Should Communities of Color Participate in Discussions on White Privilege?

(This blog entry was orig­i­nally posted on New Voices of Phil­an­thropy, Trista Harris’s blog on next gen­er­a­tion philanthropy.)

This might seem to be a loaded ques­tion if you’re a sup­porter of racial and social jus­tice causes. Of course com­mu­ni­ties of color should par­tic­i­pate. Beyond this, you might even say it’s ironic to have a pub­lic dis­cus­sion about race that includes experts and not invite one from a com­mu­nity of color that’s been most affected by the priv­i­lege or dis­crim­i­na­tion being discussed.

But appar­ently not all pro­gres­sives see it this way, as I found out dur­ing a recent incident.

I’d come across an e-​​mail announce­ment from a radio talk show host say­ing he was devot­ing his next show to a panel dis­cus­sion of white priv­i­lege. One of the experts on the panel had writ­ten a paper that I’d admired and wanted to read again. Through an e-​​mail link I (thank­fully) found the paper, but then noticed that three of the experts on the panel were white. The other was from the South Asian community.

As far as I could tell, all of the experts were cred­i­ble knowl­edge sources for the panel topic. All of them deserved to be there. I was glad to see that some­one from the South Asian com­mu­nity was rep­re­sented. But I won­dered why the panel didn’t also include an expert from a com­mu­nity of color that’s been most affected by white priv­i­lege, such as the black, Latino, or Amer­i­can Indian com­mu­ni­ties. After all, doesn’t white priv­i­lege result, at least in part, from a lack of diver­sity and inclu­sion; and isn’t it per­pet­u­ated when peo­ple aren’t inten­tional about includ­ing diverse points of view?

I wrote a very short e-​​mail to the host say­ing that I think he does good work, but ask­ing whether he didn’t notice the irony about the panel. It was really just an obser­va­tion that I assumed he’d over­looked or hadn’t noticed. Although I don’t know the host, he has a rep­u­ta­tion for being progressive.

There are plenty of panel dis­cus­sions about white priv­i­lege or race, and the makeup of this one wasn’t much of an issue in and of itself. But his response was. He fired back with an incen­di­ary e-​​mail say­ing he was “pissed off” that dis­cus­sions about race in this coun­try were “nec­es­sar­ily the province of peo­ple of color and no oth­ers.” More dis­turb­ing, he said that “white racism is a white prob­lem, not a black one [empha­sis mine]. Or don’t you get this?”

His response is dis­turb­ing on a num­ber of lev­els. I won’t detail all of them here, but I want to address one:

Per­son­ally, I find erro­neous, and even offen­sive, the notion that white racism isn’t a black prob­lem. Blacks are seven times more likely to go to prison in their life­time than whites and three-​​four times as likely to be unem­ployed or impov­er­ished. White racism is surely their prob­lem. It’s a prob­lem for Lati­nos and Amer­i­can Indi­ans, as well as for South­east Asians, South Asians, and all com­mu­ni­ties, whether they’re of color or not.

I’m dis­turbed that his response per­pet­u­ates notions of white priv­i­lege and race I’ve seen else­where. So often, when com­mu­ni­ties of color ask why their rep­re­sen­ta­tives aren’t at the table, those at the table exag­ger­ate the request into an angry demand to exclude whites or to be oth­er­wise unwork­able. This has been true, even of progressives.

I’m not accus­ing the host or oth­ers who act as he did of being racists. For all I know, this is an iso­lated inci­dent and he hope­fully doesn’t gen­er­ally act this way. I think the dis­com­fort that accom­pa­nies the process of change and mak­ing inten­tional choices seems threat­en­ing. I would like him and oth­ers to embrace this change.

Because, if we want to dimin­ish white priv­i­lege and racism, don’t we need to share power and invite pre­vi­ously excluded com­mu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate and lend their insight as much as we can?

Tagged as: People of Color, Racial Justice, White privilege, Who's considered an expert?