Friday, July 19, 2013

The Panic of White Folk: What If You Weren't White? by Kyle Phoenix



We've always been wrestling with race in America, wrestling with denying it, making it legal, making it illegal, making it socially unacceptable, making it acceptable, rapping abut it, wrapping it up to make it presidential but when we question why White people, the perpetrators and victims of the mental illness we coin simply as racism can't see it, dismantle it, continue it, we're not accessing their deepest question.  Their identity questioning.

The heavy question becomes: What are White people without privilege, without entitlement, without the advancement of discrimination? 

Are they smart if they've held back millions of Blacks and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans from competing---are they really smart then or has privilege allowed them to make themselves the only one allowed to take the test, read the books? 

Does something like professional sports show us a glimpse that White people as a whole are not great as literal or metaphorical athletes when the basketball field is leveled? 

What are White people when we strip them of the power of Whiteness? 

Is it really that interesting to be pale if you didn't control the publishing and TV imagery to say it is? Most of the world isn't pale so the imposed standard of beauty isn't justifiable. 

Are you only smart when you can create a segregated school system and keep everyone else out, at sub standards or make it illegal for others to read?

Analogously, am I fast runner if each time there's a race I turn and smash you in the knee with a crowbar?

That insecurity of real regulation of place and real self-measurement is what frightens White people to the point of denying racism's existence and affect.  What are you in your little self, if tomorrow you were denied being White?

That's what I do in my professional development workshop---I deny White people Whiteness or privilege. And honestly they freak out. Privilege to a White (d)---race being a social construct---so the lighter skinned people have been convinced they are privileged people--- person is water to a fish, air to a mammal. 

What you see in society, in reactions, is an animal fighting for what it believes is it's only medium of survival.

Enjoy!
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
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Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
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