Thank you all so much for showing up
today and now everybody is really busy,
but if you're like me,
you're really excited about this talk.
It's my great pleasure to welcome Sarah,
but I will do that in just one second.
I just want to say if you're a student,
welcome especially and I want to be
sure you know that we have free copies
of our one book available for you
if you want to pick one up at home
and library if you're not on campus,
we can also mail them out to you.
And dumb.
We have a couple more talks this quarter.
There's one in two weeks on the
education to incarceration pipeline
and then in one month we will have
our final talk of fall quarter.
And that's actually going to be a
panel presented by our Asian and
Asian American caucus and it will
be on the model minority myth.
And I'll send out word about that again too.
But anyway today.
It is my great pleasure to introduce
and welcome my colleague Sarah Keen
from sociology and I'm going to
let Sarah just take it from here.
We will be doing a Q&A at the end and
I think Sarah will also kind of pause
along the way at some points to see
if there are things people want to
say or questions that you might have.
And yeah,
so please feel free to use the chat.
Thanks. Thank you so much, Judy.
Let me come, let me get this up.
OK, can you all see the PowerPoint
that does not have notes?
OK, cool, thank you.
Thanks so much to all of you for coming
and I'm really also really appreciative for
all the students that are here as well.
Thank you so much.
I see some folks from the sociology club here
too and just really grateful to have y'all.
So before we get going I just want to
thank Jodie for all of the amazing work
that she does on these one book series.
They're really incredible and I also
want to thank Jodie and Sega and
Amanda for suggesting that I do.
This I have, you know,
was really hesitant and I've been
super nervous the whole time,
but I'm really grateful to be here
with you all, so thanks for that.
And I just also want to extend my
deep gratitude to Kate Lawson,
my fellow sociologist,
and all of my T track team.
I'm really inspired by all of you
and I just appreciate all of the
work that you do on and off campus.
Alright, so I want to begin by
acknowledging that we're on the
traditional and occupied land
of the Coast Salish peoples,
past, present and future.
This includes, but is not limited to,
Snoqualmie, Squamish, Duwamish,
Nisqually, Teloloapan, Muckleshoot.
We honor their connection to the region.
Pay respect to Coast Salish
elders past and present,
and stand in solidarity through their
struggles with continued systemic oppression.
So to that end, I've provided some
links for ways that we can do this.
In other ways,
in addition to the land acknowledgement,
by learning more about the region and
the native people who live here and
have lived here and continue to live
here and also by supporting native
LED movements and organizations.
So I also want to acknowledge and
recognize the labor upon which our country,
state and this institution are built.
We remember that our country is built
on the labor of enslaved people who
were kidnapped and brought to EU
S from the African continent and
recognize the continued contribution
of their survivors.
I also want to acknowledge all immigrant
laborers who have and continue to
contribute to the building of this country.
All unpaid caregiving labor and the
hourly student and contingent labor
of those here at Green River College.
So again,
I've included a link here for
ways that we can.
Support some of the laborers who've been
most marginalized by our socioeconomic and.
Political structures and you can
see when you click on this and
this will be available to come.
I think in the on the one book website,
so you'll be able to click on these links,
but you can filter by geography,
geographic location and community.
And then I just also encourage you
to explore other organizations and
businesses on your own that work for
racial justice and to support them.
Alright, so this is what we're
going to be doing today.
Uhm, I've tried to cut this talk down
as much as I can and I apologize.
It's still kind of long.
We're going to start by
defining white privilege.
Then I want to sort of begin
at the end by looking at the
evidence of white privilege.
And then we'll be talking a bit about
the social construction of whiteness
and historical context, and finally,
dismantling white supremacy.
How we can use white privilege
to dismantle white supremacy
and systemic racism?
And ways at the individual
level and collective level
that we can take action now.
Alright, so these are some key points
that I'd just like you to keep in
mind as I go through this talk.
So the first one is the race racial
categories and the ideologies that
inform them are relatively new
means of human classification.
So race as primarily based on notions
of skin color and other phenotypic
attributes were created through
processes of colonization and slavery,
both of which were used in the
service of capitalist development.
Race in this whiteness are social
constructs and not biological realities,
and so, in the interest of time,
I'm not going to be reviewing
the evidence on this right now.
But if you'd like a bunch of different
interdisciplinary resources and references,
I'd be happy to share those with you.
So feel free to email me if you'd like that.
Race and thus whiteness are
inherently unstable concepts,
and this is a really important point for
today because race is a social invention
and it's not a biological reality.
Racial categories and ideologies have always
been and will always be subject to change.
Reason thus, whiteness are and
have always been relational,
so whiteness as a category depends on
on and it's also a structured power.
By the way,
depends on and the existence of
blackness or other non white
racial categories and vice versa.
Alright,
regional hierarchies have been
constructed within specific
configurations of institutional power,
and this is really critical to the
production of racial ideologies
and their reification in social,
economic and political legal institutions.
And then finally to dismantle white
privilege we have to tackle the
structures of power that maintain
its existence.
So I'm going to be talking about this
not at great length, but it, but a bit.
At the end we have to dismantle the
social relations that undergird our
capitalist economic system and the
institutional practices that uphold
and reinforce white supremacy.
So what is privilege?
I'm going to be building on UM,
Ijoma lose discussion of
white privilege in her book,
so you want to talk about race.
