Privileging White Skin

By SETH SANDRONSKY

I watched a new Netflix documentary, “Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea,” on a day President Trump retweeted a threat that his ouster via impeachment would spur a civil war. That tweet no doubt empowered some of his base, 63 million strong, who define as white. That is what he counts on, presumably. Biologically, of course, there is a single race—human beings.

In her 64-minute documentary, Chelsea Handler interviews Orange County, Calif., GOPster women. One speaks about wanting to move past the economics and politics of skin-color issues. Later, a white rapper who hails from Tennessee is politically conscious of white-skin privilege, notably in the criminal justice system.

Handler’s commentary is informative, in the way that personal experiences can be. Her sharing of police stops as a teen, in which she went free, unlike those darker, near and dear to her (a black boyfriend with whom she visits 25 years later) who served 14 years in prison, is instructive.

Living while black means one is subject to police and vigilante violence for reasons of poverty and skin color. The perpetrators go free generally. “Law, especially criminal law, is deeply embedded in this white-mind framework,” writes Zillah Eisenstein in “Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution” (Monthly Review Press).

African Americans’ history in the US is one of fighting such oppression. Against that backdrop, black and white relations are a social construct that rose out of a labor system called chattel slavery. It fueled the growth of capitalism, from sugar in the Caribbean to cotton and tobacco in the American South.

Race, however, is not always and everywhere a skin color issue. People can change from nonwhite to white. For example, Handler’s and my Jewish ancestors arrived in the US as nonwhite folks. They became white in terms benefitting from social policy. The same goes for Irish and Italian immigrants. Handler’s family, like mine, benefitted from public policy that benefitted whites educationally, financially and occupationally.

The strengths of her documentary is that she speaks with whites about their skin-color privilege. She is on the mark here. Handler’s interviews with those who agree and disagree with the idea of white-skin privilege is informative. Some see and some do not. The so-called level playing field of the marketplace is a myth.

White-skin privilege in terms of perceptions is an effect of an historical process. If you are white, it is all right. If you are black, take a step back. Take employment trends now, a legacy of three centuries of chattel slavery, a century of Jim Crow discrimination, then a half-century of massive black incarceration.

Yes, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, the US had an African American president for two terms, and that is why, in his view, slavery reparations to the descendants is off the table. Meanwhile, blacks are structurally disadvantaged versus whites in the labor force. Consider this:

As the national jobless rate remained at 3.7% in August, “the unemployment rate for blacks fell 0.5 percentage points to 5.5%, the lowest level on record,” according to Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The unemployment rate for black women stood at 4.4% in August, a record low, and for black teens at 15.7%, also a record low.”

White supremacy and its history of a chattel labor system birthed racial capitalism, which is a part of—not apart from—racism, of which white-skin privilege is a virulent form. However, we, socially, should not rely upon a celebrity such as Handler to act and speak honestly and publicly about racial inequality. That is a sign of working class weakness, not strength.

Nature abhors a vacuum. In the void of strong social movements to build a society of equality among and between people that would by definition end not mend white-skin privilege, male supremacy and other forms of oppression, we have Handler’s documentary. It is a kind of step sideways. That is progress of sorts. We can and should do better, though.

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019

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