Privilege & Pain Avoidance

Our daughter Yunhee was adopted from Korea as an infant, joining a white American mother, father and older brother, who was born into our family. (One of our oft repeated family jokes is the story of her middle school classmate who asked me, "Does Yunhee know she's adopted?")

Race was an often daily topic in our family. I'd had fifteen years of anti-racism education by the time Yunhee came home, not to mention growing up in Korea as a highly visible person of racial difference, so I was certainly comfortable addressing the topic. But I remember on so many occasions, when Yunhee expressed intense emotion about the subject (often as the result of a comment by a classmate), and even as I might be giving her my full, sympathetic attention, I was aware of a little voice in my head asking, "Can it really be that bad?"

Of course, as Yunhee's mother, I had many tangled emotions and longings as I witnessed her distress. I didn't want my child to hurt - ever, for any reason. I wanted her to learn appropriate social customs, which include containing and channeling the expression of emotion in consideration of others. But that little voice was a result of my own conditioning as a white American: racially, I have had it easy.

Without my having done anything but be born with this color of skin, I have automatically (and usually unconsciously) been granted a measure of status, advantage and influence. I have grown up surrounded by social structures, media, interactions and institutions which reinforce the centrality of my racial identity, so much so that I don't even notice them. I have never endured a steady barrage of negation about my race. In general, the experience of being white in the U.S. is comfortable, unchallenged, affirmed and taken for granted. It's no wonder that I don't notice it, and no wonder if I can't imagine what it would be like to be a person of color in this society.

Privilege plays out in many concrete ways, some explored here, but it's also pervasive as a state of mind. This diminishing of the experiences of people of color, as expressed by them, is one of its more insidious aspects. There are so many versions of this avoidance:

"Why are you playing the race card?"

"I understand your concerns, but I have a hard time hearing you when you're so angry."

"I know there are some problems, but we elected Barack Obama!"

In other words, "Please reframe that so that I can stay comfortable."

***

Because it can be really tricky trying to see my own invisible patterns, I find it useful to borrow some awareness from other aspects of my life. I can get a clue about privilege in thinking of my experience as a self-employed artist.

I'm often made aware of the fact that people with salaried positions, benefits and health insurance don't seem to be able to imagine what it's like to live without these. (I'm fortunate to currently have health insurance through my husband's job, but have gone for years without it when we were both self-employed.) I notice that salaried people frequently make requests for unremunerated services or time that show that they're completely unaware of what it's like not to have a steady income. For instance, teachers' conferences expect presenters to pay for the privilege of attending, assuming, I guess, the support of a school district to cover registration and travel. Most writers and illustrators don't have the extra resources for this, unless they have other jobs as well. The feeling I often have is that salaried people can't even imagine what the questions are that those of us who are self-employed have to ask all the time.

(This is not to suggest that self-employed people are the targets of anything, but merely to point out an example of privilege in the oblivion of people who are salaried about the lives of people who are not.)

***

Once I've identified that part of my avoidance around race, particularly my discomfort in listening to people of color express their feelings about being mistreated, is a privilege I no longer want to participate in, I've made a start.

The next part is a human one. Open my heart, and let it break.

And keep listening.

Silence

In the pre-cell phone era, here in Maine, I was out with two friends, one white and one black. The black friend ducked into a local bar to find a pay phone. She came out a few minutes later, stony-faced. The bar patrons had called out comments the whole time she'd been trying to make her phone call

- "Look, it's Whoopi Goldberg!" "Hey, Whoopi!" She was sunk inward, both angry and disheartened, all the stuffing knocked out of her by one-too-many encounters of being Othered. I, who'd been at ease in conversation with her the previous hour, could find nothing to say in the face of her distress.

At a chapter meeting of a diversity leadership training group (NCBI), a member of color voiced a concern about being tokenized. All the white members (including me) - all skilled, experienced trainers - sat silent.

How many times have I heard a comment - a racial slur or epithet, or something less hostile but still "off" - and found myself incapable of responding?

As I've been writing about this topic in the last month, two white friends have written directly to me, and although they were each simply recording how they experienced being white as a child, they both ended with something like, "I could never say this in public." I notice a curious lack of comments on listservs and blogs - except ones that are about race and therefore attract an audience that wants to talk about it - when the topic of race is raised directly.

Why do I and other white people lose our voices at such times?

In my own experience, this is the inside of my brain at such moments:

1."OMG what just happened what should I do what if I say the wrong thing was it something I did what if I say this no that might be taken the wrong way no I can't say that yikes somebody save me this silence is really uncomfortable but I have absolutely no idea how to respond no matter what I do it's going to be wrong;"

or 2. -- (blank screen)

Responding with silence can be a symptom of many other reactions: carefulness, self-consciousness, nervousness, avoidance, numbness, going "stupid," freezing, guilt, shame. Whatever the cause, it doesn't move anyone or anything forward.

If we want to be allies in pursuit of a world of books that represent and celebrate all children, white people must find our voices around the topic of race. (One of the most useful things that white people can do to is practice by telling our stories of being white to each other.)

Take the risk of making mistakes, dare to make ourselves vulnerable, and begin to build bridges with our words.

White Patterns

Most white Americans rarely think about race, and less still about being white.

There's a good reason for this. Because white people have been both the majority and the dominant group in the U.S. for the last several hundred years, being white has been the norm. When you're the norm, you hardly notice. One of the defining characteristics of a majority identity is its invisibility to those who belong to the group. In the case of race in America, white is the default, the presumed, the given.

