The reality of white privilege
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Bryan N. Massingale of the National Catholic Reporter looks at recent incidents in the US, particularly that involving Amy Cooper in Central Park.
He shows that her behaviour is only comprehensible by teasing out the assumptions of white privilege on which it rests.
“The fundamental assumption behind all the others,” he affirms, “is that white people matter, or should matter, more than people of color. Certainly more than black people.”
This article was originally published by National Catholic Reporter on Mon 1 Jun 2020. Read the original here.
The assumptions of white privilege and what we can do about it
Amy Cooper knew exactly what she was doing. We all do. And that’s the problem.
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A small side comment: Amy Cooper did all of this while throttling her dog. I’ve noticed that bigots often use their prejudice to shield and justify other forms of cruelty and bigotry.
Mr Massingale has one fact wrong, I believe. Mr Christian Cooper is widely reported as being middle-aged, and in the N.Y.Times biographical piece on him he is described as being 57 years of age. I am well aware of the grand old American tradition of assuming that young black men are always on the verge of raping white women. Over half a century ago I read of the Scottsborough Boys (young men, in fact – I and the author and the CPUSA, who defended them in very dangerous circumstances, are well aware of the pejorative charge in addressing or even describing any black male as ‘boy’) and of Emmett Till, tortured to death for complimenting a white woman on her looks.
Whatever the relevance, Christian Cooper was not a young man. On one reading, this very fact deepens the vileness of the woman Cooper, as, arguably, does Mr Cooper’s graciousness if deploring the tidal wage of righteous indignation unleashed at her. (There are of course newspapers who will attack Mr Cooper’s demeanour, imputing racist motives on his behalf, just as there are chauvinists who will impute antisemitism to anyone who looks sideways at the murderous acts of the Israeli government).
American working class black people in their overwhelming majority have excellent reasons for regarding the 18,000 police forces with their qualified immunity from civil or criminal suit as resembling the Sturmabteilungen of Nazi Germany. (Qualified immunity is nullifiable only by a successful recent prosecution of an identical crime within the same local jurisdiction – this vicious system is therefore indefinitely self-extending, rather like Hitler’s Enabling Act) . Democratic controls are of little use, since the US law and administrative system makes it almost impossible for a third party to develop, and US ‘parties’ are more like franchises of Wall Street (Hillary Clinton… ) or the likes of Sheldon Adelson (Trump) and have barely any policy making powers outside the commercially driven presidential selections. This is a dreadful warning of the dangers ahead for our LP, where a commercial lobbyist – David Evans with his ‘Campaign Company’ (!!!!) is now general secretary.` He compares the headquarters that brought us years of bureaucratic neoliberalism (with the occasional dollop of charity to plaster over the wounds of ever-more supercharged capitalism), with Marks and Spencer (!), and CLPs, the basis of party democracy, with Delboy.
Of course, these undemocratic constitutions do not compare with the situation in Israel, where Palestinian parties are in effect banned from participating in government, and increasingly, even supporting a governmental coalition from the outside – let alone the outright brutal tyranny in the West Bank and in the Gaza ghetto. Palestinian resistance is repressed only by outright systematic murder (Gaza) or by a massive Israeli sponsored quisling police apparatus (the West Bank).