Search results for white privilege

A resolution to the matter described below was announced yesterday.  In order to preserve the religious memorial without violating the separation of church and state, the Park Service has agree to give the land it sits on to two private citizens who take care of the monument.  Problem solved?

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The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding whether a cross erected 75 years ago as a memorial to war veterans violates the constitutional separation between church and state. The cross sits on the Mojave National Preserve and, therefore, is on public land. After lower court rulings, the cross was covered in plywood.

In deliberations, Justice Scalia tried to argue that the cross is a neutral and universal symbol. He said:

It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead… What would you have them erect?… Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?

Faced with an argument that the cross is distinctly Christian, he said:

I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.

Scalia’s comments reveal a common phenonemon that we’ve discussed in terms of race and gender, but not yet religion.  As Jay Livingston pointed out at MontClair SocioBlog, one can only think of Christian symbols as non-specific if one thinks of Christianity as somehow normal, neutral, and for everyone.  In the U.S., because Christianity is the dominant religion, many people simply see it as default.  You’re Christian unless you’re something else.  Something else that marks you as different and specific, Christianity does not.

This is one way that dominance works.  It makes itself invisible.

UPDATE! Dmitriy T.M. pointed out that Steven Colbert addressed this issue on The Colbert Report back in 2009:

See our other posts on how whiteness and maleness are the characteristics we attribute to “person,” unless there are reasons to do otherwise, here, here, here, and here.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Autism appears to be on the rise. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that there are 20 times more cases of autism today than there were in the 1980s.  This figure, from the Los Angeles Times, shows a 200% increase in California:

The rise in cases of autism led scientists to ask whether there was an actual increase in incidence or if we were just getting better at identifying it.  The evidence seems to suggest that it’s (at least mostly) the latter.  Said anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker: “Once we are primed to see something, we see it and wonder how we could have never seen it before.”

But how to explain disparities like this?

Often regional differences in health and mental health can be traced to heavier environmental toxin loads.   In most of those cases, though, clusters of illness occur in poor and often disproportionately non-white neighborhoods.  Autism clusters were happening in class-privileged places.

Sociologist Peter Bearman discovered that these clusters were the result of conversation.  Class-privileged parents had the resources to get their child diagnosed, then they talked to other parents.  Some of these parents would recognize the symptoms and take their child to the doctor and… voila… a cluster.  “Living within 250 meters [of a child diagnosed with autism], reports the Los Angeles Times, boosted the chances by 42%, compared to living between 500 and 1,000 meters away.”

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Amid accusations of racism, the European Union (EU) has withdrawn a two-minute video designed to raise awareness about “Neighbourhood Policy,” an approach to establishing “deeper relations” with neighboring state the need for unity among EU nations and acceptance of candidate states hoping to enter.  In the video, sent to us by Claire P., the EU is personified by a white woman, who is facing attacks from all sides.

Bruno Waterfield, writing for the Telegraph, describes the scene:

First the EU heroine… is menaced by a Chinese Kung Fu master. Then a second threat appears as a urbaned practitioner of Kalaripayattu, a southern Indian martial art, levitates towards her brandishing a scimitar.

UPDATE: Reader Katrin says the video was about increasing integration and cooperation of states and the European Commission’s enlargement policy, not about the “neighborhood” policy as reported by the Telegraph:,

It was for greater unity of existing EU member states (which is why the video is entitled “Growing Together”) and candidates for membership (which is why it says “the more we are the stronger we are”) in order to show a united front to the rising powers China, India and Brazil. It was intended to portray that if the EU acts united, then China, India and Brazil will be willing to engage with the EU constructively…Current candidates of accession are e.g. Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. Enlargement and unity as a tool for greater power when facing rising economies was the intended message of the clip, not the ENP.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Originally posted at In Transit and Racialicious.

I’m still trying to work my way through my discomfort and analyze exactly where my discomfort of this Sociological Images post is coming from, so if this critique seems a bit scattered, it’s because my thoughts about it, at the moment, are that way.

First: I agree with where the post is coming from, in that the disenfranchised rarely ever have a voice of their own in mainstream Western culture, are always portrayed as the Other, which is defined as everything that said mainstream Western culture isn’t (at best as something that props it up and provides an aesthetically pleasing contrast, at worst as something that must be exterminated). And this leads to remarkably similar cycles of dehumanization and disenfranchisement. As so many minority thinkers/activists have noted, manufactured binaries between the privileged West and everyone else, even seemingly positive ones, ultimately end up reinforcing destructive hierarchies.