Therefore, the experience of being socialized as a white person is largely INVISIBLE to people who are white. Even trying to write about it is tricky; I keep revising this post just to try to get my thoughts clear. Unlike many people of color, most white people don't talk regularly about race, their own or other people's. Other people don't usually remark on or draw attention to the fact that someone is white. Whiteness itself is the reference point; other races are defined by their difference from whiteness.

As a result, many white people have very little experience in thinking about, discussing and navigating issues of race. Naturally, when the topic of race is raised, particularly in a charged way, many white people feel uncomfortable. They don't have much practice in or resource for responding authentically, flexibly, creatively, and effectively.

These are some of the (mostly unconscious) behaviors and attitudes that can result:

- Silence.

- Carefulness.

- Self-consciousness.

- Nervousness.

- Avoidance.

- Denial.

- Pretense.

- Numbness.

- Going "stupid."

- Freezing.

- Sense of entitlement.

- Defensiveness.

- Resistance.

- Ignorance.

- Making assumptions.

- Overcompensation.

- Trying too hard.

- Guilt.

- Shame.

Recognize any of these? Got any others to add?

(If you want to learn a lot about how white people behave, just ask a friend of color. One of the defining characteristics of a minority identity is its visibility. As a result, most people of color have been thinking and talking about race their whole lives. Non-dominant group members also need to observe and become experts about the dominant group, for their survival. People of color can often see clearly the patterns that are invisible to white people.)

Now, imagine what happens when a whole lot of people are walking around behaving in all those funny ways in relation to race, often with no awareness of what they're doing. Is it any wonder that reality - say, the representation of race in children's books - doesn't match our vision?!?

The most effective way I know to change unexamined behaviors and attitudes is to first notice they're there, then examine them. In the next several posts, I'll explore these patterns in some detail, with examples of how I've seen them in myself and other white people.

Connecting the Dots

In 1960, our family moved to South Korea, a country struggling to recover from a war that had devastated and divided the peninsula just seven years before.

Every time I walked the city streets or went to the market, I saw children my age, dressed in rags, begging. Some families, refugees from the north, were still living in mountain caves on the outskirts of the city. Nearly everyone I met had less than our family did. (Over the next twenty years, we witnessed South Korea's rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of war, to become one of the world's economic superpowers, but that's another story.)

My parents were actively engaged in trying to relieve suffering through delivering medical care and supporting women's groups. In fifth and sixth grade, I spent many after-school hours playing with the orphan babies who were patients at the hospital where my father worked.

Fast forward to my arrival at an American college campus, straight from the rural health care project my father directed on a remote Korean island. Though I wasn't aware of it at the time, I was carrying some extra baggage along with my trunks.

I had deep and loving relationships with many individual Koreans and by then knew many who were well-to-do, but my early childhood experiences had ingrained within me the idea that the task of a privileged white American was to be a helper. The little I'd been exposed to of the experiences of African-Americans - mostly slavery, civil rights, and Martin Luther King - only confirmed my unconscious impulse to respond to people of color by trying to help.

It wasn't hostile, it wasn't hateful, but it was still a way of viewing people of color as less than. It made me see Them primarily as victims and myself as some kind of caretaker, which is a "benign" form of white supremacy. It caused me to behave oddly, especially around African-Americans: self-conscious, careful, effortful, earnest, overcompensating - twisting myself into a pretzel instead of just being myself. (Because of my comfort level and sense of belonging with Koreans, I was much more relaxed with Asian Americans.) I spent a great deal of time earnestly trying to prove how good I was, that I wasn't one of those white people. None of this was any help at all in developing equitable, authentic bonds across race.

Fortunately, I had also gained some strengths from my upbringing, including awareness of race and knowing that cross-racial relationships were essential to me. So in spite of all the baggage, I developed friendships with black students and began learning. Watching myself repeatedly behaving in peculiar ways gradually brought me to awareness of the unconscious stuff, how it was in my way, and what I could do about it.

I share all this only as an illustration: In a similar manner to the work done by Adult Children of Alcoholics and other groups, we can examine the experiences of our upbringing to uncover the patterns we have formed around race. We can become witnesses of our own implicit attitudes, behaviors and actions, without judging ourselves, and ask, "Why in the world do I think/feel/do that?"

Once we see the patterns, we are freed to make conscious choices.

Tracking Everyday Bias

In late January I attended a fascinating Bates College lecture entitled "Mind Bugs: The Science of Everyday Bias," by Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard. She shared that brain research has now documented with conclusive evidence that bias is a universal human condition, and that testing shows a high degree of racial and gender bias (as well as many other types) in human brains (for instance, 80% of whites show bias for the white race).

Researchers can watch the brains of test subjects. When you think about people like you, they report, a certain part of your brain lights up; when you think about people different from you, a different part lights up. This kind of bias is completely unconscious, present in people who are absolutely positive they don't have it and who are committed to treating everyone fairly (and think they do). But it affects our actions, from hiring decisions to proscribing medications to book purchasing. The higher the degree of prejudice, the more it affects behavior.

To me, all this was great news. It give us the opportunity to get beyond the defensive arguments of whether or not bias is present (though some people will hold onto that forever), accept that it's in all of us (each of us with our own unique pattern), and get on with what to do about it. It's not a question of if you have bias, it's what yours looks like.

As Banaji said, you can discover from testing that "the data are coming out not in line with my conscious intention," realize that "you are shaping your mind and creating associations," and take responsibility for, literally, changing your mind.

At the Project Implicit website, you can "assess your conscious and unconscious preferences for over 90 different topics ranging from pets to political issues, ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music," (joining the 12,000,000 people around the world who've offered themselves as subjects).