Privileged By Association
Friends with privileges don’t make you privileged, y’all — for realz!
When a so-called White friend (the friend goes without quotes and not just because the person reads my shit) and me were having a kiki about the silly and offensive words (micro aggressions) people be using. My friend made the curious (hilarious) suggestion that Whites subconsciously carry the attitude that their presence among Black people (and other non-Whites) elevates the Black people. Yes kids, there is an internalization that White people make everyone (everything) better—like Coke! We were laughing our asses off, but that shit smacked hard of truth. This person (the friend) had shared a cultural experienced they considered as pervasive as hot wings at Sunday football. It was the kind of proprietary secret that shows up in many cultures’ attitudes about people, places, and things. They aren’t typically shared in mixed company. They’d let a “family” secret out of the bag!
I shouldn’t have been all that awed by the idea. It’s not even a new idea. It ain’t like I haven’t seen it in action throughout my life. I just never had a way to express it like they (the friend) did. Whole institutions have been founded in that belief. It was the rationalization for colonization (even though that was mostly about wealth extraction). White people over the past 500 years or so have moved through the world wreaking havoc, in the name of saving savages. It makes sense that, along with the biases and baseless beliefs that sprung out of colonization, White people continue to experience their presence as a sign of advancements. It’s what gentrification is all about. It’s what a lot of cultural appropriation stems from: a desire to make things better for the enjoyment of White people, but understanding it as better for everyone.
I think of the Pygmalion myth where a man brings a statue to life expecting the “new” woman to be at his beck and call—a slave. There’s an even older reference—the Golem. Frankenstein is a man (Mary Shelly knew what was up) believing he could improve on nature using dead body parts. Colonists began with a process of dehumanization (of would be free labor and displaced natives) that amounted to turning them into dead things. Perhaps it was mentally impossible for Europeans to recognize other’s humanity outside of a Western context (different). Abducted Africans and the original inhabitants of this continent became things in Western eyes. It follows that psychological framing continues.
It goes the other way as well. Dehumanized beings begin to recognize their own humanity only through the gaze of White people. Proximity to Whiteness becomes a pursuit in itself among non-Whites who buy into a faulty perception. I imagine, even with people of color who have done work to decolonize their own minds, many African Diasporan folks still experience the residual effects of conditioning that subjugated all others to the White ideal. So much of our clothing, the way we wear our hair, the things we consider respectable, and a bunch of shit, is founded in the belief that if White people think its good, it must be good.
The contradiction that my friend’s inspired rant happened several cocktails in (booze will do that), inside one of those pervasive Detroit establishments that fail to attract any Black folks, is not lost on me. Hold on while I go check myself.
