I’m going through Debbie Irving’s book Waking Up White, along with several friends, blogging about each chapter as I read it and react to it. Quotes are from her book; my responses follow.
Another particularly stubborn hard-drive attitude I’ve had to wrestle with is the idea that “fair means equal.” This attitude fits nicely with the myth of meritocracy.
This fits in with what I’m thinking at the moment, that there are so many missing elements and gaps in the lives and experiences of my friends. I imagine sometimes what it might be like to be equal, but I hadn’t considered, really, what it might be like to have equity. Frankly, this is an extremely contentious idea in White America, that not only should the have-nots gain access to the same processes as the haves, the have-nots should also get a hand-up, an extra boost to enable them to catch up to the haves. Five centuries of deliberate exclusion (and other base actions) directed at BBIPOC (Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color) has left everyone way, way behind the privileged position of white Americans. It can be condensed into the dreaded word “Reparations,” but the idea is there already that we must pay back—with interest—what we stole. We white people tend to think that we’ve landed at the top due to our own achievements, but it appears far more likely we landed at the top because we were placed there deliberately due to our birth and neighborhood situation: we were born white, so we become white, and soon simply are white.
I couldn’t see the help I’d received as a member of the dominant racial group.
Whiteness is invisibility regarding all that has gone into making our lives safe and secure and hopeful. Not every white person in America succeeds, and there are pockets of successful BBIPOC, but the general experience of white people is that nothing holds them back as white people, and yet our BBIPOC friends and community experience resistance and roadblocks and reversals, over and over again. I’m white, and I’m trying my best to see this. But to be as honest as I know how to be, I barely ever see this. I think the world of whiteness around me is constructed to hold this back from me, to keep me blind but happy.
There’s a great book I got as a kid: The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde. My version was a large, full-color book, maybe 16″ x 14″ of glorious pictures and a delightful text. But the message was sobering: a young man—the prince—was destined to be king, and he was protected from the slightest encroachment of harm or pain or wrong. He lived in a gilded palace among beautiful gardens—until one day he saw misery, and asked a bird, a humble swallow, to give him guidance on what to do. You should read the book to find out more—my copy was printed in the early 60s, but there are plenty of newer additions. Key to my experience with that book was the idea that one could live in a bubble of such protection that pain and suffering were invisible—until the hand of God moved to tear down the walls.
The Happy Prince was perhaps lucky to find what he was missing. I was perhaps lucky to have such a book, given to me by someone (maybe my parents) who saw the book more for its beautiful illustrations than its meaning. But it was part of me, laying the groundwork for me to have that swallow appear five decades later to wake me up to the pain and hurt and loneliness of those around me who were always invisible.
Once I recognized the imbalance of resources and access historically given to white people, my ideas changed. Suddenly things like affirmative action and housing subsidies, which had once sounded like unfair programs that helped people I assumed simply weren’t helping themselves, made sense.
It is very, very hard to convince people with invisible privilege to see it, much less give to others from their own “resources” so that they, the undeserving, can come up to their level. Of course we “know” that privilege doesn’t exist, that it’s all merit, that others can just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, that we can’t let those people just steal our stuff, that…. Well, I’m sure you can fill this all in. It is, in my experience, nearly impossible to break free of the blindness. But I’ve seen it happen, again and again, through persistent love and careful cultivation of the spirit of a man or woman to woo them into compassion and empathy. I do not claim to fully see, not at all. I will just say where once I was blind, now I see, enough to realize what’s going on, and to want to bring healing.
“Here’s a great way to explain [equality vs. equity] to kids. Ask them what they’d do if there was a test that involved writing their answer on a line on the board—a line five feet above the ground.
I loved this illustration because it cuts through the fog of excuses right down to what matters to kids and how kids can see it. They instantly grasp that of course it would be fairer to bring the line down or bring the other kids up. Leaving them to fend for themselves—to pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps—won’t really work.
“‘Equality’ means giving every student exactly the same thing to meet the same expectation. ‘Equity’ means both holding people of differing needs to a single expectation and giving them what they need to achieve it.”
Great quote to understand that we don’t all start equal—we’re all starting from different blocks, and so unless we, the privileged, are very, very incompetent and slow, and the un-privileged are extremely fast and unusually quick-witted, the race is over before it starts. But if we say everyone can run the race and everyone has a chance to win—we need to be sure that everyone has the same prequalifications—education, housing, food, health care, training, care, love, safety—all the things that are inherent to being white (remember, we’re not punished for being white, even though we might not have everything handed to us as white people), and making them available to those who will not start off “equal.”
When I analyze how Jerry Weast worked [from Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools], I noticed that he did not impose his ideas on others as much as he used his position of power to involve and empower people at all levels of the system and surrounding communities. In fact, at every turn he replaced a status quo “white” attitude or behavior with an alternative approach, effectively flattening the traditional hierarchy.
This was the scary part—that Mr. Weast trusted the people he was training to “get it,” and not impose himself and his oh-so-obvious solutions. The temptation is for those with the answers (!) to just impose them upon a restive, unconvinced population. But the trust that Mr. Weast had in the people paid off enormously. The community took his charge seriously, and although the changes are still in the process of implementation, the changes are occurring. Schools are seeing better performance, and kids are doing much, much better.
If I lived in Montgomery County, my children would have been in a Green Zone school. Could I have been convinced to have my county’s resources shifted from my child’s school to a Red Zone school if I didn’t understand the achievement gap’s historical roots?
Ms. Irving goes through the bulleted list of what Mr. Weast did—and wonders aloud if she would have been willing to grant equity to her neighbors or if she would have perceived this as an “unfair boost” to undeserving communities.
It’s a good question to ask ourselves, to remind ourselves that we are not “good” people, but that we are people who can try to change to match our values. And that’s good enough for me.
Questions
Which of the following special-by-race programs have benefited you in your life? How?
- White-only or white-dominated neighborhood – Yes. Grew up in a completely white community. I did not see a Latinx or Asian person until we moved to a new city in the 4th grade, and I never, ever interacted with someone Black (outside of our neighbor’s maid) until I was in my 20s.
- White-only or white-dominated country club – I’m not that rarified, but my social clubs (Scouts/YMCA Indian Guides) were white because they were based on the population in our all-white neighborhoods.
- Other types of white-only or white-dominated social clubs – Church was nearly entirely white for me for 30 years. My church in the 80s did make the attempt to incorporate the poor, so I became more exposed to BBIPOC, but only as guests. I can honestly but regretfully say that I made no friendships in the congregation from the communities of color.
- Legacy at a private school – Did not have a private school.
- Legacy at an institution of higher education – I had community college ready for me.
- Lending rates for white people – I’ll say I benefitted from this, although I haven’t really investigated this nor have I thought out the implications.
For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
I’ve been blogging this book along with a few other people here:
Di Brown ‘Nixie’ at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter (from 26-45): https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-the-final-chapters/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/
“We white people tend to think that we’ve landed at the top due to our own achievements, but it appears far more likely we landed at the top because we were placed there deliberately due to our birth and neighborhood situation: ”
Or.. on the backs of BIPOC, who were forced to their knees to serve as stepstools for us….?