Читать книгу Understanding Racism - Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl - Страница 58

Amico, McIntosh, Rothenberg, and Wise all note that it is time for White people to take a look at themselves and how their lives have benefited from racism. Rothenberg says that her book Invisible Privilege “grows out of a deeply felt need to reflect in a more personal way on what it means to be a privileged white woman coming to terms with that privilege.”³¹ Wise realizes that, on some level, he had not been honest with himself concerning his relationship to race/racism: “My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn’t just race that was a social construct. So was I.”³² McIntosh notes that her self-reflection came about after her frustration “with men who would not recognize male privilege.” She continues, “I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life.”³³ And throughout his book Exploring White Privilege, Amico uses personal vignettes that provide real-life examples that effectively expose White privilege in a personal manner. Although on some level this approach is effective by connecting with people through real-life personal examples, there’s no systematic analysis of data or clear way to analyze whether these reflections are honest, reliable, or generalizable. This method of analysis makes it difficult to replicate to evaluate its applicability. In addition, because most of the information is personal, it is just that—information relative to the individual who experienced it; however, this can be mitigated by providing contextualizing information. For example, sometimes the reflections are complemented by information on racist laws, racial statistics, or information from other sources that confirms these personal reflections. Amico in particular offers important macro-level data on White privilege, which is complemented by personal anecdotes, rather than the other way around.