Definition of race can vary from country to country, and the use of the ‘one drop rule’ – as defined in law – is particular only to the USA. Similarly in the UK, as with the USA, despite a significant proportion of individuals self-defining as Mixed Race whilst partaking in respective census measures, the media in each country has continued to define ‘people of colour’ as black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2017-01-17 00:03Z by Steven

The definition of race has come under scrutiny by a number of researchers (Case, 2012; Soudien, 2010; Rose & Paisley, 2012). This can include the arguments surrounding the ‘one drop rule.’ This has its origin in the racial segregation laws in the USA that defines the extent to which any person can be considered African-American relates to their having just one African-American ancestor. ‘A black is any person with any known African black ancestry’ (Davis, 2001, p.5). A difficulty with this definition is the fact that race can also be affected in both directions. As Davis (2001, p.6) points out, ‘many of the nation’s black leaders have been of predominantly white ancestry.’ Definition of race can vary from country to country, and the use of the ‘one drop rule’ – as defined in law – is particular only to the USA. Similarly in the UK, as with the USA, despite a significant proportion of individuals self-defining as Mixed Race whilst partaking in respective census measures, the media in each country has continued to define ‘people of colour’ as black. Miscegenation promotes assimilation with all other racial groups, but for African-Americans it disadvantages the white element; for other racial groups it advantages the non-white element (Soudien, 2010). This varied definition of race can thus undermine the fuller understanding of the intersectionality between race: in the USA, not even all non-white groups are discriminated against equally. This renders patterns of discrimination more complex and multilayered than might otherwise be considered.

J. J. Lindsley, “Peggy McIntosh (1997: 291) describes White privilege as ‘an invisible package of unearned assets’. A discussion on the relative advantages and disadvantages of this analogy in advancing our understanding of Whiteness,” Medium, January 8, 2017. https://medium.com/@JohnJLindsley/peggy-mcintosh-1997-291-describes-white-privilege-as-an-invisible-package-of-unearned-assets-732c671f5fb5.

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Peggy McIntosh (1997: 291) describes White privilege as ‘an invisible package of unearned assets’. A discussion on the relative advantages and disadvantages of this analogy in advancing our understanding of Whiteness

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Social Justice, Social Science on 2017-01-10 00:58Z by Steven

Peggy McIntosh (1997: 291) describes White privilege as ‘an invisible package of unearned assets’. A discussion on the relative advantages and disadvantages of this analogy in advancing our understanding of Whiteness

Medium
2017-01-08

J. J. Lindsley


Kanye West meets with Donald Trump at Trump Tower, December 2016. Credit: Observer.com at http://observer.com/2016/12/is-kanye-west-the-future-voice-of-trump-radio/

2013 essay revisited

The analogy put forward by McIntosh (1997) has a number of advantages. It is frequently assumed in social terms that whiteness is immutable. However, the experience of the white Irish in early twentieth-century USA suggests that ‘whiteness’ holds connotations beyond skin colour alone (Guteri, 2009). Similarly, the ‘one drop’ rule that was used to define African Americans in rules regarding segregation in the early Twentieth Century suggested that any individual with one African-American ancestor should be considered as non-white (Khanna, 2011). However, difficulties occur in this analogy when white privilege intersects with other forms (Smith, 2007). White privileges can combine with other foundations with the effect of a different set of advantages and disadvantages; be they represented through as social, economic, gender or sexuality. ‘The cumulative effect of these unseen privileges for whites sustains the current racial group disparity’ (Mallett & Swim, p.58). The questions posed by McIntosh’s (1997) analogy focus on whether we can consider the interactions between all prejudice in solely terms of maintaining white privileges, or whether other factors arise. Are the privileges gained by being ‘white’ and ‘male’ simply the cumulative effect of the assets of either category, or does being a non-white male involve a qualitatively different type of maleness? To examine these issues the following structure will be adopted. First, a discussion will be made of McIntosh’s (1997) analogy in understanding whiteness. The suggestions of McIntosh (1997) and Ignatiev (1997) for active resistance to whiteness will be scrutinised. Second, the contribution of Critical Race Theory (CRT) will be assessed. Third, the intersection of race with other factors, including definitions of race, poverty, and gender will be discussed. In the ensuing discussion, the following disclaimer is made: race and racial terms are understood as social constructs rather than biological facts, and the terms will be used purely as they are understood contextually. This must also be recognised of the term African-American which is used in the ensuing discussion…

Read the entire article here.

