I study race and racism on a very
regular basis and it’s a very strange
area to study because it seems like
everybody has an opinion about it
and no one actually knows what they’re
talking about is it and actually
sometimes the people who have the heart
the strongest opinions actually know the
least about what they’re talking about
and so what I’m going to do today is I’m
going to advance a new concept for you
and also take you sort of on my
intellectual journey coming to this
point and the concept is called white
immunity and it’s actually a very simple
concept it’s that white people by virtue
of being in a racist society receive
kind of a social inoculation from racial
oppression and how I started developing
this was off of a lot of discussions
about white privilege and kind of
ironically my the the first jumping-off
point into this came from the
conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly I
watched The O’Reilly Factor on a fairly
regular basis when it was on because I
like having high blood pressure and he
had a he whenever white privilege comes
up he loves railing against it he says
yeah he said when I was you know
working-class painting houses in Carvel
I didn’t have white privilege I’m gonna
have to exempt myself now first of all
it’s the epitome of white privilege to
say you don’t have white privilege like
that but that’s a different issue
altogether but I started thinking about
this I said well you know what kind of a
mental image does white privilige create
in our heads and it just the term
privilege it’s it invokes this kind of
you know semi charmed life it’s
summertime and the living is easy your
daddy’s rich and your mama’s
good-looking and and and and then but
then the corollary to that is that if I
can therefore find a point in my time I
personally history my family’s history
where we were struggling I therefore I’m
not privileged so there’s kind of a
semantic issue
it was weird I was kind of agreeing with
the semantic issue was taking even
though you know mr. O’Reilly really
doesn’t care about my privilege uh but
the same time just the framing of it I
didn’t have white privilege it removes
it race it individualizes race and
individualize this racism and and all
too often that’s how we have
counterproductive conversations about
racism it’s sort of on this like you
know this Likert scale you’re a good
person you’re not really racist you a
little bit you oh god you’re so racist
you know but it’s it’s all about the
individual and that’s not how racism
operates and so and that gets lost in a
lot of white privilege conversations and
so to go back we just have to start off
with the idea of what is racism and I
love the deceptively simple definition
that the esteemed psychologist Beverley
Daniel Tatum gives where she says that
it’s a system of advantage based upon
race we’re in her estimation white
people are at the advantage are at the
top of the social ladder and the reason
why I like that is that it makes it a
systemic analysis and so then you know
the the overall question I get is well
what does that mean what does a system
mean there’s a very simple analogy sort
of like the SAT analogies this is – this
is this that we can that we can use and
that is capitalism all too often we
think that racism is only sponsored by
racist by the corollary capitalism is
not just held up by people of a
capitalist class anytime you guess up
your car anytime you get your groceries
anytime that happens you’re
participating in the economic system
that we have in the society and so
therefore racism becomes a question of
what do your actions do in relationship
to the systemic reality now so having
said that in order to really understand
white immunity though we kind of have to
go into the formation of whiteness in
this country this is gonna sound kind of
weird but learning about whiteness in
this country has a really really really
fascinating issue because it’s one of
the social identities that it has a very
unique way that it came about because
when when European settlers were coming
over and stealing land from the Native
Americans and killing them on the spot
that the they weren’t known as white
they were known by the country of origin
they were known as Irish and and Germans
and pull in all this
and and the idea of whiteness didn’t
really exist but there was kind of a
watershed moment around Bacon’s
Rebellion but it in in I don’t want to
say that it was just episodic like this
just sort of materialized this was you
know decades and hundreds of years of
constant action where the ruling elite
and society started realizing we cannot
keep poor whites out of the system
anymore if they form coalition’s with
free blacks Native Americans who ever
they could overthrow the existing rules
so they start saying okay you know what
we’re gonna give you token incorporation
into our society well we’ll put you on
slave patrol so make you overseers
you’re not gonna be rich but at least
you’re gonna have a little bit of skin
in the game at the same time there was a
consistent articulation of the ideology
that being of European descent was
inherently superior that Europeans were
a superior race and what this did is it
created what this team sociologist WB
Dubois referred to as the public and
psychological wages of whiteness I may
be tired
I may be downtrodden I may not be rich
but at least I’m not black at the same
time religion played a really central
role in in the creation of whiteness
because it was seen in particularly
Christianity was seen as a civilizing
force and it was this weird cyclical
argument where it was it started at a
priori we are civilized people people of
European descent well why are we
civilized because we have Christianity
well why do we have Christianity because
we’re civilized people and it just keeps
going and going and going like that and
some of you are kind of giving me this
