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The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Allman. I'm Cheryl Strayed.
This is Dear Sugar.
Oh, dear, son, won't you please Share some little sweet days with me I check my mailbox every day Oh, and the sugar you've seen my way Hi, Steve.
Hi, Cheryl. So we're going to do an episode today talking about privilege, which I think is something that's always been important.
But I think a lot of people, if I'm speaking for a lot of the white people I know, are waking up to the fact that essentially what's happened in our nation requires us to have a deeper and more intentional sense of consciousness about how we make real change in the world.
Not just lip service to diversity and inclusion, but how we actually think about the ways that we have been ourselves complicit in racism, with sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and classism, and all of the ways in which power is invisible in the form of privilege.
Right. No, that's exactly it.
And the way that privilege operates is if you're living in the midst of it, it can be invisible to you and usually is.
And for lots of groups within the United States and all over the world who are marginalized, they are well aware of the power arrangement that we call privilege.
They are the victim of it on a daily basis.
What we want to to talk about with these letters in this week is how to make privilege visible to all of us and what to do once we see it.
And how to talk about it.
Yeah. So the first time that I clearly understood what privilege was.
Yeah. I was 19 years old.
I was a sophomore at the University of Minnesota.
I ended up being a women's studies English major.
And I took this class with as professor Dr. Jacqueline Zeta, and she passed around this list that was made by Peggy McIntosh.
She was cataloging privileges bestowed on those who are white.
And for the first time in this very accessible list, I could see all of these things that had never occurred to me.
Item five on the list, for example, I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will will not be followed or harassed by store detectives.
Number 15, I do not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
Number 32, my culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
And this was an awakening for me.
Right. You know, what I wished for at that 19, 20 -year -old self was, okay, I'll learn this and then I'll be a good person.
I do have good intentions.
I do believe in the values of equality and kindness and all that stuff.
But what I've learned is white supremacy is so deeply embedded in, you know, who we are as a nation, who we are as a planet, that this has been like any other thing in my life, that I have to keep engaging.
I have to keep learning and growing.
Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt has this amazing speech, the new nationalism speech back in 1910, and he said basically it's the job of government to destroy privilege.
What I think he was really saying was to destroy imbalances of power because people apply a modifier to privilege, white privilege, male privilege, whatever it is.
But really, we're talking about power and how power is recognized within the self and how it's executed in the world.
And those two are linked.
And so before we launch into the letters, I want to quote Bell Hooks from her book, Homegrown Engaged Cultural Criticism, so that listeners will understand we're not talking about privilege as an unconditionally bad thing.
We're talking about it as a form of power that has to be recognized and wielded responsibly.
She writes, privilege is not in and of itself bad.
What matters is what we do with privilege.
I want to live in a world where all women have access to education and all women can earn PhDs if they so desire.
Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
This, I think, is what Teddy Roosevelt was saying when he said we have to, a mature democracy should be destroying privilege.
What he meant is should be destroying power that certain people hold arbitrarily over others.
That's weaponized essentially, right?
That's right. So today on this episode, we're going to have a really interesting guest who talks to people about their white privilege.
We're also going to discuss two letters.
One is about gender privilege and one is about racial privilege.
I'll read the first letter.
Please. Dear Sugars, my boyfriend and I I have been together for nearly five years.
We planned to get married a year ago but canceled a month in advance.
He wasn't happy in his own life.
We weren't happy in our relationship and we weren't able to communicate about those issues.
We spent six months apart until he asked me to give it a second chance.
It's now been six months since our reconciliation and we're talking again about getting married.
We've been going to couples counseling, which he researched, booked, and paid for, and he has also been going to individual therapy.
Both are helping, and in general, we're very happy together and optimistic about our future.
But there's one issue we can't bridge, which came up in our arguments last year as well.
He wants me to change my last name to his, so any future kids would have his name.
My preference is that we have clear equality in our naming decisions.
Either we both change our names to make a new family name.
Our names are so similar this could be done by each of us changing a single letter or we keep our current names and split the last names of future children one with his name one with mine he hates both these suggestions as well as other compromises i've raised he's reluctantly willing to let me keep my own name but unwilling to have any children that don't share his last name he claims it's easier when everyone has the same name and that it's difficult for fathers to travel with kids kids of a different last name.
