Not to turn this into a white privilege blog, but… here’s Time’s Mark Halperin’s tease of his take on Obama’s potential Supreme Court nominations.
Ok…I’m not the biggest fan of scanning the blogosphere for poor word choices and labeling it as racist to enhance my own self concept. But what I don’t get is why an otherwise intelligent guy jumps to a framing of the next Supreme Court nomination process as “another instance of screwing over the White guy.” Seriously? How many instances have we had? You do know that of all 108 members of the Supreme Court, 104 have been White males?
So why is the 109th case going to be different? It gets back to this strange presumption that black people are reflexively in-group oriented whereas White people have no such in-group loyalties and are completely free and clear of any race-based bias. This clarity allows them to make dispassioned, merit-based decisions while the rest of use a pernicious “fuzzy logic.”
I think you Sociology folks call this White Privilege.
Comments 2
meruprecht — May 1, 2009
yes, and us lit folks call it that too.
but actually, jose, to me, it's not "that" -- it's not that white people think they "have no such in-group loyalties and are completely free and clear of any race-based bias" and thus make dispassioned, rational decisions.
it is that they (we, i) suffer from white privilege: from the fact that we view ourselves as not HAVING a race AT ALL, that we think of "white" as both "natural" AND "neutral," of "white male" as "human being", it is that we think only other people HAVE a race (are "other" to the "norm") -- which to us, now (post civil rights et al), means they "get things" they might not have merited (aka, affirmative action), things we might be more qualified to receive ...making us today's oppressed group. (gawd, how often i hear exactly that argument from my more conservative, white students!)
so the problem is not, imho, that white people see themselves as an in-group,exactly, it is that we see ourselves as the "new" target --AND-- that we are used to blindly enjoying the privileges of whiteness which we consider natural and normal and do not see or wish to see as privileges at all. rather than privileges, they are seen as simple realities. so we are used to this kind of statistic and choose to view it, still today, as a "neutral" statistic that does not reflect the unfair, unearned material privileges we live with everyday of our lives and which constitute our very existences:
"that of all 108 members of the Supreme Court, 104 have been White males"
to many white people, and perhaps many people at large, that kind of statistic remains a "neutral" reality. ...the sun rises, the sun sets, and 104 out of the last 108 justices have been white males. simple "reality", so what? that's the view...a simple refusal to recognize white privilege.
shame on halperin. he ought to know better...
rkatclu — May 2, 2009
Pernicious assumptions aside, I wouldn't bet on the next SCOTUS candidate being a white male.
It's kind of ironic, but I think many who complain about reverse discrimination point to historical grievances (e.g. the kind of quota systems SCOTUS struck down in Bakke). I think things have improved since then, but that not all claims of reverse discrimination are meritless. Frankly though, many are. If prior court cases are any indication, many complainants hold overly favorable views of their own qualifications.