White people are being asked—or pushed—to take stock of their whiteness and identify with it more. This is a remarkably bad idea.
In the past year, all of the following headlines have appeared, in well-read publications:
The White Guy Problem
White Men Must be Stopped: The Very Future of Mankind Depends on It
I Don’t Know What To Do With Good White People
Ten Things White People Need To Stop Saying
Dear White People: Here’s a List of Things We’d Wish You’d Stop Doing
What is new is the direct indictment of white people as a race. This happened through a strange rhetorical transformation over the past few years. At first, “white men are our greatest threat” postings tended to be ironic, a way of putting the racist shoe on the other foot. They were meant to show that blaming an entire race for the harmful actions of a few individuals is senseless.
Then the tenor changed. What started as irony turned into an actual belief that white people, specifically white men, are more dangerous and immoral than any other people. Loosely backed up by historical inequities and disparities in mass shootings, this position has begun to take a serious foothold.
Don’t Ask White People to Be More Tribal
Strikingly, this shift in rhetoric undermines what was once the core of anti-racist efforts. Treating people equally has given way to making all of us ambassadors for our race. This is a classic theme in critical race theory, that people of color carry a burden of representation that white people do not. But foisting the baggage of representation onto white people doesn’t solve that problem. It makes it worse.
White people are being asked—or pushed—to take stock of their whiteness and identify with it more. This is a remarkably bad idea. The last thing our society needs is for white people to feel more tribal. The result of this tribalism will not be a catharsis of white identity, improving equality for non-whites. It will be resentment towards being the only tribe not given the special treatment bestowed by victimhood.
A big part of the reason white Americans have been willing to go along with policies that are prejudicial on their face, such as affirmative action, is that they do not view themselves as a tribe. Given the inequality of resources favoring whites in our society, it is a good thing that white people view themselves as the ones without an accent. Should that change, white privilege (whatever one views that to be) will not be eviscerated—it will be entrenched.
The Tipping Point of Whiteness
All of this comes at a time when the last immigrants from the great wave of white immigration from 1850-1920 have died off. In the past, most whites identified with their European ethnicity: Irish, Italian, German, etc. As white people gravitate away from such identities, many see themselves as a neutral, “non racial” population. The Left criticizes this refusal to see themselves as “white,” but it is far preferable to the alternative: an American white population that views itself as a special-interest group.
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Privilege Theory Is the Wrong Track
The McIntosh in question is Peggy McIntosh, whose 1988 essay “Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack” formed the foundation of privilege theory. The essay is mostly a list of ways in which white people receive better treatment in society. The MCWC describes McIntosh’s theory as a synecdoche because it has come to define the totality of education’s anti-racism efforts. It is meant to be the magic pill that clarifies things and sets us on the right course once consumed.
They found that many disadvantaged white students reject the notion of their grand privileges and resented the key confessional component of white privilege education. One case study involved an education student named John, from a small, non-diverse town. In his final essay for the class John explained his reaction to McIntosh: “I got the feeling from it that it was more about trying to make white males feel guilty for things they most likely had no control over. Being a white male I got a little worked up about the whole list since I don’t feel like I have anything to apologize for.”
John rolled his eyes at privilege theory. However, his teacher reported that other ways of exploring racism and multiculturalism such as films on race relations and historical texts broadened John’s empathy towards non-white people. John was able to reject confession while still becoming a better anti-racist educator. This made John’s teacher wonder whether confessional white privilege is the universally beneficial educational tool it is made out to be. The collective found that it is not.
In its blunt conclusion, the collective writes: “McIntosh’s conception of white privilege has been at the center of anti-racist thought and action in teacher education. We argue, however, that McIntosh’s ideas simplify white racial identity in dangerous ways. We also demonstrate that white privilege pedagogy demands confession, but that confession is a dead end. Finally, we propose that white supremacy needs to replace white privilege as the central concern of our anti-racist efforts.”