And I know that many of you are
already familiar with this concept,
but I wanted to provide a working
definition just to frame this talk,
so I've included a few definitions here,
but I just want to focus on the
last one because it explicitly.
Dresses structural dynamics.
So white privilege is an institutional
rather than personal set of benefits
granted to those who, by race,
resembled the people who dominate the
powerful positions in our institutions.
Now, this idea of white privilege
has a really long history.
In his Seminole study of Black
reconstruction in the United States,
this physiologist WEB Dubois
articulated this concept of the
psychological wage of whiteness.
And.
This quote is really dumb.
It's taken from his explanation of
why black and white workers didn't
unite around their class interests.
So I just want to read this aloud.
The theory of race was supplemented
by a carefully planned and slowly
evolved method which drove such a
wedge between the white and black
workers that there probably are not
today in the world two groups of
workers with practically identical
interests who hate and fear each
other so deeply and persistently,
and who are kept so far apart that
neither sees anything of common interests.
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 votes,
selected public officials.
And while this had a small effect
on the economic situation,
it had a great effect upon their personal
treatment and the deference shown them.
White school houses were in the best
communities and conspicuously placed,
and they cost anywhere from
twice to 10 times as much per
capita as the colored schools.
The newspapers specialized on news
that flattered the poor whites
and almost utterly ignored black
people accept in crime and ridicule.
So while social and legal advances
have been made since 1935,
when Du Bois wrote this,
we still see this psychological wage of
whiteness showing up in way too many places.
So what I'm going to do now is give
you a really partial and incomplete
list of the the specific ways that
white privilege is show up in our lives
and are institutionalized in society
through what bell hooks refers to as
white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
So Peggy Mcintosh's article unpacking
the invisible knapsack documents 50 ways
that white people are granted unearned
privileges in society on a daily basis that
we often don't recognize as privileges,
and I've just included a handful of
these here, so I'm going to read them.
For those of us who identify as white,
I can go shopping alone.
Most of the time.
Pretty well assured that I
won't be followed or harassed.
When I'm told about our national
heritage or about civilization,
I'm showing that people of
my color made it what it is.
I can be pretty sure that my children
will be given curricular materials that
testify to the existence of their race.
I can take a job with an affirmative
action employer without having
coworkers on the job suspect
that I got it because of race.
And I can be sure that if I
need legal or medical help,
my race won't work against me.
Now these are like daily ways
that white people experience
privilege on a personal basis.
But I really want to focus now
on all of the institutional ways.
And these have really tremendous
impact on people's life,
chances and opportunities in society.
So in the 1930s, the federal government
implemented a host of policies under
the general heading of the New Deal to
buffer against the effects of the Great
Depression and to promote the expansion of
a middle class following World War Two.
The New Deal policies intentionally
excluded African Americans by not including
agricultural workers or domestic workers
in the new suite of Labor protections.
Also, the FHA explicitly sanctioned
racist lending practices by stating that
the presence of even a couple of non
white families would devalue real estate.
Now for white people this meant
that they could many for the first
time in their family's history,
be able to buy property and to start
accumulating equity and wealth.
But this source of privilege was not extended
to black people and other people of color.
So exclusionary lending practices and
redlining contributed substantially
to the racial wealth gap that we
now have in the United States.
So as you can see in this slide,
the median wealth of white households is 16
times that of African American households,
and it's 14 times that of Latino households.
Now, redlining is also had an
impact on access to education,
health and basic services.
So for instance,
many businesses they wouldn't invest
in areas that had been redlined.
So bipop communities disproportionately
lacked things like grocery stores
and other really essential amenities
in their neighborhoods.
And this is also why we see such high
concentrations of bipad people in high
poverty neighborhoods where the schools
are of lower quality and economic
opportunities are fewer and often
insufficient to meet people's basic needs.
I have some powerful data on this that I
ended up cutting in the interest of time.
So if you're interested in that,
at the end,
I can.
I can pull that up as well.
So white privilege also entails
significant economic advantages
according to the Census Bureau's
current Population survey of 2020,
African Americans experience the highest
rates of poverty in the United States,
with 18.8% of the black population in
poverty versus 7.3% of the white population.
And we know that people who live in
high poverty can't afford to live in
areas that boast high quality schooling,
housing safe neighborhoods.
All right, so in addition to
having the highest rate of
incarceration in the entire world,
the United States has prisons that are
disproportionately comprised of men of color,
and this is a legacy of the
black Codes and Jim Crow,
and also immigration policies.
As of 2018, Black Americans comprised
approximately 12% of the US population,
but they represented 33% of the prison
population in the United States.
In contrast, white Americans comprise
about 63% of the US population,
and only 30% of the prison population,
and these disparities are even more
pronounced when we consider gender.
So, according to the Bureau
of Justice statistics,
about one in 20 men ages 35 to 39 were
in state or federal prison in 2018.
Now, scholars such as Angela Davis,
Ruth Wilson, Gilmore,
Michelle Alexander and Eva Pager,
among many others,
have documented the ways in which
people of color are more likely to be
arrested and convicted for crimes that
are done in similar proportions as whites.
They receive harsher sentencing than whites,
and they're more likely to be
negatively impacted by their
criminal record than are whites.
And these are just a few of the
ways that white privilege come.
