Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege and Race

170 Pages·2011·2.832 MB·English

by  Jean O'Malley Halley, Amy Eshleman, Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya

Praise for Seeing White
“Introducing students to the concept of racial privilege is fundamental to teaching about racism,
yet hard to do. Seeing White is a great resource for those who undertake this important work,
providing an excellent primer for classroom discussion.” —Beverly Daniel Tatum, president,
Spelman College; author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
“Seeing White engagingly makes whiteness into a problem—one needing to be investigated in
all its human and inhuman dimensions. The great interdisciplinary reach of the authors opens
up, for students and all of us, the changing ways in which race has been made over a long
history and how it is remade and contested today.” —David Roediger, University of Illinois;
author of How Race Survived U.S. History
“This book is a rare gem. There are lots of books on race, and some on privilege, but none
brings it all together in one place in such an illuminating and thoughtful way. None so ably
connects psychology, identity politics, economics, and policy to explain the origins of race and
how it is socially modified over time. The content is both enlightening and challenging, and the
examples and stories used in this book will help students really understand the complicated
issues of how race affects all of our lives.” —Nyla R. Branscombe, University of Kansas
“With remarkable clarity, the authors have made the often invisible workings of culture both
visible and comprehensible. Focusing on one of the most knotty of problems—entrenched
assumptions about racial difference and inequality—this important book will offer students the
opportunity to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways, and to challenge the mental baggage that so
many carry inside their heads and hearts. The book’s goal is to lay the groundwork for a better
historical understanding of ideas that too often remain unexamined.” —Stuart Ewen, Hunter
College, CUNY
“This book will challenge students, and it is guaranteed to stimulate discussion and debate. If
you seek a stepping stone to debate, discussion, and engaged learning, Seeing White is an
excellent choice.” —Chris Crandall, University of Kansas
“Now when some would describe our times as post-race, Seeing White offers its readers an
opportunity to rethink race and power from an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on
sociology, economics, and psychology. The great accomplishment of the book is its appeal to
readers to reflect on their own view of race as well as their relationship to the privilege of
whiteness. Seeing White is a must read for all of us.” — Patricia Ticineto Clough, The
Graduate Center, CUNY.
Seeing White
Seeing White
An Introduction to White Privilege and Race
Jean Halley, Amy Eshleman, and Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, inc.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2011 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halley, Jean O’Malley, 1967–
Seeing white : an introduction to white privilege and race / Jean Halley, Amy Eshleman, and Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4422-0307-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0308-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0309-9
(electronic)
1. Race awareness. 2. Whites—Race identity. 3. Race discrimination. I. Eshleman, Amy, 1974– II. Vijaya, Ramya Mahadevan,
1974– III. Title.
HT1521.H265 2010
305.809'073—dc22
2011004624
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paperfor Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For our mentors, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Christian S. Crandall, Jane R. Dickie, and Kathleen
O’Malley, who helped us to see more clearly,
and to our students, may they live in a more just world.
Acknowledgments
To borrow from Sir Isaac Newton’s famous quote, we “stand on the shoulders of giants.” In
writing this book, indeed in living and shaping our own lives, we three are deeply indebted to
innumerable scholars, activists, and writers. Jean Halley and Amy Eshleman are well aware
that our whiteness has benefited us in countless ways, including in no small part providing us
this opportunity to write this textbook on race with Ramya Vijaya. Here we wish to reiterate
what Tim Wise notes in his wonderful book about white privilege. “You are not reading this
book because [we are] great writer[s] . . . or particularly smart. There are lots of folks,
especially persons of color, who know a lot more about racism than [we] do.”* For all kinds of
reasons to be discussed in the upcoming pages, white privilege, the privilege of Halley and
Eshleman being white, helped to open up the possibility that we three would have an easier
time being considered legitimate ones to write this book on race. Nonetheless, our small
contribution rests on the work of many, many other race scholars both of color and white. To
all of them, we owe a great debt.
In particular, we are profoundly grateful to the following brilliant and brave thinkers who
have inspired us to write this book: Gloria Anzaldúa, César Estrada Chávez, Grace M. Cho,
Patricia Ticineto Clough, Jane R. Dickie, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich,
Stuart Ewen, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Toni Morrison, Rakesh
R. Rajani, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Patricia J. Williams, and Malcolm X. To our students and
others who have not yet read their works, we hope you, too, will explore and learn from their
writings.
