Monthly Archives: April 2006

A long post about white privilege

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I was home last night in time to watch the exciting end of the women’s basketball national championship game.   While I have never been a fan of Duke’s men’s basketball team, I’ve always liked Gail Goestenkors, the Blue Devils’ women’s coach.  I like her intensity and her passion, and I am chagrined that she can’t seem to "win the big one."  (Then again, folks used to say the same things about Mack Brown in football and Roy Williams in men’s basketball, and they finally broke through.)   Duke’s 6’7" center Alison Bales was my favorite player in the tournament this year, and in my heart, succeeded in replacing my idol from last season, Liberty’s Katie Feenstra.  (No, don’t get all analytical on me and discuss my admiration for very tall, muscular women who can dominate in the paint.)  In 2007, my favorite will probably be the scarily good Courtney Paris, who I thought had a chance to lead Oklahoma all the way this year.

Anyhow, I want to return — more seriously this time — to the subject of race.  Last Friday, I posted this rather flippant (but partly sincere) ode to my WASP upbringing.  In the comments section, Aldahlia reposted some provocative questions (written originally by Lauren from Feministe) for those of us who acknowledge our whiteness:

1. what does it mean to be white? what does it mean to be White?
2. how has whiteness affected your worldview?
3. how has whiteness affected your educational experience?
4. how has whiteness affected your experience with authority?
5. how has whiteness affected your experiences with people of other races and ethnicities?

Asking the first question with and without "white" in capital letters is a good and provocative start. I’ve understood the lower case "white" to refer to external perceptions about my race and heritage.  Folks look at me, and they see a man who is, unquestionably, white.  They may not be able to tell I have a mix of English, German, Jewish, Scots-Irish, and Welsh ancestry, but my facial features instantly identify me as looking like the same sort of folks who traditionally have power in this country.

I wrote about some of the specifics of my WASPiness last week.  Yes, class and geographic location played a role in my upbringing.  I have cousins in South Carolina and Virginia who share my ethnic background, but grew up with slightly different cultural signifiers than I did.  (For one thing, in my California family, the first alcoholic drink any of us ever have is white wine; for my southern relatives, it’s bourbon or Irish whiskey.)  But when folks look at me on the street, they can’t tell whether I was raised in Carmel or in a trailer park; whether my parents were professors or plumbers.  What they can tell is that I’m a white man, and that gives me certain privileges.

When I was in college, all of my advisors looked like me.   With the exception of the Chicano Studies courses I took with Norma Alarcon and Cherrie Moraga, every single professor I had as an undergrad or a grad student was European or European-American.   In grad school, I could easily have passed as the son of most of my faculty advisors, all of whom were white men (with the exception of the wonderful Marilyn McCord Adams, about whom I must post soon).  Thus it wasn’t hard for me to imagine myself becoming just like these men and women someday — and it wasn’t hard for them to see me as a younger version of themselves.  Did that have an effect on my confidence?  Hell yeah.

When I walked around the Berkeley campus (or the UCLA campus, or anywhere else), no one ever looked at me with a querying "what are you doing here?"  People who shared my sex and my skin color founded these universities and run them to this day. I felt an absolute and unerring sense of entitlement whenever I walked through the quads or under Sather Gate. It wasn’t arrogance, but rather a kind of confidence that came from always being seen as someone who "belonged".  My friends of color could not report the same set of experiences!

In countless ways, my white skin (as well as my sex and my class background) have opened doors for me.  In my life, I’ve been insecure about many things (my neurosis about working out and staying trim gets well-documented ’round here).  But I’ve never, ever, doubted that I belonged anywhere that I went.  I’ve had many "encounters" with law enforcement over the years, ranging from speeding tickets to getting 5150ed a few times in my late adolescence and twenties.  Even when my own behavior was self-destructive and bizarre, even when I needed handcuffs, I was always, always, always, called "sir."  (The last time I drank, many years ago, I remember being briefly handcuffed by a young deputy.  I slurred something along the lines of "I’m not gonna hurt you, buddy"; he laughed and said with remarkable and memorable gentleness, "Sir, we just don’t want you to hurt yourself any more.")  I’ve had black and Latino friends whose self-destructive behavior approximated my own — and they report very different stories of often violent (or at the least, rude) treatment at the hands of the police.

