Occupy Wall Street and ‘White Privilege’: A Personal Perspective

 The issue of racial minorities and the Occupy Wall Street movement has been making big news recently.  For example, the Boston Metro reported last week that some in the Occupy The Hood movement have been breaking ties with Occupy Boston.  One of the reasons for this is because Occupy Boston is redolent of white privilege.  Later that week, an article in the Washington Post discussing the very same issue put the question eloquently.  It reads: African-Americans share white Americans’ anger about corporate greed and corruption, and blacks have a rich history of protesting injustice in United States. So why aren’t they Occupying? This is a question I have asked myself and my friends, the majority of whom are immigrants from Africa and Asia, but also are African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Russian, and so on.  I have been given various answers, all of them interesting.  One of the most interesting responses came from a great friend of mine from Bangladesh.  He told me pointedly that “I understand why you are standing up for your rights.  You grew up here and have something to lose.  Where I come from we don’t have such high expectations and not much to lose.”  I pressed him further asking whether he feels like he has much to lose now.  He says that he does but with 2 kids, a wife, and a full-time job, he can’t give too much to such a movement.  Fair enough, I thought.  So it seems from the Post article and the responses from my friends that there are a range of reasons why African-Americans, Native Americans, and ethnic minorities in the US are not showing up in larger numbers.  What I hope to address in this blog is the issue of ‘white privilege.’

I want to share up front that this post is more personal reflection than analysis.  It comes from my own perspective and is colored by my experience.  When I visited Occupy Boston one of the things I noticed was that an overwhelming majority of people there were white.  In fact, this is something that I asked amid anti-war demonstrations throughout the previous decade.  Perhaps the reason was then and is still because African-Americans, minorities, and poor whites are too beaten down by the system to join up.  But it always lingered in my thoughts that maybe there is another reason.  Might it be because of ‘white privilege’?  Just what does that term mean and how much does it hinder a movement?

Practicing ‘White privilege’ refers to the act of suppressing minority groups for the advantage of the majority.  This can be done knowingly or not and more often than not it is subtle and not overt.  It takes the dominant group’s situation as the norm and attempts to impose it on the rest.  In addition, it places the onus on the minority group to reach what the majority regard as the norm.  As such, the practice of ‘white privilege’ sets up an unreachable goal for minorities because it is one that is continuously defined by the dominant group.

The criticism of Occupy Wall Street has been that it is a movement started by whites and as such will represent the view of whites.  I’m sure most whites involved would argue that this is untrue.  However right they are in their reply, they are also wrong because in a deeper sense, it is true.  After all, police brutality and home foreclosures have been going on since before 2011 and yet there was no Occupy movement.  Is the concern over this growing merely because now it is hitting white middle class Americans?  African- Americans have been dealing with these issues for years and I can understand their apprehension toward joining a movement which is late to the party and dominated by whites.  To address my own personal record on these matters, my friend and I were arguing for an occupy type of protest to take place back in 2001 when bombs first started dropping in Afghanistan.  But I digress.  I don’t recall many demonstrating  in Boston over the execution of Troy Davis (apart from the usual crowd) and that was this year!  Even more obscure, how many were there for local Palestinian activist Amer Jubran?  I don’t recall very many showing up to hearings, marching outside government center.

I wrote a post on Occupy The Hood last month in which I wrote that we whites need to stop preaching and start listening to African-Americans and other minority groups before we can make real changes.  The fact is that we won’t be taken seriously until we take everybody else seriously.  We whites need to look at ourselves and see the interconnectedness of our struggles with the rest of the people around us.  We need to address the subtle nuances of our concerns and be understanding of our biases.  We need to, as the great historian, Ronald Takaki suggests, hold America and ourselves up to “A Different Mirror.”  We have come to a crucial moment that cannot and should not be squandered.  It is essential to doing away with ‘white privilege’ and more importantly, toward breaking the cycle of cultural misunderstanding.

In spite of this, I want to stress that no movement should be shunned because some of its members are late-comers.  This is a lazy criticism that stifles energy that could be harnessed to address real problems.  I am not arguing here for the immediate joining of such movements but of critical engagement with them.  There may be white privilege on display and a lack of understanding but the existence of such tendencies should be seen as an opportunity for dialogue and teaching, not of outright dismissal.  These are well-meaning individuals, not crooked Wall Street brokers or opportunistic politicians.  They are also mostly young and were just children during the last decade.  Should these people be faulted for not marching against the war in Iraq because they were 12 when it began?  Should I be faulted for not protesting police brutality after 41 shots killed Amadou Diallo (I was 16 then and just cutting my political teeth)?  I welcome anyone who is “late to the party” and want to engage with them.  The beauty of social movements lies in their description.  Human beings are social animals with a unique ability to communicate with one another.  Lets embrace this in order to learn, teach, and struggle together in order to build a better world.

We should be grateful that this discussion is being had.  As such, I welcome all comments and feedback and look forward to an open dialog.