Where I disagree with the poster is the framing, which I feel makes the post, in some ways, as reductive as what it’s critiquing. Because there are different contexts in which the above cycle/process of exotification occurs, and those contexts matter and shouldn’t be handwaved, even (and I would say especially) if you’re taking the pov of the white outsider and attempting to deconstruct it. Social justice discourse loses its meaning when it becomes divorced from one of power relations.

In this specific example, while making its comparison of India as a magical negro, the post fails to both note and appreciate the following bits of context:

That both the main white actress and the main desi actor in the film are British, with Dev Patel adopting an Indian accent and playing the part of a “native”. That all the featured Indian characters are coded as middle/upper class (the dress, able to speak fluent English, etc) and light skinned. That in many ways this is how India is actively marketed by its tourism sector (and also its government. Did a project once which involved collecting promo material from the Indian consul — I think in Chicago? — and it was quite hilariously illuminating), because they’ve judged that this type of pandering will bring in the tourist dollars.

And this exotification of India in the West has been happening since before the time of Columbus, and reducing said things to a “phenomenon in which a white character in a tv show or movie finds enlightenment…” seems rather glib. (Just because it appears in tvtropes does not mean TV created it!) And that’s not even getting into how most isms seem to inevitably become just like the racism that blacks (had) face(d) in the US.

I also thought it was telling how none of the links elaborating on the “magical negro” trope went to one of the many black writers who’ve done the major work of deconstructing and dissecting it, much less linking to desi writers talking about colonialism and othering.

So what my disagreement boils down to, I think, is this: that this is a discussion about the Othering/exotification of India in mainstream Western culture that succeeds in further marginalizing/disenfranchising desis and other minorities. It doesn’t consider that we might be among the audience for this post (much less making room in the conversation for us, much less acknowledging all the times we’ve already discussed this), and in the way it takes something that rose out of certain contexts, misidentifies said contexts while applying it to different ones with no mention of the consequences of the differences, makes it, again, similar to what it’s aiming to critique.

And it brings home the point that, for all its social justice aims, this is a blog for a specific group of white people, by a specific group of white people, with all the marginalizations that entails.

Another note: it is interesting to read the comments, to see all the places East/West binaries crop up. For example, this comment (which thankfully was critiqued):

So, this is probably why you’ll never find a movie about a Westerner in Latvia trying to find himself- “finding oneself” usually requires immersing oneself in a setting completely different from the everyday humdrum norm.

I do find India humdrum normy, actually. And infrastructure specifically designed to ape the west is increasingly common in cities, and you can always find people in the touristy parts who speak English and cater to Western tastes in a thousand and one ways. (Actually, you won’t need to find them, if you are white they will find you and you will not be able to escape them!) Latvia, I am assuming not so much?

I feel as if the manufactured differences that so many Westerners create for India, while completely missing the deeper and more significant ones, are part of the same binary that Fanon was talking about when he said: “The settler is all that is good and of value. The native is the negation of the settler’s value”. And a lot of the appeal of India, the reason for it not being “everyday humdrum normy”, is that it still gives middle class white Westerners who go there chances to personally experience the colonial British sahib lifestyle.

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Colorblue blogs at In Transit.

Here’s another one for our collection of instances in which we describe light tan as “nude,” “skin-,” or “flesh-colored” (symbolically erasing the existence of people without light tan skin).  Yahoo’s OMG! describes uses the word “nude” to describe the color of Lil’ Kim shirt.

It’s always particularly amazing when they use the word to talk about something a black person is wearing.  Like, um, Michelle Obama.

For more examples, see our posts on products designed for white people, the widespread use of such language to describe light tan in the fashion world,  and lotion marketed as for “normal to darker skin.” See also our Contexts essay on race and “nude” as a color.

For contrast, see this post about how the generic human in Russian cartoons is colored black instead of white.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

During the height of the Occupy Movement, thousands of individuals submitted pictures of themselves to the We are the 99 Percent tumblr blog.  They posed with letters and signs, telling individual stories of what it’s like to be in the 99%.

There’s been a solid critique of how whites, youth, and those with college access have a larger voice on this site, as well as dismissive responses from those on the right, but I’m struck by the rhetoric used. One word stands out to me as particularly jarring: Luck.