fur look in your eyes right now and if
it doesn’t make sense that’s exactly the
point that’s exactly the point because
race and racism was never meant to make
sense if you look at what has happened
as a result of systemic racism and white
supremacy in our history the genocide
and theft of native lands the slave men
of native Africans the the making
Chinese do the railroad the theft of
Mexico I mean it’s not pretty it’s not
meant to make sense it’s almost like you
do this dehumanizing actions you come up
with a racist idea after the fact so if
what I’m saying doesn’t make sense
that’s exactly the point of racism it’s
not supposed to make sense
but last but not least in terms of of
whiteness formation law played a
critical role and it did so by saying
okay we have the Constitution it says
that all men are created equal and yes
it was male specific and then they said
so there are these inalienable rights
that everybody is supposed to have and
then laws started forming in the United
States that eliminated rights for people
of color rights to own land rights to
read rights to intermarry rights to
travel me and what ended up happening
was you had this core at the center
where rights were allowed and then all
of a sudden this groups denied this
groups denied this groups tonight and
you created this thing but from
whiteness called whiteness by
eliminating by identifying people who
were not white it was this identity this
idea of definition through negation and
so basically it was necessarily creating
a white supremacist society that denied
rights to people of color and that was a
foundational component of our history
and then that relates back to white
immunity because again we’re talking
about base standards of human rights and
so the disparate racial oppression that
people of color were experiencing white
people had that social inoculation too
so and a lot of people will say well
weren’t the 60s a really important time
and absolutely they were they were an
incredibly important time but let’s not
kid ourselves to think that you can have
several hundred years of over white
supremacist thought action law and
graining in every sector a sector of our
society and then you’re gonna undo that
in ten years it was incredibly important
that people of marginalized racial
identities were able to affirm their own
humanity in the 1960s but that doesn’t
mean we completely overthrow the system
as a matter of fact what usually what a
lot of sociologists now argue is that
racism as a system was then driven
underground it’s still here and it’s
still prevalent but it you know we don’t
always acknowledge that it’s there and
so then the idea became that oh actually
let me back up so a really simple
example of this is because we talk about
race all the time but we don’t actually
talk about race is the
median Daniel Tosh asked was was doing a
stand of his first stand-up and Comedy
Central he said you ever noticed when
they say this place is really safe they
mean it’s really segregated and there
was just crickets in the audience and he
says did that cut a little too close to
calm Orange County and the beautiful
thing about that joke is that it’s it’s
a joke Madeleine I can do that anywhere
right I could be here and say hey does
that cut a little too close to home
Catalina Foothills Oh exactly and people
are uncomfortable with that absolutely
but we talk about race all the time one
piece of audience participation help me
out what’s known as the dangerous side
of Tucson you racist no but the point is
that we have heard this constantly and
it’s not coincidental that the good side
of town the safe side of town also
corresponds to the white side of town
the dangerous side of town happens to be
the brown side of town and the question
that I ask you as you reflect on these
words a little bit is this as much as
you have heard that the south side is
dangerous how many people have actually
looked up the crime statistics how many
people have actually gone and seen is
this really a dangerous neighborhood I’m
not making an argument one way or
another I’m making a point that we do
this based upon sort of just this
assumption that if it’s a largely Latino
neighborhood if it’s a largely black
neighborhood that it’s gonna be
dangerous but again that’s how race
infects itself into our consciousness
without us even realizing it and so this
happens all the time where you know
people will say things like you know not
to be a racist but not to be racially
offensive but not to be racially
insensitive but and almost without fail
after you say that something racist is
and so it’s you know it’s one of those
things that racism is very very much
alive today and there’s a massive
continuity with the racism of the past
it makes a lot of people feel
uncomfortable having that linkage to the
past because that also means that the
name of the system that we’re living
under is white supremacy and again we’ve
been taught to say that well if that’s
only supported by white supremacists and
those evil guys over in Charlottesville
that’s not relevant here and now and I
whenever I use that term on stage
especially when talking about
contemporary society
I could feel there’s like this tension
like people just kind of they just they
get a little bit nervous about it
and I ask you to sit with that tension a
little bit and just understand that it
is more difficult for people of color to
survive and thrive in a white
supremacist regime that it is for you to
feel uncomfortable with a terminology
from a sociological perspective it is
accurate and so that’s what I’m asking
you is to look within yourself if you
are feeling uncomfortable with that
having said that coming back to the
issue of white immunity part of the
reason why I really offer it is that
white privilege centers white people
people are causally saying how am i
privileged how am i privileged and
instead white immunity actually says how