Take shape in our everyday
lives and in our institutions.
There's so many more right
health outcomes and access to
healthcare experiences in schools,
media representations,
and so on.
But I wanted I want to jump forward
a bit here now and look at how
whiteness was constructed over time.
So, as I noted earlier,
race is a social construction.
It's not a biological reality
and I want to talk now about
how this idea of race developed
and changed overtime in place,
focusing largely on how whiteness
has been constructed in EU. S.
And for those of you who are
interested in learning more about this,
I highly recommend Doctor Nell
Irvin Painter's book.
The history of white people as
well as Doctor Audrey Smedley's
book race in North America.
Those are some really great sources.
Right, so European notions of identity among
the people that we've come to know as white
weren't historically based on skin color.
Contrary to popular belief,
people of diverse skin colors and ethnicities
lived in proximity to one another.
As you can see in this slide
of Roman era mummy portraits.
Atlanta identities weren't static,
and as Audrey Medley is,
Smedley has documented in her work
common ways of identification,
were based on kinship ones,
occupation their town or region of origin,
and their religious affiliation.
And I want to read a quote here by
Nell Painter, Doctor No painter,
before the Enlightenment,
Europeans could see human difference.
They could see who was tall, who was short,
who light skinned, who dark?
Difference is that they
explained according to religion,
cultural habits, geography,
wealth and climate.
Among the most usual characteristics
but not race.
Now one example that Doctor Painter
uses to demonstrate this is she
shows how Greeks explained human
difference during the antiquity in
she writes and quote vague and savage
notions had lodged in the Greek mind
concerning Citians and Celts who lived
in what is now considered Europe.
Now these people were described
by the Greeks,
and broadened generalizing
terms as far distant Barbarians,
and the difference is that the Greeks
saw in their physical and behavioral.
Characteristics were attributed
to place in climate.
Now importantly,
although physical and behavioral
differences were classified
in a hierarchical fashion,
the concept of race was not used to
explain these differences and any
other unifying category or notion of
whiteness that would have connected
all of these people to one another.
Basis of their skin color.
It had no meaning or cultural
expression prior to the 18th century.
Now this changed with the
emergence of racial science,
and more appropriately,
probably called scientific racism.
So so-called scientific classifications
of humans emerged in the 1700s,
and they did a great deal to solidify
and disseminate this concept of race,
and it also served as a powerful
justification for both colonization
and the transatlantic slave trade,
which we're really remaking
the world in dramatic ways.
Racial groups were ranked hierarchically
by scientists and Europeans were
put at the top and this should
come as absolutely no surprise.
The scientists themselves
were men of European ancestry,
and so naturally they placed Europeans
at the top of the social hierarchy.
But the categories themselves and
who belonged to those categories
changed considerably based on when
and where the scientists themselves
were conducting their work.
So I don't have the time to
elaborate on all of that,
but I did want to provide this link
from the Asian Pacific American
Institute at New York University.
They've done a really impressive
job of curating this comprehensive
list of some of the most impactful
moments in the construction of
scientific racism since the 1700s.
So you'll be able to click on
that and check this out.
And each of those has links that will
take you in lots of different directions.
To be able to explore what these
people were saying at the time.
Now, as I noted earlier,
whiteness UM has been and
always as a relational category.
So in other words, the existence of
privileges based on light skin color
depend on the systematic denial of
opportunities to those with darker skin.
And this is, you know,
this is what Dubois was really talking about,
and he called this structure a
caste system and Isabel Wilkerson
has elaborated on this idea
in her book 2020 book Caste.
The origins of our.
Discontents and she uses that
concept to talk about the underlying
infrastructure that produces and
preserves racial hierarchies.
So what is that underlying infrastructure?
Well, Sedrick Robinson in 1983 and
many others have brilliantly explained
how we can't understand the social
construction of race in general,
and whiteness in particular without
understanding the historical
processes of capitalist production.
Now the massive growth in cotton
production in the United States
in the 1800s was just profound.
The by 1835, the US post producing more
than half of the entire world's cotton crop,
and this, of course,
was fueled by the bodies of
millions of slaves and on stolen
land of Native Americans.
Now, by 1860,
approximately $6.5 billion in
cotton in 2014 dollars was being
exported annually and cotton was
a central source of wealth for
white plantation owners and the
United States more generally.
EU S government expropriated
millions of acres of land from Native
Americans in the South to expand
cotton production and increase labor
power was achieved by the continual
import of African American slaves
and slavery in all of its brutal
manifestations was firmly couched
in economic terms to build the
wealth of a relatively small number
of white elites and to finance the
economic expansion of the nation.
Now is precisely these conditions
of capitalist development,
in which pseudo scientific conceptions
of whiteness were constructed.
So changes in the social and legal
status of whites through law,
such as the Virginia slave codes and others,
were enacted to pacify light skinned
indentured servants and to have them
identify with colonial land owners.
So being classified as white.
Gave people a kind of status that
differentiated them from people deemed black,
and this is precisely what Dubois
meant by this notion of the
psychological wages of whiteness
that I discussed a bit earlier.
In this way,
the construction of whiteness served
as a way to ensure that poor whites
and enslaved black people would not
unite to revolt against their common
oppressor and for more on this,
I highly recommend WEB Dubois is
black reconstruction in America
and roediger's wages of whiteness.