When I walk into a store in a nice neighborhood, even if I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, clerks ask "May I help you, sir?"  I don’t have security guards following me around, wondering if I’m going to shoplift.  When I walk down the street at night, women don’t cross over to the other side to avoid me.  Is all of this because I’m such a swell guy?  Of course not.  I’m a reasonably clean-cut white man, and my skin color opens doors and puts people at ease without my having to say a word.  That’s unearned privilege.

I’m not ashamed of being white.  I would not renounce either my skin color or my background, even if I could.  (Though I wish I wasn’t as prone to skin cancer as I am!)  As I wrote last Friday, I love my family and my heritage very much.  I love the particular traditions and rituals that I associate with growing up the way I did.  I have no patience with those who say that in order to be effective allies to people of color, whites have to entirely renounce their whiteness.  But while I won’t apologize for my upbringing, I can take positive action to renounce my privilege.  There’s a huge difference between being ashamed of one’s family or skin color (which I’m not) and working actively to end one’s own unmerited advantages.

The most effective thing white folks can do, I think, is admit that privilege actually exists.  I have no idea how many doors opened for me because of what I look like, and because of my family background.  When I was first hired at PCC, several people actually said to me "You’re lucky to have gotten that job, Hugo!  I’m surprised they didn’t hire someone of color using affirmative action.  At least you know you got this on your own merits!"  On my own merits?  Puhleeze!  I looked like two-thirds of my hiring committee!  I looked like the professors who had mentored me and looked out for me!  I went to the same university that my parents, grandparents, and great-grandfathers did!  Any unearned advantage conferred by affirmative action pales in comparison to those unmerited privileges bestowed upon me by my appearance and my background!  Of course, I was also hired for my teaching skills and my academic preparation.  My color and class would not, in and of themselves, have canceled out actual incompetence.  But they may well have tipped the scales in my favor when I was given this job I love a dozen years or so ago.

I’ll say it again: I’m not ashamed of my ancestors, my family, or my skin color.  But I don’t deny that these things gave me advantages I didn’t earn.  What whites need to do is stop perpetuating the myth that our personal successes are entirely unaffected by these privileges.  Whenever possible, we need to cop to the reality of these unearned benefits.  We need to embrace programs that seek to level the playing field (such as affirmative action) without complaint or bitterness.  And we need to stop insisting that all of our achievements were based solely on the content of our character, and not also in part on the color of our skin.

Nothing today…

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No serious post today — I’m still thinking about the issues of body image and a double standard I raised in my most recent posts below.  Besides, I’ve got letters of rec to write and midterms to design and plans for Spring Break to firm up.  Something more thoughtful tomorrow, I promise.  In the meantime, thanks for all the good and challenging comments.  And click on some of the new additions to my blogroll!

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A very candid note about contradictions, sexuality, and self-discipline

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Catty writes to say that she now has 100 letters of support for Jane Doe, the survivor in the infamous Orange County Gang Rape case.  Get caught up on the case here, and then send your letters of support to ihiroe@yahoo.com

At Feministe, Piny and Jill both have terrific posts up about eating disorders.  And I’m in the process of realizing that this subject still brings up a great many contradictions for me.   As Sophonisba pointed out in the comments below my post on masturbation last week, I sometimes struggle with a double standard when it comes to pleasure and self-control.   When it comes to both food and sex, I am positively passionate in my conviction that women have a "right to pleasure".   Whether that pleasure comes from eating or masturbation, where women are concerned, my reflexive feminism leads me to advocate guilt-free self-indulgence.  (Though not, of course, compulsive or dangerous behavior).

But I tend to treat men, and particularly myself, quite differently.   On the same blog where I compose defenses of female masturbation, I make it clear that I also embrace the virtues of radical self-restraint in my own life.  In a sense, as Sophonisba pointed out, I’m guilty of a profoundly sexist framing of sexuality: even after all this time, I tend to see male sexuality (including my own) as dangerous and powerful while seeing female sexuality as less threatening.  The implication, perhaps, is that I don’t really see the full capacity of female sexuality.  The "men are dangerous and must control themselves" while "women’s sexuality ought to be freely indulged" dichotomy can’t stand for long, at least not if I want to be a coherent and thoughtful voice in the classroom or the blogosphere.

