LibGuides: Race & Social Justice Teacher Resources: White Privilege &amp; Victimhood

FYI- Of Interest! - White Privilege

A grand jury declined to indict a woman whose accusations set off Emmett Till killing | NPR
Article by The Associated Press
NPR
August 9, 2022
Brighton native says her school experiences shaped her attitudes about race and white privilege | WXXI News
Radio interview (audio, 00:06:19)
Interviewer: Beth Adams
Interviewee: Jen Willsea
September 28, 2020
more...less...
Related:
How a white girl learned white supremacy in a literal suburb of Rochester, NY: a love letter to white Rochesterians [blog post]
https://www.jenwillsea.com/blog/how-a-white-girl-learned-white-supremacy-in-a-liberal-suburb-of-rochester-ny-a-love-letter-to-white-rochesterians
Can We Talk About Whiteness? | Code Sw!tch [podcast] | NPR
Podcast episode
Code Sw!tch (Switch), Episode 1
May 31, 2016
Transcript and audio (00:37:22)
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Independent School 49, no. 2 (Winter 1990): 31. A classic article on the everyday manifestations of white privilege.
*Note: 'Iolani School login needed - library databases resource.
TEDTalk: How to Recognize Your White Privilege -- and Use it to Fight Inequality
Peggy McIntosh talks about first learning to see male privilege, which led her to recognize white privilege and the ways she benefitted from it. Based on her article, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."
October 2012 (video, 18:27)
TEDTalk: The Danger of a Single Story
"Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding."
July 2009 (video, 18:33)
White Awake
"White Awake is an online platform and nonprofit organization focused on political education for people who are classified as “white”. We believe this is important because white people are socialized, and awarded limited types of privilege, to align ourselves with the capitalist, ruling class at everybody’s expense. White Awake addresses the particularities of white racial socialization with tools and resources that prioritizes spiritual practice, emotional intelligence, compassion, and curiosity alongside historical analysis and intellectual rigor. Our desire is to supplement the work of social change – through labor and community organizing, activist networks, spiritual communities, electoral campaigns, and other models of action – such that spiritual, educational, and cultural change is fully integrated into white people’s participation in collective liberation."

Literature - White Privilege

Not My Idea by Anastasia Higginbotham
ISBN: 9781948340007
Publication Date: 2018-09-04
Fiction
Age Range: 8 - 12
Lexile Measure: 540
Available from HSPLS in print.
After seeing news of a police officer shooting and killing a black person, a young white boy has lots of questions about race. However, his family deflects by saying, "We don't see color." As the child continues to question, this picture book encourages conversations about racism and racial justice.
White Privilege by M. T. Blakemore
ISBN: 9781532110399
Publication Date: 2017-09-01
Non-fiction
Age Range: 11 - 18
Lexile Measure: 1100
Available in ebook (US Library)
"Everyone's daily lives are affected by race and racism in America. White Privilege examines the historical forces that have disadvantaged people of color and discusses how these forces continue to influence the media, education, politics, and other areas of life today." -- from the publisher
Playing While White by David J. Leonard
ISBN: 9780295741871
Publication Date: 2017-07-01
Non-fiction
Available in ebook (US Library)
"Leonard demonstrates that sporting cultures are a key site in the trafficking of racial ideas, narratives, and ideologies. He identifies how white athletes are frequently characterized as intelligent leaders who are presumed innocent of the kinds of transgressions black athletes are often pathologized for. With an analysis of the racial dynamics of sports traditions as varied as football, cycling, hockey, baseball, tennis, snowboarding, and soccer, as well as the reception and media portrayals of specific white athletes, Leonard examines how and why whiteness matters within sports and what that tells us about race in the twenty-first century United States.” -- from the publisher
Understanding White Privilege by Frances Kendall
ISBN: 9781136289941
Publication Date: 2012-12-12
Non-fiction
Available in ebook (US Library)
"Understanding White Privilege delves into the complex interplay between race, power, and privilege in both organizations and private life. It offers an unflinching look at how ignorance can perpetuate privilege, and offers practical and thoughtful insights into how people of all races can work to break this cycle." -- from the publisher
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad; Robin DiAngelo (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781728209807
Publication Date: 2020-01-28
Non-fiction
Available from HSPLS in print, ebook, and audiobook
“Me and White Supremacy shows readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.” -- from the publisher
Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo
ISBN: 9781580059510
Publication Date: 2020-12-01
Non-fiction
Available from HSPLS in print, ebook, and audiobook
“Through the last 150 years of American history -- from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics -- Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.” -- from the publisher

