I'm White & That was a Microaggression
Often in diversity, equity, and inclusion work I am asked questions about the nuance of experience in our social identities. It is not uncommon for people to start questions like: “As I man can’t I….” or “As a straight person, wouldn’t I…” Generally embedded in these questions is an earnest inquiry about how the complex dynamics of engaging across difference actually work out with the questioner’s particular social identity in mind. Overtime, I’ve specifically noticed that most of the questions come from people with a dominant or privileged social identity and situates them as an exception to a generalized dynamic that exist across power lines and across different social identity groups. Concretely, these questions show up subscribing to ideas like: men can experience sexism and white people can experience racism.
Always, I field these questions, although I don’t always agree with these questions. I recognize, especially in education, that when people ask these questions earnestly and honestly, they are often trying really hard to sort out a bad or hard experience they’ve had, while also trying to push their own understanding of how terms like oppression, privilege, racism, microaggression, culture, and power work. To illustrate, I’ve included an email correspondence between myself and a session attendee who wanted to respond to a white person indicating that it is a microaggression directed towards them when people say they have white privilege.
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From Scholarly Student:
I didn’t get a chance to stay very long after yesterday’s dialogue but I wanted to thank you for such an amazing event and for creating space for a very important dialogue. Second, I wanted to ask a question. When we were discussing our individual microaggression experiences someone in my group spoke up and said that they experience microagrressions when people say they have white privilege, because it assumes that they didn’t have to work to get to where they are today. I disagree that this is a microaggression and of the person’s definition of white privilege, but I froze and in the spirit of honoring people’s experience. I didn’t say anything or challenge his definition. I regret not saying anything and would love to know how you would have dealt with this situation in the moment. I’m hoping he’ll be at the next event and I can bring it up with him.
My Reply:
The idea that white people experience microaggressions when people say they have white privilege is an expression I am used to hearing from some white people. The utterance is generally conflating several ideas including meritocracy, socioeconomic class, class mobility, and the functioning of racism. Often, the person doesn't know that all of these concepts could be swimming in what they just said, but it's true. And as a result of how choc-full the statement is, it can become difficult to respond to.
I'm in agreement with you, this is not a microaggression. It is or could be an example of someone being assumptive about a white's person experience because they are white. This is a key way that race and socioeconomic class are tightly coupled, and in fact, an example of how white privilege works. White privilege would have most people to assume that a white person is (and was born into the) middle or upper class.
Often a white person's refute of white privilege is a communication about their working hard and generating success for themselves to be upwardly class mobile. In these moments, I don't discredit the hard work, however, I do highlight that everyone's hard work is not rewarded in the same way, and that some - by virtue of their race - actually have a hard-work-head-start. This is hard for white people to hear because they actually can't feel or see the wind in their sails toward upward mobility - they only experience rewards of their hard work as the reward for the hard work - a system disproportionately benefiting them is not evident.
In the moment, some turns of phrase that could be helpful include: "can you tell me more about how you worked to get where you are?" Or "white privilege is about the invisible advantages that one receives automatically if they are white, white privilege doesn't qualify or assume how hard one has worked" Or "no matter how hard one works, if you are white, you still benefit from white privilege" Each is phrase is trying to raise a white person’s awareness regarding the inner workings of their life and society. In depth analysis can reveal gaps and the unaccounted for nature of unearned privilege
In this person defense, they are desiring to link hard work and white privilege, suggesting that white privilege should only apply to white people who have not worked had, but that's not how it works. Also, embedded in this statement is the possibility that this person has experienced conversations like these where their hard work hasn't been recognized.
Both can happen. A white person can work hard and a white person can benefit from white privilege. The two are not mutually exclusive. Hopefully this helps.
In this example, while the person inquiring is not situating their experience as an exception to a generalized dynamic, they are wondering how to respond when a person with privilege does. In this case, they are me - fielding the inquiry. And me, like them, used to freeze, not really knowing how to honor a person’s experience while simultaneously refuting their assertion about how power, privilege, or dominance works. In this example, and so many others, evoking both-and thinking is helpful. Collectively, our default is either-or thinking - either it is racism or it isn’t; either I have privilege or I don’t. Yet, because we engage, interact, and exist in multiple levels or spaces (i.e. interpersonal, group, system), we must also account for how multiple experiences may be true and coexist.
Let’s make this concrete. In the example above, the question is raised whether it is microaggression when a white person is told they have white privilege and their hard work to earn what they have is unacknowledged. In short, the idea is that you have white (unearned) privilege because you didn’t work for it, or you don’t have white (unearned) privilege because you have worked hard to be where you are in life. Yes, white people work hard, and relative to people in their families, among their friends, and socially this feels very true. And, white people - at the system or institutional level - benefit from white privilege. The latter doesn’t negate the former, they coexist, functioning simultaneously and on different planes.
For this reason, I understand completely why it is hard for people with privilege or social identities that are valued more in society to see how they may have an unearned advantage; locally, sometimes, it is not evident. And, collectively we aren’t taught about systems or institutions - certainly we do not “experience them”. As a result, the heavy lift in conversations like the one Scholarly Student is bringing forward is to help people see the larger picture which implicates them whether they want to see it or not. Scaling up the experience white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, male, upper class, American, and educated people starts to illustrate what is happening in the aggregate which is hard to see on the ground.