I’m about to delight some of my men’s rights advocate critics by agreeing that I do have an unfortunate double standard: too often, I see male experience through the prism of my own life narrative.  I’ve seen how my own misused sexuality caused tremendous harm to a great many people for a great many years; three wrecked marriages and a lot of other associated messes were linked to my own recklessness.  I’ve always had a keen sense of my own agency in all of this; I’ve never once felt (even in three divorces) like a "victim" of a woman.   With my exes — and with too many other women in my family and elsewhere — I tend to construct a narrative in which I am the destructive antagonist and they are the kind and gentle victims of my bad (male) behavior.  So my pro-feminist paeans to male responsibility are heavily tied up with pep talks directed at myself!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my belief in radical sexual restraint (no masturbation, no fantasy, all one’s energy poured into one’s spouse) combines with my intense focus on mastering my own body.   All of the running, the boxing,  the Pilates, the careful attention to diet — all of that brings me great pleasure.  But the pleasure is the pleasure of self-denial, of discipline, of desires conquered.  In my own inner narrative, my own fat is associated with sexual self-indulgence and lack of self-control.  (Other people’s fat, on the other hand, is perfectly okay.  Double standard, big-time).  Intense exercise produces a toned body, and that toned body is an outer manifestation of what I hope is my inner effort to live a life of restriction and sharing.  In order to be of greatest use to others, in order to more fully follow Christ, I discipline my flesh through a variety of forms of self-denial and exertion.

So there’s a big fat (sorry) disconnect between the way I live my life (where I want to approximate a Spartan, or at least a moderate ascetic) and the life I advocate to my students, particularly my female ones.  "Eat without guilt!", I say; "enjoy your body as God’s gift to you."  Knowing that so many of my students come from backgrounds where they’ve never experienced pleasure without guilt, where eating to satiety and sexual exploration are both shamed, I am eager to encourage them to break free of their cultural inhibitions and live a little more selfishly.   But I don’t seem as troubled by the potential consequences of female self-indulgence and exploration as I do by my own — or any other man.   

Perhaps that’s because I still see men as more powerful, more potentially dangerous, and thus more in need of a message of self-control.  At times, I’m overreacting to a double standard which demands self-discipline of women and encourages male irresponsibility.  And as any reader of this blog knows, I tend to filter most things through my own experience — and that leads me both to great insights and to stunning contradictions.

The fact is, the more I grow in my relationship with Christ the more I find myself giving up and surrendering.  The more I work to restrict my impulses, the more I work to share boldly and put others first, the more I push myself physically and spiritually, the happier I am.  Self-denial has been a key factor in helping me to become a loving, joy-filled man.  But I don’t share that story much with either my students or my teenagers.

Most bloggers don’t blog their doubts the way I seem to.  Are you all just much more certain than I am, or do you process through your doubts in private before posting?   Part of me thinks that a man who has been teaching for this long, with this much professional and personal experience, ought to have more certainties.   He ought to be able to do a better job of separating his own personal struggles from his public work.  Rest assured, I don’t share much about myself in the classroom; I am much more committed to balance and nuance in my courses than I am here on this blog.  But here I can wrestle out loud with those areas of my life where I still fall short.  And that’s what I’m doing here.

Folks, feel free to respond and challenge me further.  Sophonisba sent me on quite a journey in the past week with one simple comment!  I have more to say on this subject, but that will need to wait for another post.

Pro-ana websites and abs on the floor

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Thanks to Jill at Feministe, I read this article in yesterday’s New York Times: Before Spring Break, the Anorexia Challenge.

I REALLY gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I’m proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I’ll do before sleep … Yey for me."

For most students spring break represents the promise of a beer-soaked respite from Northern cold and midterm stress, a time to let go and revive. But for a subculture of students with eating disorders, this annual weeklong bacchanalia, unfolding across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean during March and April, represents the summit of deprivation and self-denial.

Though not widely discussed — sufferers of eating disorders often spend years in denial about their condition, and therapists treating them can rarely isolate any single reason for these complex psychological syndromes — those who treat eating disorders say spring break is one of the most dangerous times of the year for young women struggling with their weight and eating.

The article discusses the huge number of pro-anorexia ("pro-ana") sites now flourishing on the Internet, including many that offer encouragment and even contests to help readers lose weight and practice ever more extreme restriction and restraint.  As anyone who has worked with eating disorders will tell you, anorexia is a competitive disease — and while girls a decade ago competed against their classmates and nearby peers, the ‘net allows comparisons to go global (or at least national.)  A 15 year-old in Pittsburgh can offer her extreme diet tips to her cyber buddy in Portland, and her cyber buddy can triumphantly list the ways in which she has "topped that."  The potential for dangerous escalation is obvious.