He says my suggestions would inconvenience two people instead of one.
Or he gives emotional reasons that seem irrational to me, such as I'm afraid of a world in which my wife doesn't share my last name, and I'm afraid they wouldn't feel like my kids.
He says he's not making decisions based on gender, but rather on what's easiest. But societal expectations and tradition are deeply rooted in patriarchal gender roles that disempower women, and I'm bewildered that he can't admit this.
I understand that my preferences aren't the default, and that it would be a lot easier to do things the traditional way, but I don't think that the ease of pleasing society is worth sacrificing my equal status in this relationship.
He thinks I'm making a bigger deal of this than I otherwise would because I'm railing against the current political climate, that I only care about the principle of the issue.
There are real sacrifices involved in changing one's name, especially now that we're in our mid -30s and mid -career.
But I also want to say, so what if I'm only doing this for the principal?
The principal is important.
If I'm using this issue to rail for equal personhood, I want my best and closest person to rail with me to support my equality.
Despite our very expensive therapist in our very liberal city, we remain deadlocked.
My partner's parents feel very strongly that a wife and children should have the husband's last name, and all of our liberal friends have stuck with traditional names as well.
I feel alone, as if there's really no one else who's advocating for me.
Please help us. Signed, A -Rose by any other name.
Rose, I'm 100 % on your side.
So first of all, I just, let's just dispatch with a couple of things.
One is that your partner's parents have no vote in this.
Doesn't matter what they think about what you and your children's name should be.
And frankly, your fiancé boyfriend doesn't either.
You're exactly right that you get to do what you want with your life.
Our names are an essential part of who we are.
And the tradition of changing names, a woman changing a name when she marries a man, is all about patriarchy.
It's all about losing one's identity and it being subsumed into the identity of the man to whom you are married and his family.
And I think that it's really important that you do what you want to do here.
You are not alone. Many, many, many women do not change their names when they get married.
That it is still considered unusual in certain circles is shocking to me, but that's absolutely falling away.
Furthermore, when it comes to your boyfriend's claim that he's reluctantly willing to let you keep your name?
I mean, first of all, just reverse that sentence.
Are you willing to let your boyfriend keep his name after he marries you?
I also think it's really important that you look more deeply at your boyfriend's behavior in response to your preferences and wishes.
Because that to me is the deeper concern.
The fact that that he is willing to try to bully you essentially into doing something that you don't want to do that is absolutely so essential to who you are.
He's actually trying to force you to change your name to please him while knowing that you have all kinds of valid and passionate and deeply held reasons not to make that name change.
I mean, one of the first things I think about when I think of what a good partner does does, is a good partner would never make his or her partner do something that he or she didn't want to do.
And so what I hope you'll do, Rose, is really think about what is the meaning of this, not just, you know, the little logistics of your name, which isn't so little, but what is the meaning of this when it comes to how much this man genuinely cares for your well -being, how much he genuinely cares for supporting you and the things that are important to you.
Yeah, and how much he's committed to an equal status relationship, I'll say a couple of things in response.
Aaron took my name and I did not ask her to.
It wasn't an issue that we discussed deeply, but it was an assumption that both of us consented to.
And it was an assumption that was predicated on male privilege in some ways.
I think it had to do with her ambivalent feelings about her own family of origin and their name, and maybe being a bit happier to shed that.
But regardless, it was something that I'm, in the context of this letter, Rose, I'm examining how that math was done and how privilege was invisible to me as that decision was made.
I do think it matters that his family is a family that assumes that a woman and children will take the father's name, I think it matters because that's, you're partly fighting against them as well.
And you have to understand that your husband is a product of a household where that patriarchal assumption was never in question.
If you want to know how he expects you to function in the role of partner and wife, look at his family of origin, because that's the model that he was looking at growing up.
This is the thing about privilege.
Because people of privilege have never experienced certain certain forms of inequality.
They are completely blind to it.
And when you bring it up, it causes fear.
And now I want to return you to the way in which he sets out his rationale for forcing you and your kids in particular to take his name.
I'm afraid of a world in which my wife doesn't share my last name.
I'm afraid they wouldn't feel like my kids.
Your husband's in fear.
Of losing his power.
Losing his power, losing his privilege that's been made aware to to him.
And I say that not to say he's a scaredy cat, or, you know, he's the bad actor here.
