How do you deal with the fact that the majority of US prisons have been built since that movement, and that most of the inhabitants of said prisons are people of color, and that their rate of inprisonment is astronomically higher than those for people whose asses are white like yours and mine? How do you deal with the fact that people of color are refused financial loans at astronomically higher rates than people of color? How do you deal with racial profiling? How do you deal with the top-down moves to undo Affirmative Action thorughout the country, while white enrollment rates at universities are increasing in proportion to those of black students simultaneously?

Racism depends on white privilege. Without the privilege, there would be no point.

In this case, you’re proving my point by way of illustration, for which I thank you. The first real step in doing anti-racist work for a white person in America is acknowledging and coming to terms with the structural privileges you have by virtue of having been born white. If you can’t do that, you’re can’t so much as see the root of the problem of racism.

And come on, how can you take yourself seriously with that “anti-racism and multiculturalism as far as the eye can see” bit in the context of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments that have gained so much traction since 911, and the anti-Latino sentiments that you see all over the place in mainstream politics and mainstream press in the context of the so-called “immigration” debate? Or are you just not paying attention to that part?

I’m sorry that you’re “deathly afraid.” But the fact of the matter is that dealing with the racism that inevitably results from having been socialized in a racist environment is difficult and uncomfortable. Maybe for you that fear is the first step.

“White people in America are the most reticent of all to acknowledge and begin to deal with their own racism.”

I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but whites have been browbeaten to the point of constantly walking on eggshells, deathly afraid of saying anything that might remotely be construed as “intolerant” or “hateful”.

Whites, to be frank, are the least racist people on the planet. Asians, both eastern and southern, Africans, Latin Americans — all have strong ingroup/outgroup identities, and no one thinks of telling them to change.

The current cultural landscape of America is anti-racism and multiculturalism as far as the eye can see. “White privilege” is merely the privilege of being blamed for everyone’s problems.

anything that can elbow its way into mainstream discourse while addressing race in such a way that focuses on the white experience and use of racial difference (i.e., the benefits of racial privilege and the consistent refusal to acknowledge racial difference meaningfully) can only serve to help white america out of its insane notion of itself and its context.

the best thing i’ve read on race in a while (Kobena Mercer’s *Reading Racial Fetishism* included the following:

…the real challenge in the new cultural politics of difference is to make whiteness visible for the first time, as a culturally constructed ethnic identity historically contingent upon the violent denial and disavowal of “difference” (215).

racist society produces racists. there’s no way around that, not with any amount of progressive politics. white people in america are the most reticent of all to acknowledge and begin to deal with their own racism. yet this must be step #1 in doing anti-racist work. Hillary Rodham should be encouraged to acknowlege her own racism, and find the opportunity to begin to work against its influence that comes out of that acknowledgement. the rest of white america needs the same experience.

for me that was indeed the most important part of the speech – trying to go beyond the usual finger-pointing to discussing why, for example, members of the white working class blamed blacks or their problems, and who benefitted from that, instead of just caricaturing them or pointing a finger at obvious targets (e.g. Don Imus) and calling them racists.

It reminded me of this great analysis of the settlers in Modi’n Ilit, the settlment built on the lands of Bilin in the occupied territories, and of the real estate agents that are the real benfactories of the whole conflict – although they are the least visible and it’s easiest to blame the soldiers or the settlers.
Gadi Algazi is one of the founders of Taayush, one of the most importat movements in the Israeli radical left.
http://www.taayush.org/new/fence/matrix-bilin-en.html