This letter is a response to an article entitled “Claims of white privilege a damaging farce” that appeared in Wednesday’s Daily Cardinal.
Steven’s argument about how white individuals should be favored because they’re the majority is ignorant.
“No institutional discrimination is needed to explain why most business owners, government workers, college professors and students are white. It’s because the majority is white, not because of some underlying racism.” Institutional racism exists because the majority is white. The market is obviously not colorblind, society is not colorblind, and race comes into play in many employment instances. Those who dominate the industry, the system, will choose who they want to work with. Steven wrote, “How can it be that students are taught it is a benefit to only have teachers with the same color skin as themselves or that a manager of a business is somehow unqualified because of the color of his skin? It cannot be.” I worked for a federal agency that focuses on equal employment. We run through hundreds of cases each day of racism and discrimination in employment practices. The reality is that white people dominate the market, corporations, businesses, and many professions, so it’s very much possible that employers will attribute certain types of races to work ethics or behaviors and make ridiculous assumptions based on someone’s race. Maybe Steven has never seen those experiments that test discrimination practices in employment or the hiring process. There are studies where people use typical white names and non-white names to apply for a job, and majority of the employers selected names that sounded more white. Our social construction has built up this idea of people of color and how people behave, act, speak because they’re a certain color—so yes, race does come into play when talking about jobs and who’s on top.
“The free market is colorblind and in modern society—where de jure segregation has been eradicated—I am willing to bet that in a few more generations these differences will evaporate.” This statement is completely false. This shows how unaware Steven is of his privilege. Segregation still very much exists, especially in education, charter schools, etc. Not necessarily systematic segregation, but it happens naturally because of the way people view race. So there is a preference for race in many industries. Equality doesn’t exist for everyone, as ideal as we want that to be, and a significant part of that is due to race and racism.
I also take issue with the statistics that Steven uses. Personally, I have issues with statistics in general when they’re used incorrectly or in a biased way. These statistics can be use in any context to sway any opinion. There are huge issues with these statistics because it generalizes and lumps people together to support his argument, when in actuality, so many different types of people that fall into these percentages, especially blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans experience the institutional racism. What about every time a person of color walks into a store and gets strange looks like they don’t belong, or people suspect them of suspicious behavior. These actions or reactions don’t occur as often if a white person walks into a store. This article is another example of how people of color have to make justifications for the things they do and validate their actions, the way they speak or look, every day. There are always racial assumptions about ‘oh it must be because she’s black’ or ‘it must be because she’s Asian’ to explain certain behaviors. White people are not constantly reminded every day that they’re white. People of color are constantly reminded of race because society is not colorblind and because race is so prevalent you have to be aware to survive. It’s like a survival trait.
You don’t know because you don’t experience it. I think it’s ignorant of Steven to make these claims but have no idea of the experience that people go through. The most important step is being aware of the privilege that white people have. Or even other privileges—being male, being heterosexual, being abled. This is not to put any guilt on white people for having privilege. But I think the most important part is understanding the privilege, being able to deconstruct it so that one is able to become an ally and work towards ending racism. If one is unaware of the privilege they have, their actions and behaviors can negatively affect those who are disadvantaged.
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