I'm saying it because power, patriarchy, privilege is built on fear.
That is the entire foundation of it.
If the only way that you can understand privilege and power is that it gives you the right not to consider other people's humanity, well, then you should be terrified when the power is no longer yours.
That doesn't mean you can't work it out.
It's a really good sign that your boyfriend when things were going south was the one who initiated finding therapy.
This is not a guy, Cheryl, who registers to me as completely out to lunch. Well, and this is, I think this is actually a great example that intentions are not the same thing as actions.
And so, yeah, this guy who's going to therapy and saying he wants to make your relationship better, that's a good intention.
But his actions are that he doesn't actually respect you as an equal in the most baseline way.
He refuses to even recognize what, as you point out, is an obvious claim.
His desire for you and the kids to have your last name is absolutely rooted in patriarchal gender roles that disempower women.
And he's refusing to see his privilege here.
I would have a very different feeling about your conundrum, Rose, if you had written a letter that said, when we talked about the name thing, my boyfriend said, I know this is embedded in gender roles that are disempowering to women, but my preference is that our kids have our last name and that you do too, that he's at least would be engaged with interrogating that a bit.
Right. And he's not doing that.
He's gaslighting you.
I mean, that's a strong term, I think.
But I think that this is what's happening.
He's he's saying to you things like, well, I'll let you keep your name.
He's not letting you keep anything.
Okay. Your name is your name.
It can only be taken from you if you surrender it.
He has no power over you in this regard. And so what else does this lead to?
It begins with the name.
Then it seeps into decisions around money.
It seeps into decisions around parenting.
What you're getting here is right at the gate, he's informing you what kind of partnership he expects.
And it just doesn't matchup.
I really, you know, the strongest terms available to me want to say to you, this might be a deal killer if he cannot be more open -minded and vulnerable about examining his privilege and really laying down his arms when it comes to using his privilege against you.
Yeah. Well, I think one thing, Cheryl, as you were talking, I was thinking, how is Rose going to have this discussion?
And I think there are two parts of it that that are crucial.
The first is to be unstinting and clear eyed in the manner that Cheryl has set out, that this is about power and this is about the family of origin that he grew up in and the culture around it and how you no longer consent to the rules that they set down, which disempower you.
And it's important for this kind of personal relationship that you find space within that discussion to point out to him that his language is a language of fear.
I'm afraid of this.
I'm afraid of that.
Okay, what's the worst that could happen if you're moving through the world with kids who have unhyphenated name?
What exactly are you imagining is going to happen?
They're going to be seized from you, not to mock him, but merely to give him the space to go further down that path and figure out whether those fears are rational fears that are grounded in reality or fears that ultimately were down to the fear of losing power or having to share power equally with his partner.
A lot of my fear, Rose, is rooted in the fact that I do think that you've had, sounds like you guys have gotten pretty far in this conversation.
You had it the first time you were going to get married.
You're having it again, and he's not able to hear you.
And as I read your letter, I remembered many years ago, before I married my husband, Brian, we got married in 1999.
So it's been some time.
But in our first discussions about getting married, we talked about the name thing.
And I remember distinctly having this lump in my throat when we first began talking about it.
I said to Brian, you know, well, what are your thoughts and your preferences?
And he said, well, I guess I've always just thought that it would be cool that we're all Lindstroms. And, you know, immediately I was like, well, that's not going to happen.
You know, there's absolutely.
And of course, he knew that.
But even the fact that he said that to me, I always thought it made me feel sad because it made me think, you know, he hadn't examined his male privilege.
You know, he had reason to always think we would all have his last name, of course, right?
This is the traditional way, as you say, Rose.
But then I pushed further.
What about the kids?
We'd always talked about having two children.
I'm in your situation exactly, Rose.
One with his name, one with yours.
This is the deal that I struck with my husband.
And it took a conversation or two.
But what happened when I pushed him on his privilege is he said, you're right.
Right. It makes me a little uncomfortable that our two kids will have different last names.
But I can't argue your point, which is it's not fair.
It's sexist. Why should both of them have my last name?
The bond we will have with our kids is not about the last name we have. So in my bout of the patriarchy, when I became pregnant with our first child, I thought, well, you know, I won't ask for too much. We'll give that first one the Lindstrom name, less the whole universe, you know, and here again, you know, I had the mother -in -law who would have been extremely upset.
