White by the Numbers
Posted by Jack Stephens on August 5, 2008
Tammerie, who is pursuing a dissertation on anti-racism and Christian theology, blogs:
By the numbers, white people still hold a preponderance of the positions that count, out of proportion to our presence in the population, from which I would argue we are able to maintain white-privileging control over the systems and institutions that shape our society, including business, legislative and judicial systems, property sales and management, education and health care. (Note that the percentages of non-white, non-male legislators was considered too small to be tabulated.)
Of course, not all white people are employed in positions that afford economic power and privilege. Whites represented 44 percent of the 37 million U.S. citizens living below the poverty line in 2006. The (historically constructed) sad thing about that is that most of the white people living in poverty think they have more in common with wealthy white people than they do people of color also dealing with poverty. And that keeps folks from banding together and working together to insist on change in an unjust reality.
Renegade Eye said
This post is a deja vu experience for me. The issue of whether white skin priviledge effects the white working class, is part of what split SDS in the 1970s.
I don’t find that concept helpful when involved with organizing white workers. The idea of workers united, doesn’t negate fighting racism.
It’s best to make demands that elevate the class as a whole.
Renegade Eye said
My comrades have put together a document on the Afro-American struggle, that will be public soon. It deals with issues involved with this post.