Feelings and Whiteness

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There’s a great chance I’m doing this wrong. Let me know in the comments.

Since I was young, I’ve been hit harder by feelings than most of my peers.

Whenever schoolyard talk got heated, I’d burst into tears and be unable to complete a sentence, then stumble into my 5th grade class, blotchy and sniffling.

Decades later, I still feel things strongly, but for a different purpose. Today, I watched this on the drive home from downtown.

That caused me to scream curses at my dashboard and sulk the rest of the evening.

A year ago, I confessed to my wife, “Babe, I’m worried about Trump. He has a casual relationship with the truth, but he speaks with authority as if all his statements are verified and factual. What if people believe the crazy shit he says?”

And here we are. In the video above, President Trump equates a small crowd of white supremacists with a smaller crowd of people there to start fights with white supremacists. In the mind of the President, they both share the blame for a violent clash that left dozens wounded and oneB dead.

He’ll likely be re-elected in 2020 by a large demographic who views his words as truth without question.

POTUS is referring to the torch-carrying crowd on Friday night who chanted bblood and soilb and bJews will not replace us.b

Nice people? https://t.co/YO1yS1tg6q

b Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 15, 2017

Recently, a friend of mine caught up with me. It had been a few years since we talked face to face, and he mentioned, “So I see that you’re posting more… um… racial stuff… on Facebook.”

My friend is white, but you could probably guess that.

And he was right; my journey to becoming more “woke” toB my own white privilegeB began fairly recently. As a kid, every member of my middle school classes was white, and I heard a dozen racist jokes before I even entered high school. My high school and college were both north of 90% white, as wereB my church, family, and co-workers.

It wasn’t until halfway into my first year of teaching that I realized, “I’m the only white person in this room. That’s… probably never happened before.”

That began a shift for me. But I’m hitting a wall now, years later.

One of my favorite podcasts in Code Switch from NPR. In a recent episode, a Charlottesville resident said this:

This [protesting Nazis] is easy, because it’s something that everyone’s for.
Once this goes away, how we deal with other race issues is what really matters in the long run.

My life is easy. Everyone on TV looks like me, people making decisions about our nation look like me, and no groups or legislation are calling for my rights, citizenship, or humanity to be diminished, overtly or otherwise. That’s my definition of privilege: theB little advantages that I didn’t earn or deserve that make my life easier.

And there are dozens of them for me. Truly, it’s like I’ve won blackout inB Privilege Bingo.

So I must be hyper-attentiveB when other groups cry, “oppression,” and I listenB in closely and shut up.

While I can pat myself on the back for my tweets getting a lot of traction with people I respect, there’s probably very little net impact from that.

Further, I have a bunch of relatives who post … insensitive… content on Facebook.
Not all of them respond well when confronted about it. Some do.

All of this makes itB really tempting to tune out, sterilize my social media feeds, and just listen to podcasts about architecture and sociologyB instead of politics and race relations (all real things in my feed).

If I only hear about happy things, then I won’t be burdened with discomfort about my privilege.

Even writing this post, I’m feel compelled to give examples of my digital activismB becauseB white folk love to take credit for being “one of the good ones.”B Do I link to the times that I called out toy companies for lack of representation and retweeted #EduColor?

Districts want to hire consultants that just talk about math education, not tattooed punks who useB words like “patriarchy” when discussing equity in education. And on my day job, I serve hundreds of white teachers, not all of them are comfortable discussing the topic of race and privilege. Some of them just wanted help getting their work email on their phone.

So I feel a little bit uncomfortableB all the time around the issue of race relations, unsure how often to address this issue that I care about that makes some of my peers, friends, and family squirm.

I’m a little bit uncomfortable all the time.

And that.

That right there.

That’s the price of my privilege.

I feel uncomfortableB sometimes,B but I don’t get backhanded compliments for being “well-spoken.”
I feel uncomfortable sometimes,B butB I don’t get unfairly policed. Ever.
I feel uncomfortable sometimes,B butB I don’t draw suspicionB when I walk into expensive stores.
I feel uncomfortable sometimes,B butB I don’t get shady eyes from white folk in traditional neighborhoods.

And so on.

So white people, I encourage you to join me. Lean into that uncomfortable feeling and listen. Ask friends and family what they mean when they say, “those people.” Call out microagressions when you hear them, even if it’s just asking, “What did you mean by that?”

Not everyone has the option to tune out.

I’ll close with this quote from Lori Lakin Hutcherson, in the article linked above:

As to [white friend] bbeing part of the problem,b trust me, nobody is mad at you for being white. Nobody. Just like nobody should be mad at me for being black. Or female. Or whatever. But what IS being asked of you is to acknowledge that white privilege DOES exist and to not only to treat people of races that differ from yours bwith respect and humor,b but also to stand up for fair treatment and justice, to not let bjokesb or boff-colorb comments by friends, co-workers or family slide by without challenge, and to continually make an effort to put yourself in someone elsebs shoes, so we may all cherish and respect our unique and special contributions to society as much as we do our common ground.

~Matt “Privilege Bingo” Vaudrey

*If I’m missing something, feel free to mention it below. This post is public, and I want any input to be public, too. Even if it makes me more uncomfortable.

UPDATE 18 August 2017: Hank Green and I are on the same path.

Comments

10 responses to “Feelings and Whiteness”

August 17, 2017

Jason S

Thanks for your thoughts, I think if all of us had the idea “we might be wrong” the discussion would a lot more healthy. All too often the discussion narrative is my opinion is right and you are wrong.