Then I became pregnant with a second one.
And what, what shifted in me was that before I had the kids, they were a concept.
Then I had my son and he was a person and his last name was Lindstrom.
And then I was pregnant with my daughter.
And I could see that my, my kids would be siblings with each other.
They'd be moving through school together.
And there would be this way in which it would be a happier thing for them to both have the same last name.
And Brian said to me, it's completely up to you.
And I made the decision to give this second child, my daughter, her father's last name.
And that felt like a kind of turning that privilege on its head, really, that I got to make the choice.
And it was about out something that wasn't about the patriarchy.
Right. And every listener who did take his or her partner's name in marriage, and, you know, men do this too, gay couples who get married often will choose one of their names.
Right. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
What's wrong with the map that you're following right now, Rose, and this is why you're upset about it and I'm upset about it, is you're following a map that is designed to disempower women.
Right. As you note.
And you say, Rose, that this is an issue you can't bridge.
And I think that's a wonderful kind of visual to keep in your mind when you think about what deeper meaning this has in your relationship.
Do you want to be married to somebody who walks halfway across that bridge to meet you in the middle?
Or do you want somebody who's always going to stand on the far shore saying, come here?
Yeah. So Cheryl, we are going to broaden the discussion and we're We're going to talk with Katrice Jackson, who's going to join us from Omaha, Nebraska.
Katrice is the CEO of Katriceology Enterprises.
As a voice for racial justice, she created She Talks, We Talk, Race Talks for Women and We Talks for Women of Color.
She's one of the most fierce voices on the subject of privilege.
And we're really thrilled to talk with her.
We'll do that right after a break.
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Hello? Hi, Catrice.
This is Cheryl Strayed.
Well, hi, Cheryl. How are you?
I'm great. Thank you so much for joining us today on Deer Sugar.
Steve Almond is also with me.
Hi, Catrice. Hi, Steve.
Well, before you got on the phone, Steve and I have been talking about how to talk about privilege and how to challenge our own privilege.
And we really wanted to talk to you because we know you do that in your work.
I first learned about you on social media.
I can't remember if it was Facebook or something like that.
One of my friends posted a link to your She Talks, We Talk, Race Talks for Women.
And I went online to your page and watched your videos.
And I was really challenged and moved about the ways that you've talked about how we can talk about privilege and think about privilege.
And I'm just wondering if you can tell our listeners a bit about your workshops.
Absolutely. So, I decided to create an opportunity where women in particular could come together and talk about issues of racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and white feminism, and decided to create this space so that we can begin to have these conversations.
conversations so these are spaces that I call brave spaces where women come together to talk about these issues in a way that allows black and brown women to be heard and not silenced it allows the opportunity for white women to hear these perspectives because what I know for sure Sure, is that oftentimes black and brown voices are silenced.
They're marginalized and they're not heard. And so this gives space to this, these workshops that I do.
Yeah, we actually have a clip of that.
Let's listen. So I want to share a few of these ways in which white women show up in their engagement that I call interpersonal violence or white woman violence.
violence and so you know check this out for yourself how many of these are you doing are you showing up with the women of color in your life this way refusing to believe the validity of people of color's lived racial experiences exhausting yourself trying to prove that you are a different special kind of good white person expecting people of color to teach you or to educate you about racism and then becoming angry or defensive when they refuse to provide you with exhausting emotional labor.
You know, they're quite challenging based on what I have heard from past participants is that they really are changed, you know, at a cellular level, moved in a way that they've never been moved before and really get the opportunity to peel back the layers and look at their their own racism, their own biases, their own ways that they are consciously and unconsciously oppressing Black and brown women in particular.
Right. Why do you think I mean, I think this is really we see this white people, especially white people who think of themselves as nice liberals with good intentions, are so terrified of thinking themselves racist or being called out for racism.
And I'll admit as a white, I mean, it scares me too.
I mean, this is why I wanted, frankly, to do this, this show because we are always talking about being brave in our emotional lives and this is how transformation is made.
Why do you think it's so terrifying for people to see their racial privilege and confront it?
You know, that's a good question.
And I hear that often.
And, you know, I just have to be real honest about that.
Part of me understands where that comes from.
