I’ve long been uncomfortable with the concept of “White privilege,” mostly because I feel that the concept doesn’t really tell White people why they should give up their White privilege. I envision a conversation that goes something like this: “Hey, check your White privilege.” [reply spoken externally] “Oh, right, sorry!” … [reply spoken internally] ((Wow, I got White privilege? that sounds pretty good, I’m gonna hang on to it.))
That’s not a serious critique of the concept of White privilege. It’s just this feeling of discomfort that I have. Yet the feeling is strong enough that I find myself not wanting to use the phrase “White privilege,” due to some kind of nameless fear that it’s just going to reinforce the behavior in us White people that the phrase is supposed to put an end to.
In an essay titled “How ‘White Privilege’ Obscures Black Vulnerability,” Mukasa Mubirumusoke, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, provides a more serious critique of the shortcomings of the concept. Mubirumusoke ends his essay with this rhetorical question:
“In what ethical universe could the possibility afforded by whiteness to dominate another human being just because they are Black be considered a ‘privilege’? In the ethical universe of white America today, apparently.”
(Parenthetical note: The essay appears on the Public Seminar website, which I hadn’t seen before. Looks like a lot of good stuff there.)
But wait, there’s more. In a recent post on the American Philosophical Association blog, Lewis Gordon offers a constructive critique of Mubirumusoke’s critique. SCroll way down to find it, and (as I understand it) Gordon’s basic point is that Mubirumusoke’s critique is based on Afropessimism, an intellectual approach that Gordon finds unsatisfactory.
In the course of his longer discussion of Mubirumusoke, Gordon asks a question that may provide a better grounding for a critique of “White privilege”:
“[W]hy center so much of reality from white perspectives?… Fanon, after all, stated that the Black (‘Le Noir’) had no ontological resistance ‘in the eyes [that is from the perspective] of the [White].’ But he never claimed the White was correct. The White needs that lie. I can go on, but at this point, it should be clear that I’m concerned that Mubirumusoke gives too much credence to the problematic, almost Zeno-like forms of problematic argumentations of impossibility as well as the concomitant Stoicism of individual resignation — perhaps even ressentiment — that such arguments occasion….” (N.B.: in this quotation, the notes in brackets are Gordon’s.)
Gordon’s philosophically nuanced critique of Mubirumusoke takes the critique of “White privilege” to a whole other level. It’s a level above my pay grade, to be honest. But let’s be clear, Gordon is not some “anti-Woke” political conservative, like the ones who dominate U.S. politics these days. Trump and company cannot take comfort from this philosophical conversation. By the same token, political liberals who get uncomfortable when their White privilege is called out aren’t going to find much comfort in Gordon’s critique, either. Gordon even goes so far as to criticize that idol of liberalism, the individual:
“Added to all this is the larger history of Euromodern thought as emerging with the global expansion of enslavement while centering freedom in its discourse. The history of political theology and its role in racism and the advancement of capitalism offered rationalizations of a philosophical anthropology in which ‘the individual’ collapsed into stoic models of rationalization instead of understanding the fundamental incoherence of an individual, treated as real in and of itself like an Aristotelian substance, or, worse, a minor, or perhaps egologically inflated sense of self as, a god.” (N.B.: in this quotation, the emphasis is mine.)
Whoa. Take that, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gordon is striking at the root of our theological commitment to “the individual.” Because — following Emerson — we Unitarian Universalists really do have this tendency to treat the self as a god. Which is idolatry. And we are fundamentally opposed to idolatry.
Well, as I say, all this is well above my pay grade. But I’d also say both these essays are worth reading. Every time I read Lewis Gordon, I find myself getting insight into problems that have been bothering me. And based on what Gordon says about Mubirumusoke, he might be another one of those thinkers….