So I want to step back to an idea that
I introduced a little bit earlier.
One of the central arguments in
Dr painters work is that the
categories of whiteness have changed
overtime and according to different
economic and political interests.
So scientists in the United States
prior to the 1940s, for instance,
conceived of a multiplicity
of white so-called races,
and I just want to read this extended
quote from Doctor Painter to illustrate
how whiteness in the 1940s or until the
1940s embodied this really fragmented
and hierarchical internal structure.
The mass immigration that followed
the Irish famine of the 1840s,
inflamed nativist anti Catholic bigotry that
flourished through the end of the century.
Then new waves of poor Eastern and
southern European immigrants arrived,
inspiring new racial classifications.
The northern Italian race,
the southern Italian race,
the Eastern European Hebrew race,
and so on.
Their heads were measured in
IQ's assessed to quantify and
later to deny racial difference.
They were all white members of white races,
but like the Irish before them,
the Italians and Jews and Greeks were
classified as inferior white races.
Now the 1940s proved to be a really pivotal
turning point in conceptions of whiteness.
Nazi Germany's claim to the
superiority of so-called Aryan race.
The Aryan race and their attempted
genocide of the Jewish population was
deeply influenced by the eugenics writing
of 20th century American scholars.
Doctor Nell Painter provides a
powerful description of the impact
that World War Two had on changing
classifications of whiteness,
as well as how the rise of the Black
power movement in the 1960s and
70s caused a reassertion of ethnic
identity among white Americans.
So I just want to play a clip
of this for you now.
I think that mass of white people
in the United States less now than.
Before 2020.
Sorted themselves as individuals,
unraced individuals.
The short answer is thanks
to the Nazis, the Nazis,
racialized Jews and made the Holocaust.
Naziism was well known in the United
States and it was also well known that
a lot of Americans like Henry Ford and
also many scholars believe that Jews
were race a separate race and they
didn't mean it in a flattering way.
At that time, it was usually thought that,
say, Irish people belong to the Celtic race.
East European Hebrews and you know
these were all white races, but.
This was a moment in the very
early 40s as the United States was
getting into the war that we were
desperately in need of national unity.
And the two enemies were racial states.
German conquest of Europe and Africa.
Japanese conquest of the Ori.
So one way of pulling all Americans
into the fight against utilitarianism
was to get rid of as many racial
categories as possible.
So the ideal was unity.
And the anthropologists,
the Boasian anthropologists wrote all
over the place in newspapers and books and
so forth that there are only three races.
The Caucasian,
the ********* and the Negroid.
Its motives are cultural,
but largely political.
Interestingly enough, through somebody
like Malcolm X who talked about the
white man so he didn't talk about
Polish Americans or Jewish Americans,
the charge of violence against us actually
stems from the guilt complex that exists.
In the conscious and subconscious minds
of most white people in this country.
They know that they've been violent.
In their brutality.
Against ***** that carried a lot of heft,
and so there's this moment in the
70s where we have white Americans
standing up and saying no,
I'm not white, I'm Polish.
I'm not white, I'm Greek.
I'm not why I'm Italian, kiss me,
I'm Irish and so forth.
And that's of response to Malcolm X and
to the castigation of white people.
As this is one big mass.
Great so Doctor Peters work.
I think really powerfully illustrates
that there hasn't been anything
stable or permanent about whiteness
other than the fact that it's always
been embedded in forged in these
highly unequal relations of power.
So meanings and constructions of
whiteness have and will continue
to change overtime now before
transitioning into the ways that.
White people can use their privilege to
disrupt white supremacy and systemic racism.
I just want to leave you with one
last clip from Doctor Painter on the
changing conceptions of whiteness
today and how racial identities
as well as the structures that
maintain them are actively produced
through actions and behaviors.
Trump forced masses of Americans
to figure out where they belong.
He ran make America great again
and everybody heard white.
He didn't put the word in,
but he put the word in.
And then Charlottesville in
2017 and his response there.
He has been pushing people who
might not even want to think
about it or talk about it,
to have to figure out where they are
in this national geography of race.
Part of the ideology of race is
that race is and in our lives.
We acted out on a day to day basis
and what I've said over and over
and over again as we make race
every day and we can remake it
and even unmake it by what we do,
we make and unmake behavior not in words
or capital letters but in behavior.
OK, uhm. So white people have
unearned privileges in society.
I want to talk next about
what do we do with that?
What do we do with that privilege,
and how can we use it to dismantle
white supremacy and systemic racism?
So, uhm, I hope this goes without
saying that what follows is a really
short and partial list starting at
the macro level and working to the
micro or starting at the micro level
and working to the macro level,
but I just want to acknowledge
that many people on campus are
already taking action to address
white supremacy and privilege,
and so I invite all of you who
are working on those things to
feel free to use the chat and
put in there what you're doing.
Put in their areas where you need help,
especially from white people,
to step up and help with this work.
So with that I just wanna say one more
thing that I'll say again in a second
I'm going to start at the personal level,
but I think it's really important that we
recognize that personal work is ongoing
work that should not be done like before,
right?
I think that we can think about doing
this work before and then we'll do the
actual action later and then talk about this,
but this needs to be done
simultaneously with actions.
That are creating structural change.
So here we go alright.
First, educate ourselves.
Like I said,
this is an ongoing process now and forever.