And then there's another part of me that is insulted by that.
There's a part of me that thinks that's quite pathetic in comparison to black and brown people who actually live through and survive racism, that the worst thing that white people think can happen to them is to be called a racist or to have a discussion And I think part of the reason why there's so much fear around white folks, you know, talking about racism or owning their racism is because of this perception, this definition that they have about what racism actually is.
And so they see that racism is these terrible white people who are burning crosses, they're alt -right, they're neo -Nazis, they're these horrible people doing these horrible things.
And that is true. That would be a definition of racist people and racism.
But what I have found and what I focus on in my work is really helping white people dismantle and uproot what I call their everyday racism.
And I think once they can begin to see a new definition and really understand what this everyday racism looks like, then it can take a little bit of the fear away from talking about it.
Right. It's as if there's I sense this a lot, especially in our political climate, that there is a group of people who essentially say, well, what matters most in the world, and they say it in different ways all across the spectrum, is white people's feelings rather than brown people's actual experiences.
Because there's always this recoil that's like, but this is making me feel bad.
You're condescending to me as if that's really what's at issue when we have, you know, families being ripped apart at the border or systematic forms of racism in which people are literally moving through the world in a state of fear and terror that they're going to be whatever it is, pulled over, taken into custody or worse.
Yes. And I think that's what you just said there speaks to that piece of me that says it's insulting.
You know, it's insulting as a black woman raising a black son, my only child who's 26 years old and still having to have discussions with him about what to do if the police stop you, how to move around in the world.
And now I'll be having those same discussions with my four year old grandson because it starts early for our children.
And we do not get the luxury to not have these conversations with our kids around racism.
We must. It's part of their survival toolkit.
And in my book, Antagonist Advocates and Allies, I open up chapter one with my first memory of realizing that I was different, realizing that I was black.
and I share a story about how we were sitting in circle time and our teacher was reading a story as she did every day and the most annoying little white boy in the class who annoyed all the girls didn't matter if they were black white or brown happened to sit next to me that day during story time you know this is the 70s and so I had the knee -high socks on and the short skirt and I I remember sitting with my legs crossed in circle time and I can vividly see my brown legs showing between the top of the knee socks and where the hem of my skirt went.
And just randomly out of the blue, he took his hand, he spit on his hand and he rubbed my leg.
And I looked at him like, what the hell are you doing?
And he did it again.
And I pushed his hand away.
And before before I could even respond, he raised his hand and he asked the teacher, Mrs. So -and -so, why is Catrice dirty?
And I felt paralyzed in that moment.
The room paused. The look on her face was fright.
All the kids turned around and looked at me.
And when they turned around and looked at me, I wasn't only horrified and embarrassed and ashamed, but I I realized that I was the only Black kid in the class.
And so I went home and I cried and I talked to my mom and she, of course, affirmed me and assured me, but my eyes were never closed again.
And I've been seen since then.
And I would say that I've had an eye for justice and an eye for racism for as long as I can remember.
But it was 2012, the murder of Trayvon Martin when it became very personal for me because my only child, a son, a Black male, was 18 at the time and he loved to wear hoodies too.
And when Trayvon Martin was murdered, it hit me at a cellular gut level and I said, I have to do something in the world.
And I had been feeling a calling to do this work, but I kept running from it because it's hard. It's challenging.
It's difficult. And when black and brown people speak out about racism, we can become targets.
Our families can become targets.
And it took me about four years to finally stop running from this call that just kept chasing me saying, use your voice, use your voice, do this work.
And I finally walked away from my branding and marketing work that I was doing on a whim, no vision, and just said, yes, I'm going to be obedient and I'm going to do this.
And I wrote my first book.
Wow. And then you started the workshop soon after.
Yeah. I think it was on one of your videos that I found on your website is you say that we need to be intentional about being an ally.
White people need to be intentional.
And I love that word because I do think a lot of white people hide their racism behind what they think are their good intentions that are actually not intentional at all.
They're kind of like, like, well, I didn't mean that.
So therefore, it can't be racist. And I think what you do is say, no, let's unpack this, right, and look at, in a practical way, what it means to be an ally, or as I think you use this word, an accomplice, you know, laying down, essentially, the kind of privilege that does manifest itself in ways that are actually violent.