is my experience markedly different than
people of color it’s asking you to say
what is going on that’s outside of my
experience what have I’ve been blinded
to because of the social inoculation so
instead of censoring white privilege it
makes you actually look holistically at
society and how it is that we’re
treating the most marginalized it
requires us to have a sense of empathy a
sense of linked fate to say that my
success in my ability to thrive is
predicated upon yours as well and I use
empathy in particular because I can’t
stand sympathy sympathy all too often is
feeling sorry for somebody looking down
on somebody I want to be Co
collaborators I want empathy I want to
see us
for our mutual humanity
at the same time white privilege has
devolved into almost this like well what
do you do with it
and all too often it becomes well I will
confess my white privilege this is how I
was privileged in this one situation but
all that that is it’s it’s just
basically helping alleviate white guilt
it’s saying I am have white guilt I have
confessed my white sins and I am blessed
and go with God it’s like no I am NOT
your racial priest I have no patience
for guilt and I have no patience for
sympathy if you want to actually do
something with it then do something with
it but don’t turn the emotions around to
make it so that you resent our whiteness
in the process ultimately though I go
into the history of white supremacy and
Link it to our contemporary times in my
offering of white immunity because it
also often is seen that that you can you
know I can undo white privilege I can
give up my privilege no the only way
that we get away from white immunity is
to dismantle white supremacy that the
that the system creates the localized
conditions that I experience and if you
want to get rid of those local
conditions you have to get rid of the
system and so when I see racial lectures
on race and racism I see them a lot that
I give them a lot the end in some sort
of you know now here’s an interesting
thought take my ten point racial plan
here’s how you do it anti racism and
three quick and easy steps and I
obviously would love for you to engage
with this concept develop this concept
figure out how to put this concept into
practice but ultimately I want to be
very clear about one thing and that is
whether we’re talking about white
privilege or white immunity we’re
talking about racism 101 we’re talking
about the mathematical equivalent of
addition when it comes to racial
conversations and collectively we need
to be at a calculus level and so instead
of sitting here and saying the end
that’s great we’re all gravy I want you
to feel a little unsettled by this I
want you to feel a little uneasy
this and instead of saying ok as long as
I take account of white immunity
everything’s good
see white immunity as a jumping-off
point and so instead of saying the end
my challenge to you is here’s to a
beginning thank you [Applause]
regular basis and it’s a very strange
area to study because it seems like
everybody has an opinion about it
and no one actually knows what they’re
talking about is it and actually
sometimes the people who have the heart
the strongest opinions actually know the
least about what they’re talking about
and so what I’m going to do today is I’m
going to advance a new concept for you
and also take you sort of on my
intellectual journey coming to this
point and the concept is called white
immunity and it’s actually a very simple
concept it’s that white people by virtue
of being in a racist society receive
kind of a social inoculation from racial
oppression and how I started developing
this was off of a lot of discussions
about white privilege and kind of
ironically my the the first jumping-off
point into this came from the
conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly I
watched The O’Reilly Factor on a fairly
regular basis when it was on because I
like having high blood pressure and he
had a he whenever white privilege comes
up he loves railing against it he says
yeah he said when I was you know
working-class painting houses in Carvel
I didn’t have white privilege I’m gonna
have to exempt myself now first of all
it’s the epitome of white privilege to
say you don’t have white privilege like
that but that’s a different issue
altogether but I started thinking about
this I said well you know what kind of a
mental image does white privilige create
in our heads and it just the term
privilege it’s it invokes this kind of
you know semi charmed life it’s
summertime and the living is easy your
daddy’s rich and your mama’s
good-looking and and and and then but
then the corollary to that is that if I
can therefore find a point in my time I
personally history my family’s history
where we were struggling I therefore I’m
not privileged so there’s kind of a
semantic issue
it was weird I was kind of agreeing with
the semantic issue was taking even
though you know mr. O’Reilly really
doesn’t care about my privilege uh but
the same time just the framing of it I
didn’t have white privilege it removes
it race it individualizes race and
individualize this racism and and all
too often that’s how we have
counterproductive conversations about
racism it’s sort of on this like you
know this Likert scale you’re a good
person you’re not really racist you a
little bit you oh god you’re so racist
you know but it’s it’s all about the
individual and that’s not how racism
operates and so and that gets lost in a
lot of white privilege conversations and
so to go back we just have to start off
with the idea of what is racism and I
love the deceptively simple definition
that the esteemed psychologist Beverley
Daniel Tatum gives where she says that
it’s a system of advantage based upon
race we’re in her estimation white
people are at the advantage are at the
top of the social ladder and the reason
why I like that is that it makes it a
