News, personal stories, and opinion pieces on the political and social life as a Black body. Issue I
Welcome to From A Black Body
Gif by NOWNESS.
In my “Deconstructing Whiteness” writing seminar, we were assigned to read a piece published in The New York Times Magazine about white debt and social advantages of the whiteness system. The writer, Eula Biss, a white woman, ends her piece with, “[w]hen we buy into whiteness, we entertain the delusion that we’re business partners with power, not its minions. And we forget our debt to ourselves.” Here, white privilege is seen as something that can be purchased, white people are not the creators, but the enforcers of white privilege, and there is a sense of pity in the final sentence, “…we forget our debt to ourselves.” I as a Black woman in America and I as a scholar of race, institutional systems, and justice and equality, find these statements to be a careless cop-out. Of course, I can’t understand what she really means because I am not a white woman with white privilege in America, but as a Black woman with little to no privilege in America, these comments are insensitive.
Whiteness is inherent, it’s not something you can “buy into,” youare brought into it. I can not buy my Blackness, it is always here, the same way your whiteness and your white privilege is always there; Your invisible knapsack of opportunity. If white privilege was being sold I would have made my purchase a long time ago so I could shop without being asked by every employee if “I need help” (code word for: “is this black girl stealing?”) or not hearing my coworkers say I was the “diversity hire.” This complex entity of institutionalized systems rooted in the foundation of white American history can not be put on sale, removed, or returned. You’re born with it and you die with it. By making claims that whiteness can be purchased, it further enforces the system that white people have created and are still updating and strengthening. White people are business partners with their “founding father” ancestors who set in stone that they get privileges because they are white (bonus points for being male, rich, and heterosexual) and white people, now, uphold and modernize the rules to continue the systematic privilege they get and oppression of there minority groups. White people are not mindless “minions” in this game of monopoly, they are the CFOs making the financial plans to ensure their privilege. This is their “debt.” That they are born into a wealth of opportunities just for the color of their skin and they uphold the institutions giving them these privileges. How I pity and their debt. What a shame.
Of course, (and a statement we hear a little too often) not all white people. But as a white woman, scholar, and writer, her words hold immense power that contribute to upholding the systems of whiteness. In my Facts and Alternative Facts class, we discussed the first day the power of words and what ideas they can preserve and perpetuate. This statement passes off whiteness as something that can be paid for and white privilege as a burden; Discounting the power of white people and their privilege.
From this Black body, her take on whiteness and white privilege was incorrect and insensitive. If I were able to buy into this privilege if it means equality, justice, and visibility, I would have bought into it a long time ago, but that is not the truth. The moment a white person is born they are given their right and visibility as human along with perks, minorities have to gain their identity as human and aren’t even offered extra perks. This Black body does not have the opportunity to buy into political, social, and economic equality. This Black body didn’t have a grandfather who created systematic oppression to ensure I received those benefits. This Black body does not feel pity for a white person’s white privilege.
This Black body presents to you, From A Black Body, where we will discuss the political, the social, the artistic, the intersectional, and the voices of Black bodies across America. Every Sunday, we will discuss a new topic relating to our Black bodies through current events, personal anecdotes, think pieces and more.
I’m very excited for this journey.
“As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become ‘other,’ the outsider whose experience and tradition is too ‘alien’ to comprehend.” - Audre Lorde
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