Yes. And I'm so glad, Cheryl, that you mentioned the word violent.
You know, sometimes I get some pushback from white folks when I use the term violent.
And specifically, what I use when I educate white women in particular, is that I help them discover and identify what I call weapons of whiteness.
And I think by being able to name these weapons and give them a definition and help white folks understand what these weapons look like in real life, then they can be intentional.
And they can be strategic and mindful about how they then are going to engage with Black and Brown people in a way that is less oppressive, less harmful, and less violent.
And I believe that what's going to, you know, create the change that we want to see, and that's going to be dramatic change, is that white people have to commit to being anti -racist. Here's how Bell Hooks talks about this in her book, Talking Back, Thinking Feminist, thinking black, and this I think speaks to what both of you guys are just talking about, even in the face of powerful structures of domination, it remains possible for each of us, especially those of us who are members of oppressed and or exploited groups, as well as those radical visionaries who may have race, class, and sex privilege
to define and determine alternative standards, to decide on the nature and extent of compromise.
I think there's this sense somehow that, in fact, everybody who's interested in destroying imbalances of power, privilege, has that responsibility, not just the oppressed and or exploited group, but people who enjoy race, class, and sex privilege.
They also, we also have to be part of actively defining and determining alternative standards.
Absolutely. And, you know, when we talk about privilege, we all on some level have some form of privilege over another group of people.
And there is work for all of us to be doing, you know, even within my own Black community.
For example, you know, even though I am a Black woman, I am a lighter skinned Black woman.
And I very much know that my darker sisters face a different kind of oppression than I face.
And so So it's, you know, it's my responsibility to also, you know, be a voice for them to hear their voice, to amplify their voices.
You know, there's definitely work for all of us to do to honestly examine our place in the world, our privilege, our power, and to use that in a way to eradicate those systems so that we all can have the equality and the freedom that I believe that we want and deserve.
Right. It's significant that you were talking, Catrice, about talking to your son and now to your grandson.
It called to mind Ta -Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me, where he essentially says amongst families of color, you always have to talk about how to deal with police or other figures of authority.
And I want to read actually the letter that we want to talk with you about, because it's also about a parent struggling with how to talk to her children.
Okay, sounds good. All right.
Dear Sugars, This week we were riding in the car and our two sons, six and nine, brought up a conversation about the differences between women and men.
They suggested that women's and men's brains are different and so men and women are better at different things.
So far, sort of true.
But then they suggested that men are better at math and science.
My husband jumped in and told them that there are much greater differences between individuals' brains than between the brains of groups of people, we had an interesting discussion, one emphasizing that a person's gender doesn't determine what they're capable of.
I brought up race as an analogy.
The color of a person's skin makes no difference in terms of the capacity of their brain and heart.
A Black woman can be a rocket scientist if she works hard to learn what she needs to know and has the mental capacity to do so.
And a white man may do the same or may be incapable for various reasons none of which have anything to do with his race or gender.
As we were talking, I had a sudden awareness that my six and nine -year -old may have a sense of relief whenever we talk about issues of race and gender.
When we talk about how women couldn't vote, they think, well, at least I could have voted.
When we read about black children who were slaves, they think, if I lived during that era, I would have been free.
So I asked them, Do you feel glad to know if you had lived during those times you would have been okay?
They both replied quickly, Yes.
It occurred to me that, while this is a natural feeling to have, it's also a very privileged place from which to live.
They do not feel less than anyone because of the color of their skin or because they are boys.
That is white male privilege for a six and a nine -year -old, even in a progressive liberal community in a progressive liberal family.
White children everywhere have a collective sense of relief that they never would have had to suffer such indignities and injustice.
This privilege must play a large role in maintaining racism, and so that brings me to my question.
How can I help my sons see their privilege?
More importantly, what can they do about it?
Do we attempt to erase it, or are there ways to confront front this privilege and use it for good?
How can I help them to know what it is to live a life that does not offer this sense of safety?
And how can I encourage them to continue to use their hearts to promote racial justice for all?
Signed, a mother of white privileged children.
Any thoughts about that, Catrice?
That's a big question.
I think you have lots of thoughts.
I think, yeah, we laugh.
But, and you know, and I think that mother of white privileged children, And, you know, her questions are her own, but I think many people are asking these questions.
And I'm curious what your take on this letter is.