Many more people were involved and very helpful in writing our book than we can possibly
acknowledge. We hold deep gratitude to so many. Among them, Michael S. Kimmel wrote a
textbook on gender that inspired us to emulate it. He was incredibly generous in reviewing an
early draft of our book proposal and connecting us to individuals who helped us to find our
home at Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Alexa S. Dietrich and Celeste Marie Gagnon
fed us wonderful anthropological work regarding the nonbiological nature (so to speak) of race
and provided invaluable feedback throughout our writing. Nicholas P. Richardson gave us a
smart metaphor for uncritical multicultural programs. Laurence J. Nolan provided critical
insight on our discussion of cranial capacity. Ron Nerio gave us permission to use his
powerful unpublished memoir, and he generously read and offered feedback on drafts of some
chapters. Sofia Bautista Pertuz, Jacob Segal, and Janet Spector read and gave us very
thoughtful feedback on several chapters as well as interesting discussion questions. Segal read
numerous drafts, helped with the research, and assisted us in understanding the guaranteed
income.
As always, Donna Toscano helped in innumerable ways, getting things taken care of for us
before we even realized something needed to be done. We are so grateful to our research
assistants Megan Allen, Sophie Fonner, Tiarra Rogers, and Mary Beth Somich who performed
a wide range of tasks that made our lives easier and the book significantly better. Among their
many undertakings, they contributed discussion questions, read drafts of pieces of the book,
and gave us feedback as well as performed ethnographic fieldwork, studying race on one of
our college campuses. We are very thankful to several anonymous reviewers of our proposal
and final manuscript for their helpful suggestions. Finally, we owe a deep debt to all of our
students who, over the years with great insight and patience, discussed race, class, gender,
sexuality, and social power with us.
Each of us would also like to acknowledge our gratitude to our personal networks of support:
Jean Halley: To my very dear family, Kathleen O’Malley, Janet Spector, Lore Segal, Kate
Maxfield, Andrew Maxfield, Sharon Saydah, Rakesh Rajani, Maggie Bangser, Beatrice Segal,
David Segal, Richard Holland, and most especially, Jacob Segal, Isaiah Halley-Segal, and
Kathleen Halley-Segal, I offer my profound gratitude, and so much love. They relentlessly
supported me as I struggled through writing a book about a deeply complicated, and at times
heartbreaking, subject.
Amy Eshleman: I am deeply grateful to my family for their encouragement. Nick, thank you for
listening critically and offering your honest perspective to countless questions. Without the
generous support of my parents, David and Lorraine, I cannot imagine who I would be today.
Thank you to Jenny, Mark, David, Lindsey, and Madeline for the joy you bring to my life.
Ramya Vijaya: An immeasurable gratitude is due to my parents, Vijaya and Mahadevan, and to
Usha, Renuka, and Radhika for their generous support of all my endeavors. Much love and
thanks to Bill for his unstinting support and comforting good humor about this, at times, very
emotional topic. Thank you to Bidisha for the numerous discussions of all my work and critical
feedback whenever I have any doubts.
Note
* Tim Wise, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Soft Skull Press, 2005), 10.
CHAPTER ONE
The Invisibility of Whiteness
A white boy who is very close with one of the authors of this text has been raised in a
predominantly white, small town in the Midwest. On a family trip to the big city in 2008, the
boy, then eight years old, enjoyed playing in an interactive water room at a children’s museum.
Always a gregarious and friendly child, the white adults who accompanied the boy—including
one of the authors of this text—enjoyed watching him play with other children as he enjoyed
the activities of the museum. Upon exiting the exhibit, in a crowded hallway filled with a
racially diverse collection of individuals, the white boy announced proudly and loudly, “I just
made an African American friend!”