My personal opinion, which again can be corrected, is that white privilege can be better classified as “differences from other people”. When someone is different from you whether it be by race, gender, sexuality, IQ, and the list goes on…that is when problems can occur. EVERYONE needs to be aware of their privileges and their tendency to be mean to people who are different. Not just white people, ALL PEOPLE.

Shouldn’t ALL people look at the privilege chart(you created in article)? You are a privileged white person but I am sure there are Black, Hispanic, Asian…etc…people that have a majority of those privileges.

Shouldn’t ALL people check others for “off color jokes” and “put yourself in other people’s shoes”? I think our society would benefit if EVERYONE did your call to action at the end of your article not just white people.

Overall, this is a human problem not just a white person problem. The human problem being we tend to stay by people that are similar to us and can be mean/insentive to people who are different.

Yes white people are the biggest category but why only focus on that?

Reply
1. August 18, 2017
  
  Matt Vaudrey
  
  Yes white people are the biggest category but why only focus on that?
  
  Because I’m white.
  
  And it’s a bit presumptuous for the me to suggest everyone else get their house in order before I focus on my own.
  
  Reply
2. August 20, 2017
  
  Carl Oliver
  
  We are all humans, and humans do have the problem of trying to make sense of the differences we see among other humans in the world. In regards to privileged, if everyone was a more human, it would great. But would it be enough. In regards to race, there are a number of systemic problems that take place within the institutions that make up our society that play out for people of different races. Think of the institutions one interacts with through life. The hospital you are born in, the school you attend, the media you watch, the interactions you have with police, the transactions you have with the banking industry or the real estate industry. All of these things are capable of delivering unfair, demeaning outcomes to people based or race, even when their are really good humans placed in charge of carrying out these interactions. If all people were good, and did their part, would these institutions still have their biases, these institutions would still cause inequitable outcomes, because these biases are so deeply ingrained in our institutions. So I worry that hoping for all people to change, may not have as much impact as looking to target and dismantle the biases within our institutions that cause the problems experienced by non-white people.
  
  Reply
August 17, 2017

John

I don’t think that you’re /missing/ anything in here. You have said a lot of the things that I also feel, and that should come as no surprise. The button I’d like to push harder on is “sterilizing my social media feeds” and encouraging others to “lean into that uncomfortable feeling and listen.”

Charlottesville. It made me sick to see white supremacists, Nazis, and the like join in to rise up and have their voice heard. Has anyone leaned in to hear what’s going on over in “their” camp? “They” are upset, frustrated, and feeling oppressed. Sound familiar? “They” feel like they’ve been set up, attacked, and had their rights taken away. Sound familiar? People in my feed lament that the only books “they” read are Mein Kompf and are too dumb to think for themselves. Is that helpful?

It would be easy to sit back and say, “sucks, doesn’t it? Now it’s your turn to feel what it’s like.” We both know that this isn’t going to solve the problem. Maybe nothing will. But sitting on what we feel to be the appropriate side of the debate and admonishing any other perspective is also not going to get us anywhere. To use your advice, we need to lean in and listen to perspectives that are outside our comfort zone.

We can still denounce hate, oppose white supremacy, and persecute those who turn their beliefs into criminal acts, all while working toward a resolution that lies in civility. I believe this because, to me, not believing in it means the end of what The United States of America has been working towards for quite some time now.

Reply
1. August 18, 2017
  
  Matt Vaudrey
  
  I’m not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that protestors carrying torches, chanting racial slogans, and calling for cleansing have sentiments as valuable as the oppressed minorities? That white folk are oppressed, too?
  That’s a hard sell for me.
  
  Reply
  1. August 18, 2017
    
    john stevens
    
    While I’m a bit upset that you would boil my position down to that, I’m not going to try to change it. Here are my thoughts, not necessarily a direct reply to your post, on how I’m trying to handle things.
    http://www.fishing4tech.com/fishin-solo-blog/im-trying-to-not-raise-white-supremacists
    
    Reply
August 18, 2017

John Golden

I’m with you on your journey. Finding the edges of my privilege, trying to push past ally behavior to accomplice, listen to the unheard and work to get them a seat at the table.

Reply
August 19, 2017

Drew Rehfeld

Talking about race doesn’t make me uncomfortable. (Hopefully, it doesn’t; I taught ‘Philosophy of Cultural Diversity’ to a class where I was the only white person and assigned, “The Racial Contract” by Charles Mills). Anyway, the hardest part about race discussions for me is that race doesn’t exist in any biological, scientific way. I struggle with the fact that labelling someone “white” or “black” is only to more-deeply-ingrain socially-constructed, artificial categories that are the basis of “racism” in the first place. “White” and “black” only exist as social categories, which were used to differentiate “us” and “them”. I understand critiques of being “colorblind”, yet the fact that race doesn’t exist is undeniable. What are we supposed to do with that? And how do we move past race? Is it actually helpful to label myself “white” and someone else “black”? (With a Jewish last name, I might not be white to the neo-Nazis, anyway).

“All of this makes it really tempting to tune out, sterilize my social media feeds, and just listen to podcasts about architecture and sociology instead of politics and race relations (all real things in my feed).”

bSide note, I’m strange, because the content I find most entertaining is the stuff with which I don’t agree. Instagram feeds me all of this right-wing-Trumpist stuff, because I’m always clicking on it.

Reply
August 19, 2017

Becky Vaudrey

Thanks Matt!!! <3

Reply
August 19, 2017

Wendy Menard

Matt- great, honest post. And spot on. I love the honesty in Privilege Bingo, and I agree with you that it behooves us as privileged white Americans to take the lead in pointing out racism, both individual and systemic. Thank you.

Reply