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“I Don’t See Color” Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Canada, Economics, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Philosophy, Social Science, United States on 2016-01-03 15:34Z by Steven

“I Don’t See Color” Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege

Pennsylvania State University Press
2015
280 pages
6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-06499-4

Edited by:

Bettina Bergo, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

Tracey Nicholls, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois

Who is white, and why should we care? There was a time when the immigrants of New York City’s Lower East Side—the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, the Russian Jews—were not white, but now “they” are. There was a time when the French-speaking working classes of Quebec were told to “speak white,” that is, to speak English. Whiteness is an allegorical category before it is demographic.

This volume gathers together some of the most influential scholars of privilege and marginalization in philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology, literature, and history to examine the idea of whiteness. Drawing from their diverse racial backgrounds and national origins, these scholars weave their theoretical insights into essays critically informed by personal narrative. This approach, known as “braided narrative,” animates the work of award-winning author Eula Biss. Moved by Biss’s fresh and incisive analysis, the editors have assembled some of the most creative voices in this dialogue, coming together across the disciplines.

Along with the editors, the contributors are Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Nyla R. Branscombe, Drucilla Cornell, Lewis R. Gordon, Paget Henry, Ernest-Marie Mbonda, Peggy McIntosh, Mark McMorris, Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Victor Ray, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Louise Seamster, Tracie L. Stewart, George Yancy, and Heidi A. Zetzer.

Table Contents

  • Preface / Eula Biss
  • Introduction / Bettina Bergo and Tracey Nicholls
  • Part I. What is White Privilege?
    • Chapter 1: Deprivileging Philosophy / Peggy McIntosh
    • Chapter 2: White Privilege and the Problem with Affirmative Action / Lewis R. Gordon
    • Chapter 3: Revisioning “White Privilege” / Marilyn Nissim-Sabat
  • Part II. The Images and Rhetoric of White Privilege
    • Chapter 4: The Very Image of Privilege: Film Creation of White Transcendentals in Vienna and Hollywood / Bettina Bergo
    • Chapter 5: Painting and Negotiating Colors / Lilia Moritz Schwarcz
    • Chapter 6: I Was an Honorary White Man: Reflections on Space, Place, and Origin / Mark McMorris
  • Part III. Troubling Privilege
    • Chapter 7: Whiteness as Insidious: On the Embedded and Opaque White Racist Self / George Yancy
    • Chapter 8: White Privilege: The Luxury of Undivided Attention / Heidi A. Zetzer
    • Chapter 9: The Costs of Privilege and Dividends of Privilege Awareness: The Social Psychology of Confronting Inequality / Tracie L. Stewart and Nyla R. Branscombe
    • Chapter 10: Unpacking the Imperialist Knapsack: White Privilege and Imperialism in Obama’s America / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Victor Ray, and Louise Seamster
  • Part IV. Other Perspectives on White and Western Privilege
    • Chapter 11: Whiteness and Africana Political Economy / Paget Henry
    • Chapter 12: The Great White North: Failing Muslim-Canadians – Failing Us All / Tracey Nicholls
    • Chapter 13: Rethinking Ethical Feminism through uBuntu / Drucilla Cornell
    • Chapter 14: The Afrocentrist Critique of Eurocentrism: The Decolonization of Knowledge /Ernest-Marie Mbonda
  • Contributor Biographies
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Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study

Posted in Anthologies, Asian Diaspora, Books, Census/Demographics, Economics, Gay & Lesbian, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Latino Studies, Law, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Politics/Public Policy, Slavery, Social Science, United States, Women on 2015-10-24 18:38Z by Steven

Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study

Macmillan
Ninth Edition
2014
732 pages
Paper Text ISBN-10: 1-4292-4217-5; ISBN-13: 978-1-4292-4217-2

Paula S. Rothenberg, Senior Fellow; The Murphy Institute, City University of New York
Professor Emerita; William Patterson University of New Jersey

Like no other text, this best-selling anthology effectively introduces students to the complexity of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the United States and illustrates how these categories operate and interact in society. The combination of thoughtfully selected readings, deftly written introductions, and careful organization make Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Ninth Edition, the most engaging and balanced presentation of these issues available today.

