51. SNAPSHOTS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE - Why It Is Not Enough To Just Not Be Racist

As I was writing a Philosophy Unleashed post on a sunny Saturday in my garden a few weeks ago, the mass uprising in response to the death of George Floyd was only just beginning. Writing the post itself was an example of my own white privilege: detached from this latest murder in a long line of racist murders I could sip my iced coffee and comment from afar, in the abstract, knowing that the problems I wrote about were the problems of other people. The post was good - it wasn’t about George Floyd or structural racism, but about notions of sanction and punishment and alternatives to punitive policing. It included George Floyd’s murder as an example of authoritarian overreach and how true justice must come from something more than punishment and prison, but it was also about Dominic Cummings and my experiences teaching online in a world stripped of traditional behaviour consequences for students. I had the privilege that Saturday of being able to see George Floyd’s murder as just one news story among many that I could connect to other things going on in my mind; something awful and something that needed confronting, but, like another human rights abuse reported on the other side of the world, I could feel bad about it and still return back to my life, where those rights weren’t being abused. It is my white privilege that, whatever happened with Derek Chauvin and the other officers who participated in the cold-blooded killing of another black American, I knew I could still walk outside that afternoon without fear of being murdered by those who are supposed to protect me. If I was pulled over in my car that night, my concern would be about points on my license and paying a fine, not on whether I would make it home alive. If I needed to call 999 because I was in danger, I had little reason to fear that calling the police would put me in more danger, not less.

As philosophers we are all about fine distinctions, so let’s make this clear: structural racism and intentional racism are two separate and distinct things, but that does not make the consequences - or the racism - of those consequences experienced by those affected any less severe. I would like to think I’m not a racist (I won’t do the virtue-signalling thing now of citing all the examples I have to convince you). In my heart, I know I am not a racist. Am, in fact, actively anti-racist and have challenged racism that I have seen in both my personal and professional life. But, as a white person living in a structurally and systemically racist state, I have nevertheless undoubtedly been the beneficiary of white privilege which has had a negative racist impact on others in my country.

As a teenager, my friend and I were mugged in Birmingham city centre by two white kids. When we had the police come to our homes to take our reports, the (white) officer was invited in and offered cups of tea by our parents as he asked us repeatedly: “a bunch of black lads was it?” despite our repeated statements that it was not. It was our privilege that, although we both refused to go along with the police officer’s forced racist narrative, we could laugh about his blatant racism afterwards without having to worry that he, or people like him, would be knocking on our door later with handcuffs and chokeholds or harassing us on the streets of Birmingham assuming guilt before innocence. 

I have run from police wielding batons at protests, seen them run over innocent demonstrators in their armed vans, shoot tear gas in the faces of activists, and beat people bloody with their weapons; but my fear of being attacked, even as I was being stopped and searched the day I was passing out pamphlets about non-violence at a riot, was shielded by the privilege of my white skin. I knew that, if I made it home from the protests without injury, next time a police officer saw me - no banners, no whistles, no shouted slogans - I would just be another white face they looked on without suspicion. That when I asked why they were kettling us together in a tiny space between riot shields and horses it was with the inconvenience of someone who might miss their train, not the fear of someone who believed they might spend the night in jail or be beaten for asking the question. My white privilege meant I could pick and choose when to experience the true, militaristic, authoritarian, violent and uncaring reality of British policing and when to slip back into the comfortable myths that these people were “on our side”. The daily glimpses of that brutal reality, the constant vigilance and fear against unjust detainment and harassment - what it is like to look at the news of another death in police custody and see the face staring back look just like you; that is something I am privileged not to have to live with every day.

As a white skinned anarchist I have written publicly about the unjustness and illegitimacy of the police.  As a white skinned punk rocker I have written and sang along to songs against police brutality and against the very institution of policing. I have never had to fear for my life or my safety for doing so. That is white privilege.

