White BUTs
(No, that’s not a typo, although it is sort of a joke)
I tweeted about this earlier, and it seemed to hit with some folks, so I thought I might expand upon what I meant.
What I wrote this morning was as follows: Given that my scholarship started with white teachers (who are mostly white women), I think there’s something to be written about the flavor of racism that I might call “white BUT” racism, where some form of marginalization is used as “proof” that a person is Good. White BUT female, White BUT queer, White BUT disabled, and so on. I guess, if my first article was about the “altruistic shield” (re: supposedly prosocial professions), this would be a “marginalized identity shield.”
What a “professional academic” would do is work this into a proposal for a journal and then hope it saw the light of day 3–56 months later, by which point I will have moved on to 23 other ideas. I may yet include it in future articles or books, but anyone who follows my work knows by now that I would rather engage you folks in what I think as soon as I think it.
Anyway, so, white BUTs. That huge BUT — or, a marginalized identity shield, as it were — allows people to evade the necessary deep work that might bring them away from the racism they (and you)were raised with. It’s hard and rare enough for people who acknowledge the way they’ve benefited from whiteness to unpack and challenge these ideologies, and it’s a shame when otherwise-marginalized people perpetuate racism, but it’s hardly uncommon. Ask yourself if you know anyone who fits the description of what I wrote above, and if you can’t think of anyone, ask yourself if it applies to you.
The particularly sad thing, in my opinion, is that being part of a marginalized group can enhance empathy if it’s not used as a wedge, and so when it causes distance rather than solidarity, it’s tragic. I tend not to bother trying to convince cishet, well-off, abled white men to come along for the work with me — if they are willing to do it, great, but we don’t really need all of them if we can build with all the other marginalized white folks. Considering that the list I wrote out includes “female,” “queer,” and “disabled,” at least one of those descriptors applies to most white people. Yet it’s the people with as few barriers as possible who still hold most of the power over the rest of us.
I suspect that it’s because, even now, a lot of literature intended for white audiences is still very gentle in the hopes that readers don’t shut down when they feel uncomfortable. I suspect I’d never really be able to take my rather strident scholarship and essays and turn them into a mass-market best-seller, because a lot of white folks would rather hide behind these BUTs than allow themselves to engage with this stuff. And I get it — when I was first learning more about my own privileges, particularly gender and class, I did not want to hear that I had benefited unfairly. “But I’m Black,” I’d insist to myself (long before I knew I was disabled). And so I’d dig in my heels about male privilege or what my family could afford that others couldn’t.
So I’m not any “better” than the people who hide behind white BUTs, or at least I wasn’t when I was younger. The question, for anyone reading this who is prone to this fearful behavior, is whether or not you’re willing to come out from behind these big BUTs and face the necessary discomfort that precedes the growth required to escape from racist ideologies, or if you’re happier staying where the sun don’t shine. It is, as ever, up to you.