In addition to including scholarly selections from authors like Beverly Tatum, Barbara Ehrenreich, Annette Lareau, and Jonathan Kozol, Rothenberg includes historical documents like the Three-Fifths Compromise, firsthand narrative accounts of how these issues have affected the lives of individuals, and popular press pieces reporting on discrimination in everyday life.

This edition includes 28 new selections considering such relevant topics as the citizenship and immigration, transgender identity, the 2010 census, multiracial identity, the 99% and the occupy movement, the tragic story of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, South Asian Identity post 9/11, multiracial identity, disability, sexual harassment in the teenage years, and much more.

Table of Contents *Articles new or revised for this edition

  • Part I THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
    • 1 Racial Formations / Michael Omi and Howard Winant
    • 2 The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch / Richard Wright
    • 3 Constructing Race, Creating White Privilege / Pem Davidson Buck
    • 4 How Jews Became White Folks / Karen Brodkin
    • 5 “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender / Judith Lorber
    • 6 The Social Construction of Sexuality / Ruth Hubbard
    • 7 The Invention of Heterosexuality / Jonathan Ned Katz
    • 8 Masculinity as Homophobia / Michael S. Kimmel
    • 9 Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History / Douglas C. Baynton
    • 10 Deconstructing the Underclass / Herbert Gans
    • 11 Domination and Subordination / Jean Baker Miller
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part II UNDERSTANDING RACISM, SEXISM, HETEROSEXISM, AND CLASS PRIVILEGE
    • 1 Defining Racism: “Can We Talk?” / Beverly Daniel Tatum
    • 2 Color-Blind Racism / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
    • 3 Smells Like Racism / Rita Chaudhry Sethi
    • 4 Oppression / Marilyn Frye
    • 5 Patriarchy / Allan G. Johnson
    • 6 Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism / Suzanne Pharr
    • *7 The 10 Percent Problem / Kate Clinton
    • 8 White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack / Peggy McIntosh
    • *9 Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class, and Family Life / Annette Lareau
    • *10 Class in America—2012 / Gregory Mantsios
  • Part III Complicating Questions of Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
    • 1 A Nation of None and All of the Above / Sam Roberts
    • 2 A New Century: Immigration and the US / MPI Staff, updated by Kevin Jernegan
    • *3 Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of America / Mae Ngai
    • 4 Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves / Evelyn Alsultany
    • *5 For many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color / Mireya Navarro
    • *6 Testimony / Sonny Singh
    • 7 Asian American? / Sonia Shah
    • 8 The Myth of the Model Minority / Noy Thrupkaew
    • 9 Personal Voices: Facing Up to Race / Carrie Ching
    • Suggestions for Further Readings
  • Part IV DISCRIMINATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
    • 1 The Problem: Discrimination / U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
    • 2 Abercrombie Settles Class-Action Suit
    • 3 Apparel Factory Workers Were Cheated, State Says / Steven Greenhouse
    • 4 Women in the State Police: Trouble in the Ranks / Jonathan Schuppe
    • *5 Why Transgender Identification Matters / Rebecca Juro
    • 6 Where “English Only” Falls Short / Stacy A. Teicher
    • 7 Blacks vs. Latinos at Work / Miriam Jordan
    • 8 Manhattan Store Owner Accused of Underpaying and Sexually Harassing Workers / Steven Greenhouse
    • 9 Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State / Matthew Rothschild
    • 10 Tennessee Judge Tells Immigrant Mothers: Learn English or Else / Ellen Barry
    • *11 Tucson’s Ousted Mexican-American Studies Director Speaks: The Fight’s Not Over / Julianne Hing
    • 12 My Black Skin Makes My White Coat Vanish / Mana Lumumba-Kasongo
    • 13 The Segregated Classrooms of a Proudly Diverse School / Jeffrey Gettleman
    • 14 Race and Family Income of Students Influence Guidance Counselors’ Advice, Study Finds / Eric Hoover
    • 15 College Choices Are Limited for Students from Needy Families, Report Says / Stephen Burd
    • 16 Wealthy Often Win the Race for Merit-Based College Aid / Jay Mathews
    • 17 On L.I., Raid Stirs Dispute over Influx of Immigrants / Bruce Lambert
    • 18 More Blacks Live with Pollution / Associated Press
    • *19 National Study Finds Widespread Sexual Harassment of Students in Grades 7-12 / Jenny Anderson
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part V THE ECONOMICS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
    • *1 Imagine a Country—2012 / Holly Sklar
    • *2 Dr King Weeps from His Grave / Cornel West
    • *3 Rich People Create Jobs! And Five Other Myths That Must Die for our Economy to Live / Kevin Drum
    • *4 It’s Official: The Rich Got Richer: Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds / Robert Pear
    • *5 Study Finds Big Spike in the Poorest in the U.S. / Sabrina Tavernise
    • *6 The Making of the American 99% and the Collapse of the Middle Class / Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich
    • *7 Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics Twenty-to-One: Executive Summary / Rakesh Kochhar, Richard Fry, and Paul Taylor
    • 8 The Economic Reality of Being Asian American / Meizhu Lui and others
    • 9 The Economic Reality of Being Latino/a in the U.S. / Meizhu Lui and others
    • *10 Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites / Sabrina Tavernise
    • *11 Gender Gap on Wages is Slow to Close / Motoko Rich
    • 12 Women Losing Ground / Ruth Conniff
    • 13 Lilly’s Big Day / Gail Collins
    • 14 “Savage Inequalities” Revisited / Bob Feldman
    • 15 Cause of Death: Inequality / Alejandro Reuss
    • *16 Undocumented Immigrants Find Paths to College, Careers / Gosnia Wozniacka
    • 17 Immigration’s Aftermath / Alejandro Portes
    • *18 Inequality Undermines Democracy / Eduardo Porter
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part VI MANY VOICES, MANY LIVES: SOME CONSEQUENCES OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER INEQUALITY
    • 1 Civilize Them with a Stick / Mary Brave Bird (Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes
    • 2 Then Came the War / Yuri Kochiyama
    • 3 Yellow / Frank Wu
    • 4 The Arab Woman and I / Mona Fayad
    • 5 Crossing the Border Without Losing Your Past / Oscar Casares
    • 6 The Event of Becoming / Jewelle L. Gomez
    • 7 This Person Doesn’t Sound White / Ziba Kashef
    • *8 In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger / Susan Saulny
    • 9 Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste / Joseph Berger
    • 10 Pigskin, Patriarchy, and Pain / Don Sabo
    • 11 The Slave Side of Sunday / Dave Zirin
    • 12 He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy / Tommi Avicolli
    • 13 Requiem for the Champ / June Jordan
    • *14 Against Bullying or On Loving Queer Kids / Richard Kim
    • 15 Before Spring Break, The Anorexic Challenge / Alex Williams
    • 16 The Case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson: Ableism, Heterosexism, and Sexism / Joan L. Griscom
    • *17 Misconceptions Regarding the Body / Jennifer Bartlett
    • 18 C. P. Ellis / Studs Terkel
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part VII HOW IT HAPPENED: RACE AND GENDER ISSUES IN U.S. LAW
    • 1 Indian Tribes: A Continuing Quest for Survival /U.S. Commission on Human Rights
    • 2 An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves, South Carolina, 1712
    • 3 The “Three-Fifths Compromise”: The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2
    • 4 An Act Prohibiting the Teaching of Slaves to Read
    • 5 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
    • 6 The Antisuffragists: Selected Papers, 1852–1887
    • 7 People v. Hall, 1854
    • 8 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857
    • 9 The Emancipation Proclamation / Abraham Lincoln
    • 10 United States Constitution: Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments
    • 11 The Black Codes / W. E. B. Du Bois
    • 12 Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873
    • 13 Minor v. Happersett, 1875
    • 14 California Constitution, 1876
    • 15 Elk v. Wilkins, November 3, 1884
    • 16 Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
    • 17 United States Constitution: Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
    • 18 Korematsu v. United States, 1944
    • 19 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954
    • 20 Roe v. Wade, 1973
    • 21 The Equal Rights Amendment (Defeated)
    • 22 Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 2003
    • *23 Equal Protection Indeed / The Economist
    • *24 Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution / Linda Hirshman
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part VIII MAINTAINING RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER HIERARCHIES: REPRODUCING “REALITY”
    • 1 Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes / Mark Snyder
    • 2 Anti-Gay Stereotype / Richard D. Mohr
    • 3 White Lies / Maurice Berger
    • 4 Am I Thin Enough Yet? / Sharlene Hesse-Biber
    • 5 Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse / Sut Jhally
    • 6 The Plutocratic Culture: Institutions, Values, and Ideologies / Michael Parenti
    • 7 Media Magic: Making Class Invisible / Gregory Mantsios
    • 8 Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid / Jonathan Kozol
    • 9 Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex / Angela Davis
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Part IX SOCIAL CHANGE: REVISIONING THE FUTURE AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE
    • 1 Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference / Audre Lorde
    • 2 Feminism: A Transformational Politic / bell hooks
    • 3 A New Vision of Masculinity / Cooper Thompson
    • 4 Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change / Andrea Ayvazian
    • 5 Rethinking Volunteerism in America / Gavin Leonard
    • *6 The Most Important Thing in the World / Naomi Klein
    • *7 Beyond Elections: People Power / Mark Bittman
    • *8 Demand the Impossible / Matthew Rothschild
    • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Index
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Does the “White Privilege” Umbrella cover Black and Biracial Children? (Survey included)