And, of course, it is my white privilege to be where I am today. Moving to a small, and very white, little suburb when I was six, I messed around in school, I didn’t listen to my teachers, and I talked back - all the time - I was in detentions weekly...but I kept being told I was better than that; that there were great things in my future if I focused more. For the single black kid in my primary school, no more poorly behaved than I was, the assumptions were different. His misbehaviour was something inherent within him, he was told, unchangeable, something bad about him. And when he wasn’t told he was anything more than that bad behaviour, what reason did he have to not become the stereotype people already said he was? The fact he has spent years of his life in prison and I have not is an example of my white privilege. Every door that was opened to me was slammed shut in his face.  Likewise, as I got older, went to a bigger school, and watched black kids, Asian kids, kids whose family came from any part of the world that made their skin colour darker than mine, go through our shared childhood having abuse hurled at them, racist names, racist jokes, my own status as child of an immigrant went under the radar. My American mom was clearly foreign but her foreignness was more a badge of honour and a point of interest to people at school - America wasn’t scary, it was cool - and my own name - Irish - again, like the Irish grandfather who gave it me, showed otherness clearly, yet it was an otherness hidden comfortably behind my white skin. There were lots of Irish kids at school. We didn’t stand out. We didn’t get insulted.  I’m technically Jewish too; but who could tell just by looking?  I, a second generation son of an immigrant Jew, got to breeze thorough school because of my white privilege, unaware I even had immigration in my identity until decades later. 

There are many further privileges of my upbringing I will be unaware of. The jobs my two, white, parents had - were they, themselves, the beneficiaries of their own white privilege? Most likely. My father: an Oxford educated, grammar school boy. My mother: born and raised in Manhattan; she may have gone to school in Hells Kitchen but she was accelerated through and went to university at a very young age. Maybe it was merit? Maybe it was something else? They’re both dead now so I can’t ask, but I know they always had jobs as I grew up, we had money in the bank, food on the table, a nice house (even if their marriage wasn’t that great). That sort of comfortable home background which, statistically, advantages a young person over those who don’t have that. If their success came because of the privileges of their skin colour, albeit unconsciously, it is still a success I was privileged to enjoy simply by virtue of my being white.  A lack of uncertainty and struggle that I got to enjoy.  Certainly, I watched my mother get into confrontations with the police several times as she over-reacted to parking and speeding tickets, yet we all lived to tell the tale and laugh about it after.  

It was also my privilege to pick and choose my own social exclusion when I wanted it.  A choice of music; a hairstyle; strange clothes which marked me out as a punk in a small suburban town where such non-conformity stood out.  I do know what it is like to be pointed at, laughed at, spat at as I walked through the street, and, yes, even physically threatened because of how I looked.  But at every moment, if I really didn’t like how the world was treating me, it was always within my power to just take my costume off.  Cut my hair.  Retire the oversized trench-coat painted with slogans and provocative political statements.  Fit in.  The reasons for people’s antagonism against me were never an indelible part of my exterior even if that chosen exterior might have reflected an authentic part of my self.  It was always my choice to make it visible, become a target; those targeted because of the colour of their skin don’t have that choice.

And, of course, during that time, in the late nineties, I was also the beneficiary of the fact that even my chosen counter-culture wasn’t racistly linked to criminality in society and didn’t cause my parents and teachers too much concern.  Despite the fact that punk rock is lyrically linked to anti-authoritarianism, anti-statism, and that punks glorify and indulge in the breaking of many laws - and, in fact, it is definitely what made me an anarchist - culturally, it has always been seen as some sort of silly kneejerk juvenilia more than any real threat to the system.  My interest was encouraged; I was bought a bass guitar and allowed to play our weird punk nonsense in school competitions and busk Dead Kennedys covers in the town centre of Solihull.  Authority figures rolled their eyes with a smile and talked about their own old Sex Pistols and Sham 69 records.  Meanwhile those getting as interested in rap and hiphop as I was in punk were finding themselves harassed by police and parents, worried that this “urban” music was getting them into drugs and gangs.  All around me, many white kids were doing ecstasy at illegal raves, and we were being taught how to take it safely at school so we didn’t have another tragedy like Leah Betts, a white girl who died after taking some pills.  But drugs associated with black culture, we were told, would land you immediately in jail and we had to be vigilant against the music which glorified their use.  Sid Vicious, the guy all my teachers liked to tell me my spiky hair reminded them of when I played bass, he died of a heroin overdose after murdering his girlfriend…but white privilege and an iconic movie made that story the tragi-comedy of laughable folklore.  This rap and hip hop stuff, we were told, was dangerous.