FYI- Of Interest! - White Victimhood

The eternal fear of "race suicide" | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Article by Jonathan Zimmerman, professor Univ. of Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 23, 2019
The Talk: A letter to my White sons | The Emancipator | Boston Globe & Boston University Center for Antiracist Research
Article and video by Joanna Schroeder
The Emancipator
October 12, 2022
"A letter to my White sons: a mom's take on the sneaky way racist ideas spread to kids on social media"
(video, 00:02:57)
New research shows the connection between political victimhood and White support for Trump
Miles T. Armaly & Adam M. Enders
Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2021
Analysis article that outlines "egocentric" and "systemic" victimhood.
Welcome & Keynote Address: "Historicizing the Origins of White Racial Victimhood" Gunther Peck | Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity | Duke University
Gunther Peck, Associate Professor of History at Duke University, keynote address entitled: "Race Traffic: Historicizing the Origins of White Racial Victimhood" at 00:24:09 - 01:19:15 in the recording.
"The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, in conjunction with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, held a symposium in Washington, D.C., on March 14-17, 2017 entitled "Reflections on the Impact of the Reconstruction Amendments: A Research Symposium on the Social and Economic Outcomes of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments." The conference was devoted to characterizing the state of knowledge and identification of critical new directions for research in the social and behavioral sciences, and on economic inequality in the context of the impact of the Reconstruction Amendments." (April 12, 2017; 01:23:30)
Includes:
Welcomes and opening remarks by
- William A. Darity, Jr., Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and Samuel DuBoisCook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economic at Duke University
- David S. Ferriero, 10th Archivist of the United States
- Spencer Overton, President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and Professor of Law at George Washington University
- Congressman George Kenneth “G. K.” Butterfield, Representative (D-NC 1st District)
‘Why Me?’ The Role of Perceived Victimhood in American Politics
Miles T. Armaly & Adam M. Enders
Political Behavior, 2021
"Despite growing recognition among journalists and political pundits, the concept of victimhood has been largely ignored in empirical social science research. In this article, we develop a theory about, and use unique nationally-representative survey data to estimate, two manifestations of victimhood: an egocentric one entailing only perceptions of one’s own victimhood, and one focused on blaming “the system.”" - from the abstract

Literature - White Victimhood

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)
Call Number: 305.8 DIA
ISBN: 9780807047415
Publication Date: 2018-06-26
Non-fiction
Available in print (US Library)
"Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively." -- from the publisher
The Politics of Resentment by Jeremy Engels
ISBN: 9780271066646
Publication Date: 2015-06-15
Non-fiction
Available as an ebook (US Library)
"The Politics of Resentment traces the rise of especially violent rhetoric in American public discourse by investigating key events in American history. Engels analyzes how resentful rhetoric has long been used by public figures in order to achieve political ends. He goes on to show how a more devastating form of resentment started in the 1960s, dividing Americans on issues of structural inequalities and foreign policy. He discusses, for example, the rhetorical and political contexts that have made the mobilization of groups such as Nixon's "silent majority" and the present Tea Party possible. Now, in an age of recession and sequestration, many Americans believe that they have been given a raw deal and experience feelings of injustice in reaction to events beyond individual control. With The Politics of Resentment, Engels wants to make these feelings of victimhood politically productive by challenging the toxic rhetoric that takes us there, by defusing it, and by enabling citizens to have the kinds of conversations we need to have in order to fight for life, liberty, and equality." -- from the publisher
When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
Call Number: 323.1196 KAT
ISBN: 9780393328516
Publication Date: 2006-08-17
Non-fiction
Available in print (US Library)
A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action. When Affirmative Action Was White demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. This was no accident. With the United States still in an era of legal segregation, the powerful southern wing of the Democratic Party provided the framework for Social Security, the GI Bill, and landmark labor laws that helped create the foundations of the modern middle class. Through mechanisms that specifically excluded maids and farmworkers and through laws that kept administration in local hands, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. The publication of this deeply disturbing work promises to create a national debate on the meaning of affirmative action and the responsibility of government.

Terms to be aware of

White Nationalists

White Identitarian (WI)

Alt-Right (AR)

Related to White Victimhood:

Race suicide - "The alarmist term 'race suicide' was coined by the popular and distinguished U.S. sociologist Edward A. Ross at the turn of the 20th century. The concept was in-principle a general one. When the birth rate within a so-called race dropped below the death rate, 'race suicide' was thought to be occurring, with the ultimate consequence that the 'race' would die out. In practice, however, the concept was deployed to raise fears amongst members of dominant 'races' about their declining numbers and the influx of foreigners... Race suicide theorists believed that natural evolutionary dynamics were disrupted in the age of industry, and that social policy was needed to ensure that the supposedly superior 'races' did not disappear..."
Eugenics Archive
[This was an early 20th century term; the Holocaust had not yet happened and the term "genocide" had not yet been coined.]

White Genocide - "A term coined by white supremacists for propaganda purposes as shorthand for one of the most deeply held modern white supremacist convictions: that the white race is 'dying' due to growing non-white populations and 'forced assimilation,' all of which are deliberately engineered and controlled by a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race. This same conviction can be seen in the so-called '14 Words' slogan, the most popular white supremacist slogan around the globe: 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.' White supremacists commonly claim that they must take action, even violent action, or the 'white race' will 'perish from the Earth.''
Anti-Defamation League.

Defining Extremism: A Glossary of White Supremacist Terms, Movements and Philosophies | ADL
Anti-Defamation League

(Click to enlarge.)

Thanks for reviewing a draft of "Important Questions" go to
Dr. Melissa Perkins, 'Iolani School History Faculty
2021 Hawai'i History Teacher of the Year