Dear DePauw Community:
I recently had the privilege of giving a talk as part of the “American Whiteness: Power and Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts” series on your campus. My visit put me in touch with some amazing students, many faculty members and with the coordinators of your innovative Green Dot campaign. Since that time I’ve been following the events and conversation you’ve been having on campus. I applaud your community focusing on these difficult conversations, but I remind you that these conversations are difficult, and as such they require us to take risks and to sit in our pain for longer than we are comfortable. I encourage you all to listen carefully to the voices of students of color during these conversations without retreating to the safety of whiteness.
The safety of whiteness sounds like this: “Yeah, Black Lives matter, but really all lives matter…The problem is that we should be stop making this all about race and just make it about the content of a person’s character…Are you sure the campus police cuffed those guys because they were Black men? Maybe it was because they didn’t recognize them…Hey, I’m not prejudiced. I’m not the problem. It’s those racist whites that are the problem. It’s the outside agitators that are the problem…it’s all good here.”
Dear white people, when we respond in these ways, the lives of people of color fall out of the conversation. Colorblind responses that shift the conversation erase the ground upon which people of color stand, by folding their unique historical experiences into a generalized conversation about humanity. “Let’s just talk about people!” But, really, which people are we talking about? Do you have the courage to keep the focus on Black and brown bodies without erasing them in a sea of colorless humanity? Can you keep the conversation focused on injustice without it boomeranging back to your conversations about the friends of color you have, evidence of your goodness or how you’ve had similar experiences?
The journey to white privilege awareness requires an acute ear, patience, compassion, risk taking and the courage to say stupid stuff and move on. It requires getting out of your comfort zones.
On October 27th and 28th Dr. Peggy McIntosh will be giving two talks on white privilege awareness on your campus. If you are looking for an accessible place to begin this conversation, I encourage you to attend.
I wish you strength and courage during these conversations.
In Solidarity,
Dr. Alison Bailey
Illinois State University