So while some of my peers had interventions because of the colour of the musicians they liked, I got to be creative with my band.  When I answered back in class, they told me I should study philosophy rather than telling me I was “unmannered”.  When I was falling behind in my GCSEs they told me they expected better, rather than writing me off.

The point of white privilege is that all of this was easy.  I’m not taking anything away from my accomplishments, my struggles (I had a lot of mental health issues growing up in my dysfunctional family, despite the material comfort), but what I am saying is that there was no extra level of scrutiny or further set of obstacles to face at any stage on top of those normal struggles.  When I had my first meeting at school with a careers advisor, I literally told her I didn’t want to do anything but play in a band - that’s how carefree I was about the prospect of earning a living - and she was fine with it, because she knew when I finally decided on a “proper” job, I’d likely be able to get one somewhere.  And I did.  The idea I wouldn’t fall on my feet somewhere was inconceivable to her, and to me.  In fact, the punk music I was listening to and political awakening I was having made me, if anything, not want to get a job.  It was my white privilege that allowed me to see jobs as a means of social control and exploitation.  Not having to worry about where my next meal was coming from or how I would keep a roof over my head gave me the distance and privilege of seeing work for what it was.  This is not to say there are no non-white people with that same material privilege; but statistically, the structural racism of our society has made black and other ethnic minorities in Britain more likely to have low paid and unstable work than white people.  Because I grew up comfortable, a beneficiary of that structural injustice, knowing nothing of the struggle of making ends meet, I was privileged enough to be able to resist employment for as long as was possible.

University helped with that too.  I wasn’t avoiding work - I was getting an education.  But of course it was my white privilege to go to university.  Not just because of barriers to access based on the colour of one’s skin that many experience when applying to top universities, but because as I began to study philosophy at A-level I could see myself in all these great thinkers.  All men.  All white.  It was easy to see myself doing the same thing they did.  They looked like me.  They looked like my dad; my grandad.  Why wouldn’t I be a philosopher?  While that is not to say that the non-male and non-white classmates with whom I studied did not also go on to study philosophy (several did), it is to demonstrate that the intellectual journey was made easier by seeing myself reflected in the thinkers we studied.  I have never said one day I wanted to be something only to be laughed at and told “people like you don’t do that sort of thing.”  That is white privilege.

Looking for somewhere to live in my second year of university I will never forget booking the appointment for my friend and I to see a flat in Cardiff.  We arrived at the letting agent’s separately.  I got there first.  I was told we’d be on our way as soon as my mate arrived.  When he did, however, the letting agent saw the colour of his skin and literally picked up an unringing phone, pretending to answer it.  “Sorry,” he told me with false apology, acting out an imaginary phone-call against the silent receiver.  “You’ll never believe this but the flat just went.  That was them calling.  Sorry - we can’t help you today.”  To me it was a bizarre pantomime - why had he so blatantly faked that phone-call?  My friend clued me in: the landlord had obviously instructed the agents that they didn’t want people like him living in their flat.  This is the same friend who spent years working at a job under a different name than his own, not because he was a secret-agent working undercover, but because the guy running the place couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to pronounce his unfamiliar name.  It was not a one-off.  He was used to it.  Years later we went to America to watch some WWE wrestling in New York together.  Legendary wrestling announcer Jim Ross signed a book for him to some unknown person called “Ernie”.  Close enough, my friend decided.  It is my white privilege that when someone can’t pronounce my name right, I feel entitled to correct them.

That friend and I had the same driving instructor in Cardiff. Neither of us liked him. But for all his faults he was better than the guy I’d had during the summer back home who warned me chummily about driving in certain areas of Birmingham because “they don’t know how to drive where they’re from”. At that early stage in my driving career I had no idea what I was doing behind the wheel, but it was my white privilege that this guy didn’t see that as he threw scorn on perfectly good drivers whose colour skin he appeared to despise. And when I asked for a different teacher because of it, as far as I know the guy wasn’t fired or even reprimanded, just sent back to find driving students who would happily smile and nod as he shared his racist views. That was his white privilege.