It's not one that never ends,
it's it's continual.
And we've got so many things on campus
that help us to do this as white people.
So the Black Caucus is and has been
facilitating these really incredible
workshops and presentations.
And this is a great space for
white people to come.
To learn,
to reflect and to work towards
personal and social transformation.
So two great workshops are coming up
on black excellence on October 27th.
Rashad Norris will be discussing
barriers preventing black excellence,
and on November 9th,
Doctor Deborah Jenkins will be
discussing racial healing and
you'll be able to click on the
email when you have these slides.
If you want to email the Black Caucus.
For more information about that.
Also, if you haven't looked at it already,
definitely check out the Asian
and Asian American Caucus site.
It's this marvelous set of resources
and it's just a wealth of information,
so definitely check that out
and join the White Caucus.
I've been wanting to get involved in
this for a while and I finally took the
step to do that and it's it's really
exciting work that these folks are doing.
So this is a great place.
For white people to work with
other committed folks to use our
white privilege to contribute
to structural change on campus,
and then keep coming to these
one book presentations.
So I know that Joey announced this,
but I just want to announce
that one more time
in two weeks. Doctor Jay Sean
Banks is going to be talking about
this school to prison pipeline and
then two weeks later after that,
the Asian and Asian American Caucus
is going to be holding a panel
that's discussing the topic of.
Unpacking in the model minority myth,
yellow peril and racial triangulation
in Asian America.
So these are all ways to start
educating ourselves that are
already happening on campus.
The next level at a personal
level is really reflecting on our
own identities and privileges,
and this really requires that we look
at our implicit biases and that is
challenging because it's hard to see them.
So it takes a lot of work to try
to figure out what your implicit
biases are to address them.
Lulu provides some wonderful suggestions
of how to reflect on our own
identities and privileges and her book,
so definitely check those out, and then,
if you're having a hard time getting started.
And need a place to start this 21 day anti
racism challenge is a good place to start.
I just really want to emphasize here
though this should not be some kind of
like FAD or short term activity right?
This this can be a way of getting
started and to keep ourselves going.
Alright, so I just want to return to
one more quote from Doctor Nell Painter.
Uhm, you know these two take home points.
Race is socially constructed and
it's an ever changing concept.
To this end I want to talk about the
ways that we can move beyond this kind
of white identity that is either white
nationalism on the one hand or this
this false belief that white people
are unraced individuals on the other.
And this is what painter refers
to as nothingness.
So given that the monolithic definition of
whiteness is antithetical to social justice,
perhaps we should encourage
a rebellion against it,
just as blacks and whites joined
together as abolitionists to bring down
American slavery in the 19th century,
anti racist whites in the 1990s
called themselves race traitors,
believing that social justice for all
demands treason against white supremacy,
eliminating the binary definition
of whiteness.
This toggle between nothingness and
awfulness is essential for a new
racial vision that ethical people.
Can share across the color line.
Just as race has been reinvented
over the centuries,
let's repurpose the term abolitionist
as more than just a hashtag.
The abolition of white privilege can
be an additional component of identity,
not a replacement for it.
One that embeds social justice
in its meaning even more.
It unifies people of many races.
Now, as I said a few minutes ago,
we cannot stop here, right?
Educating ourselves and reflecting our
own identities and privileges has to be
done constantly, but it's not enough.
It has to be done in tandem with
other actions.
So in other words,
to do the self reflective work
in learning is important,
but don't consider this your
main mode of taking action.
Self reflection and learning are lifelong
processes and we can't wait until we,
we quote,
get it in order to take action
and do something more impactful.
So these are just some different
ways to think about how we can start
taking action to disrupt white
privilege and white supremacy.
For students starting Affinity Group
on campus and this can be a great
way to collectively do the work of
recognizing your own white privileges
and also working with other white
students to identify areas to contribute
to and collaborate with other students
working for racial justice on campus.
Another way to get involved is to join
a club and there's a ton of amazing
clubs on campus and I just want to
give a plug for the sociology club
and for those of you who are here,
please feel free to put your email.
Contact if if you're comfortable in
the chat so that folks can contact
you about the club,
but this is a racially diverse
group of really amazing students
who've been engaged in a variety of
projects to take action around social
justice issues and racial justice
has figured really prominently.
In their work.
So if you're interested in this,
you're welcome to contact me or
contact one of the folks in the club.
Now for teachers critical pedagogies.
So when Doctor Brooms was talking about
the need for our syllabi to reflect the
diverse experiences of our students,
he was modeling not only what a more
equitable kind of instruction looks like,
and you know,
Ferrari's sense of the pedagogy of freedom,
but he's also modeling what a more
truthful and honest education looks like,
so it's critical that those of us who
are white teachers continually look for.
Where white supremacy might show up
in our content in pedagogies and then
also to construct culturally responsive
pedagogies that include content
assignments and teaching practices
that reflect and uplift the diverse
voices and perspectives of our students.
At the departmental in division level.
Self assessment is a tool that we
can use work within departments and
divisions to actively look for places
where white supremacy is showing up,
and there's a lot of tools out there,
but the deck has put together a
departmental diversity self study and
that tool might be a great place to
start and then also just constructing
best practices and shared commitments
so to identify best practices that are
broad enough to accommodate a range.
Of disciplinary and pedagogical perspectives.
