Understanding Privilege and Inequality

[Music] thank you there is a lot of other you could be doing tonight it is it is Friday in New Orleans what in the hell like really what in the hell are any of us doing here like myself included like I I lived here for 10 years I know there's better stuff to do but I I'm gonna try to get you out of here in time to still enjoy Friday night in New Orleans so you're gonna you're gonna get whatever I can offer you and then you're gonna go out and you're gonna have fun and you're going to enjoy the sort of closing moments of this fantastic conference which by the way it is a real honor to to always you know the last 15 or 16 years I guess that I've been coming to the conference it is always nice to be back I really appreciate the honor of being able to be here this evening and to share some thoughts with you and I want to be real deliberate about this particular talk oh that's water [Laughter] that's water you know me well but that is water it won't be in a couple of hours but right now it's water so why this talk if you saw the title in the program you know it is entitled the pathology of privilege and the reason that I wanted to speak about this this evening is that you know for years those of us who do anti-racism work and work around issues of white privilege and systemic and equality have made something of a living out of frankly proving the existence of this thing called privilege proving the existence of unearned advantage whether that's white privilege male privilege straight privilege class privilege whatever the case might be we have made a bit of a living out of proving that to people and then being very proud of ourselves for having proven what is really incredibly obvious to an awful lot of people it's like proving that rain actually falls from the sky yes it yes it does and then we pat ourselves on the back for demonstrating all the evidence of white privilege of male privilege of straight privilege now I don't mean to demean the importance of proving that because obviously there are an awful lot of people in denial about that but the problem with that as your paradigm as your mode of operation is that we live in a society where even if I managed to convince you of your unearned advantage and that is a big if because it's not a given even if I managed to convince you of it that certainly does not mean that you will necessarily be moved to give up those advantages and that is an understatement of somewhat biblical proportions but there it is in any event in fact we live in a society where if anything it is quite the opposite right we live in a society where if you have an advantage you are not supposed to give that away you are supposed to multiply it right when our parents told us count your blessings they did not follow that up with and then give that to somebody else back in the day my mom used to tell me her parents would say hey eat all that food on your plate don't you know there are children starving in China notice she did not say box that up and send it to China what she said was eat eat have seconds why don't you have thirds because you know there are starving people but that's none of your concern in other words right we live in a society that says when you have an edge you don't give that up you multiply it you take advantage of it and so we have to figure out not just how to prove that privilege is real but how to actually convince people that it's toxic and that it's worth giving up and that's a hard thing to do because why would you want to give up your edge in a society that is all about having an edge many years ago I had this conversation with one of my mentors and and people that I learned so much from the late great Derrick Bell law professor at Harvard and then NYU who has since passed but he said to me in our conversation that that was the holy grail of anti-racism was figuring out how will you convince white people and I could make the same argument about sex and gender and male privilege I could make the same argument about any system of privilege how do you convince those with an edge to actually be willing to sacrifice that edge or fight for a system in which that edge does no longer advantage them and exist and I will tell you today that I do not claim to have discovered Derek Bell's Holy Grail but I do have some thoughts about why even the privileged should think twice about indulging our advantages at the expense of equity and at the expense of justice indeed I would suggest to you that privilege is pathological it is ultimately destructive even to those who benefit from it in the short and the medium term and thus this talk let me be clear though before I get into that what I am NOT saying I am NOT saying that the privileged are the ones we ought to feel sorry for so please don't get confused I'm not saying that we should shed tears for the pain of privilege for the privileged my goodness these poor white people my God my goodness these poor men we must feel for them and create support groups and structures I'm not saying that I'm also not saying that the harm that privilege does to the privileged is morally or practically equivalent to the harm done to those who don't have it I realize that we cannot equate those two the harm done to those who are oppressed and marginalized is both quantitatively and qualitatively greater no question I'm also not saying that we should Center the problems associated with privilege for the privileged in our larger work obviously the experiences of the marginalized have to be central in our moral universe and in our movement building what I am saying however is this unless we have an analysis around the dysfunctionality and even pathology of privilege even for those who receive it a few very serious problems emerge for any attempt to build effective movements for equity and liberation first if we don't have an analysis around the pathology of privilege we miss an opportunity to create a shared sense of injury from this system of inequality and therefore we sacrifice an opportunity to build a mentality of solidarity how do I build a mentality of solidarity with you if I don't understand that my liberation is intimately connected to yours I can't without an analysis of the pathology and the downside of privilege we ultimately reinforce and us against them mentality whereby any change to the system is seen as a net loss to those who have had advantages and it's a zero-sum game so if you win I lose and if I lose you win and I'm telling you right now from a movement-building perspective if you think you can build movements for human liberation on the basis of a zero-sum game you have not paid attention to history it doesn't work that way if we reinforce the idea that your win comes at the expense of me my inclination will be to double down to triple down to quadruple down on my advantage and to ignore your cries for justice that in turn means if we do not build an analysis around why privilege is dysfunctional and if we just don't care about the creation of this zero-sum thinking it means that we are willing to risk everything on one of two things neither of which are very good bets number one that white allies or co-conspirators if you prefer the terminology can be counted on to stay in this work solely on the basis of altruistic and selfless motives that somehow we can convince white folks to stay in the work just because it's the right thing to do I don't know about y'all I've known white people a long-ass time I've been white for 49 years I know my people relatively well and please do not get this twisted I do not hate white people let me say this upfront because I know that every time I say this people get it confused and they say particularly first time in court folks who were like what the hell is this I didn't come here for this I'm the student body vice president what the hell did they get me into I don't hate white people I love me some white people my wife is white [Laughter] [Applause] I love her our daughters are white that's what happens and white people make babies I love them my mom is white nice white lady my dad and I don't get along but it's not about the white it's about some other stuff that I do not have time to process here tonight but if you have a psychology degree or degree in therapy or analysis you please can feel free to come help me with that later I don't have time tonight it's not about white people it's about whiteness what I'm saying is white people in whiteness are not the same and if we don't understand that if we don't understand that people called white can be damaged by this thing called whiteness not as seriously as people of color are and not as directly but we can be the collateral damage of our own if we don't understand that then we are willing to risk everything on the idea that white folks will stay in the fight just because it's the right thing to do but I don't trust altruism in a society rooted in self-interest I don't trust it I don't trust it or we're willing to risk the history of our country and society on the probability that somehow people of color can just overthrow this system on their own without collaboration maybe that's possible I don't know I don't see a lot of evidence of it in history but even if it is possible here's the point even if black and brown folks can liberate themselves without any white Co collaboration who's gonna liberate white folks if not us because even if people of color can liberate themselves unless we link our fate to the fate of black and brown peoples and black and brown communities we will never be free and I learned this in this town I lived here for ten years I got my start in this work doing work against David Duke in 1990 and 91 when he ran for US Senate and governor of this state I know I don't need applause for that that's what white folks should have been doing I don't need applause for that but here's the problem right we had six out of ten white people in this state that voted for a man they knew was a Nazi and that is not a word I use lightly I know we throw that word around sometimes for people that we just don't like but like David Duke is an actual Nazi not even a neo-nazi because neo implies that you thought of some new and David Duke is like Jurassic Nazi like Paleolithic Nazi like old-school Nazi unreconstructed Nazi and six out of ten white people in this state said well I think I'll vote for him anyway it's not like they didn't know babies in utero knew that this man was a Nazi and six out of ten white folks said that's all right with us and I remember sitting here in this town in the aftermath of those elections trying to figure out what does that mean for for my people those who marked that census box the same way I do because what does it mean that six out of ten of my people voted for not now here's the deal I am Jewish so you know I did know like don't vote for the Nazi because like not a good look for Jews when we vote for Nazis but like the white thing is still operative right and six out of ten white folks voted for the guy and I remember sitting there thinking what does that mean cuz the only reason he didn't win let's be clear if it's up to us he does win the only reason he doesn't win is because black folks saved our ass and we never did say thank you we never did say thank you and I haven't been deputized to say thank you tonight but thank you to the black folks of Louisiana for saving this state from David do my point my point is that it's not black folks job to save white people from ourselves you see they did it that was a nice favor they did that was a nice gift that they gave us it was a gift that was totally undeserved but they did it anyway at some point we have to save ourselves so that means we have to talk about what privilege is done to us he privilege and racism has allowed us to actually vote for someone like David Duke who has no solutions for the problems that millions of white folks face economically all he has is blamed to offer and fingers to point at black and brown folks that didn't create the crisis that didn't destroy Wall Street that was rich white men but all David Duke and folks like him can offer all Richard Spencer can offer right all Donald Trump can offer is to point fingers at black and brown folks those down the ladder from those white folks who voted for David Duke and say there is your enemy that's the crisis of whiteness when you take your eye off the ball and you ignore the actual source of your pain your pain is real your diagnosis is and it's time that we call that out so what does privilege do to those who have it well on the one hand we know the easy answer right it creates huge advantages it creates huge material opportunities so white folks are half as likely as black and brown folks to be unemployed one-third is likely to be poor even when they have the same level of education by the way white families fifteen times the net worth on average of black families 12 times that of Latin X families so we know all of that the material piece and obviously it protects recipients of privilege from for the most part not entirely but for the most part from systemic mistreatment it certainly protects those who have privilege from mistreatment on the basis of the identity where they are privileged where they are dominant and those are obviously benefits but the question is what are the costs that we pay to a to actually access those benefits see here's the thing when you are used to experiencing life in a certain way you come to expect that reality to continue in perpetuity so just as the oppressed and the marginalized come to expect oppression and marginalization those who are privileged come to expect the permanence and the predictability of that as well we assume that we will always have access to good jobs we will always have access to the ability to support our families we will always have access to affordable housing education health care we take for granted our place our belonging and prestigious educational institutions we assume that as long as we play by the rules and we work hard the promise of American meritocracy and rugged individualism that we will always be able to succeed and move up the ladder of life and enjoy upward mobility we come to believe in the notion of rugged individualism and meritocracy because for the most part that is tended to work for us now I realize that within a system of capitalism it doesn't work equally for all but for the most part historically white folks have been able to enjoy a pretty decent measure of upward mobility intergenerationally people of color could never take that for granted but white folks could even white working-class folks to some extent could maybe not maybe not vertical mobility but at least horizontal mobility what does that mean and why does that matter well think about it that means that I could say to myself hey my granddaddy worked in the coal mine my daddy worked in the coal mine I'm a work in the coal mine my son is gonna work in the coal mine my granddaddy worked on the assembly line my daddy worked on the assembly line I work on the assembly line got a good union job gonna pass that down to my child the notion of horizontal mobility the idea that as long as I've got a strong back and can lift stuff I'll always have a job now I beg to remind you that black folks never took for granted that was true no person of color ever assumed that just because they were willing to work there be a job ready for them that just because they're willing to work hard and sweat all day that folks would hire them but for white folks that was sort of the truth particularly white men even working-class white men you come to believe in the notion of rugged individualism of meritocracy the idea that wherever you end up is all about you that you're always in control of your destiny more or less you presume that your experiences your cultural norms will always be dominant and normative and unquestioned because they always have been in other words you come to expect certain things to stay the same because this is how they've always been but what if your world starts to change what if the economy globalizes in a way that makes certain of those jobs that you took for granted superfluous in the global economy so now coal mining is no longer really a thing that's profitable because there are more affordable ways to produce energy or even to mine coal they can just blow the tops off mountains now and don't need to hire your happy ass to go into the cave and dig it out and all those folks who own the mines who are just about making money don't give a about you and your family don't give a about the black lung that you might get by the time you're 53 and die by the time you're 60 all they care about is their profit they'll just blow the top off the mountain Jack it's not it's not hippies and environmentalists taking your job it's rich white men that owned the mine but if you're not ready for that change if you're not ready for the globalization of the economy if you're not ready for the cultural shifts that have taken place whereby the country has become more pluralistic and where you now have to share the designation of what it means to be an American see you never had to do that right and American was you right you were the definition you were the textbook example you were the dictionary you were the catalog definition the store window model of what an American was man I remember a time I mean I'm old but I'm not that old I remember a time when the grocery stores like back in the 80s men even like the ethnic food aisle unless you were on the coast if you were anywhere other than the coast the ethnic food aisle was like pasta yo like that was literally it like it was like just some pasta like ragu and right and now all the sudden the notion of Americanism is incredibly more pluralistic the notion of our popular cultures totally changed right those of us a little bit older than some in the room can remember a time when MTV well first off we can remember a time when MTV played music videos that was what they were like I don't know if y'all MT V stands for music television like they used to show videos and right and now they don't do that but they did and they didn't show black videos though like Michael Jackson was the first they showed like one prints video but they edited it or something like they were nervous about it right and that was after many years of the existence of MTV so now you think about that was just the 80s right when they would not play black music on MTV and now popular culture thoroughly multicultural so much so that the soundtrack of pretty much any teenagers life in this country no matter where they live they could live in Nebraska they could live on the East Coast the West Coast anywhere they live they're gonna have a playlist of their life that is completely in most cases multicultural that is not enough to change the power structure of this country so don't misunderstand what I'm saying but it does signify a significant cultural transformation that is not me and in particular what it means is that those people who got used to the old cultural norms those people who needed those norms needed their culture to be reflected their culture to be dominant don't know what to do with that shift it makes us nervous so you have a global economy you have cultural shifts you have the demographic change we've all heard about right there by 2042 or whatever the year is right half or more of the population ibly people of color half will be white so if all the sudden whiteness is no longer demographically normative culturally normative you get a black president with an exotic name who's from Hawaii or Kenya because that's what so many folks think but to them it's like they might as well be this thing I think a lot of white folks think Hawaii's just like a tourist destination they still don't realize it's part of the United States right it's just like ooh that's exotic no I don't think he's American so you have a individual in the highest office challenging your notion of what leadership is supposed to be you have the demographic shift challenging your notion of what the country itself is you have the cultural changes that are challenging your notion of what the culture of America is and all of that's happening at the same time so imagine that you've been able to assume a steady state your whole life you've been able to assume that I'm an American by god I'm what a normal American looks like and now you can't take that for granted that privilege that you've had starts to freak you out a little bit when it doesn't get delivered suddenly your expectations are being disrupted and here's the thing if you go back to the 60s there was a theory that developed right around the time y'all remembered that and if you don't remember it personally I'm sure you've studied it like you think about the urban rebellions and uprisings of the 60s ask yourself now when did those happen most of those happened 65 and later right 65 67 68 after the assassination of dr. King you didn't have those happening in the same way and let's say 55 57 58 now why is that because if you think about it right you might think it would be more logical to have these uprisings or what some people call riots in the mid 50s because at least by the mid 60s what had happened we'd had the Civil Rights Act we're getting the Voting Rights Act right you get the Great Society programs there are some reforms that are happening granted they're not happening fast enough right but there's been some progress there been some victories so you would think it was odd right that even as things are quote-unquote getting better that's when you have the rebellion as opposed to when they were worse well there was a theory to explain that and the theory that sociologists came up with to explain it was this notion of rising expectations right this idea that when you take people who have been crapped on forever and you start to increase their expectations of real change when the actual delivery of change is slower than the expectation it creates real anxiety and anger right and then there's an explosion because folks are like you promised change and you're delivering really slowly and now I'm pissed and I'm and you know you get frustrated right so that made sense and for the most part that theory has been pretty much mainstream now it's pretty much accepted that when you rise when you when you raise the expectations of marginalized people but you don't deliver there can be an explosion well let me ask you a question if that's true and the evidence says that it is ask yourself what will happen when you take people who have always had high expectations who were raised and nurtured or high expectations and then you don't deliver to them what you promised them now what happens you think there's a problem when you promise some stuff to people you never promise stuff to you before and then they get pissed tell me about the folks have been promised for three or four hundred years that life would be okay what happens when it's not and I'm telling you if you think the one is an explosion wait till you see what this produces you understand when you frustrate the expectations of those who have always had high expectations and a mentality of entitlement that came from that not only that I expect a B and Z but I am entitled to a B and C I'm entitled to have these benefits I'm entitled to these advantages that's when you have this problem so a couple years ago right there's this study and I'm sure y'all saw it came out to economists at Princeton husband-and-wife team very well respected academics did this study where they were looking at mortality data from 1999 to about 2013 I think so 14 years worth of data and they were looking at some really interesting information that nobody seemed to be commenting on they noticed that from 99 to 2013 for the most part most groups in this country continued to experience a downward trajectory of mortality death rates right which is the normal trend when you live in an advanced industrial economy the typical trend is that people's mortality rates decline life expectancy improves unless you have a major epidemic or a natural disaster or something like that that's what's supposed to happen you're supposed to live longer die less at cetera and for most groups that's what happened but there was one demographic cohort for which that was not true and it was white middle-aged non-college educated working-class folks and for that group there was an excess mortality number of half-a-million people let me explain what this means it means that from 1999 to 2013 a half a million white folks died who would not have died if their mortality numbers had simply continued in the same direction as everybody else's and I should point out to you these deaths were not from just like simple heart disease or anything like that it was from three things in particular opioid overdoses suicides and cirrhosis of the liver which is typically brought on by heavy drinking right in other words they were what these two researchers at Princeton called deaths of despair right half a million excess white deaths but not just any white folks white folks who were working-class non-college educated middle-aged white folks and I remember when I saw the study at I wasn't satisfied with this analysis because when you talk about deaths of despair like what's the despair okay I get it some of these folks are unemployed they're not able to hold down a job the jobs are leaving their town I get that that's got to be anxiety-producing but here's the deal y'all manufacturing jobs have been leaving the inner cities of this country and urban communities let lived in by black and brown folks since 1973 so that is not new right and the idea that that deaths of despair that it's somehow a unique thing for white folks to experience that when black and brown folks have been dealing with that for literally 40-plus years doesn't make any sense to say that they're dying deaths of despair and they're drinking themselves to death and using opioids and putting guns in their mouths and killing themselves just because they can't make ends meet if that was enough then black folks would also be seeing that trajectory and brown folks would also be seeing that trajectory because on every single indicator of well-being people of color are suffering more now don't get me wrong that doesn't mean white folks aren't suffering I'm not trying to say that just because black and brown folks are hurting more white pain doesn't matter what I'm saying is there has to be a reason that white pain is dealt with differently by white people than black and brown pain there has to be a reason that black and brown folks who were dealing with actually more economic anxiety that famous thing that some folks want to attribute Donald Trump's victory to because they just can't admit that it's racism they want to say it's economic anxiety if it was economic anxiety black and brown folks would have lined up around the damn block to vote for this man and I beg to remind you that they did not so what is it about white anxiety that creates this dysfunction the only possible answer is that these are folks who were promised the moon promised that the world was there Auster promised that this level of insecurity would never be their lot in life that that level of anxiety that was for those folks on that side of town it's not for us we're always gonna have work we're always gonna be able to make ends meet you see so those deaths of despair not about despair it's about the disconnect between aspiration and achievement between expectation and achievement between entitlement and achievement right between the expectation ilysm if you will that whiteness has created there are some similarities between the opioid crisis right which is so disproportionately affecting not exclusively I want to be clear because there are black and brown folks suffering with this thing but disproportionately white there's a link between that and the spike in suicides in white communities there's a link between those things and the uptick in misogyny that we see online and in the streets of our country as well when we see somebody not even in just our own country but in Toronto that guy that ran over a bunch of women and then find out that he'd been posting on these boards he's a what he called involuntary celibate right this in this communities that call themselves in cell because you know they're mad that women won't have sex with them and they think that they're entitled to women's bodies that's their entire mentality so it's not just whiteness it's patriarchy and toxic masculinity telling men that we're entitled to the bodies of women and the attentions of women and when they don't give us that attention and when they don't give us their bodies then we can run them over in a car as part of an in cell rebellion this stuff is all over the Internet why because toxic masculinity and patriarchy have told men that we are entitled to that that we should expect it that's what privilege does it sets you up to expect this and then god forbid you only got this there's a link between that and the meltdown of the religious right right when they argue about oh my god our religious freedom is being taken away because of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ liberation struggles as if somehow their own marriage is threatened and they say this by same-sex marriage if your heterosexual marriage is so weak that it can be threatened by same-sex marriage you need marriage counseling I am trying I'm trying to ascertain I'm trying to ascertain what that anxiety feels like like suddenly you were married to someone of the opposite sex now the Supreme Court legalized the same-sex marriage and you're like oh damn I could have held out [Laughter] [Applause] like what exactly is the problem there's a link though right because if you've been led to believe that your sexuality is normative and that your sexuality must be ratified and reified by all any challenge to your hegemony not to your rights cuz you still got your rights nothing's changed but you've been hegemonic right you've been able to assume your complete dominance your unquestioned hegemony and then if that hegemony is questioned it's like the end of the world I'm not sure who came up with the phrase first but you all have heard it right that when you're used to privilege equality or even pluralism feels like oppression if I'm used to 90% don't tell me I'm only gonna get 75 because that's like the end of the world even if I'm in a group that's only sixty two percent of the damn population 75 percent is still not enough y'all you understand because expectation ilysm says it's not there's a link between that and this guy that writes to me two years ago to tell me that he white dude says he can't find a job because all the jobs are being taken by black folks and Mexicans and he was sincere well I know he was sincere because that was all in capital letters [Laughter] and that is the mark of veracity is when you put your in capital letters and read font I know you're honest he says to me I can't get a job all the jobs are going to black folks and Mecca I'm like all the jobs all the jobs funny cuz black folk and Latin X folks have two to three times the unemployment rate three times the poverty rate of white folks but I guess they've still taken all the job where they took these jobs they took them like a block and a half and then were like nah to hell with that I'm done I don't know if these jobs are in second life on minecraft or some video game I have this image of a white farmer somewhere in Iowa waking up at 4:00 in the morning going out to the barn to milk the cow he's got his buckets cuz I guess that's Dada they milk cows I don't know he's walking out 4:00 in the morning he gets out to the bar and a black dude jumps out from behind a bale of hay and says I already milked your towel white man I took your job that's right me Andre from Detroit I took your job and look don't get me wrong I would be sympathetic to this ridiculousness if like look if if like Monday the boss called the guy up who was white and applied for the job and was like you got the job and white dudes all happy and then Wednesday the boss called him was like I'm just kidding I'm hiring Jose okay I get it like that would be wrong but that is not what is happening yet this kid was convinced right because again his notion of expectation and entitlement told him that if a person of color got a job that he didn't get it must have been that they did they jumped him in line that he was more qualified right he can't even fathom the idea that maybe they were better for the job because entitlement an expectation says that we should all be employed before any person of color is right there's a link between that and the fragility to conjure up the work of Robyn D'Angelo good friend and colleague of mine the fragility of whiteness right that I notice in the hate mail that I get let me just give you some sampling scuzz if I got a deal with it y'all can at least hear it but now here's the good thing let me just some advice for y'all because I know some of y'all do this work and you get hate mail too and you might get it within your like campus community or you may get it from other I don't know here's a little strategy that I employ to make it not so frightening cuz this is some this is some exhausting like when you get death threats since that is not fun but one way that you can make it less problematic is I promise you this works it is just a coping technique and we all need coping techniques to let us laugh through the pain like take your hate mail because it's what I do I take my hate mail and I bring it with me on the road and I sit in my hotel room and I read it out loud in the voice of goofy because I'm telling you somebody threatening your life is never as scary when it starts with Oh garsh we're gonna we're gonna put you in an oven jus see that is not really that disturbing when it's in the voice of I mean it's weird like not see goofy is you know weird but he's not particularly scary so here's the deal but I want you to listen to the words just so you understand the pathology of privilege this but these white folks are manifesting says something I'm not just reading you this for the laughs and like the ridiculousness about how about this actually tells you something about the mentality that whiteness has created and otherwise I'm assuming decent human beings maybe I don't know here it is first one someone is going to take you out you scumbag if you don't like white people then off to Africa you're a piece of subhuman you will not win to genocide the white race what do you hear there other than the profanity you hear this fear of like genocide in white people right because we're not the majority anymore we don't have total hegemonic control and therefore it's genocide first off that's not the definition of genocide you all like Google that like that's a term you can look up right like if not having total control meant genocide then black and brown folks are got the first claim on that native peoples indigenous peoples got the first claim on that people of color at the first claim on that not white folks but this guy's so upset about the loss of the Gemini that he thinks that's what I'm about just because I fight white racism next one you are full of clearly [Laughter] [Music] you're trying to act like the good white guy to get attention and profit I don't care what you claim clearly evidence shows that racism is at a halt black people black people were being lynched now they run congressional positions please stop your racism is over wait for it wait for it white power okay [Applause] I could not I could not script this like you just got a pic one man either either tell me racism is over or do the white power thing but wait oh and his name by the way cuz you know you can when you send the email you can like especially on my website you should be able to go in and like just put whatever fake name you wanted so I wouldn't know who you were his his name that he said it was Greg Hitler so you know next Tim when the race war breaks out you will be thrown in an oven and have your skin blister and peel while you cry in agony for mercy you ravenous but there will be no mercy for you if you don't believe in Hell today think again through the power of Christ you Jew rodents will be purged from the earth from fire and venom ovens and gas chambers there is a heaven it is a place where beautiful blond white women and girls and beautiful see I got there's a heaven I got it [Laughter] [Applause] we're beautiful blonde women and children can live happily in a harmonious and relatively crime free community relatively because relatively [Applause] relatively you know there's still gonna be a little crime a little crime like on on heaven Wall Street there's still me a little crime but it's relatively crime free hell is also a real place he said and it is full of violent in words he did not say in words you know what he said and hook-nosed pushing filth and degradation among God's beautiful children this being the case through the power of God hell needs to be brought to your life a little sooner and what better way to do that than toss you and all of your ilk into an oven where you will toss and turn in agony while you spend your last waking moment repenting you're a piece of there is a bullet waiting to blow your spinal cord now I know that sucks right damn you know that was all in like one week but here's the thing right because but what does it say this is not about like sympathy for me and that's it and people who get death threats it's about just asking what does it say that like that took time to write like it took time to come up with that like hold on let me think about this you filthy Oh heaven is for blonde girls there's no crime well there's a little crime but there's not much like that took that took minutes and minutes and minutes of somebody's life that he was not producing which is what I thought masterrace people did and what it speaks to is it conditioning right that's a sickness and that's not just a sickness that gets played out on people of color or in my case as a Jewish white person or Jewish folks in the form of anti-semitism that's a sickness that is internal do you think that person or those people that wrote those things are healthy mentally emotionally do you think how do you think they treat their own children how do you think they treat their partners or spouses and loved ones and family their colleagues out in the world can we expect anyone so eaten up with resentment and anxiety and hostility that they would take the time because lots of people piss me off y'all I've never actually been like hold up like I can't even do dinner right now family I got to sit down and write some crazy angry to somebody that pissed me off like I just can't even fathom doing that like people have lives to leave but these people were like so bought into this sense of threat right which is part of the entitlement and the expectation their lives are clearly not working out and they need somebody to blame how do you cope when everything falls apart especially when you were told it never would the only choice is you try and numb the pain so you can try opioids as a way to numb the pain us what opiates do right what isn't opiate an opiate is a drug that essentially blocks pain receptors it doesn't solve your problem right so like if you have a crush disc in your back you might get opioids prescribed to deal with the pain but it's not gonna fix your back right you're gonna have to have surgery for that if you have cancer they might prescribe opiates to deal with the pain but that's not gonna solve your cancer you're gonna have to have other treatments to deal with that but it does block the pain receptors and give you the illusion at least of some comfort and some progress so you can do that if you're white and frustrated by your position relative to your expectations or you can turn to a political opiate that does the same thing because if you want to understand the opioid crisis and Donald Trump these things are not unrelated and I'm not saying that because I'm saying that you had to be high to vote for Donald Trump that's not actually my argument though it is a fascinating sociological inquiry that if y'all are academics in that field y'all might want to check into that but what I can tell you is that there was in fact a direct proven correlation between votes for Donald Trump at the county by county level and the degree of opioid addiction in those same counties the counties that were most ravaged by the opioid crisis had a disproportionate likelihood of supporting Donald Trump relative to other counties in this country it's not because they were necessarily high at the time but it's because Donald Trump is a walking talking breathing human opioid who looks at white folks and says I can take away your pain but just like an opioid it doesn't stop the pain when you say build the wall and that'll solve the problem really if y'all studied capitalism is that how you think that works you just build a wall at the border and then all of a sudden all the bosses are like oh I guess we got to give everybody a big raise now that's not how capitalism works man goods are always gonna cross borders capital is always going to be mobile if you allow capital to move and goods to move but you don't let labor move then by definition you just rigged the game against working people and not just Mexican folk and Salvadoran folk and Honduran folk but even working class people north of that border who'd be better off with a large or more militant working class fighting for better wages and working conditions for all working people in the hemisphere that's what you end up doing but Donald Trump can hang out this banner that says I'm on your side right and I'm gonna bring back Kol beautiful clean coal we're gonna get you guys back in the mines rather than transition to an economy that's not only ecologically sustainable but sustainable for the health of those miners who don't give a damn about them he'll send them back down in the mines and they'll die at 57 years of age you don't care about them the only people that actually do care about them of the folks that are trying to get them different kinds of jobs different kinds of opportunities to save their lives in the name of an economy that isn't rooted in profit and it isn't rooted in white domination and patriarchy Donald Trump is a walking opiates so we have to have sympathy for the people that get sucked into that but we must insist that that sympathy not come at the expense of demanding a proper diagnosis it's one thing to have economic anxiety but we cannot allow that analysis to be separated from white expectations the idea that Trump supporters were simply anxious economically that that's not connected to their racial identity is folly those two things are linked I believe in sympathy for those folks but I insist on a proper diagnosis and I say this as a known hypochondriac let me clear this up I'm a horrible hypochondriac y'all bad bad like I could be dying right now I just had a twinge in my back and I'm just could get real any minute okay I'm a hypochondriac but here's the deal just just to put this in perspective and relate it back to the Trump phenomena um a couple years back around New Year's about the last three days of the year before New Year's I was having these weird chest pains and um because I'm a hypochondriac I was convinced I was gonna have a heart attack but because I am a professional hypochondriac not an amateur like some of y'all a professional hypochondriac I did not go to the doctor see a amateur hypochondriac will go to the doctor for every little thing a professional won't even bother because we're just like there's no point it's too late like there's not even any point I'm gonna die and I just I just need to write my goodbyes and like for real that's what a professional hypochondriac so I sit there for three days in the bed and then I did the worst thing you can do I consulted dr. Google never a good move dr. Google does not know what the hell he is talking about cuz you'll get on Google look up different symptoms and you'll get on some chat board where somebody's like yeah I had those symptoms and I died seven years ago and for a minute you'll be like wait a minute you didn't die you posted that at 3 in the morning yesterday but then as a hypochondriac there's party this like what if they really die cuz you're not thinking rationally that's the whole point of hypochondria so you're like oh my god I'm actually dying so finally three and a half four days into this thing it's my wife's birthday cuz that's classy I waited till their birthday to bring it up we go to eat breakfast and I'm sitting I'm real quiet the whole time she's like what's wrong I'm like I'm not doing so good she's like what's wrong I'm like you know I think I might be having some heart problems I lowered my voice like three octaves like that I'm well I don't know and she's like well how long has it been going on like about three days you know she's like well why don't you just go to the doctor today and see what's going on I'm like yeah I think we're way past doctor stage I think we're I think we're past that happy birthday and I'm like I think I need to go to the hospital and she's like oh god really cuz she knows she knows who she's married to right she's like Tim just go to the doctor I'm like no I think I really need to go to the ER she's like Oh God Almighty okay but but here's the thing she was sympathetic about the pain she did not say to me because she's a loving wonderful person you're full of it's all in your head like she didn't say that she didn't deny my pain was real that would have been a mean thing to do and awful that she she knew if I was saying I was in pain I really was but she just didn't want to indulge my self diagnosis right so then I go to the doctor and they run all these tests and six thousand dollars into my deductible but still not having met it cuz America [Music] I found out I pulled a muscle [Laughter] so $6,000 muscle and I pulled the hell out of it and I came back and she's like next time call the doctor right and the same is true with this Trump thing and with understanding the larger phenomena I'm speaking of it's fine to actually sympathize with the pain I know there are millions of white folks in pain that's what the economic system under which we live does to people it's what patriarchy does to women and to men by forcing us to stifle our emotions and our ability to express tenderness and love and compassion because that's not manly enough in a heteronormative way privilege soaks all of that strains all of that wrenches all of that empathy out of us so I know people are in pain I just insist that we have to demand an accurate diagnosis of the pain because people's lives are at stake and that's the great irony about this you know when you do anti-racism work there will always be those white folks who will insist and I've gotten those emails too and they're not necessarily as brutal as the ones I read you but they're every bit as common if not more to talk about how I'm anti white and how those of us who do this work hate white people and want to see white people genocided from the face of the earth but in fact what we are saying is that the liberation of black and brown people's from white supremacy is central to the liberation of white people's from whiteness and white supremacy as well only only when we eradicate the expectation ilysm and entitlement mentality that comes with white supremacy will we be liberated from fear of the other from the fragility that comes with being the dominant group and not knowing how to cope with setback only then will we be liberated from the naivete about how our society works it's very dangerous when you believe for instance that the world is about rugged individualism and meritocracy and then you find yourself struggling because if you've been told your whole life that where you end up is all about you and then you find yourself struggling when you didn't expect that what do you do with that pain what do you do with the disconnect you got to either blame somebody else for your problem but even when you do that see there's that voice in the back of your head in there and that voice is saying nah it's you you just didn't work hard enough you need to double down on the work effort you're not just trying hard enough and so even those white folks who live by rugged individualism and meritocracy end up dying by it because when things don't turn out for us we don't have a place to put the pain and the disconnect because we're so naive about how the society works unless people of color are liberated from white supremacy white folks can't be and we will continue to suffer the death of human empathy see empathy is a natural response to pain it's what children do when they see another child in pain as a natural empathic response it doesn't have to be taught it's a human instinct but white supremacy requires that we sacrifice and suppress that because if we didn't sacrifice it and suppress it we couldn't live with ourselves what happens I ask you to a people who generation in and generation out in order to survive and thrive in the society built for their benefit have to suppress one of the most basic human emotions do you think that that suppression of empathy and compassion only affects the other or do you think it gets turned back upon oneself and one's family when you have a system of privilege that forces you to stuff your emotions it's not only at the expense of the other it's at the expense of yourself this isn't just whiteness it's toxic masculinity and patriarchy even at the most basic levels I think about the way that many years ago you know my best friend who I've known since we were five now teaches at Cal State Los Angeles in the School of Education he's been out there since 99 and probably in the mid 2000s maybe oh five oh six oh seven I went out there he picked me up at LAX and I was throwing my luggage in the trunk and you know we were hugging to say hello hadn't seen him in about five months and we hugged now let me ask you a question how do you think we hugged you know how we hugged we did that thing that guys do it's that it's that how the hell are you just beating the hell out of your back like my goal in life is to bruise your spine because under heteronormativity that is what real men do now this is my best friend this was the best man in my wedding and I stood in his wedding he's the godparent to my children I'm the godparent to his child but we know I'm Jewish so we don't call the godparent I'm actually the social justice uncle we made that up feel free to borrow it in your own family this guy was the president of the student body in high school I was the vice president we did theater together we were debate partners together we've been friends since we were five and I still can't just hug him normal now when I get back to his house in Pasadena and I see his wife Dana do you think I hug her that way when I see Dana do you think I like beat the hell out of her spine how the hell are you girl how are you no with her it's just 1 2 3 release [Laughter] [Applause] because toxic masculinity teaches us as men that we cannot show compassion and tenderness with other men under heteronormativity that also means that I cannot express the most basic emotion that I feel for this man whom I love more than any other person not in my own family on the face of this earth that is not healthy for me it is not just that patriarchy and toxic masculinity unhealthy for women that goes without saying but heteronormative toxic masculinity is incredibly destructive even to those who internalize its norms because it keeps us from expressing our actual selves and forces us to wear a mask to wear a mask none of this is good you see this is the pathology of privilege and if we want to get free we all have to get free it's as James Baldwin said and he said it better than I and I'll end with his words he said this any real change implies the break up of the world as one has already and always known it the loss of all that gave one identity the end of safety and at such a moment unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will bring forth one clings to what one knew to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed yet it is only when one is able without bitterness or self-pity to surrender a dream one is long-cherished or a privilege one has long possessed that one is set free that one has set one's self free for higher dreams and for greater privileges thank you all so much for being here [Applause]

[Music] thank you there is a lot of other you could be doing tonight it is it is Friday in New Orleans what in the hell like really what in the hell are any of us doing here like myself included like I I lived here for 10 years I know there's better stuff to do but I I'm gonna try to get you out of here in time to still enjoy Friday night in New Orleans so you're gonna you're gonna get whatever I can offer you and then you're gonna go out and you're gonna have fun and you're going to enjoy the sort of closing moments of this fantastic conference which by the way it is a real honor to to always you know the last 15 or 16 years I guess that I've been coming to the conference it is always nice to be back I really appreciate the honor of being able to be here this evening and to share some thoughts with you and I want to be real deliberate about this particular talk oh that's water [Laughter] that's water you know me well but that is water it won't be in a couple of hours but right now it's water so why this talk if you saw the title in the program you know it is entitled the pathology of privilege and the reason that I wanted to speak about this this evening is that you know for years those of us who do anti-racism work and work around issues of white privilege and systemic and equality have made something of a living out of frankly proving the existence of this thing called privilege proving the existence of unearned advantage whether that's white privilege male privilege straight privilege class privilege whatever the case might be we have made a bit of a living out of proving that to people and then being very proud of ourselves for having proven what is really incredibly obvious to an awful lot of people it's like proving that rain actually falls from the sky yes it yes it does and then we pat ourselves on the back for demonstrating all the evidence of white privilege of male privilege of straight privilege now I don't mean to demean the importance of proving that because obviously there are an awful lot of people in denial about that but the problem with that as your paradigm as your mode of operation is that we live in a society where even if I managed to convince you of your unearned advantage and that is a big if because it's not a given even if I managed to convince you of it that certainly does not mean that you will necessarily be moved to give up those advantages and that is an understatement of somewhat biblical proportions but there it is in any event in fact we live in a society where if anything it is quite the opposite right we live in a society where if you have an advantage you are not supposed to give that away you are supposed to multiply it right when our parents told us count your blessings they did not follow that up with and then give that to somebody else back in the day my mom used to tell me her parents would say hey eat all that food on your plate don't you know there are children starving in China notice she did not say box that up and send it to China what she said was eat eat have seconds why don't you have thirds because you know there are starving people but that's none of your concern in other words right we live in a society that says when you have an edge you don't give that up you multiply it you take advantage of it and so we have to figure out not just how to prove that privilege is real but how to actually convince people that it's toxic and that it's worth giving up and that's a hard thing to do because why would you want to give up your edge in a society that is all about having an edge many years ago I had this conversation with one of my mentors and and people that I learned so much from the late great Derrick Bell law professor at Harvard and then NYU who has since passed but he said to me in our conversation that that was the holy grail of anti-racism was figuring out how will you convince white people and I could make the same argument about sex and gender and male privilege I could make the same argument about any system of privilege how do you convince those with an edge to actually be willing to sacrifice that edge or fight for a system in which that edge does no longer advantage them and exist and I will tell you today that I do not claim to have discovered Derek Bell's Holy Grail but I do have some thoughts about why even the privileged should think twice about indulging our advantages at the expense of equity and at the expense of justice indeed I would suggest to you that privilege is pathological it is ultimately destructive even to those who benefit from it in the short and the medium term and thus this talk let me be clear though before I get into that what I am NOT saying I am NOT saying that the privileged are the ones we ought to feel sorry for so please don't get confused I'm not saying that we should shed tears for the pain of privilege for the privileged my goodness these poor white people my God my goodness these poor men we must feel for them and create support groups and structures I'm not saying that I'm also not saying that the harm that privilege does to the privileged is morally or practically equivalent to the harm done to those who don't have it I realize that we cannot equate those two the harm done to those who are oppressed and marginalized is both quantitatively and qualitatively greater no question I'm also not saying that we should Center the problems associated with privilege for the privileged in our larger work obviously the experiences of the marginalized have to be central in our moral universe and in our movement building what I am saying however is this unless we have an analysis around the dysfunctionality and even pathology of privilege even for those who receive it a few very serious problems emerge for any attempt to build effective movements for equity and liberation first if we don't have an analysis around the pathology of privilege we miss an opportunity to create a shared sense of injury from this system of inequality and therefore we sacrifice an opportunity to build a mentality of solidarity how do I build a mentality of solidarity with you if I don't understand that my liberation is intimately connected to yours I can't without an analysis of the pathology and the downside of privilege we ultimately reinforce and us against them mentality whereby any change to the system is seen as a net loss to those who have had advantages and it's a zero-sum game so if you win I lose and if I lose you win and I'm telling you right now from a movement-building perspective if you think you can build movements for human liberation on the basis of a zero-sum game you have not paid attention to history it doesn't work that way if we reinforce the idea that your win comes at the expense of me my inclination will be to double down to triple down to quadruple down on my advantage and to ignore your cries for justice that in turn means if we do not build an analysis around why privilege is dysfunctional and if we just don't care about the creation of this zero-sum thinking it means that we are willing to risk everything on one of two things neither of which are very good bets number one that white allies or co-conspirators if you prefer the terminology can be counted on to stay in this work solely on the basis of altruistic and selfless motives that somehow we can convince white folks to stay in the work just because it's the right thing to do I don't know about y'all I've known white people a long-ass time I've been white for 49 years I know my people relatively well and please do not get this twisted I do not hate white people let me say this upfront because I know that every time I say this people get it confused and they say particularly first time in court folks who were like what the hell is this I didn't come here for this I'm the student body vice president what the hell did they get me into I don't hate white people I love me some white people my wife is white [Laughter] [Applause] I love her our daughters are white that's what happens and white people make babies I love them my mom is white nice white lady my dad and I don't get along but it's not about the white it's about some other stuff that I do not have time to process here tonight but if you have a psychology degree or degree in therapy or analysis you please can feel free to come help me with that later I don't have time tonight it's not about white people it's about whiteness what I'm saying is white people in whiteness are not the same and if we don't understand that if we don't understand that people called white can be damaged by this thing called whiteness not as seriously as people of color are and not as directly but we can be the collateral damage of our own if we don't understand that then we are willing to risk everything on the idea that white folks will stay in the fight just because it's the right thing to do but I don't trust altruism in a society rooted in self-interest I don't trust it I don't trust it or we're willing to risk the history of our country and society on the probability that somehow people of color can just overthrow this system on their own without collaboration maybe that's possible I don't know I don't see a lot of evidence of it in history but even if it is possible here's the point even if black and brown folks can liberate themselves without any white Co collaboration who's gonna liberate white folks if not us because even if people of color can liberate themselves unless we link our fate to the fate of black and brown peoples and black and brown communities we will never be free and I learned this in this town I lived here for ten years I got my start in this work doing work against David Duke in 1990 and 91 when he ran for US Senate and governor of this state I know I don't need applause for that that's what white folks should have been doing I don't need applause for that but here's the problem right we had six out of ten white people in this state that voted for a man they knew was a Nazi and that is not a word I use lightly I know we throw that word around sometimes for people that we just don't like but like David Duke is an actual Nazi not even a neo-nazi because neo implies that you thought of some new and David Duke is like Jurassic Nazi like Paleolithic Nazi like old-school Nazi unreconstructed Nazi and six out of ten white people in this state said well I think I'll vote for him anyway it's not like they didn't know babies in utero knew that this man was a Nazi and six out of ten white folks said that's all right with us and I remember sitting here in this town in the aftermath of those elections trying to figure out what does that mean for for my people those who marked that census box the same way I do because what does it mean that six out of ten of my people voted for not now here's the deal I am Jewish so you know I did know like don't vote for the Nazi because like not a good look for Jews when we vote for Nazis but like the white thing is still operative right and six out of ten white folks voted for the guy and I remember sitting there thinking what does that mean cuz the only reason he didn't win let's be clear if it's up to us he does win the only reason he doesn't win is because black folks saved our ass and we never did say thank you we never did say thank you and I haven't been deputized to say thank you tonight but thank you to the black folks of Louisiana for saving this state from David do my point my point is that it's not black folks job to save white people from ourselves you see they did it that was a nice favor they did that was a nice gift that they gave us it was a gift that was totally undeserved but they did it anyway at some point we have to save ourselves so that means we have to talk about what privilege is done to us he privilege and racism has allowed us to actually vote for someone like David Duke who has no solutions for the problems that millions of white folks face economically all he has is blamed to offer and fingers to point at black and brown folks that didn't create the crisis that didn't destroy Wall Street that was rich white men but all David Duke and folks like him can offer all Richard Spencer can offer right all Donald Trump can offer is to point fingers at black and brown folks those down the ladder from those white folks who voted for David Duke and say there is your enemy that's the crisis of whiteness when you take your eye off the ball and you ignore the actual source of your pain your pain is real your diagnosis is and it's time that we call that out so what does privilege do to those who have it well on the one hand we know the easy answer right it creates huge advantages it creates huge material opportunities so white folks are half as likely as black and brown folks to be unemployed one-third is likely to be poor even when they have the same level of education by the way white families fifteen times the net worth on average of black families 12 times that of Latin X families so we know all of that the material piece and obviously it protects recipients of privilege from for the most part not entirely but for the most part from systemic mistreatment it certainly protects those who have privilege from mistreatment on the basis of the identity where they are privileged where they are dominant and those are obviously benefits but the question is what are the costs that we pay to a to actually access those benefits see here's the thing when you are used to experiencing life in a certain way you come to expect that reality to continue in perpetuity so just as the oppressed and the marginalized come to expect oppression and marginalization those who are privileged come to expect the permanence and the predictability of that as well we assume that we will always have access to good jobs we will always have access to the ability to support our families we will always have access to affordable housing education health care we take for granted our place our belonging and prestigious educational institutions we assume that as long as we play by the rules and we work hard the promise of American meritocracy and rugged individualism that we will always be able to succeed and move up the ladder of life and enjoy upward mobility we come to believe in the notion of rugged individualism and meritocracy because for the most part that is tended to work for us now I realize that within a system of capitalism it doesn't work equally for all but for the most part historically white folks have been able to enjoy a pretty decent measure of upward mobility intergenerationally people of color could never take that for granted but white folks could even white working-class folks to some extent could maybe not maybe not vertical mobility but at least horizontal mobility what does that mean and why does that matter well think about it that means that I could say to myself hey my granddaddy worked in the coal mine my daddy worked in the coal mine I'm a work in the coal mine my son is gonna work in the coal mine my granddaddy worked on the assembly line my daddy worked on the assembly line I work on the assembly line got a good union job gonna pass that down to my child the notion of horizontal mobility the idea that as long as I've got a strong back and can lift stuff I'll always have a job now I beg to remind you that black folks never took for granted that was true no person of color ever assumed that just because they were willing to work there be a job ready for them that just because they're willing to work hard and sweat all day that folks would hire them but for white folks that was sort of the truth particularly white men even working-class white men you come to believe in the notion of rugged individualism of meritocracy the idea that wherever you end up is all about you that you're always in control of your destiny more or less you presume that your experiences your cultural norms will always be dominant and normative and unquestioned because they always have been in other words you come to expect certain things to stay the same because this is how they've always been but what if your world starts to change what if the economy globalizes in a way that makes certain of those jobs that you took for granted superfluous in the global economy so now coal mining is no longer really a thing that's profitable because there are more affordable ways to produce energy or even to mine coal they can just blow the tops off mountains now and don't need to hire your happy ass to go into the cave and dig it out and all those folks who own the mines who are just about making money don't give a  about you and your family don't give a about the black lung that you might get by the time you're 53 and die by the time you're 60 all they care about is their profit they'll just blow the top off the mountain Jack it's not it's not hippies and environmentalists taking your job it's rich white men that owned the mine but if you're not ready for that change if you're not ready for the globalization of the economy if you're not ready for the cultural shifts that have taken place whereby the country has become more pluralistic and where you now have to share the designation of what it means to be an American see you never had to do that right and American was you right you were the definition you were the textbook example you were the dictionary you were the catalog definition the store window model of what an American was man I remember a time I mean I'm old but I'm not that old I remember a time when the grocery stores like back in the 80s men even like the ethnic food aisle unless you were on the coast if you were anywhere other than the coast the ethnic food aisle was like pasta yo like that was literally it like it was like just some pasta like ragu and right and now all the sudden the notion of Americanism is incredibly more pluralistic the notion of our popular cultures totally changed right those of us a little bit older than some in the room can remember a time when MTV well first off we can remember a time when MTV played music videos that was what they were like I don't know if y'all MT V stands for music television like they used to show videos and right and now they don't do that but they did and they didn't show black videos though like Michael Jackson was the first they showed like one prints video but they edited it or something like they were nervous about it right and that was after many years of the existence of MTV so now you think about that was just the 80s right when they would not play black music on MTV and now popular culture thoroughly multicultural so much so that the soundtrack of pretty much any teenagers life in this country no matter where they live they could live in Nebraska they could live on the East Coast the West Coast anywhere they live they're gonna have a playlist of their life that is completely in most cases multicultural that is not enough to change the power structure of this country so don't misunderstand what I'm saying but it does signify a significant cultural transformation that is not me and in particular what it means is that those people who got used to the old cultural norms those people who needed those norms needed their culture to be reflected their culture to be dominant don't know what to do with that shift it makes us nervous so you have a global economy you have cultural shifts you have the demographic change we've all heard about right there by 2042 or whatever the year is right half or more of the population ibly people of color half will be white so if all the sudden whiteness is no longer demographically normative culturally normative you get a black president with an exotic name who's from Hawaii or Kenya because that's what so many folks think but to them it's like they might as well be this thing I think a lot of white folks think Hawaii's just like a tourist destination they still don't realize it's part of the United States right it's just like ooh that's exotic no I don't think he's American so you have a individual in the highest office challenging your notion of what leadership is supposed to be you have the demographic shift challenging your notion of what the country itself is you have the cultural changes that are challenging your notion of what the culture of America is and all of that's happening at the same time so imagine that you've been able to assume a steady state your whole life you've been able to assume that I'm an American by god I'm what a normal American looks like and now you can't take that for granted that privilege that you've had starts to freak you out a little bit when it doesn't get delivered suddenly your expectations are being disrupted and here's the thing if you go back to the 60s there was a theory that developed right around the time y'all remembered that and if you don't remember it personally I'm sure you've studied it like you think about the urban rebellions and uprisings of the 60s ask yourself now when did those happen most of those happened 65 and later right 65 67 68 after the assassination of dr. King you didn't have those happening in the same way and let's say 55 57 58 now why is that because if you think about it right you might think it would be more logical to have these uprisings or what some people call riots in the mid 50s because at least by the mid 60s what had happened we'd had the Civil Rights Act we're getting the Voting Rights Act right you get the Great Society programs there are some reforms that are happening granted they're not happening fast enough right but there's been some progress there been some victories so you would think it was odd right that even as things are quote-unquote getting better that's when you have the rebellion as opposed to when they were worse well there was a theory to explain that and the theory that sociologists came up with to explain it was this notion of rising expectations right this idea that when you take people who have been crapped on forever and you start to increase their expectations of real change when the actual delivery of change is slower than the expectation it creates real anxiety and anger right and then there's an explosion because folks are like you promised change and you're delivering really slowly and now I'm pissed and I'm and you know you get frustrated right so that made sense and for the most part that theory has been pretty much mainstream now it's pretty much accepted that when you rise when you when you raise the expectations of marginalized people but you don't deliver there can be an explosion well let me ask you a question if that's true and the evidence says that it is ask yourself what will happen when you take people who have always had high expectations who were raised and nurtured or high expectations and then you don't deliver to them what you promised them now what happens you think there's a problem when you promise some stuff to people you never promise stuff to you before and then they get pissed tell me about the folks have been promised for three or four hundred years that life would be okay what happens when it's not and I'm telling you if you think the one is an explosion wait till you see what this produces you understand when you frustrate the expectations of those who have always had high expectations and a mentality of entitlement that came from that not only that I expect a B and Z but I am entitled to a B and C I'm entitled to have these benefits I'm entitled to these advantages that's when you have this problem so a couple years ago right there's this study and I'm sure y'all saw it came out to economists at Princeton husband-and-wife team very well respected academics did this study where they were looking at mortality data from 1999 to about 2013 I think so 14 years worth of data and they were looking at some really interesting information that nobody seemed to be commenting on they noticed that from 99 to 2013 for the most part most groups in this country continued to experience a downward trajectory of mortality death rates right which is the normal trend when you live in an advanced industrial economy the typical trend is that people's mortality rates decline life expectancy improves unless you have a major epidemic or a natural disaster or something like that that's what's supposed to happen you're supposed to live longer die less at cetera and for most groups that's what happened but there was one demographic cohort for which that was not true and it was white middle-aged non-college educated working-class folks and for that group there was an excess mortality number of half-a-million people let me explain what this means it means that from 1999 to 2013 a half a million white folks died who would not have died if their mortality numbers had simply continued in the same direction as everybody else's and I should point out to you these deaths were not from just like simple heart disease or anything like that it was from three things in particular opioid overdoses suicides and cirrhosis of the liver which is typically brought on by heavy drinking right in other words they were what these two researchers at Princeton called deaths of despair right half a million excess white deaths but not just any white folks white folks who were working-class non-college educated middle-aged white folks and I remember when I saw the study at I wasn't satisfied with this analysis because when you talk about deaths of despair like what's the despair okay I get it some of these folks are unemployed they're not able to hold down a job the jobs are leaving their town I get that that's got to be anxiety-producing but here's the deal y'all manufacturing jobs have been leaving the inner cities of this country and urban communities let lived in by black and brown folks since 1973 so that is not new right and the idea that that deaths of despair that it's somehow a unique thing for white folks to experience that when black and brown folks have been dealing with that for literally 40-plus years doesn't make any sense to say that they're dying deaths of despair and they're drinking themselves to death and using opioids and putting guns in their mouths and killing themselves just because they can't make ends meet if that was enough then black folks would also be seeing that trajectory and brown folks would also be seeing that trajectory because on every single indicator of well-being people of color are suffering more now don't get me wrong that doesn't mean white folks aren't suffering I'm not trying to say that just because black and brown folks are hurting more white pain doesn't matter what I'm saying is there has to be a reason that white pain is dealt with differently by white people than black and brown pain there has to be a reason that black and brown folks who were dealing with actually more economic anxiety that famous thing that some folks want to attribute Donald Trump's victory to because they just can't admit that it's racism they want to say it's economic anxiety if it was economic anxiety black and brown folks would have lined up around the damn block to vote for this man and I beg to remind you that they did not so what is it about white anxiety that creates this dysfunction the only possible answer is that these are folks who were promised the moon promised that the world was there Auster promised that this level of insecurity would never be their lot in life that that level of anxiety that was for those folks on that side of town it's not for us we're always gonna have work we're always gonna be able to make ends meet you see so those deaths of despair not about despair it's about the disconnect between aspiration and achievement between expectation and achievement between entitlement and achievement right between the expectation ilysm if you will that whiteness has created there are some similarities between the opioid crisis right which is so disproportionately affecting not exclusively I want to be clear because there are black and brown folks suffering with this thing but disproportionately white there's a link between that and the spike in suicides in white communities there's a link between those things and the uptick in misogyny that we see online and in the streets of our country as well when we see somebody not even in just our own country but in Toronto that guy that ran over a bunch of women and then find out that he'd been posting on these boards he's a what he called involuntary celibate right this in this communities that call themselves in cell because you know they're mad that women won't have sex with them and they think that they're entitled to women's bodies that's their entire mentality so it's not just whiteness it's patriarchy and toxic masculinity telling men that we're entitled to the bodies of women and the attentions of women and when they don't give us that attention and when they don't give us their bodies then we can run them over in a car as part of an in cell rebellion this stuff is all over the Internet why because toxic masculinity and patriarchy have told men that we are entitled to that that we should expect it that's what privilege does it sets you up to expect this and then god forbid you only got this there's a link between that and the meltdown of the religious right right when they argue about oh my god our religious freedom is being taken away because of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ liberation struggles as if somehow their own marriage is threatened and they say this by same-sex marriage if your heterosexual marriage is so weak that it can be threatened by same-sex marriage you need marriage counseling I am trying I'm trying to ascertain I'm trying to ascertain what that anxiety feels like like suddenly you were married to someone of the opposite sex now the Supreme Court legalized the same-sex marriage and you're like oh damn I could have held out [Laughter] [Applause] like what exactly is the problem there's a link though right because if you've been led to believe that your sexuality is normative and that your sexuality must be ratified and reified by all any challenge to your hegemony not to your rights cuz you still got your rights nothing's changed but you've been hegemonic right you've been able to assume your complete dominance your unquestioned hegemony and then if that hegemony is questioned it's like the end of the world I'm not sure who came up with the phrase first but you all have heard it right that when you're used to privilege equality or even pluralism feels like oppression if I'm used to 90% don't tell me I'm only gonna get 75 because that's like the end of the world even if I'm in a group that's only sixty two percent of the damn population 75 percent is still not enough y'all you understand because expectation ilysm says it's not there's a link between that and this guy that writes to me two years ago to tell me that he white dude says he can't find a job because all the jobs are being taken by black folks and Mexicans and he was sincere well I know he was sincere because that was all in capital letters [Laughter] and that is the mark of veracity is when you put your in capital letters and read font I know you're honest he says to me I can't get a job all the jobs are going to black folks and Mecca I'm like all the jobs all the jobs funny cuz black folk and Latin X folks have two to three times the unemployment rate three times the poverty rate of white folks but I guess they've still taken all the job where they took these jobs they took them like a block and a half and then were like nah to hell with that I'm done I don't know if these jobs are in second life on minecraft or some video game I have this image of a white farmer somewhere in Iowa waking up at 4:00 in the morning going out to the barn to milk the cow he's got his buckets cuz I guess that's Dada they milk cows I don't know he's walking out 4:00 in the morning he gets out to the bar and a black dude jumps out from behind a bale of hay and says I already milked your towel white man I took your job that's right me Andre from Detroit I took your job and look don't get me wrong I would be sympathetic to this ridiculousness if like look if if like Monday the boss called the guy up who was white and applied for the job and was like you got the job and white dudes all happy and then Wednesday the boss called him was like I'm just kidding I'm hiring Jose okay I get it like that would be wrong but that is not what is happening yet this kid was convinced right because again his notion of expectation and entitlement told him that if a person of color got a job that he didn't get it must have been that they did they jumped him in line that he was more qualified right he can't even fathom the idea that maybe they were better for the job because entitlement an expectation says that we should all be employed before any person of color is right there's a link between that and the fragility to conjure up the work of Robyn D'Angelo good friend and colleague of mine the fragility of whiteness right that I notice in the hate mail that I get let me just give you some sampling scuzz if I got a deal with it y'all can at least hear it but now here's the good thing let me just some advice for y'all because I know some of y'all do this work and you get hate mail too and you might get it within your like campus community or you may get it from other I don't know here's a little strategy that I employ to make it not so frightening cuz this is some this is some exhausting  like when you get death threats since that is not fun but one way that you can make it less problematic is I promise you this works it is just a coping technique and we all need coping techniques to let us laugh through the pain like take your hate mail because it's what I do I take my hate mail and I bring it with me on the road and I sit in my hotel room and I read it out loud in the voice of goofy because I'm telling you somebody threatening your life is never as scary when it starts with Oh garsh we're gonna we're gonna put you in an oven jus see that is not really that disturbing when it's in the voice of I mean it's weird like not see goofy is you know weird but he's not particularly scary so here's the deal but I want you to listen to the words just so you understand the pathology of privilege this but these white folks are manifesting says something I'm not just reading you this for the laughs and like the ridiculousness about how about this actually tells you something about the mentality that whiteness has created and otherwise I'm assuming decent human beings maybe I don't know here it is first one someone is going to take you out you scumbag if you don't like white people then off to Africa you're a piece of subhuman you will not win to genocide the white race what do you hear there other than the profanity you hear this fear of like genocide in white people right because we're not the majority anymore we don't have total hegemonic control and therefore it's genocide first off that's not the definition of genocide you all like Google that like that's a term you can look up right like if not having total control meant genocide then black and brown folks are got the first claim on that native peoples indigenous peoples got the first claim on that people of color at the first claim on that not white folks but this guy's so upset about the loss of the Gemini that he thinks that's what I'm about just because I fight white racism next one you are full of clearly [Laughter] [Music] you're trying to act like the good white guy to get attention and profit I don't care what you claim clearly evidence shows that racism is at a halt black people black people were being lynched now they run congressional positions please stop your racism is over wait for it wait for it white power okay [Applause] I could not I could not script this like you just got a pic one man either either tell me racism is over or do the white power thing but wait oh and his name by the way cuz you know you can when you send the email you can like especially on my website you should be able to go in and like just put whatever fake name you wanted so I wouldn't know who you were his his name that he said it was Greg Hitler so you know next Tim when the race war breaks out you will be thrown in an oven and have your skin blister and peel while you cry in agony for mercy you ravenous but there will be no mercy for you if you don't believe in Hell today think again through the power of Christ you Jew rodents will be purged from the earth from fire and venom ovens and gas chambers there is a heaven it is a place where beautiful blond white women and girls and beautiful see I got there's a heaven I got it [Laughter] [Applause] we're beautiful blonde women and children can live happily in a harmonious and relatively crime free community relatively because relatively [Applause] relatively you know there's still gonna be a little crime a little crime like on on heaven Wall Street there's still me a little crime but it's relatively crime free hell is also a real place he said and it is full of violent in words he did not say in words you know what he said and hook-nosed pushing filth and degradation among God's beautiful children this being the case through the power of God hell needs to be brought to your life a little sooner and what better way to do that than toss you and all of your ilk into an oven where you will toss and turn in agony while you spend your last waking moment repenting you're a piece of there is a bullet waiting to blow your spinal cord now I know that sucks right damn you know that was all in like one week but here's the thing right because but what does it say this is not about like sympathy for me and that's it and people who get death threats it's about just asking what does it say that like that took time to write like it took time to come up with that like hold on let me think about this you filthy Oh heaven is for blonde girls there's no crime well there's a little crime but there's not much like that took that took minutes and minutes and minutes of somebody's life that he was not producing which is what I thought masterrace people did and what it speaks to is it conditioning right that's a sickness and that's not just a sickness that gets played out on people of color or in my case as a Jewish white person or Jewish folks in the form of anti-semitism that's a sickness that is internal do you think that person or those people that wrote those things are healthy mentally emotionally do you think how do you think they treat their own children how do you think they treat their partners or spouses and loved ones and family their colleagues out in the world can we expect anyone so eaten up with resentment and anxiety and hostility that they would take the time because lots of people piss me off y'all I've never actually been like hold up like I can't even do dinner right now family I got to sit down and write some crazy angry to somebody that pissed me off like I just can't even fathom doing that like people have lives to leave but these people were like so bought into this sense of threat right which is part of the entitlement and the expectation their lives are clearly not working out and they need somebody to blame how do you cope when everything falls apart especially when you were told it never would the only choice is you try and numb the pain so you can try opioids as a way to numb the pain us what opiates do right what isn't opiate an opiate is a drug that essentially blocks pain receptors it doesn't solve your problem right so like if you have a crush disc in your back you might get opioids prescribed to deal with the pain but it's not gonna fix your back right you're gonna have to have surgery for that if you have cancer they might prescribe opiates to deal with the pain but that's not gonna solve your cancer you're gonna have to have other treatments to deal with that but it does block the pain receptors and give you the illusion at least of some comfort and some progress so you can do that if you're white and frustrated by your position relative to your expectations or you can turn to a political opiate that does the same thing because if you want to understand the opioid crisis and Donald Trump these things are not unrelated and I'm not saying that because I'm saying that you had to be high to vote for Donald Trump that's not actually my argument though it is a fascinating sociological inquiry that if y'all are academics in that field y'all might want to check into that but what I can tell you is that there was in fact a direct proven correlation between votes for Donald Trump at the county by county level and the degree of opioid addiction in those same counties the counties that were most ravaged by the opioid crisis had a disproportionate likelihood of supporting Donald Trump relative to other counties in this country it's not because they were necessarily high at the time but it's because Donald Trump is a walking talking breathing human opioid who looks at white folks and says I can take away your pain but just like an opioid it doesn't stop the pain when you say build the wall and that'll solve the problem really if y'all studied capitalism is that how you think that works you just build a wall at the border and then all of a sudden all the bosses are like oh I guess we got to give everybody a big raise now that's not how capitalism works man goods are always gonna cross borders capital is always going to be mobile if you allow capital to move and goods to move but you don't let labor move then by definition you just rigged the game against working people and not just Mexican folk and Salvadoran folk and Honduran folk but even working class people north of that border who'd be better off with a large or more militant working class fighting for better wages and working conditions for all working people in the hemisphere that's what you end up doing but Donald Trump can hang out this banner that says I'm on your side right and I'm gonna bring back Kol beautiful clean coal we're gonna get you guys back in the mines rather than transition to an economy that's not only ecologically sustainable but sustainable for the health of those miners who don't give a damn about them he'll send them back down in the mines and they'll die at 57 years of age you don't care about them the only people that actually do care about them of the folks that are trying to get them different kinds of jobs different kinds of opportunities to save their lives in the name of an economy that isn't rooted in profit and it isn't rooted in white domination and patriarchy Donald Trump is a walking opiates so we have to have sympathy for the people that get sucked into that but we must insist that that sympathy not come at the expense of demanding a proper diagnosis it's one thing to have economic anxiety but we cannot allow that analysis to be separated from white expectations the idea that Trump supporters were simply anxious economically that that's not connected to their racial identity is folly those two things are linked I believe in sympathy for those folks but I insist on a proper diagnosis and I say this as a known hypochondriac let me clear this up I'm a horrible hypochondriac y'all bad bad like I could be dying right now I just had a twinge in my back and I'm just could get real any minute okay I'm a hypochondriac but here's the deal just just to put this in perspective and relate it back to the Trump phenomena um a couple years back around New Year's about the last three days of the year before New Year's I was having these weird chest pains and um because I'm a hypochondriac I was convinced I was gonna have a heart attack but because I am a professional hypochondriac not an amateur like some of y'all a professional hypochondriac I did not go to the doctor see a amateur hypochondriac will go to the doctor for every little thing a professional won't even bother because we're just like there's no point it's too late like there's not even any point I'm gonna die and I just I just need to write my goodbyes and like for real that's what a professional hypochondriac so I sit there for three days in the bed and then I did the worst thing you can do I consulted dr. Google never a good move dr. Google does not know what the hell he is talking about cuz you'll get on Google look up different symptoms and you'll get on some chat board where somebody's like yeah I had those symptoms and I died seven years ago and for a minute you'll be like wait a minute you didn't die you posted that  at 3 in the morning yesterday but then as a hypochondriac there's party this like what if they really die cuz you're not thinking rationally that's the whole point of hypochondria so you're like oh my god I'm actually dying so finally three and a half four days into this thing it's my wife's birthday cuz that's classy I waited till their birthday to bring it up we go to eat breakfast and I'm sitting I'm real quiet the whole time she's like what's wrong I'm like I'm not doing so good she's like what's wrong I'm like you know I think I might be having some heart problems I lowered my voice like three octaves like that I'm well I don't know and she's like well how long has it been going on like about three days you know she's like well why don't you just go to the doctor today and see what's going on I'm like yeah I think we're way past doctor stage I think we're I think we're past that happy birthday and I'm like I think I need to go to the hospital and she's like oh god really cuz she knows she knows who she's married to right she's like Tim just go to the doctor I'm like no I think I really need to go to the ER she's like Oh God Almighty okay but but here's the thing she was sympathetic about the pain she did not say to me because she's a loving wonderful person you're full of it's all in your head like she didn't say that she didn't deny my pain was real that would have been a mean thing to do and awful that she she knew if I was saying I was in pain I really was but she just didn't want to indulge my  self diagnosis right so then I go to the doctor and they run all these tests and six thousand dollars into my deductible but still not having met it cuz America [Music] I found out I pulled a muscle [Laughter] so $6,000 muscle and I pulled the hell out of it and I came back and she's like next time call the doctor right and the same is true with this Trump thing and with understanding the larger phenomena I'm speaking of it's fine to actually sympathize with the pain I know there are millions of white folks in pain that's what the economic system under which we live does to people it's what patriarchy does to women and to men by forcing us to stifle our emotions and our ability to express tenderness and love and compassion because that's not manly enough in a heteronormative way privilege soaks all of that strains all of that wrenches all of that empathy out of us so I know people are in pain I just insist that we have to demand an accurate diagnosis of the pain because people's lives are at stake and that's the great irony about this you know when you do anti-racism work there will always be those white folks who will insist and I've gotten those emails too and they're not necessarily as brutal as the ones I read you but they're every bit as common if not more to talk about how I'm anti white and how those of us who do this work hate white people and want to see white people genocided from the face of the earth but in fact what we are saying is that the liberation of black and brown people's from white supremacy is central to the liberation of white people's from whiteness and white supremacy as well only only when we eradicate the expectation ilysm and entitlement mentality that comes with white supremacy will we be liberated from fear of the other from the fragility that comes with being the dominant group and not knowing how to cope with setback only then will we be liberated from the naivete about how our society works it's very dangerous when you believe for instance that the world is about rugged individualism and meritocracy and then you find yourself struggling because if you've been told your whole life that where you end up is all about you and then you find yourself struggling when you didn't expect that what do you do with that pain what do you do with the disconnect you got to either blame somebody else for your problem but even when you do that see there's that voice in the back of your head in there and that voice is saying nah it's you you just didn't work hard enough you need to double down on the work effort you're not just trying hard enough and so even those white folks who live by rugged individualism and meritocracy end up dying by it because when things don't turn out for us we don't have a place to put the pain and the disconnect because we're so naive about how the society works unless people of color are liberated from white supremacy white folks can't be and we will continue to suffer the death of human empathy see empathy is a natural response to pain it's what children do when they see another child in pain as a natural empathic response it doesn't have to be taught it's a human instinct but white supremacy requires that we sacrifice and suppress that because if we didn't sacrifice it and suppress it we couldn't live with ourselves what happens I ask you to a people who generation in and generation out in order to survive and thrive in the society built for their benefit have to suppress one of the most basic human emotions do you think that that suppression of empathy and compassion only affects the other or do you think it gets turned back upon oneself and one's family when you have a system of privilege that forces you to stuff your emotions it's not only at the expense of the other it's at the expense of yourself this isn't just whiteness it's toxic masculinity and patriarchy even at the most basic levels I think about the way that many years ago you know my best friend who I've known since we were five now teaches at Cal State Los Angeles in the School of Education he's been out there since 99 and probably in the mid 2000s maybe oh five oh six oh seven I went out there he picked me up at LAX and I was throwing my luggage in the trunk and you know we were hugging to say hello hadn't seen him in about five months and we hugged now let me ask you a question how do you think we hugged you know how we hugged we did that thing that guys do it's that it's that how the hell are you just beating the hell out of your back like my goal in life is to bruise your spine because under heteronormativity that is what real men do now this is my best friend this was the best man in my wedding and I stood in his wedding he's the godparent to my children I'm the godparent to his child but we know I'm Jewish so we don't call the godparent I'm actually the social justice uncle we made that up feel free to borrow it in your own family this guy was the president of the student body in high school I was the vice president we did theater together we were debate partners together we've been friends since we were five and I still can't just hug him normal now when I get back to his house in Pasadena and I see his wife Dana do you think I hug her that way when I see Dana do you think I like beat the hell out of her spine how the hell are you girl how are you no with her it's just 1 2 3 release [Laughter] [Applause] because toxic masculinity teaches us as men that we cannot show compassion and tenderness with other men under heteronormativity that also means that I cannot express the most basic emotion that I feel for this man whom I love more than any other person not in my own family on the face of this earth that is not healthy for me it is not just that patriarchy and toxic masculinity unhealthy for women that goes without saying but heteronormative toxic masculinity is incredibly destructive even to those who internalize its norms because it keeps us from expressing our actual selves and forces us to wear a mask to wear a mask none of this is good you see this is the pathology of privilege and if we want to get free we all have to get free it's as James Baldwin said and he said it better than I and I'll end with his words he said this any real change implies the break up of the world as one has already and always known it the loss of all that gave one identity the end of safety and at such a moment unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will bring forth one clings to what one knew to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed yet it is only when one is able without bitterness or self-pity to surrender a dream one is long-cherished or a privilege one has long possessed that one is set free that one has set one's self free for higher dreams and for greater privileges thank you all so much for being here [Applause]

Transcript for:Understanding Privilege and Inequality

Transcript for:
Understanding Privilege and Inequality