White People and White Folks
Strangely, in my two years now writing this blog I never stopped to offer a clear definition or in academic speech, taxonomy of white folks. As a social/cultural critic that is blatantly irresponsible and I think it is high time for me to correct the issue before I go any further.
First: True or False
White folks and White people are the same.
False: White folks are individuals who subscribe and ascribe to the politics of white privilege. This privilege citied by Peggy Mcintosh (1988) means the following: White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks. Furthermore, taking a more historicized perspective, one of America’s best know scholars, WEB Dubois lays a operationalized application of white privilege. He states: It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule. Digesting this information and also examining my experiential base, I see that white privilege equates to recognizable power and the willingness to exploit that power to maintain the status quo. This philosophy I add enables a plethora of advantages existing through the various structures within our society, be they legal, educational, social, economical, informative, political, spiritual, what have you? To have this power and to incessantly use this same power with impunity rips away any humanity from those who do not fit this dynamic. Actions of this type represent the reprehensible and are endemic of xenophobic arrogance. These people personify White Folks. Conversely, white people represent the opposite. White people are cognizant of their white privilege and function as allies to its eradication. White people I offer come in different forms including but not limited to, the economically disenfranchised, aka the po, the gay and lesbian community (not all mind you) the academically educated (again not all), the spiritually disenfranchised (those who are not born again Christians) and certainly those white people who have elected to considered white abolitionists.
Under these degrees of separation I can willingly say I love white people because white people to me represent progressive attitudes. White folks on the other hand, I work to (regrettably in some cases) cultivate a tolerance for the simple fact that without the bitter I cannot truly appreciate the sweet.
Second: True or False
White folks only come in one color.
False
White privilege is not exclusively based in pigmentation. There is a politic to white privilege which has an overarching extension into the realm of socio economic class. This means you have a potpourri of folk who try to take the credit of white privilege but really can’t claim the card. One of the most public examples of this was with OJ Simpson. As Michael Eric Dyson puts it, once OJ was linked to the high profile death of his white wife, his white privileges came under fire. The conundrum with OJ of course was that as he was on trial for his very life, he amassed enough money to exercise the last credits of his American Express Race Card to purchase a verdict, historically reserved for white folks in power: that being an acquittal. In the idealistic version many have of the US court system, the one where Perry Mason gets the villain in the end, justice is free for all. Yet in this realistic view of the criminal justice system, which is more criminal than just, verdicts do have a price tag. Often times, people of color can’t come up with the cash to get off the dime. So using the American Express Race Card analogy, many of us when we swipe our card, the response is on the reader is often times a big DECLINED or guilty. Needless to say, as OJ’s was APPROVED or not guilty, his American Express Race Card, the white one, was permanently revoked and ceremoniously cut up for not only him, but the rest of the world to see.
Now as OJ represents the quintessential case study, there are quite a few others which must be outed:
Clarence Thomas
Condelesia Rice
Armstrong Williams
Michael Steel
Alan Keys
Jimmy JJ Walker (yeah I know right)
And here is a Wikki list in case you may want to know others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_conservatism
Tune in for more on my social constructions of white folks