But narrow enough to be meaningful and
specific enough to be meaningful and
then create shared and demonstrated
commitments implementing those
best practices.
At the college level,
speaking up when we see injustices,
or when something doesn't feel right
in creating space to talk about it.
And you know,
if you don't realize that the
something was wrong until later,
follow up on it and as soon as you can.
Self assessment as noted earlier,
you know on an institutional level as well,
looking for places where white supremacy
is showing up in institutional norms
and practices and addressing those.
And then come to that and
implementing that endpoint.
Recommendations that were put
forth by the Black Student Union,
so we don't need to reinvent the wheel,
right?
Best practices at the college level
have been identified by groups like
the Black Student Union and the deck,
including recommendations around
hiring more racially and culturally
diverse employees
and creating mechanisms to retain them.
That's a really important part,
so let's hold ourselves accountable to
that and implement those recommendations.
And then getting involved
in current programs.
So again, there's another place.
If there's a program that you're working on,
please put it in the chat.
I'm sure there's so many on campus that
I'm not aware of that are taking concrete
steps to address racial injustices
and contribute to structural change.
I just want to highlight one of
those so the reentry Committee,
for instance, is.
It has been working to disrupt
institutional racism and inequities
by creating pathways to education.
And like I said,
I know there's more,
so please feel free to put the work
you're doing in there so people can
know about it and get involved and then
getting involved at the community level.
Get involved with organizations that
are already working on racial equity
initiatives so real rent Duwamish
isn't something that I learned about
when I got to Green River in 2019
and I'm grateful to be paying rent
and to be contributing to raising
awareness about the lasting legacies
of colonialism and the need for
reparations of different different kinds.
But there's also so many other organizations
out there as well to get involved with.
So one place that you could look
is showing up for racial justice.
If you go there, it's a good place.
Start,
you can find different community based
organizations near where you live that
are working on racial justice initiatives.
And again,
if you belong to other groups in the
community that you'd like to share,
please put that in the chat so that we
can share that information with everybody.
OK.
I do not have time to talk about
all of these and maybe this is
something that folks want to
talk about in the the discussion,
but social and economic policies
are going to be a really critical
place to create structural change.
So these are some areas I think that
are really critical if we want to
have a more racially just society.
So looking at voting rights,
protections, debt, free, education,
equitable and affordable housing,
public schooling funding needs to change
the structure of that affordable child care,
affordable health care alternatives to our
prison system and alternatives to capitalism.
So sorry,
this has been a long I've been talking
for a long time and and you're lucky
because I think I cut out like 30 slides
that I had in here before I practiced it.
So I just want to open it up.
We can talk about anything
you folks want to talk about.
If there's different actions you'd
like to highlight that be great.
And also I think that it might be really
useful to also have a conversation
about mechanisms of accountability,
because I think that's a really that
that's one of the hardest things, right?
How do we?
Keep ourselves as white folks accountable,
and what kinds of mechanisms
can we use to do
that? So I'm going to stop sharing and I'm
going to stop talking. You open it up.
And thank you so much for coming.
Sorry I talked so long now.
You have one question in
the chat from John Falconer.
Are you able to see your chat?
Yes, let me oops. I see 31 things.
His is just a couple up in your chat list.
OK, let me see it.
Would you mind reading it?
Sure about that.
Yeah and CTC link were
expected to enter our race,
which always makes me feel self conscious.
Is there a constructive
way to respond to that?
Well, I mean, I think this is where
I I actually think that painters
work is is really powerful, right?
Wears when she's talking about and
make sure I'm answering this in a
in a way that's satisfactory to.
But when she's talking about toggling
between this difference between
awfulness and nothingness, right?
She's saying that no matter what,
we have a white identity.
And So what we do with that
is really important.
And so you know,
collecting statistics and so on.
Race I think is a really important
way for us to measure and assess
where inequities are and so on.
A personal level,
I think trying to redefine your
your whiteness through actions.
Is a super important place to start
and then in terms of discomfort,
if there's discomfort around
providing that information,
I think just just know that this
information is so important for us
to collect so that we can critically
assess and measure different
kinds of inequities and look at
what they're like in different
institutions including ours,
so I don't know if I if I if I got to
your question and let me know if not.
Oh cool OK thanks great.
Thanks for that question.
Trying to scroll through this.
And we can't.
It's not so easy to see raised hands,
but feel free to unmute if
you want to see something.
Hi Sarah, it's Suzanne. Doctor J.
Want to thank you for your
for your presentation and.
Uh, I want to go back to an earlier comment,
but you were busy talking, right?
But someone I think might have been
marked Barrington, and it's about
the topic of of scientific racism,
and the comment was to encourage
across all of our disciplines to bring
that concept into our curriculum.
I think it's I just wanted to hone back in.
I really appreciated you showing
the history of the.
Uhm, creation.
Of whiteness and many institutions,
including in particular the academies,
the sciences were used as tools,
and I think this would be just
one of the most.
Everything in your presentation
is is was was wonderful,
but it resonated with me
in terms of you know,
especially for faculty what,
what's something that could
be done within disciplines?
And I think talking about
the use of the Academy,
the use of science to justify social
constructions of race is one of those
things that really starts to break apart.
Just the the whitewashing of of our world.
So just learn to thank you.
It's not so much a question.
But share comment to you.