systemic analysis and so then you know
the the overall question I get is well
what does that mean what does a system
mean there’s a very simple analogy sort
of like the SAT analogies this is – this
is this that we can that we can use and
that is capitalism all too often we
think that racism is only sponsored by
racist by the corollary capitalism is
not just held up by people of a
capitalist class anytime you guess up
your car anytime you get your groceries
anytime that happens you’re
participating in the economic system
that we have in the society and so
therefore racism becomes a question of
what do your actions do in relationship
to the systemic reality now so having
said that in order to really understand
white immunity though we kind of have to
go into the formation of whiteness in
this country this is gonna sound kind of
weird but learning about whiteness in
this country has a really really really
fascinating issue because it’s one of
the social identities that it has a very
unique way that it came about because
when when European settlers were coming
over and stealing land from the Native
Americans and killing them on the spot
that the they weren’t known as white
they were known by the country of origin
they were known as Irish and and Germans
and pull in all this
and and the idea of whiteness didn’t
really exist but there was kind of a
watershed moment around Bacon’s
Rebellion but it in in I don’t want to
say that it was just episodic like this
just sort of materialized this was you
know decades and hundreds of years of
constant action where the ruling elite
and society started realizing we cannot
keep poor whites out of the system
anymore if they form coalition’s with
free blacks Native Americans who ever
they could overthrow the existing rules
so they start saying okay you know what
we’re gonna give you token incorporation
into our society well we’ll put you on
slave patrol so make you overseers
you’re not gonna be rich but at least
you’re gonna have a little bit of skin
in the game at the same time there was a
consistent articulation of the ideology
that being of European descent was
inherently superior that Europeans were
a superior race and what this did is it
created what this team sociologist WB
Dubois referred to as the public and
psychological wages of whiteness I may
be tired
I may be downtrodden I may not be rich
but at least I’m not black at the same
time religion played a really central
role in in the creation of whiteness
because it was seen in particularly
Christianity was seen as a civilizing
force and it was this weird cyclical
argument where it was it started at a
priori we are civilized people people of
European descent well why are we
civilized because we have Christianity
well why do we have Christianity because
we’re civilized people and it just keeps
going and going and going like that and
some of you are kind of giving me this
fur look in your eyes right now and if
it doesn’t make sense that’s exactly the
point that’s exactly the point because
race and racism was never meant to make
sense if you look at what has happened
as a result of systemic racism and white
supremacy in our history the genocide
and theft of native lands the slave men
of native Africans the the making
Chinese do the railroad the theft of
Mexico I mean it’s not pretty it’s not
meant to make sense it’s almost like you
do this dehumanizing actions you come up
with a racist idea after the fact so if
what I’m saying doesn’t make sense
that’s exactly the point of racism it’s
not supposed to make sense
but last but not least in terms of of
whiteness formation law played a
critical role and it did so by saying
okay we have the Constitution it says
that all men are created equal and yes
it was male specific and then they said
so there are these inalienable rights
that everybody is supposed to have and
then laws started forming in the United
States that eliminated rights for people
of color rights to own land rights to
read rights to intermarry rights to
travel me and what ended up happening
was you had this core at the center
where rights were allowed and then all
of a sudden this groups denied this
groups denied this groups tonight and
you created this thing but from
whiteness called whiteness by
eliminating by identifying people who
were not white it was this identity this
idea of definition through negation and
so basically it was necessarily creating
a white supremacist society that denied
rights to people of color and that was a
foundational component of our history
and then that relates back to white
immunity because again we’re talking
about base standards of human rights and
so the disparate racial oppression that
people of color were experiencing white
people had that social inoculation too
so and a lot of people will say well
weren’t the 60s a really important time
and absolutely they were they were an
incredibly important time but let’s not
kid ourselves to think that you can have
several hundred years of over white
supremacist thought action law and
graining in every sector a sector of our
society and then you’re gonna undo that
in ten years it was incredibly important
that people of marginalized racial
identities were able to affirm their own
humanity in the 1960s but that doesn’t
mean we completely overthrow the system
as a matter of fact what usually what a
lot of sociologists now argue is that
racism as a system was then driven
underground it’s still here and it’s
still prevalent but it you know we don’t
always acknowledge that it’s there and
so then the idea became that oh actually
let me back up so a really simple
example of this is because we talk about
race all the time but we don’t actually
talk about race is the
median Daniel Tosh asked was was doing a
stand of his first stand-up and Comedy
Central he said you ever noticed when
they say this place is really safe they
mean it’s really segregated and there
