to, but in many surprising places as well. I learned that people can be giving and open. I also came to give myself some slack.

I can't really watch Philadelphia anymore. I never bought the tape or DVD. If I did though it would be sitting dusty on a back shelf. When it comes on now on TV as it sometimes does, I'll turn it off. Yet when I hear "Go West" from time to time (increasingly on oldies programming), I can't help but smile and get a little teary eyed. If I'm feeling down or low, I can pull it up on my computer.

I have a pet theory about movies and even songs. That they in large part act as tarot cards or a Ouija board. They give us the answers to the questions we're asking that we often already know the answers for, often answers we know deep down. Over the years I've taken away some odd messages from movies, even songs. Yet there were definitely there for me to find even if I had to dig a bit. Pop Culture can be like that, they give us those answers that we need for the moment. They define our times, yet they can also help us define ourselves.

"You Know, I'm Seeing More and More People Just Like You."

Wed, 11 May 2011 16:05:22 -0400

It's a phrase I've heard more often than I care to admit lately, "You know, I'm seeing more and more people just like you these days," which at one point might have been comforting, but over time it's just started to feel patronizing, and truthfully, just not that helpful. I guess none of us like to suffer alone. We all want to be unique and different at the top, but at the bottom, we want to have lots of company.

Though the economy on many fronts seems to be officially "over" somehow a lot of us just aren't feeling the love. Thus when people first said to me "You know, I'm seeing more and more people just like you these days," I took it in stride, maybe it was a little comforting. Maybe the first time or two there was some solace there, a feeling that this wasn't all my fault, that I was at least part of some recognized demographic. That at least I was being trendy.

The first time I heard it was probably at the unemployment office, some 2 years ago now. Talking to other middle managers. Talking about our company's plights the lay-offs, the cut backs, how we had had to escort long-term employees out with their belongings, not thinking it would happen to us.

The next time I heard that phrase, it was probably working with my headhunters and employment agencies. We were talking about how hard it is for mid/upper managers to find work. How someone at my age, with all my experience was just too expensive these days. How in my field though I'd taken on more and more responsibility, moved up in management, on the hands-on stuff, the skill set had changed. It was going to be hard for me to move back down the ladder. How employers looking for menial jobs didn't want to touch anyone with management experience because they'd be difficult to "manage." How there was always someone younger, hungrier, more willing to work 50-60 hour work weeks.

Then there was my mortgage, I watched the clock ticking month after month, thinking surely a job would come through. I was getting interviews, they were going well. I had several offers only to see jobs melt away. One company was sold, one company went under, a couple put the position on "hold" until their next fiscal year. One company called to actually tell me "We think you're great, you have the job... We're just not sure when we can give you a start date." So eventually I had to deal with the bank, fortunately I was able to work out a program that keeps me limping along month-to-month, barely scraping by, ebaying and yardselling to meet the payment just in time each month.

The first time I heard that "You know..." where it was really wearing thin was when I was visiting the free clinic for a nagging cough. My insurance had never been great and my co pays horrific, so on my budget I had to decide to go off some maintenance meds, or pay my premiums. I kept my insurance, thinking with a pre-existing I had to guard that at all costs. Also thinking that surely I'd get work in a couple of weeks, couple of months, max. Then finally my COBRA runs out and I don't have meds or insurance. Thus my free clinic visit. Where I was told I had advanced pneumonia and they put me right into an ambulance to rush me to the hospital.

Just recently, I finally hit my breaking point. Falling into a pattern of stress, high blood pressure, sleep deprivation, anxiety and depression. I arranged to see a psychiatrist and set up some regular counseling. The Dr. seemed very sympathetic but I could tell he'd heard my sad story before. Sure enough You know, I'm seeing more and more people just like you these days." To which without even missing a beat, I found myself looking right at him, "Dr. I know that's supposed to make me feel better, but it just doesn't work anymore. "

World's Most Ironic State Unemployment Job Board Posting

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:11:46 -0500

OUTSOURCING SALES EXECUTIVE

Months of Experience: 60

Years of Education: 12

Salary: $50,000 - $80,000 year

Job Type: Permanent Full Time

During my regular rounds of searching job boards, I often check my local state Department of Labor postings. I couldn't help but notice this nice little posting. How ironic though to post this on a Dept. of Labor website for thousands of unemployed job seekers to do the very work that put them out of a job to begin with. Talk about rubbing it in!

Plus does anyone else find it interesting that you can make up to $80,000 a year with only a high-school diploma, while destroying the U.S. Economy?