Thanks for that and I I just want
to give a shout out actually to Jake
in biology because I've I've learned
about one of the things that he's
doing in his classes that is just
super awesome he is taking and Jake.
If you're here I don't know if you're
here and jump in and correct me 'cause
I've kind of heard the second hand.
I actually haven't talked to you about it,
but he's using one day of the week
to really restructure his syllabus.
To look at where that particular
module fits in Visa V.
UM, social issues, right?
And a lot of that is around race and so yeah,
just that's wonderful work to
be doing that and bringing that
perspective in all of the disciplines.
So shout out to Jake.
The other. Yeah,
I do hello there everyone.
Thank you for that presentation too.
I learned a lot.
I always love learning like.
How things? Started like where?
How did we get where we are?
And so I felt like I learned
so much from that, UM,
one thing that I think I've I've heard
this across different works and from
other like readings and other scholars
that I've read from specifically
talking about like white privilege.
And one thing recently that I just
kind of started reading was how
white privilege is a product of
like white supremacy and how using
white privilege in and of itself.
Is kind of continuing to branch from that
white supremacy and that white power,
and so it always kind of
just makes me think like.
OK, so how do we,
you know, like how do we?
How do we do that then like or
how do we like like not use the
white privilege that we have to to
instill that change if we're not,
we need to continue to,
you know,
branch from that white supremacy
and white power that is existent
and so I don't know if I don't
know if you've heard of that.
I just didn't know if anyone else and
so that was something that recently I
had read in something that recently.
I've kind of just been trying
to like reflect more on.
I don't know if that's a question.
Or not so that makes it more
confusing really important,
because I think in some ways, uhm I,
I don't know exactly what you're reading,
so you know,
correct me if I'm wrong,
but my interpretation of that is
that it becomes a way to kind of
deny that we have white privilege.
So this idea of not using our privilege
to do something to create structural
change is sort of to be complacent in it.
Where we're going to have it,
no matter what,
right?
It's already there.
And pretending like it's not is is just
going to reinforce the presence of it.
And so you know,
I think the goal of you know using
white privilege using the privileges
that we have to be able to change
structures is really the critical issue.
'cause the goal is to get rid of it,
right?
The goal is to create a society
where people don't have privileges
based on being light skinned or
any other attribute and it's and
it's going to require these really.
Big structural changes,
but I mean that's what I would say.
Other other folks might have
ideas on this too.
And if you want to chime in,
please, I'm,
you know,
there's all these really smart
people in this in this room that
have thought about this stuff.
And I'm definitely not the only
you know speaker, so go for it.
Other people have ideas on that.
They appreciate that. That question.
You have another question in
the chat and this one says.
Would you say that the development
of racism was in effect of
the transatlantic slave trade?
Or were they koite coeval with one another?
You know my my reading of of
these things is that it would be.
It would be difficult to separate them right?
Because these historical
processes are so intertwined.
I mean, when you're looking at,
for instance,
eugenicists in the 20th century,
they were very active in
like policymaking and and,
and so these things like these
processes of capitalist development.
These processes of of
colonization and slavery.
We're working in tandem with
the scientific ideologies that
were used to justify them,
and then,
and I think that the other thing
here is that they're all part of
these ongoing historical processes.
I think that's why this idea of the
wages of whiteness is so powerful
when you see people of you know across
racial backgrounds coming together on
the basis of their class interests,
that poses a really powerful threat.
To the existing economic
structure and political structure,
right so all of these things
are kind of developing in tandem
together historically.
If that makes sense.
And again, feel free other
other folks to jump in there.
Yeah totally Stephanie,
yeah you can't. That's exactly it.
You can't sell them if you
recognize them as humans,
and I think that this is the point
about religion as well, right?
No religious. Texan principles and so on.
You know, say, do unto your neighbors.
You do to yourself,
and you see this sentiment across
all of the world's religions,
and I think that's a powerful
thing you have to dehumanize
people to be able to not see them
in that way that you could do
these atrocious things to them.
Yeah.
Nearest things spokeswoman.
Chat about or ideas to I know I I kind
of I do want to come back to this
'cause I think there's a lot of there's
a lot of brains and in the zoom room,
but mechanisms for Accountability II.
Would love to hear you know.
What folks think about that or different
mechanisms that they're already using?
I think these this is a really
big issue in all, right?
We know a lot of these things, but how do we?
How do we hold ourselves accountable?
About UM, the construction
of settler colonialism?
Well, sorry Christian.
Could you unmute and tell
me what you're thinking hey?
Hi, I don't know how well you can hear me.
OK good I guess like uhm.
A lot of analysis that I read I've
read and and here, here you know,
kind of on a regular basis as I'm.
Pursuing my own improved
education in these areas.
Use slightly different but related
constructs to ask these questions,
and I see how you're bringing the lens.
Of capitalism and race, right?
And the construction of whiteness
and I guess I just wonder like.
What relationship?
Do you see between this scholarship
or perhaps difference distinction
between this scholarship and
the scholarship around settler
colonialism and kind of asking?
How to dismantle that?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Thank you so much.
Do you know Marx had this notion
of primitive accumulation,
and that really was this idea that
how capitalists get their original
source of wealth upon which they build?
You know, profit,
right?
And this is where I think colonialism is
so critical to both the development of
capitalism and the the constructions of race,
right?