Well, what I would first say is that the mother clearly has some blind spots of her own.
I look at, in particular, that they share regularly that they're glad that things are not the way that they used to be.
And, you know, what I would say to that is, in a lot of ways, things are the way they used to be.
The only difference is how racism shows up today.
It's less overt, yet, you know, racism still exists in ways that most white people are oblivious to.
And part of that oblivion is because they don't have to know what racism is.
They don't have to know what it's like to experience racism.
And what I find interesting is that there is this collective mythical memory about the history of racism and oppression of black and brown people, as if those tragedies happened like way back long time ago, when it's very clear to me as a black woman in America that in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed.
And here we are in 2018, and that's only been 54 years.
You know, essentially one generation of Black people are considered equal and free.
That's me. That's my generation.
And so I can still reach back and touch my mother, who went through the Civil Rights era.
And, you know, my grandmother passed away in 2010, but when she was alive, I could still reach and touch that generation, where she tells me stories about how she walked alongside hand in hand with her mother, my great -grandmother, who was a slave. And so, you know, I guess those are two things that I would want to point out, is that there's almost this different reality that white people walk in, in comparison to Black and brown people.
people, these things are not that long ago.
And in fact, they've actually morphed into something different today.
Right. I want to say a few things, but I want to say them as gently as I can.
I understand why you sign this, you know, the mother of white privileged children, but in a way it kind of pushes off the privilege onto the kids.
And in fact, and I say this as a person who is, you know, moving through my own extreme bubble of privilege is with us all the the time.
We didn't ask for it.
We were born into it.
And so that's maybe one thing to realize is it's not just that your kids are in a state of privilege.
It's that you and your husband and even your community, it sounds like.
It's also important to think about the kind of parenting culture that we live in now.
I don't even like saying parenting, just how kids are raised today.
We are trying too often, I think, to protect our kids from what we perceive as violent or upsetting.
And so there are two cultures that are coming up against one another, right?
We're trying to protect our kids, I think over -protect our kids, from realizing that the world is still a violent place, violent in thought and violent in action, and that that violence is codified into our systems. It is possible to bring kids to understand that.
Rather than asking your kids, are you glad you lived during these times because you would have been okay?
It might be useful to say, well, what if you were a person of color?
What if you were a girl and or an African -American living during slavery?
What would that have been like?
It's not a mystery.
We do have narratives and stories that tell the stories of those lives and to gently let them know and imagine their way into lives that weren't OK.
Yes. And one of the things that I teach in my workshops is that the number one weapon of whiteness that white people will use over and over and over again is white centering.
Because they are white, because they were born into this white skin and their lens is white.
And that struck me as she went to talk about, you know, the situation with her children, that, you know, the whole thing is centered around their whiteness, which did not take into consideration what happens to Black and brown children on a daily basis.
Yeah. I was thinking as I was reading this letter and then sort of turning it over in my mind, I have three kids, Catrice.
They're 11, 9, and 5.
And I was driving them to the hospital.
My wife was having a procedure.
And I was listening to the radio and a story came on the radio about how they're forcibly separating children from their parents or parent at the border of this country.
And that made me upset and angry.
And my kids, I felt, were being bratty.
And I, you know, I snapped at them and said, you know, do you understand how fortunate you are, how lucky you are?
This is what's happening to kids along our border.
There are families living with this kind of terror, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.
I don't think it was a very good job of parenting, but it was a moment where I was trying to sort of thrust them into a recognition of the tremendous privilege that they live with, which, again, I don't think was very effective.
but what I think is effective, especially with kids, isn't words, it's your actions.
So now in light of being upset about that circumstance, Aaron went to a march and she said to the kids, this is what I'm doing.
This is where I'm going.
I'm going to a march to raise my voice against these families that are being torn apart.
I really feel like kids are tracking how we behave in the world and what our actions are.
And our words are really lectures to them, or at least I haven't found a way to somehow with my words, bring them into the experience of another person.
It's much more that we're trying to enact our values in the world so that they're modeling that.
Yes. Well, I'd like to say a couple of things about that.
Isn't it a luxury? Isn't it a privilege to be able to think about and carefully craft and be very mindful about how you're going to talk to your kids about what other Black and brown people are experiencing?
We don't get that luxury.
And so oftentimes how we may present that information to our children comes with a strong voice, comes with some fear, comes with some pain and anguish because it's so essential and necessary that our kids understand that they need to learn these skills and tools to survive white supremacy, to come home again after football practice, to make it home after the police stop our kids in the car.
And so our kids are exposed to this range of emotion that allows them to see the pain and the frustration and the anger and the fear that is really true and genuine.
And I think that it is a disservice that white parents take the time to be perfect and to craft these scripted conversations because it doesn't allow for that raw emotion, that true feeling, those gut responses.
responses. And so how do I see that manifested in my workshops?
I see that manifested by white women who show up in these workshops who are unable to literally have a conversation, who are unable to say the word racist, who cry at the drop of a dime when they are asked just very honest, straightforward questions.
And so these years and years of this coddling, this protecting their their comfort creates these adult, fragile people who can't have a conversation about racism.
And then when we show up as adults who've heard a different kind of language and a different tone of voice, and we speak our truth about our racial experiences, then we're aggressive, we're threatening, we're intimidating.
And so I think it's a disservice to white children, for white parents to focus on saying the right thing.
You know, our kids are smarter.
Yep. And more resilient than we give them credit for.
And there's a quote that I love by James Baldwin where he says, children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them.
And so I think this mother who wrote this letter needs to focus more on how is she being in the world?
Right. How is she showing up when she's around black and brown people?
Is she clutching her purse when she comes into the presence of a black man?
Is she locking her doors when she goes into certain neighborhoods?
So, you know, this mother really needs to step up and do her own work to figure out what her weapons of whiteness are.
so that she can lay them down and not draw them against Black and brown people in the presence of her children.
Yeah, I think there's also a powerful set of possibilities in simply bringing to consciousness the white supremacy of the world in very particular ways.
What books do your kids read?
What toys do they play with?
What TV shows and movies do they watch?
And what are they hearing in their classrooms?
And the same is true for you as a, you know, it wouldn't be the worst idea for you to read some bell hooks, some James Baldwin, Ta -Nehisi Coates book, Between the World and Me.
There are so many books that are out there that will help you get a better purchase on the ways in which you're moving through a world of privilege and need to be coming to consciousness about it pretty much every moment of the day.
Yeah. So one of the things that I use to help white people really understand their privilege, I talk about the fishbowl and I talk about how when white folks are born, that they are the only ones who are born into the fishbowl.
They are dropped into it at birth.
And there are three elements in that water.
And those three elements are white supremacy, anti -Blackness and anesthesia.
And year after year after year, they absorb these toxic fluids and it becomes a way of life.
And when you ask them what is water, they don't know.
When you ask them to describe water, a .k .a.
white supremacy, they struggle.
When you ask them to talk about racism and what that looks like and what is white privilege, they oftentimes can't put words to it because it's in the very fiber of who they are.
It's part of their existence.
And so my work in particular is to help white women see the fishbowl and to be brave enough and human enough to climb up out of that water, to get to the edge of that fishbowl and to take the leap onto dry land.
And when they take the leap onto dry land, we know what's going to happen.
They're going to gasp for air.
It's going to be uncomfortable.
They will be saying no more, no more to this toxic way of being.
But when they stay on the journey, when they connect with other white people who are doing the work, when they read the books, watch the movies, do the education, have the difficult conversations, they begin to grow legs.
They begin to learn how to breathe outside of that fishbowl.
They become a new human being who expresses more empathy and they begin to be people who are anti -racist, who cause less harm and who can now align with everybody else who's outside of the visual.
Right. That's beautiful, Katrice.
That's so powerful and and vivid.
Well, Catrice, I have such respect and admiration for you and gratitude.
And I just want to thank you so, so much for taking time out of your busy life to talk to us about talking about privilege.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me on.
Oh, also, you have a website.
Could you tell us what your website is?
Yes. It's shetalkswetalk .com.
Okay. shetalkswetalk .com.
Listeners, please go check it out.
There are really enlightening videos on there, also information about Catrice's books, her workshops, her online workshop, a lot of information there.
I hope you'll check that out.
And we will have links to both the website and to your books on our website.
All right, thank you for that.
I appreciate it. Of course, thanks, Catrice.
Bye -bye. Bye. Bye -bye.
© transcript Emily Beynon
