All of my ancestors, according to my DNA, are from northwestern Europe. Most of them were Irish, a little over a quarter of them were English or Welsh, a little under a fifth of them were French, and about 3% of them were Swedish or Dutch.
But that’s not what makes me white.
Many African peoples, when northwestern Europeans first returned to the mother continent, referred to them not as “white people” or “fair-skinned people,” but as mzungu, which translates as “wanderer.”
So it’s not my skin’s contrast to theirs that makes me white.
My skin’s pigmentation is a product of my evolutionary chain. Its genetic heritage can (currently) be traced back to roughly 7,700 years ago, when at least seven individuals in southern Sweden had two gene variants that “lead to depigmentation, and therefore, pale skin” and a third variant, “which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair.” These gene variants were perhaps naturally selected to maximize vitamin D synthesis in the northern latitudes, where it is harder for the human body to get vitamin D thanks to a decrease of ultra-violet radiation in northern sunlight.
But my ancestors’ evolutionary journey into the northern latitudes does not make me white. If it did, the first northern Europeans to reach central Africa wouldn’t have been called mzungu.
What makes me white is the Atlantic slave trade, the belief by a population that would come to define themselves as white that they were more significant, more deserving, more…human than those they defined as not-white.
Race requires racism to exist. It is the excuse the powerful use to justify their power to themselves. It allows them to normalize for themselves their dominance over an entire population.
The first central Africans to see northern Europeans saw a people who were lost, people who were aimlessly moving across the land.
You and I need to talk about — consider — think about — privilege.
Privilege is about power. To be called privileged is to be called powerful.
But it is also to be told that you did not earn (at least in part) your power.
People don’t like to be told they haven’t earned their power. They believe they’ve scraped and struggled for whatever power they have. Nearly everyone believes their life is a struggle — in fact, according to both Buddha and biology, life is struggle. Every living thing — from human to paramecium — struggles in its own way, and we hope against hope that life is just chrysalis.
If you’ve made it this far in life, you feel it’s because you’ve struggled to achieve and maintain whatever power is yours.
But to be told you’re privileged is to be told you possess more power than you’ve earned.
On White Privilege
I bring this up because of the increasingly common phrase, “white privilege.”
White privilege is a way of simplifying the entire history of the white race and bringing it to a conclusion that says all of the white people on the planet right now possess at least one benefit that they, themselves, did not earn, a benefit that comes from a wicked notion, spread by lies and propaganda, that those with white skin deserve, by virtue of their skin, more attention and respect than everybody else.
This benefit has a flip side. It reinforces the notion that those without white skin do not deserve attention and respect.
Millions of people have died — and continue to die — due to the widespread notion that people of color (i.e., nonwhite people) do not deserve attention and respect, that their lives, in fact, do not matter. Thankfully, we continue the fight against overt and covert racism, but to be on the right side of that fight, those with white privilege have an obligation to admit their privilege to themselves.
The political conversation, the money, the culture — the power — has long been and continues to be dominated by white people. The act of domination is so absolute that it changed the very skin color of Jesus Christ, the majority’s Lord and Savior, from brown to white.
In short, can I consider all of life’s options without worrying about whether my race (and my race alone) will hold me back?
If you are white and you answer those question honestly, you have to admit, on the basis of whiteness alone, you possess privileges that others do not possess.
That privilege is power, and it’s time to admit — it’s your obligation to admit — you have it.
What To Do With Your White Privilege
Do nothing.
Look around you for a second. Look at the world around you and recognize that some great wisdom comes from other cultures and other ways of being, wisdom that people have fought to preserve for a very long time, wisdom that survived despite white people forcing it to go underground, wisdom that, in fact, stood opposed to the horrors enacted by white colonialism.
This wisdom stood (and stands) proudly and strongly and without a trace of fear. We ought to hear from it more often. We ought to allow it — invite it — into our politics, boardrooms, bedrooms, and classrooms.
Women. People of color. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, and every other color of pride. Their lives — their historic and cultural ways of being — have led them to wisdoms that white men have long been blinded to, focused as we have been on the struggle to become and maintain the dominating power, wisdoms of tolerance, acceptance, and cooperation, not to mention wisdoms of empathy and service.
Now is the time for white people to stop. To do nothing. To give someone else a chance to speak up and make decisions.
As a white person, don’t speak, don’t argue, don’t run for office.
It’s not that you don’t have the right to. It’s that it’s no longer right to.
And what do you do if you’re in a room full of white people? You use your privilege to make sure there’s never a room like that again.
As Jon Fishman, a white man, once sung, “I want a fat, black, poor, and handicapped, old single mother lesbian with a high IQ in the White House for President and non-denominational too.”
What does that mean for Fluid Imagination?
I am a white person who self-publishes a blog. I find some topic of the day or week, and I write an opinion about it. I share my argument.
Does my advice to “do nothing” mean I should stop? Should I just shut up and close Fluid Imagination down?
I suspect the answer is yes.
But I like to think of myself as an ally in this fight, and right now, I’m willing to die for the cause.