[Written for a child] “I am 3 years old and lucky to go to preschool, have a roof over my head and spaghetti-o’s in my belly. I am lucky to have Medicaid while my parents don’t qualify.”

“i am 22, living in a trailer in exchange for labor… We eat 69c mac’n’cheez or ramen; i drive a car illegal with disrepairs. And i’m lucky.”

“I am lucky my husband has a decent job because before I was on his health insurance my coverage  denied normal, annual GYN visits because ‘Being a woman is a pre existing condition.’ And we are the lucky ones!!”

“But I am one of the lucky ones. I was finally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder I am properly medicated”

“I’m one of the lucky ones. I enjoy my part-time job… yet… [have a] $65,000 [student] loan. 4 side jobs – not enough for rent. No health insurance. No children, so I don’t qualify for any aid, but I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“I am a lucky one. I have enough money to eat 3 of 4 weeks of the month…”

Luck is a word that comes up incredibly frequently among the 99 percenters, alongside words like debt, crisis, and unemployment. But what kind of luck is this? What does it mean to be “one of the lucky ones?”

In these posts, people struggling to hold multiple jobs call themselves “lucky” for having food most of the month, enough work to survive, or health care for part of their family — even as they report drowning in debt, losing work, and losing hope.

This isn’t our usual meaning for luck, and it only makes sense in comparison — to the “unlucky ones.” But if the “99 percent” is lucky, who exactly is unlucky? And how does this “luck” relate to the accompanying uncertainty, stalled careers, and failure to attain personal and collective dreams?

After sending in an early picture, I was startled to realize I’d also used the rhetoric of luck as a frame for my complaint. Of course I live in relative privilege to others, but why subsume my experience of uncertainty and dislocation beneath that privilege?

On the one hand, the rhetoric of luck acknowledges our relationships to other human beings, including those with greater struggles. To observant readers, it can also point to the structural and economic challenges that even “lucky” people face.

But I’d argue that the same rhetoric turns our lives into happenstance. It moves our stories harmlessly to the side, so that larger — and often deceptive — narratives about luck, hard work, and the American Dream can continue as planned. By prefacing our stories with an admission of luck, we displace our own voices and cast doubt on our experiences as something that just “happened to us.”

Yet the current economic and political situation didn’t just happen to either the “lucky” or the “unlucky” ones. As in other periods of U.S. economic history since the 1700s, the underemployment, debt, financial instability, and lack of affordable life-goods that Americans face are the result of deliberate policies designed to streamline and protect growth for investors, large corporations, and other profiteers — often at the expense of individual citizens, workers and business owners without large amounts of capital or political access.

So rather than slip into the rhetoric of luck, what other frames can we use to talk about our experiences? Framing our experiences in light of multiple takes on economic history may allow us to draw from previous generations in assessing our options for greater involvement in setting the guidelines for our society. Initiating discussion on the civic responsibility of every stakeholder may involve bringing to task those who have instituted policies beneficial only to a small minority of elite Americans. And collective effort from the left and the right could enable us to ensure that economic activity bears appropriate fruit for individuals, households, and families, and that the people actually have a voice in our towns, states, and nation at least equivalent to other sources of power.

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Celia Emmelhainz, M.A., is an economic anthropologist who conducts ongoing research on citizenship, economics, and religion in Central Asia. With a degree in anthropology from Texas A&M University, she currently works as an academic librarian in Kazakhstan.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

It’s that time of year when we savage the world with our unbridled consumerism. If it’s not a Black Friday stampede at Target, it’s a news story of a shopper who camped out in front of a Best Buy for over a week to score some discounted gadgets. Everywhere you turn consumers are whipped into a frenzy, children’s eyes are glazed over as they think of what gifts they’ll open, and romantic partners are stressed over what they will give their loved one to demonstrate the depths of their love.

When consumerism is exaggerated, as it is this time of year, it’s easier to see the cultural scripts and rituals that surround it. These cultural scripts tell us:

1. How to feel when we come into a lot of money or even just get a good deal
2. How to act when we receive a gift
3. And how to impute love from inanimate objects.