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-04-07 01:11Z by Steven

Does the “White Privilege” Umbrella cover Black and Biracial Children? (Survey included)

Lisa W. Rosenberg: Writings on Body Image and Identity
2015-04-03

Lisa W. Rosenberg

This is the first post I have written soliciting responses to a survey—so I’m stating it up front: At the end of this post is an actual, honest-to-goodness survey for those who are interested and who fit the demographics* I’m looking for.

So, what is this about “White Privilege?” Sounds kind of political, kind of threatening, no?

The first time I heard the term “White Privilege,” I was in my late twenties and teaching at a very exclusive, private girls’ school on the Upper East Side of New York. Peggy McIntosh, PhD., the feminist, antiracism activist and associate director of the Wellesley College Women’s Project, had been brought in by the Parents’ Diversity Awareness Committee of said school. McIntosh, who is white, was there to discuss her famous paper, White Privilege, Unpacking the Invisible Backpack, as part of a workshop for staff, parents and students about the ways in which whites unwittingly benefit from racism on a daily basis…

Read the entire article here.

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On My Mixed Experience with “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2014-08-30 00:05Z by Steven

On My Mixed Experience with “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

Gino Michael Pellegrini: Education, Race, Multiraciality, Class & Solidarity
2014-08-28

Gino M. Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

I have this peculiar, twofold, scrambled-egg relationship with “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” the oft-quoted, seminal article written by Peggy McIntosh in the late 1980s.

That is to say, I have been a student in college classes where McIntosh’s article was cited and discussed, classes in which I was perceived and treated as a white male oppressor. Conversely, I have assigned or cited McIntosh’s article in classes where most of my students perceived and treated me as nonwhite, classes in which I identified myself as mixed race and a person of color—Mexican, Italian, White, Native American…

Read the entire article here.

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The Origins of “Privilege”

Posted in Articles, Interviews, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2014-05-22 01:19Z by Steven

The Origins of “Privilege”

The New Yorker
2014-05-13

Joshua Rothman, Archive Editor

The idea of “privilege”—that some people benefit from unearned, and largely unacknowledged, advantages, even when those advantages aren’t discriminatory —has a pretty long history. In the nineteen-thirties, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the “psychological wage” that enabled poor whites to feel superior to poor blacks; during the civil-rights era, activists talked about “white-skin privilege.” But the concept really came into its own in the late eighties, when Peggy McIntosh, a women’s-studies scholar at Wellesley, started writing about it. In 1988, McIntosh wrote a paper called “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies,” which contained forty-six examples of white privilege. (No. 21: “I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.” No. 24: “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.”) Those examples have since been read by countless schoolkids and college students—including, perhaps, Tal Fortgang, the Princeton freshman whose recent article, “Checking My Privilege,” has been widely debated.