was just crickets in the audience and he
says did that cut a little too close to
calm Orange County and the beautiful
thing about that joke is that it’s it’s
a joke Madeleine I can do that anywhere
right I could be here and say hey does
that cut a little too close to home
Catalina Foothills Oh exactly and people
are uncomfortable with that absolutely
but we talk about race all the time one
piece of audience participation help me
out what’s known as the dangerous side
of Tucson you racist no but the point is
that we have heard this constantly and
it’s not coincidental that the good side
of town the safe side of town also
corresponds to the white side of town
the dangerous side of town happens to be
the brown side of town and the question
that I ask you as you reflect on these
words a little bit is this as much as
you have heard that the south side is
dangerous how many people have actually
looked up the crime statistics how many
people have actually gone and seen is
this really a dangerous neighborhood I’m
not making an argument one way or
another I’m making a point that we do
this based upon sort of just this
assumption that if it’s a largely Latino
neighborhood if it’s a largely black
neighborhood that it’s gonna be
dangerous but again that’s how race
infects itself into our consciousness
without us even realizing it and so this
happens all the time where you know
people will say things like you know not
to be a racist but not to be racially
offensive but not to be racially
insensitive but and almost without fail
after you say that something racist is
and so it’s you know it’s one of those
things that racism is very very much
alive today and there’s a massive
continuity with the racism of the past
it makes a lot of people feel
uncomfortable having that linkage to the
past because that also means that the
name of the system that we’re living
under is white supremacy and again we’ve
been taught to say that well if that’s
only supported by white supremacists and
those evil guys over in Charlottesville
that’s not relevant here and now and I
whenever I use that term on stage
especially when talking about
contemporary society
I could feel there’s like this tension
like people just kind of they just they
get a little bit nervous about it
and I ask you to sit with that tension a
little bit and just understand that it
is more difficult for people of color to
survive and thrive in a white
supremacist regime that it is for you to
feel uncomfortable with a terminology
from a sociological perspective it is
accurate and so that’s what I’m asking
you is to look within yourself if you
are feeling uncomfortable with that
having said that coming back to the
issue of white immunity part of the
reason why I really offer it is that
white privilege centers white people
people are causally saying how am i
privileged how am i privileged and
instead white immunity actually says how
is my experience markedly different than
people of color it’s asking you to say
what is going on that’s outside of my
experience what have I’ve been blinded
to because of the social inoculation so
instead of censoring white privilege it
makes you actually look holistically at
society and how it is that we’re
treating the most marginalized it
requires us to have a sense of empathy a
sense of linked fate to say that my
success in my ability to thrive is
predicated upon yours as well and I use
empathy in particular because I can’t
stand sympathy sympathy all too often is
feeling sorry for somebody looking down
on somebody I want to be Co
collaborators I want empathy I want to
see us
for our mutual humanity
at the same time white privilege has
devolved into almost this like well what
do you do with it
and all too often it becomes well I will
confess my white privilege this is how I
was privileged in this one situation but
all that that is it’s it’s just
basically helping alleviate white guilt
it’s saying I am have white guilt I have
confessed my white sins and I am blessed
and go with God it’s like no I am NOT
your racial priest I have no patience
for guilt and I have no patience for
sympathy if you want to actually do
something with it then do something with
it but don’t turn the emotions around to
make it so that you resent our whiteness
in the process ultimately though I go
into the history of white supremacy and
Link it to our contemporary times in my
offering of white immunity because it
also often is seen that that you can you
know I can undo white privilege I can
give up my privilege no the only way
that we get away from white immunity is
to dismantle white supremacy that the
that the system creates the localized
conditions that I experience and if you
want to get rid of those local
conditions you have to get rid of the
system and so when I see racial lectures
on race and racism I see them a lot that
I give them a lot the end in some sort
of you know now here’s an interesting
thought take my ten point racial plan
here’s how you do it anti racism and
three quick and easy steps and I
obviously would love for you to engage
with this concept develop this concept
figure out how to put this concept into
practice but ultimately I want to be
very clear about one thing and that is
whether we’re talking about white
privilege or white immunity we’re
talking about racism 101 we’re talking
about the mathematical equivalent of
addition when it comes to racial
conversations and collectively we need
to be at a calculus level and so instead
of sitting here and saying the end
that’s great we’re all gravy I want you
to feel a little unsettled by this I
want you to feel a little uneasy
this and instead of saying ok as long as
I take account of white immunity
everything’s good
see white immunity as a jumping-off
point and so instead of saying the end
my challenge to you is here’s to a
beginning thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: