Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It

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Start by discussing how privilege looks in our society and which groups have privilege and which do not. I can criticise our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behaviour without being seen as a cultural outsider.

Colonisers often ask me why I don’t identify with my Irish and English ancestry, why I prefer to identify with my Aboriginal family. There are many reasons – all of them, to my mind, compelling. The first is the simplest: if you could identify with the bully or the victim, with the murderers or the family of the murdered, with the genocidal colonisers or the colonised, who would you choose? children’s books that help White kids understand what children of color are up against,” Romper blog post: https://www.romper.com/p/10-childrens-books-that-help-white-kids-understand-what-children-of-color-are-up-against-15238 For example, a person from North Africa, from the Indian sub-continent or from Oceania could be considered ‘white’ – in spite of a dark complexion – in many contexts. Linsey, R. B., & Terrell, K. N. (2009). Cultural proficiency: A manual for school leaders (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.Wildman, S. M., & Davis, A. D. (1995). Language and silence: Making systems of privilege visible. Santa Clara Law Review, 35(3), 881–906. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu /lawreview/vol35/iss3/4/ I suffer discrimination because some people think I am too white to be seen as blak; that I should not identify as Aboriginal, that I should not have the right. Some people would try to remove my access to Aboriginal culture, would try to say I am too white, too mixed-race, to be allowed access to my Country and culture, family and land. Those same people think I should not access Aboriginal resources, affirmative action, land rights. Writing about race, sure, write about whiteness too, sure, but why make this all about white women?’ ... Monique Roffey. Photograph: Anna Gordon How do you respond when others make negative statements towards individuals of a different ethnicity, race, gender, ability level, religion, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity than yourself?

If someone mentions an oppressive pattern that relates to privilege (e.g., “Men always dominate conversations and talk over women because they are taught that their voices are more valuable.”), consider how you will not participate in this pattern. For example, you might say less or be aware of how often you are speaking and begin to listen more while others are speaking. Speaking to the Guardian in Port of Spain, Miller said he intends to republish the essay, which he said was based on real conversations but written as allegory.

Toward a goal of racial justice

The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality, Media Education Foundation video: http://shop.mediaed.org/tim-wise-on-white-privilege-p137.aspx The first discussion should be about privilege, in general, in America and the reasons some groups have privilege and others do not. This lays a foundation before personalizing the discussion and may help participants be less defensive. Sometimes people complain that this is all about ‘identity politics’ and that these ideas are about creating hierarchies of victimisation and demonising (in particular) young, white men. This is absolutely not the intention of engaging with ideas of privilege and intersectionality. However, it does mean that before you voice your opinion on another person, you should stop to think about whether you have the right to speak about them from a position of no direct expertise, and you could stop before acting and consider whether your behaviour is contributing to or alleviating their existing disadvantage. Why don’t we have preferential programs to get underrepresented groups better outcomes in sports? In music? In culture? If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

Once mixed-race children were born they were taken from their parents. Under the protection acts in Western Australia, mixed-race Aboriginal children were routinely taken from their parents; the parents, in fact, had no rights to their own children. The Department of the Protector controlled every aspect of the mixed-race child’s life, including if, when and to whom they could marry. This policy was to ensure that mixed-race Aboriginal people could only marry white people to breed the next generation whiter. McIntosh, K. (2016). How can we reduce racial disproportionality in school discipline? [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: http://www.pbis.org/Common/Cms/files/pbisresources /IB intro 45 min 2016-2-9h.pptx As practitioners continue to develop and grow in their own self-awareness, the potential to change the current outcomes seen in disciplinary practices is promising. Lindsey, Robins, and Terrell (2009) suggest that culturally competent educational leaders should engage in the following: In South Africa, white privilege is the legacy of apartheid, which subjugated and devalued anyone whose skin colour was not white. Despite the political dismantling of apartheid, white privilege persists. Calls to transform racialised organisations are viewed as threats by white people who, correctly, hear demands for racial justice as an end to white privilege.I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race. Secondly, if you were part of the culture that belongs somewhere, the first people, the people with a unique connection to the place, wouldn’t you live in that pride? They knew, the protectors and the other colonisers, where those mixed-race babies were coming from. There were records from Neville from the many times he asked for local protectors to remove girls before they came of age and to the attention of the white man (the attention they were referring to was sexual, obviously). He did not want a ‘third race’ to be created or continued.