From a feminist standpoint, it’s easy to point out how destructive it is for young women to try to live up to an impossible media ideal.  We can also point out — feminists usually do — that anorectic behavior is sometimes about attaining a perfect body and more about an extreme form of social protest. 

Young women who feel profoundly disempowered by their culture and their families and their peers find a deep sense of control and pride through compulsive exercise and caloric restriction.   After all, if you can control nothing else, you can usually control what goes in your mouth!  By battling hunger pangs and conquering the basic desire to eat, a young person with an eating disorder can quietly but powerfully live out a "heroic" life.  If heroism is about obstacles overcome and about dragons slain, what more visceral way to create a heroic life narrative than to practice radical self-denial?   While women and men in centuries past might have sought religious ecstasy through fasting, young women (and some young men) today can pursue a cultural ideal of physical perfection as well a psychological sense of power and control.

As a youth leader, I have to deal with this in a practical way.  This past weekend, as I mentioned in my first post today, we did a lot of eating on our retreat.   At one point on Saturday afternoon, while we were taking a break from our activities, a discussion broke out among a few of the girls about their tummies.  Like the young women mentioned in the Times article, several of our girls were keenly aware of the approach of swimsuit season.  Though we were bundled in comfy sweats, there was a brief period of lifting of shirts to expose bellies and discuss strategies for flattening and firming.  (Mind you, not much flesh was exposed, and my shirt stayed in place.)  At one point, two of the girls got on the floor and started doing ab exercises.  Knowing that I work out, one of them asked me, "Hugo, can you show us an exercise to do?"

Not thinking it through, I got down on the carpet and began to show them one very simple, safe, basic, Pilates exercise.  It was nothing that could be dangerous to them — really just a simple movement (combined with correct breathing) that is designed to work the lower abs.  As the girls were pointing out, lower abs are the hardest part of the midsection to train — and Pilates really does teach you to work that part of the body safely and efficiently.  So we did a few reps of very simple abs, and I gave some generalized advice.  (Yes, my All Saints friends, I did mention six ways to Sunday that though I have a lot of experience, I am not a certified instructor, and I made sure that the only exercises I mentioned were the very basic and safe ones.  Some routines in mat Pilates, done without training and supervision, can be dangerous.  I didn’t even mention those, but did recommend Pilates for core training.)

Today, reading the Times article that Jill mentioned, I began to wonder if I might have handled the situation in a better way on Saturday.  I’ve led lots of workshops for the kids on eating disorders, but that was not our focus this weekend.  Still, I could have started some discussion about the pressures young people (especially but not exclusively girls) feel to have the perfect "bikini-ready" body for summer.  Rather than question the need for perfect abs, however, I reinforced that desire.  I made it clear that even at more than twice their age, I shared their interest in pursuing an ideal, and showed them (safely and briefly) one way in which I pursue my own goal of a rock-hard core.  Was I being helpful, or was I merely affirming an unhealthy way of thinking about the importance of the body?  I mean, they were going to "do abs" anwyay — wasn’t it better to show them a safer and more effective method for reaching the "target" area?  Or should I have re-directed the discussion?

On a related note, one of the other volunteers (who is also a runner) and I are planning to lead a marathon training program next year for All Saints youth and staff, modeled on the very successful "Students Run LA" program associated with our city’s marathon.  We’ll start in the fall, with a goal of helping as many kids as possible train to run the marathon — and perhaps raise some funds for worthy charities in the process.  (We’ll call it, "All Saints Runs LA" or maybe "Saints Run LA"").   As someone who loves running and loves to spread the gospel of running, I’m eager to do this.  But thinking about my own motives and this past weekend, I realize I will have to be very careful in terms of how I approach this project.  The goal must not be on attaining an ideal body, but rather on setting goals and accomplishing them.  We must be especially careful to lead this program in a way that encourages a love for physical exertion while not reinforcing self-loathing.  That will be a vital needle to thread.

Monday notes, and a reflection about youth ministry and ego

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First off, a dozen new pictures of Matilde in this photo album.  Lots of good action shots; this one is our favorite.

