Minority Celebrations

Happy Women's History Month!

International Women's Day was last week, but all of March is intended as a celebration of women around the world. I, personally, took a 90 minute mini-class on American Women in Rock and Roll, as a part of a special day where my school held different workshops on different topics.

Anyhow, this is sort of a response to the annual dialogue that comes up around Black History Month (which was February), and generally any period of time set aside for minority celebrations. For example, see this 55 second clip of Morgan Freeman being interviewed by Mike Wallace.

I have seen the transcript of this interview all over tumblr; it is the first post on the blog Stuff White People Reblog. The post has 120,000+ notes.

As I did with my "United States on LGBT People Around the World" post, I'd like to add something to the conversation and go against the flow a little. With this commentary, take a grain of salt– I'm white, Morgen Freeman is black. However, it should also be noted that he is incredibly rich and famous, and so both of us speak from points of privilege.

First off, I can't think of (m)any problems that were ever solved by not talking about them. Women and black people didn't get their rights by patiently waiting for them.

Second of all, as alluded in my disclaimer, racism probably looks really good and solved from a Morgan Freeman standpoint. I found his salary for only one movie, and it was $5 million– in 1997 dollars. But the point being that the average Black American is definitely behind whites. A 2004 U.S. Census Bureau study called "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States" said that in 2004, African-Americans earned about $16,000 less in annual income than White Americans (11) and 14% more of the black population was below poverty than the white population (17). In addition,  the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February 2012 for Black Americans was nearly double what it was for White Americans.

Clearly, economic inequality exists, whether or not Morgan Freeman wants to talk about it. Instead of pretending like it doesn't exist, we should try to figure out how to best lift African-Americans out of poverty and get jobs. Just because we have a mixed race president in the White House doesn't mean that we are a post-racial country.

One final point that I should make was a comparison that my English teacher brought up in our AP Literature class. American culture has been traditionally viewed as a "melting pot," with immigrants assimilating into the dominant culture. However, a more recent view has been that of a salad bowl. Different ingredients can maintain their individual tastes and still come together to make a dish with variety. Of course, the lettuce is still a part of the salad. But it's still lettuce.

African-American history (and women's history, this month) is a vital part of American history. But considering that blacks are still an oppressed minority group, I see no harm in taking a little less than 1/12th of the year to more closely examine Black History– and what we can do to elevate the status of African-Americans today.

Race and Class in College Admissions

Recently, college applicants all over the country breathed a sigh of relief as November 1st passed, and the nearly-universal Early Decision deadline was behind us.

Now, what does that have to do with this blog?

First of all, many of the people reading this blog are either applying to college or college-educated. Even if they are not, tax dollars still go to fund public universities. Second of all, race is a controversial subject in college admissions.

At many colleges, there is an optional portion where you can identify yourself as belonging to a certain race. Different colleges have different levels of specificity for races. With all other things being equal, it is easier for people of African-American and Hispanic descent to be accepted into college than people of White or Asian descent (although that particular site's graphs do not show it, Native Americans are also noted for race). This is an affirmative action policy that is based on the premise that people of certain races face more obstacles than other races in life, and are therefore given a boost in college admissions to combat any inequality or obstacles that people of other races do not face.

This assumption– regardless of whether or not it is true –has caused a lot of uproar. The state of California passed Proposition 209 in 1996, which said that public colleges could not consider race or ethnicity in their admissions process. There have been recent, failed attempts to overturn this measure. On the flip side, a 2003 Supreme Court court case regarding the University of Michigan Law School, Grutter v. Bollinger, stated that while there should not be quotas for race, race could be considered in college admissions to create a "critical mass" of minority students. The case was brought up by two White students who thought that their race directly contributed to their denial from the university. In essence, Grutter v. Bollinger stated that the University of Michigan was allowed to use affirmative action.

There has also been some talk of affirmative action for those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. These students cannot take the SAT or ACT prep courses that other students can, they cannot afford to live in neighborhoods with good schools, they cannot even necessarily afford college. Some colleges The Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University argues that "[i]f we limit working-class students’ access to selective colleges, we also limit their access to the best jobs and to social networks that have significant power in American politics and business." Indeed, it is often said that poverty is a cycle. Those who cannot afford to go to college will often be denied the chance to acquire skills to move up in the world.

Critics of affirmative action might actually accuse it of discriminating against white people. Keep clutching those pearls, because African-American students still make up less than 10% of the population of most of the nation's top schools. Yes, minority students are being given some advantage. But it is completely paranoid and inaccurate to picture White and Asian students as being somehow shut out of elite colleges. Just under 60% of Hispanic students enroll in college right after high school, compared to 92.2% of Asians.

Clearly, there are those who are being under-served. As one Columbia sociology professor put it, "There is a missing revolution in our nation: one in which poor and average Americans can have a fighting chance of acquiring the kind of education and advantages that elite education provides."

Privilege Checklists

I suppose since the first "real" post was so topical, this is an opportunity to take a step back and look at the broader theme of being a minority. Just by existing, we are assigned certain traits or labels that help determine our place in society, which is what this blog is all about. Skin color, gender, appearance, gender identity, etc. Sometimes it is difficult for a person in a majority category, like a white person or an able-bodied person, to imagine what it's like to be in the minority category– a person of color or a disabled person.

Enter privilege checklists. Privilege checklists are essentially a way for people who have some sort of privilege to try and understand people who do not have that privilege. The first privilege checklist was introduced in 1988 when Peggy McIntosh published a paper called "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies." An important excerpt to which I will refer can be found here. In the paper, McIntosh listed several things that most white people don't think about that make their lives easier, and which people of color may have to deal with on a regular basis. Some of these things include:

"6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

"18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race."

"21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group."

"35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race."

These are issues and obstacles which white people don't have to think about; indeed, they may not even know exist. It's a sobering list.

But wait, there's more! Obviously, skin color is not the only indicator of privilege. There are a lot of different types and degrees of privilege– so, naturally, there are a lot of different lists. This post on adult privilege has several links to other good checklists: white, male, able-bodied, average-sized, cisgendered (that is, not transgendered), and neurotypical (that is, without neurological disorders, sometimes specific to autism). The link to the heterosexual privilege one does not work. One of many straight privilege checklists can be found here.

Privilege checklists are not to show people of privilege how mean they are or how they are bad people. It's just to show someone "how the other half lives." There are so many things to think about when dealing with the complicated issues of marginalized or minority people, and checklists are a way to remind people of the different experiences that others have based on who they are.

I encourage readers to take a look at a checklist or two. If you can, look at one where you are the minority and one where you are the majority. Do you agree with the aim of privilege checklists? Did you know they existed at all? Do they apply to you?