The Real Roots of White Anxiety: White people versus white people

So let me get this off my chest. I hate White People.

You can probably tell by my profile picture that I am, in fact, a white person.

People have read the first line, seen the color of my skin, and assumed that they are dealing with white guilt, a form of self-hatred that has to do with my feelings about my personal role in our collective past. This is not, I hope, the case. I have been more often accused of having an over-developed sense of self-esteem, and I think that this may be somewhat closer to the truth. I do not hate myself, or my family, or the legions of poor white people around whom I grew up. I love all those people, I understand them and see them as whole human beings well worthy of compassion and respect. But that doesn't change the fact that I hate White People.

As you may have guessed by now, I would like to draw a distinction between White People and white people. The proper noun describes a societal trend, a norm that has been created in the west and perpetuated throughout the world to the great detriment of anyone who has found themselves outside of this norm. White People owned slaves. White People colonized West Africa, South America, "French Indochina" and Ireland for that matter. White People owned properties and businesses that passed wealth from White People to White People. Later, White People colonized suburbs, and today they are recolonizing the inner city.

These types of groups can be challenging to define. I will, inevitably, fall into some traps and create some broad generalizations that may be unfair. Nevertheless, onward I write. The way we have conceptualized White People in this country has shifted over the past century. America, in her early days, really only considered male protestants White people; they had the wealth, the political power, and the ability to craft the entirety of our early history. As we pressed on in the 20th century, with the influx of so many European immigrants, this definition began to shift. Catholics from Ireland (my own personal history) were not, at first, considered White People, although based solely upon the color of our skin we certainly were white. Catholics lived, largely, in poverty, were discriminated against in the job and housing markets, and had little political power outside of certain municipalities.

However, there was a shift some time in the 20th century when many of these working class white groups were allowed to buy into the system of the Whites. The middle class expanded in the post World War II economy, manufacturing jobs started paying something that bordered on a working wage, and many families had the ability to climb up the social ladder.

My own family was one of them. My grandparents were both born of modest means and through hard work managed to land themselves solidly in the middle class. Perhaps even the upper middle class. Ah yes, the American Dream. Unfortunately it is not quite this simple. My grandparents benefited from many privileges (ah yes, the dreaded word) that were systemically denied to entire classes of people. It just so happened that Irish Catholic had become permissibly White, so entrance to jobs and restaurants, houses and country clubs, and college for their children, were all relatively commonplace. What was once white had become White; my family had bought into a system of upper middle class suburban largesse that simply could not have existed without the systemic exclusion of others, the non-Whites.

Now I do not mean to imply that this was the case for all whites. Nor do I mean to downplay the obvious systemic oppression that occurred because of the nuclear family and the new 20th century middle class (feminism was a welcome voice, although overwhelmingly White).

I add this because the rural pacific northwest, where is spent the first 18 years of my life, is full of working class white people. My home town, to cite a specific example, employed people in three main industries: logging, small-scale farming, and light manufacturing. Needless to say, due to globalization and tighter governmental oversight (remember the spotted owl controversy of the 1990s?) these are all industries that have taken major hits in the past few decades. Families that were managing, barely, to scrape by a living doing tough work and getting paid only meagre wages lost their livelihoods.

White anger comes from some place. Working class whites have, like working class blacks and working class latinos, been given a raw deal.

Now this doesn't erase the reality of White privilege, of which I am a living, breathing example. I come from such a place, I attended failing public schools and I was terribly underprepared when I arrived at college. But because I look like a White kid from an east coast prep school, and because I have learned to speak properly, I have the ability to fit into that role when necessary. Certain doors have doubtlessly opened for me based upon my ability to appear, if not feel, White. And this is the inherent difference between working class white people and people of color. We white people can shed our working class roots, we can become, if you will, White; people will not constantly be questioning whether we are in our job because of affirmative action. We are less likely to be denied tenure, for example, and more likely to be hired (Jamaal still receives fewer interviews than John when they have the same CV).

So we are stuck in a bit of a catch-22. Poor white people are angry, and rightfully so. However, part of this anger is the accusation that they have some sort of privilege based upon the color of their skin. White skin privilege won't buy dinner when you lose your job. But it, nevertheless, is real and contributes to the social mobility, generationally, of white (or White) people.

As I was writing this humble blog an article was posted in the NyTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html) about white anger and began by "recognizing what Pat Buchanan got right" when he talked about the White Male being the most persecuted man in America. This is an impossible way to start this discussion. Pat Buchanan is talking about White people, whom he thinks are superior to all the recent interlopers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfoUuOwAaIc&feature=related). This grandson of a confederate soldier would like to return to a century's old definition of White people. He is not talking about class anger, really, but is talking from a place where he thinks white people are simply smarter and more hard working than other types of people. Pat Buchanan didn't, ever, not once, get anything right.

White anger is different from white anger. White anger comes from a privilege that has been slowly eroded and a desire to return to a time when only White people were admitted into the upper ranks of society. On the other hand white anger comes from genuine social and economic disenfranchisement and is justified and understandable. What is unfortunate is that we have let those people who only want to discuss White anger take over the conversation. This serves only to drive people with shared economic interests apart: black people distrust racist working class whites, and working class whites believe that blacks and immigrants are stealing their jobs.

The importance of viewing the situation through both the lenses of race and class has become absolutely critical. Working class whites have too long been vilified and they have too long allowed themselves to be manipulated by the "populist" forces of the fringe right wing. The working class Tea Party-ers (as there are many middle and upper-middle class Tea Party-ers who, at least, have their economic interests at heart in their fight for laissez-faire government) have genuine gripes and mocking their anti-intellectualism will not change the reality of their situation. Certainly the answer is not smaller government and weaker gun laws, but understanding the real roots of white anxiety, and White anxiety, will be important factors in combating both of them.