I note that UCLA — my graduate school alma mater — plays for the national championship in basketball tonight.  Here’s what makes me feel old: in 1995, the Bruins won their last national title when I was in my second year of teaching here at Pasadena City College. I had a Monday night class back then, and thus had to listen to the radio during a break to catch the score.  Tonight, I’ll be able to go online during that same break period to get an update — but once again, eleven years later, I’ll miss the entire game with teaching responsibilities.  My Trojan wife has agreed to root for the Bruins tonight (thanks to my willingness to cheer on USC in the Rose Bowl three months ago.)  We both agree that Los Angeles is in its right state when USC dominates in football, and their cross-town rivals on the basketball court.

I’m home, a bit bleary-eyed, from another confirmation class retreat in the San Bernardino mountains.  Here’s my post from last year about the 2005 retreat, and the "creed-writing" process; most of what I said then applies to this past weekend as well.

Having been in the youth ministry game for a number of years, I’ve begun to see some real changes in my approach to teenagers.  When I was first doing this work seven years ago, I was far more anxious.  There’s something about doing youth ministry that can bring back all of one’s own adolescent anxieties!  My first thought, as I’ve written before, was that I wasn’t "cool enough" to work with teens. I feared being exposed as a fraud — or worse, in a sense, as a "geek."   In my nightmares, I saw the faces of All Saints teens (particularly the "popular" ones) transposing with the faces of the poised and the beautiful kids I knew in high school — the ones I both idolized and feared.  But a good friend told me, "Hugo, they’re much more worried about what you think of them than what they think of you"; those words gave me the courage to begin my career as a volunteer senior high school youth leader.

What I love about working as a youth minister is that it does, in a very real way, allow me to stay in touch with adolescent wildness and adolescent intensity.  I may be nearly 39, but teenage emotions (with all their grandiosity, volatility, sentimentality, and vulnerability) are instantly familiar to me.  That doesn’t mean, mind you, that I think of myself as an over-grown teenager! The kids in this year’s confirmation class were mostly born in 1990 and 1991 — after I was already married for the first time.  With each passing year, the age of the kids stays the same (they are perennially 14-16); Hugo gets older.  But as I get older and softer and (one hopes) wiser, I’m happy to say that I don’t ever forget just how intense and pure and overwhelming it can be to be in the throes of mid-adolescence.

The easiest part about youth ministry is loving the kids.  The hardest part — and I suspect most who do what I do professionally or avocationally would agree — is the feeling of powerlessness one often gets in the face of great pain.  So many of our kids are hurting so much! Some of their woundedness comes from family trouble; some of it is a result of their own poor choices; some of it is a result of their own unique brain chemistry.  Though I’ve written before that I believe that the most vital thing we do in youth group is love, I’m also keenly aware that my love is not the same as God’s love.  I can’t rescue troubled and unhappy kids, though I can reassure them and hug them and tell them I do care.  But in the end, the hardest thing I have to do is to step back and point — point the kids towards God, and ask them to take the steps they need to take towards Him.

Teenagers, like all of us but only more so, are inclined to confuse the messenger with the message.  I’ve learned the hard way that it is all too easy for me to seek validation from my high schoolers by trying to make myself emotionally indispensable.  I want them to love the messenger too, of course — but not at the expense of the message itself.   My intentions were always, at least on the surface, very noble: "I want to be there for my kids!", I would regularly proclaim.  Yet at times in my first couple of years as a youth leader, I was too quick to "rescue", to play the role of "white knight" I so love to play. Lordy, I always have to be on guard against the impetuous demands of my own ego! Yes, I want the kids to know I love them; yes, I love that so many of them love me back.  But my job is not to draw kids to myself, my job is to point them and nudge them towards a relationship with God.  Though I’ve dried a lot of tears and heard a lot of stories, in and of myself I have no capacity to transform the lives of these young people about whom I care so much.   In partnership with God, they must become agents of their own transformation.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve seen some of my former high school youth go on to graduate school. I’ve been blessed to see tremendous growth in them — and, I’m pleased to say, in me as well.  I’ve been learning, to paraphrase the St. Francis prayer, that I am called to be an "instrument of His peace" — but I am not the source of that peace.  It’s a distinction I am happier to say gets easier to make each passing year, even as my compassion and love for "my kids" grows and grows.

I got a lot of hugging in this weekend. I also got in a lot of junk food, and will need to be very mindful about my eating in the days to come.