When I trained to be a teacher I remember being told by my training provider that even though I had applied ludicrously late in the day (I applied in June for a September start) they knew I’d be able to do it because of the way I dressed and presented myself when I turned up for interview.  It is only years later I think back and wonder what might have counted against me had I looked different than I did?  Again, not my skin colour, but cultural expectation - the way I talked, the choice of clothes, the way I carried myself.  What unconscious signals did I give that let these people feel they could take a chance on me…and would they have taken the same chance without someone who, through structural disadvantage, just hadn’t developed those same signals despite having just as much, if not more, raw potential to become a teacher as I did?  It has been my white privilege in every such job interview, or new interaction with white people in charge of something - the bank, the doctor, the garage, the police - that without even thinking about it I “pass” where others with a different background, or skin colour, might not.  To not have to worry about such things is, again, my white privilege.

I am under no illusions that it is just white privilege I possess.  I am a man too.  A man who has no doubt benefited from years of entrenched patriarchy and sexism.  I am a cisgender heterosexual who has not had to battle to have my identity accepted or be dishonest with the world about the person I love.  And what makes each of these privileges sickening is that they are nothing that should be a privilege to anyone - they should be basic to all human beings: to not be pre-judged, to not be denied, to not be dismissed, to not be limited simply because of the colour of your skin, your biology, your gender or your sexuality.  It has been a life of privilege that I have never felt the need to defend or justify my own right to exist, to take up space, to be heard.  

So why have I listed this small collection of only the few instances of this privilege that have sprung to mind as I sit at my computer (besides, of course, the white guilt that all of us beneficiaries of injustice have inevitably felt these last few weeks as the world finally wakes up to such structural biases in protests and demonstrations too large to ignore)?  

It is to show you that it is not enough to just not be racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic) in a world which has racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia built in to its very fabric.  We have to do more.  Because my not actively discriminating against certain groups of people in a world which does the job for me does not stop those people from being discriminated against.  And in my silence, even if I do call out the more explicit forms of prejudice I witness, and in the success and ease which I enjoy that may come at their expense, I am complicit in perpetuating the continuation of such discrimination on a structural and fundamental level far more insidious than a shouted slur.

Karl Marx once said “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways.  The point, however, is to change it.”  Even though we are the country who stoked fear about immigration daily in a deeply racist Brexit campaign and created the “hostile environment” which led to the Windrush scandal, we have arguably come a long way since our colonial slave-owning days, or the more recent past of politicians greeting immigrants with racist speeches of “rivers of blood”.  Certainly explicit forms of racism are usually called out and reprimanded.  But we have never really addressed the deeper, structural racism which perpetuates stereotypes and injustices even once the insulting names and abusive headlines are finally silenced.  This is especially true as a teacher.  As Birmingham University's Kalwant Bhopal, from the Centre for Research on Race and Education, says "there is a great deal of evidence to suggest teachers are not fully equipped to understand the experiences of black and minority ethnic pupils in the classroom.  Many teachers from white backgrounds fail to recognise their own whiteness and their own white privilege and how this affects teaching in the classroom."  As well as this, such teachers may "have stereotypes about particular black and minority ethnic groups" and "lack knowledge of the history and contribution of black and minority ethnic communities to the UK", all of which "influences the type of knowledge which is considered legitimate" and can "label and pathologise non-white groups".  As journalist, Afua Hirsch remarks, institutions or individuals which claim to be "colour-blind" or "not see race" are part of the problem of structural racism because "'not seeing race' shuts down analysis of the issue...it doesn't mean the radicalised nature of poverty, discrimination and prejudice in society at large disappears.  That individual is simply refusing to acknowledge it."  And their own whiteness is often the race white people are most eager to be blind to see.  Being blind no more, confronting and challenging this privilege especially in yourself - that is the real heavy lifting which needs doing if we are to pay more than lip service to changing this racist world and make the statement “black lives matter” something true.  In education especially, where, as microcosms of the society we exist in, we must be extra vigilant not to replicate the structures of hidden bias and racism which limit the life-chances and expectations of so many. It starts by looking at ourselves, what we have done, and how unquestioningly accepting the benefits of white privilege without calling it out means being the beneficiary of racism.  It ends only when there are no more of these stories for someone like me to tell.  

Author:  D.McKee