Because the original source of wealth
in the United States is land and and the
minerals and so on beneath that land.
And I think that's why,
you know when we.
Read about the history of the connections
between colonization and slavery.
Those are such intimately
connected processes, right?
The dispossession of Native
Americans of their land,
and then also the dispossession of enslaved
African peoples of their labor and lives,
right?
And and one of the things that we see,
two with cotton production,
is that that colonialism is
this ongoing process, right?
Cotton was so extremely.
Extractive rate of soil
fertility essentially.
And So what you see is in order
to keep those rates of production
as high as they were,
you see continual expansion and
you see continually pushing
Native Americans off their land,
which is then filled in by
enslaved laborers on plantations
to produce more cotton.
So I,
I think that that's where
these processes and also these
rankings and hierarchies of these
racial classifications serve
to justify colonization.
And expansion on the one hand theft
of land dispossession and enslavement
and forced stolen labor on the other.
Not sorry, can I just interrupt one sack,
then with a final question from Julie Moore,
she's had her hand up for a bit.
Julie Joanna. Ask our final 10.
Did you put your hand down?
I put my hand down. No, I actually.
Interestingly my question was
very similar to Kirsten so,
but I think there was a question
in the chat maybe that.
Would be a good one to wrap up with,
I don't know.
Yeah, you do have a question. UM?
What are some more ways including trying
to educate when we can talk to racist
white people in our personal lives?
So many people just shut down
and won't have the conversation.
Yeah, who this is a really hard one, uhm?
I, I think that lots of people are
going to have really good ideas on this,
and I don't think that I can tell you
what I think about it and I'm really
excited to hear what other people think.
Maybe my ideas will change from that.
I do not talk to my mom anymore or
my step dad about certain issues
because it has not gone anywhere.
And you know, I can bring it up in
all kinds of different ways and it's
going to be a lifelong process.
But I focus more on on other people in
my life and so I don't know it's it's.
I think that's something that I
really struggle with as well.
Like how do you get past that barrier?
One of the things I've learned,
at least about politics,
and I think some of this may be.
Connects to race as well.
Is the like with my family.
You know, on my mom's side were
very different politically and
what I've learned is I tried to
talk about policies I try not to
talk about people and I tried to
use as many examples as I can to
illustrate what's going on,
but I think this is also another area
where we need a lot of structural change.
I mean, we've got so much misinformation.
You know the conversations with people I
think have to be ongoing because they're
getting that misinformation all the time.
But at the same time we have to.
We have to address those
structures that are producing the
misinformation in the first place.
Uhm, so I don't know.
I'd love to hear from other people too.
'cause I struggle with this for
sure and I don't think I have
a a very good answer to it.
So hi Sarah, I'm sorry it's OK fine.
Hi Celina, yeah E.
Yeah, I've actually just been
thinking about these kinds of
problems a lot and I run into this
a lot with the people around me
like I want to open conversation
and have conversations about race,
but sometimes people just
don't want to talk about it.
They see other races as the other
or other political affiliations
as the other kind of like,
you know, dehumanizing people
that they don't agree with.
And So what I try to do is I try to,
you know,
frame it as a social issue and try
to connect with them and be like,
hey, you know I'm a person too and
I'm just trying to talk to you and
I try my very best to, you know,
respect their boundaries and respect
their ideas and try my best,
you know,
say that this is just what I
think and I just want to have a
conversation with you about it.
I'm not here to personally attack you, right?
'cause I think a lot of people
take it very personally.
When you say like hey, you know.
What you're saying is racist,
and they're like, whoa, you know,
they're like very offended,
and so you know I try my best to,
you know, connect with them.
But sometimes people just
don't want to listen, you know.
And so when I try my best and I realized,
hey,
they're not going to listen and they
respond to me very aggressively.
I'm like, you know,
today is just not their day.
You know today is just not their time.
It's not, you know,
they're not ready and you know,
I think you know there's sometimes.
You just can't really do anything for people,
and you know all I can say is eventually,
hopefully with enough kindness from
many people they'll turn around,
but you know,
it's it is a very difficult situation.
It's very hard to you know, to navigate that.
So yeah, that's just how I think of it.
Thanks Celina. Thanks so much for that.
So we're at 104 and I don't want
to keep you or other people, uhm.
There are a few more comments in the chat,
so if people do want to stick around
and actually it kind of depends on
our our Media Group Carlos too.
If you have to be someplace else.
No, I don't want to presume on your time.
And thanks, I can keep the zoom open for
a little. It's just five minutes. Thanks.
And thanks for that Ariel too.
She put in and they put in a really
nice response as well and just
want to make sure folks see that.
And if you want to add to that too,
please. Please feel free.
Yeah, I'll give and it depends
response from the context.
Anybody else have any any questions
or comments you want to make before
we wrap up today and again will
have a recording of this available.
It'll be in the one book guide and
Sarah's hand out. Is there, UM,
natural ask you if we can also put
your PowerPoint in there for sure.
Thank you all so much for for being here.
Appreciate it.
Alright, I think we are wrapping up.
Just keep an eye on this.
Yeah, well Sir, thank you so much.
This was really great really.
Just so informed which is and and.
Lightning, so thank you.
Thank you, thank you all.
Be welcome here.
Yeah, thank you all for coming here.
You did such a great job. On