More On White Privilege

[Andre Cramblit]

How We Are White By Gary Howard from the Southern Poverty Law  
Journal, Teaching Tolerance

The break is over and I am ready to begin the second half of a four  
hour multicultural curriculum workshop. Twenty-five teachers and  
staff are scrunched into 2nd grade desks, all eyes and White faces  
turned toward their one African American colleague, who has asked to  
address the group. He announces that he will be leaving this workshop  
immediately and resigning at the end of the year. He has lost hope in  
their willingness, and ability to deal with issues of race.

After he leaves, a painful silence grips the room. I realize that my  
planned agenda is no longer appropriate. Gradually the participants  
begin to talk. Their comments are rife with guilt, shame, anger,  
blame, denial, sadness and frustration. It becomes clear there has  
been a long history leading to this moment. Together they are  
experiencing a collective meltdown over the realities of race and  
their own whiteness. One faculty member remarks, "I feel so helpless.  
What am I supposed to do as a white teacher?"

In my 25 years of work in multicultural education, I have encountered  
an almost universal uneasiness about race among White educators.  
Since the publication of my book “We Can't teach What We Don't Know”:  
White teachers, multiracial schools, many people have shared their  
stories with me. A White teacher from California reports, "I realize  
that I have contributed to the failure of my students of color by not  
being able to drop the mask of privilege that I wear. Another White  
teacher writes, "I thought I was going crazy. It was helpful to hear  
that other White teachers feel similar confusion."

As White educators, we are collectively bound and unavoidably  
complicit in the arrangements of dominance that have systematically  
favored our racial group over others. In my own family, the farm was  
in Minnesota that I cherish as part of our heritage was actually  
stolen from the Ojibwe people only a few years before my great- 
grandparents acquired it. This is only one of the countless ways I am  
inextricably tied to privilege. I did not personally take the land,  
yet I continue to benefit from its possession.

But privilege and complicity are only part of the story. The police  
officers who brutally assaulted civil rights activists during the  
Selma march in 1965 were certainly White, but so were many of the  
marchers who stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Dr. Martin Luther  
King Jr. on that awful Sunday. It is true that three White men  
dragged James Byrd to a horrific death in Jasper , Texas, but it is  
also true that many White townspeople and a predominantly White jury  
condemned this act of racist violence.

In the course of my work and personal reflection, I have discovered  
there are many ways of being white. Some Whites are bound by  
fundamentalist White orientation. They view the world through a  
single lens that is always right and always white. White supremacist  
hate groups represent one particularly hostile form of fundamentalist  
White orientation, but there is also an uninformed and well- 
intentioned version that simply has never been exposed to other  
perspectives. This was my orientation from birth through my high  
school years, when I had never met a person who wasn't white.  
Fundamentalist White teachers often say, "I don't see color. I treat  
all my students the same."

Other Whites live from an integrationist White orientation, where  
differences are acknowledged and tolerated but still not fully  
accepted. Integrationist Whites are self-congratulatory in their  
apparent openness to racial differences, yet often paternalistic and  
condescending of people of color. In this way of being White, we  
prefer to keep the peace, avoid confrontation and maintain control,  
rather that actually get to the core of our separate truths and  
unique racial perspectives. Integrationist White teachers say to  
students of color, "I know how you feel," even when we have no real  
connection to their reality. This was my first orientation when I  
first began "helping" Black kids in the ghetto in the 1960s. I  
thought I was the answer, rather than the question.

Finally, there is the transformationist White identity, which is a  
place of humility and active engagement in one's own continuing  
growth and reformation. Transformationist Whites have acquired a  
paradoxical identity, which allows us to acknowledge our inevitable  
privilege and racism while at the same time actively working to  
dismantle our legacy of dominance. Transformationist White teachers  
know it is our place and our responsibility to engage issues of race  
and multicultural education in the classroom.

White educators do have a choice to grow beyond our ignorance,  
denial, and guilt. There is a journey, which I envision is like a  
river that carries us through many confusing currents and treacherous  
rapids, but which eventually can lead to a place of authentic  
multicultural White identity. Ultimately, good teaching is not a  
function of the color of our skin. It is much more closely related to  
the temperament of our mind and the hue of our heart. We did not  
choose whether to be White, but we can effect how we are White. This  
is both our challenge and our hope. In the last few years I have  
returned several times to work with the elementary staff who  
experienced such a painful meltdown over issues of race. With courage  
they have stayed on the river, chosen to look deeply into the  
reflective pool of their own difficult history together, and have  
come to a place of honesty and renewed commitment to a multicultural  
vision for their school. At our last meeting, when the painful event  
was alluded to in discussion, a newly hired Asian American asked,  
"What happened?" A veteran White teacher responded, "Its a long story  
we need to share with you. It will help you know who we are."

Gary Howard is currently President of the REACH Center for  
Multicultural Education in Seattle. He is the author of “We Can't  
Teach What We Don't Know”, available from REACH 206-545-04977

Permission granted to repost from Christine Rose; list owner of  
"STAR" - Students and Teachers Advocating Respect"