McIntosh is now seventy-nine. She still works at Wellesley, where she is the founder and associate director of the SEED Project, which works with teachers and professors to make school curricula more “gender fair, multiculturally equitable, socioeconomically aware, and globally informed.” (SEED stands for Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity.) In the next few months, she’ll give talks about privilege to groups at the American Society for Engineering Education, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, the Ontario Nurses Association, and NASA’s Goddard Space Center. McIntosh was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, and went to a Quaker boarding school. She attended Radcliffe and got a Ph.D. in English from Harvard. (Her thesis was on Emily Dickinson.) With privilege so often in the news lately—there’s even a BuzzFeed quiz called “How Privileged Are You?”—I thought I’d ask McIntosh what she thinks about the current debates about privilege, and how they compare with the ones of past decades.

How did you come to write about privilege?

In those days, I worked at what was called the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. I was hired to conduct and administer a monthly seminar for college faculty members on new research on women, and how it might be brought into the academic disciplines. I led that seminar for seven years, and it was always expanding. Eventually, it expanded to twenty-two faculty from places like New York, New Jersey, and New England. We were asking, What are the framing dimensions of every discipline, and how could they be changed by the recognition that women are half the world’s population, and have had half the world’s lived experience?…

Read the entire interview here.

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Owning my Whiteness, Becoming an Ally

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-04-18 03:18Z by Steven

Owning my Whiteness, Becoming an Ally

The Race Card Project: Six-Word Essays
By Michele Norris
2013-04-17

Becky Christensen
Ann Arbor, MI

Despite growing up in a somewhat racially diverse area in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had never thought about the privileges I had based on being White until I read Peggy McIntosh’sWhite: Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” in graduate school. Since then, I’ve been actively exploring and acknowledging my Whiteness and am involved with social justice efforts on campus to help others become aware of their own racial identities as well as the systems of power and oppression in our society.

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A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Law, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2013-03-31 04:51Z by Steven

A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family

Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
Volume 44, Number 1
2009
pages 231-253

University of Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-26

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Professor of Law, Charles M. and Marion J. Kierscht Scholar
University of Iowa College of Law

Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Assistant Professor of Physics
Grinnell College

This Article is an invited special projects paper for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. It examines how society and law work together to frame the normative ideal of intimate couples and families as both heterosexual and monoracial.

This Article sets out to accomplish three goals. First, it examines the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of interracial marriages and families within our society. Specifically, Part II of this Article uses the work of Professor Peggy McIntosh to identify unacknowledged monoracial, heterosexual-couple privileges and list unearned privileges, both social and legal, for such couples. It also uses Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw‘s theory of intersectionality to explicate how couples in general may experience societal benefits and disadvantages differently based upon various intersections of identity categories.

Second, this Article examines housing discrimination law to demonstrate the connection between the daily social disadvantages of interracial, heterosexual couples and families and the lack of legal recognition for interracial couples and families. Specifically, Part III of this Article utilizes housing discrimination law to show how law can ignore the existence of interracial, heterosexual couples, thereby reinforcing an ideal of marriage and family as monoracial. In so doing, this Part explains how housing discrimination statutes assume that plaintiffs will be monoracial, heterosexual couples, and fail to fully address the harms to interracial, heterosexual couples who are subjected to discrimination in housing and rental searches because of their interraciality (i.e., because they have engaged in race-mixing). Part III.A describes the legal framework for evaluating housing discrimination cases, including the means for analyzing discrimination by association cases in court.  Part III.B details the categories of plaintiffs who can allege discriminatory action “because of” race, familial status, or marital status under housing discrimination statutes. It then explicates how interracial couples who are victims of discrimination in housing because of their status as an interracial couple alone do not neatly fit within any of these categories.

Third, this Article calls for housing discrimination statutes to explicitly recognize interracial couples and families, thereby filling this hole in anti-discrimination law. Specifically, Part IV proposes that legislators add a new protected class category for “interraciality” to housing discrimination statutes. The Article argues that such an addition is the only means by which the law can address the “expressive harms” or lack of dignity that result from the current framing of family in housing discrimination statutes as monoracial.

This Article concludes with a call for statutes and rights to be legally framed in a manner that is inclusive, rather than exclusive.

Read the entire article here.

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