The white adults accompanying the white boy were surprised by the boy’s exclamation and
by their own reactions to it. They wondered why the boy had been so cognizant of the race of
his new playmate, questioning what his understanding of race—his own and that of others—
might be. They considered where the boy had picked up the term he chose to describe the race
of the playmate, pondering how race might be addressed in the boy’s school or in media he
viewed. They wondered how often they themselves addressed race with the boy and how they
might have shaped—or failed to shape—his understanding of race. They were also disquieted
by their own sense of embarrassment at the loud announcement by this white boy, especially
because the bystanders who were likely to have overheard included many individuals of color.
How might the bystanders interpret the boy’s words? How did the announcement reflect on the
boy and his adult companions? How might the new friend have felt if he had overheard himself
being referred to as an “African American friend”?
The boy regularly makes friends whenever the opportunity is available, but he had never
before announced that he “just made a white friend.” He clearly noticed and categorized this
playmate based on race. We will explore what incidents like this reveal about whiteness and
about the visibility of race.
How Do We Come to Know Things?
In thinking about race, it is interesting to ask, how have we come to know what we know about
race? Indeed, how have we come to know anything about anything? What does it mean to
“know” something? How can we be sure that what we “know” really is true? People in
different cultures and times sometimes understand the world in very different ways. Who is
wrong and who is right?
People also learn about the world in different ways. Diverse cultures have different
authorities that they trust and different processes to access knowledge. Are they all valid?
As an example, we might consider feudal times in Europe. Most people in feudal Europe
were very poor (extremely poor by middle-class standards in the United States today). Most
people lived as farmers. They farmed land that belonged to someone else, to the aristocracy,
the kings, queens, lords, and other nobility that ruled over the various geographic areas of
Europe. The Catholic Church existed in close connection with and strongly supportive of the
aristocracy. In exchange for being allowed to use the land, peasants paid a tithe (or rent) in the
food that they produced to the aristocracy. Historians Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen note,
“There was a vast chasm between the material abundance of the Church and aristocracy and
the scarcity experienced by the peasantry, and this system was represented as the immutable
order of things.”1
How did the aristocracy come to own all of that land? Well, today we know that they took it,
by force. Yet in feudal times, most people believed that the aristocracy owned everything and
ruled over everyone because God wanted it that way. People thought that “social inequality
was the way of God.”2 They believed God had chosen the aristocracy and that the aristocracy
was a distinct group of humans, almost a species. In this thinking, called the “Great Chain of
Being,” the peasants were also like a distinct species. People accepted as “truth” that humans
were born into the group where they belonged according to God’s will. Sharply distinct from
the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and change-your-lot-in-life thinking common in the
United States today, people’s thinking in feudal times held that one should not, indeed one
could not, change one’s position in life. One was born a peasant much like a cow was born a
cow. As far as we know, cows do not dream of being horses someday; and in feudal times,
peasants did not dream of being kings and queens.
So how did people in feudal times come to “know” all of these “truths”—that the poor were
meant to be poor and the aristocracy was in control because God wanted it that way? How did
people come to “know” that this was God’s will? Who expressed God’s will in feudal times?
As you might guess, the aristocracy and the feudal Catholic Church (supported by the
aristocracy) dictated God’s will, claiming that God had appointed them to voice His wishes.
(During this time period in Europe, the Catholic Church understood God to be decidedly
male.) Who benefited from these dictates? The aristocracy and the Church. Ewen and Ewen
write about this political and economic system:
The Bible was the Word of God, the universal law, but its interpretation was kept in the hands of the privileged few who
were sanctioned to read it. Biblical interpretation tended to uphold the immense social and political landholding power of the
nobility and the Church. . . . Although feudal power was often held and defended by the sword, it was justified by the Word.
The monopoly over the Word, over literacy, and over the ability to interpret what was read, was a fundamental aspect of
rule.3
So in terms of the issue of knowledge and how we come to “know” something, we can see
from the example of feudalism that different cultures believe in different authorities. Feudal
society believed in the authority of God expressed through the aristocracy and the Church.
Today, in many places in the world, including Europe, the United States, and most western4
industrialized nations, we tend to turn to science for knowledge, instead of religion. Instead of
the aristocracy and the Church translating God’s wishes for us, scientists using the scientific
method work to gain what we understand to be truths about our world and ourselves.

It is interesting to note that, in the above example, someone benefited from the “knowledge,”
the “truth” that everyone believed in. The way of thinking in feudal Europe worked to reinforce