Positive Privilege?

So recently, I've been working on a wonderful, almost perfect relationship with a wonderful, pretty much perfect individual. That's why I haven't written in quite some time. But I was on facebook this morning and came across this article by Tim Wise, author of White Like Me:

http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html#comment-form

I'm not sure how to repost stuff and make it legit so hopefully this qualifies.

When I read the article, I was thinking to myself, "Cool, this is typical Tim Wise. Great stuff." But then I got to the comments section and I began to feel a myriad of emotions, which is pretty typical of what comment sections do for me.

I expected idiots like Neil, plxrobert, tuffguy183, skinnies_eats, Atlanta, and Gabe to post something that completely misses the point. If I want more of that, I would just go to macon d's blog, stuff white people do.

What really got me thinking was the huge majority of responses that praised the crap out of Mr. Wise or simply said something along the lines of "Thank you, you're the shit!" And most of those commenters appeared to be white.

Here's my deal. People of Color (PoC) have been saying what Mr. Wise has been saying and seeing what Mr. Wise has been seeing for centuries. One commenter, Whitaker, even said "Progressive Black, White, Asian, and Latino Americans have been too silent." Excuse me?!? In the immortal rant of Dr. Cox, Wrong! (Watch it, it's my fav) Actually, oppressed people have been screaming and yelling since the beginning of oppression. Oppressors have the privilege of selective hearing. We (as in people fighting for equality in general) aren't silent, we're never silent. It's just that people like Whitaker don't listen. In many cases, they choose not to.

So my beef is that when a white person posts something anti-racist, the post gets 90 comments about how much God has blessed that white person. Now imagine if I posted something like that. Or if any other PoC posted something like that. If you aren't President Obama, you ain't getting 90 comments of praise. You're getting 100+ comments of ignorant diatribe that would deflate the mood of the most resilient activist. An article by a PoC would either be read five times so it can be picked apart for mistakes, or not even read at all. So what is it that grants white people inherent credibility in matters of race? Men in matters of gender? Heteros in matters of LGBT? (etc...) Why is it so hard for dominant identities (white, male, middle class, straight, Christian, etc...) to realize that the people who live as marginalized identities, who must confront that identity on a daily basis, have more experience in such matters? Doesn't that experience give PoC more credibility in matters of race? Women in the matter of gender? etc...


Privilege is ugly. Its pervasiveness is scary. I think the comment section on that post goes beyond each person displaying some form of white privilege, but the section itself was an entity of whiteness. How do we fight that sort of force?


Actually, maybe the real question is should we fight that? Is this a good thing? Since Mr. Wise has that privilege, should he use it for education and leadership? Is this a positive form of privilege? Is there such a thing?


Maybe I should rename the blog to "Questions of a 20-some year old multiracial kid"?