1. The Rapturous Consumer Windfall

Next to presentations of sex and bad karaoke there is arguably no other scenario played out on television ad nauseam more than the consumer windfall. Turn on your TV right now, and find an advertisement or game show and you will almost certainly see someone falling to their knees, eyes full of tears, as they praise the gods of capitalism for blessing them.  Bob Barker (er, Drew Carey) play the role of Benny Hinn in this consumer revival smashing their open palms on the foreheads of game show contestants as they exclaim, “The. Price. Is. RIGHT!” (Watch at 0:51):*

Television advertising is a wellspring for this type of consumer exaltation. The best example of this consumer rapture is the @ChristmasChamp campaign from Target. Watch the video below and you tell me; is this woman having a consumer-gasm or what?**

Maybe it’s just me, but this ritualized consumer rapture gives me the heebie geebies.

2. The “Show Us What You Got” Photo

Leaning on the arm of your parent’s love, seat slightly sauced, your aunt turns to you and says lovingly, “oh show me what Santa brought you!” After you halfheartedly motion to the pile of loot on the floor she puts her glass down, grabs the family Polaroid and says, “Let’s take a photo to send to [fill in name of absentee relative].”

If we were to flip through your family photo albums I bet we’d find page after page of people cheesing with their unwrapped gifts held head level. This obligatory photo is the classic post gift exchange cultural script. Somehow a gift is only properly received when there is a photo to document it.

From my point of view, it is strange that we take photos of the things we receive during holidays which are tangible and will be around well after the event. But many of us don’t take photos of the moments with our loved ones that won’t linger and fill up our closets.

3. The Hand Dance of Love

Does he love you? Does your hand show it? The holiday season is a time when many will pop the question and boy do advertisers know it. While the issues surrounding jewelry ads are well documented on this site, I’d like to talk about the hand dance women are socialized to do after their love has been verified by an appropriately large shiny rock. After a woman says “yes,” she walks around with one arm sticking out like a zombie for the next few months doing the hand dance. This cultural script dictates that women flaunt their recently acquired diamond ring and then all women in their surround give their requisite “Oh, that is GORGEOUS!” There is a sad sizing up that goes on here, where women are shamed or praised for the size of ring bestowed upon them.

In Conclusion

Most of these cultural scripts and rituals go unnoticed or at the very least unquestioned. These acts are the mechanisms through which we objectify the social world and alienate ourselves from our loved ones. So this year why not participate in Buy Nothing Day and double down on some quality time with your loved ones.

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* We should acknowledge that sometimes the people who are receiving these windfalls are desperate and totally deserving. I don’t want to shame or cast dispersions on anyone in this situation, but these are exceptions to the rule.

** Forgive me for sexualizing this, but I mean come on, that’s an apt description. While we are at it, this ad is chock full of sociology. We have an “empowered woman” who uses her power to consume; it’s the classic redirection of feminist energies into consumer. This woman, who appears to be the epitome of the middle class, white, privileged consumer, is flexing her muscles, exerting her power, and being aggressive enough to make Betty Friedan blush… ’cept she is using her power to purchase consumer goods from a capitalist system that creates and maintains her oppression. Maybe it’s just me, but I think feminist scholars would have a (justified) objection if I called this “champ” a feminist. I dunno.

Nathan Palmer is a faculty member at Georgia Southern University, editor-in-chief of SociologyInFocus.com, and the founder of SociologySource.com.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In her August 13 column in the Washington Times Communities section, Rebekah Kuschmider declares proudly, “So here’s the thing: I am not embarrassed about my stretch marks.” It’s a great message. Women should love their aging skin and reject the impossible Photoshop beauty standards that make us hate ourselves. Kuschmider describers herself as, not a Barbie Doll, but a “Velveteen Rabbit, so worn and loved that I’ve become real.”

Two curious images, however, accompany this story about a (presumably) wealthy white woman’s stretch marks. The two women pictured with Kuschmider’s column are actually a Thai woman from a village near Burma and an Indian laborer from the city of Diu (according to the Flickr pages from which the photos were captured). The old Thai woman’s face is a shrunken apple;  tattoos cover the younger Indian woman’s neck, and the whites of her eyes are yellowed from exposure to the sun. Both women are beautiful.

But why don’t we see, not to get too invasive here, the stretch marks of which Ms. Kuschmider is justifiably proud? Why do we instead see haunting portraits that seem to come straight off the pages of National Geographic? The underlying message from whoever chose these photos (the author? an online editor?) is that wrinkles look exotic on poor women whom privileged Americans love to gawk at. We don’t expect them to be attractive by our standards – they’re so lovely in their way, so tragic. But wealthier white women?