What Must White Men Do?

In a certain way it is true that being white-skinned means that everything I do will be wrong -- at the least an exercise of unwarranted privilege -- and I will encounter the reasonable anger of women of color at every turn. But 'white' also designates a political category, a sort of political fraternity. Membership in it is not in the same sense "fated" or "natural." It can be resisted. -- Marilyn Frye, "On Being White," The Politics of Reality

Theory

Politics, as Marilyn Frye suggests, is constituted by networks of alliance and opposition. Each of us has finite resources at our disposal. We use our resources to ally ourselves with those with whom we wish to stand. We also use our resources to oppose those against whom we wish to stand. Political organization is the act of aligning, collecting, focusing ourselves together with our allies to achieve our projects and to thwart the projects of others which are inimical to human flourishing, freedom, and justice.

To become politically engaged, I must determine with whom and what I should ally myself and against whom or what I should oppose myself. But determining who and what I support and oppose was merely a first step. The more difficult step for me was to determine how to concretely deploy my resources. And I realized fully only after arriving in Philadelphia -- to join protests of the 2000 Republican National Convention -- what I had known only partially before: that I might, in trying to help, harm my allies by what I did and how I did it.

That I might unwittingly nullify my efforts became clear when I realized that the burgeoning antiglobalization protest movement in the US tries to enact daily, within its sphere of influence, the kind of world that it's attempting to create. My actions would either help create a world free of oppression and illegitimate authority, or help prevent its realization. This is analogous to the ways in which Philadelphia used legitimate laws -- parade permit ordinances, say -- to stifle dissent and political expression, that is, abused legitimate laws for illegitimate ends.

What could I do to help and not harm? I started by thinking about the space between who I am and who I want to be. I am the son of White privilege. As a white, middle class, straight male, I am the direct beneficiary of all the patterns of alliance and opposition that together form the very oppressive society I went to Philadelphia to oppose.

Practice

During an unauthorized anti-police-brutality, anti-death-penalty march on Sunday, I realized what white men might do concretely. I could use my resources, including my voice, my body, my white privilege, and my network of friends and comrades, to attract and redirect attentions.

My proper role was to attract (by distraction) the negative attention of opponents away from others and onto myself. I could and did position myself during our march -- which was strongly opposed by anti-abortion forces and by the police -- between women and people of color, with whom I marched, and those who were hurling invective, taunts, abuse. I could make sure to attract the attention of police officers who seemed eager to engage, perhaps violently, the standard targets among my fellow protesters, perhaps because they were local activists, or women. Thwarting the desires of others to attack standard targets by giving them non-standard targets instead is an act of dissent and resistance; it introduces a note of cognitive dissonance into the minds of police, perhaps creating helpful hesitancies. This pattern of attracting negative attentions, primarily by distracting them away from preferred targets, is a helpful generalization of my experience at this march.

The flip side of attracting negative attention is to redirect positive attention, again, away from me as a preferred target and toward others. One concrete example is media coverage. The corporate and independent media were in Philadelphia in large numbers. Requests for interviews and pictures were common. I received a few such requests, ranging from local network affiliates to the World Socialist Web Site. Having realized that I could attract negative attentions (because white, male privilege makes me more able to bear them and can ameliorate them), it wasn't too long before I realized that I could redirect positive attentions to others. I asked media personnel who approached me if they had spoken with women and people of color. Corporate media tended to be puzzled by this response, though some understood it well enough. Independent media tended to have already been doing it, but it was often a helpful reminder to them, too.

In short, as a straight, white, middle class man, I am not ordinarily a target of attack, and I am ordinarily a subject of interest. It became my goal to subvert both of these facts.

Pitfalls

Pitfalls abound. As Marilyn Frye suggests, white male privilege traps those who possess, but would resist, it. In aiming to attract and redirect attention, white men may fail in myriad ways: by acting paternalistically, by being willing to be led by others but not making that willingness plain, by seeking congratulation and praise from women and people of color for doing one's minimal moral duty, by esteeming oneself too highly, or by taking one's actions as those of a moral agent and failing to understand the actions of others likewise. The point is to be honest about the degree to which white men's perceptions and judgments are distorted by the very privilege they would resist. One antidote I found to this distortion was to concentrate fully on the leadership and perception and judgment of my fellow protesters with whom I found myself allied. I found myself holding onto my willingness to be led by women and people of color and working to make it plain. It seemed the only way to anchor myself and my actions to trustworthy sources of wisdom and strength.

Despite the pitfalls, it is possible for white men to resist locally their white male privilege, to work against it actively and diligently. It requires acts of radical imagination, acts which are ignited by solidarity and struggle, and by a willingness to listen to and be led by others. Such alliance and opposition may initiate the acknowledgement of responsibility, the acceptance of one's minimal moral duty.

Rewards

I went to Philadelphia because I knew I could there use my resources to stand with my allies and against my opponents. I went to Philadelphia to accomplish these things, not for credit or congratulation or aggrandizement, but because it was quite literally the least that I could do, because it was my minimal moral duty.

The interlocking strategies of attraction and redirection had happy and good consequences in Philadelphia. They are generalizable to many concrete situations in which forces of alliance and opposition may be attracted and repelled, redirected and accepted. I know they helped me ensure that, having gone to Philadelphia to ally and oppose, I didn't nullify my political engagement by enacting patterns of oppression and privilege that I wished to subvert.

What must white men do? We can realize that the sum total of the ways we use our resources is the sum total of our political action as individuals: it is our political loyalty and disloyalty. We may ally ourselves with all those who seek human flourishing, freedom and justice. We may oppose ourselves against all those who seek the maintenance and expansion of oppressive social structures. White men working diligently and creatively against white male privilege is one way that oppressive social structures may yet be overturned.

And by attraction and redirection, alliance and opposition, we white men may yet free ourselves from the traps of our privilege.