Tag: Lewis Gordon

Critiquing the concept of “White privilege”

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the concept of “White privilege,” mostly because I feel that the concept doesn’t really tell White people why they should give up their White privilege. I envision a conversation that goes something like this: “Hey, check your White privilege.” [reply spoken externally] “Oh, right, sorry!” … [reply spoken internally] ((Wow, I got White privilege? that sounds pretty good, I’m gonna hang on to it.))

That’s not a serious critique of the concept of White privilege. It’s just this feeling of discomfort that I have. Yet the feeling is strong enough that I find myself not wanting to use the phrase “White privilege,” due to some kind of nameless fear that it’s just going to reinforce the behavior in us White people that the phrase is supposed to put an end to.

In an essay titled “How ‘White Privilege’ Obscures Black Vulnerability,” Mukasa Mubirumusoke, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, provides a more serious critique of the shortcomings of the concept. Mubirumusoke ends his essay with this rhetorical question:

“In what ethical universe could the possibility afforded by whiteness to dominate another human being just because they are Black be considered a ‘privilege’? In the ethical universe of white America today, apparently.”

(Parenthetical note: The essay appears on the Public Seminar website, which I hadn’t seen before. Looks like a lot of good stuff there.)

But wait, there’s more. In a recent post on the American Philosophical Association blog, Lewis Gordon offers a constructive critique of Mubirumusoke’s critique. SCroll way down to find it, and (as I understand it) Gordon’s basic point is that Mubirumusoke’s critique is based on Afropessimism, an intellectual approach that Gordon finds unsatisfactory.

In the course of his longer discussion of Mubirumusoke, Gordon asks a question that may provide a better grounding for a critique of “White privilege”:

“[W]hy center so much of reality from white perspectives?… Fanon, after all, stated that the Black (‘Le Noir’) had no ontological resistance ‘in the eyes [that is from the perspective] of the [White].’ But he never claimed the White was correct. The White needs that lie. I can go on, but at this point, it should be clear that I’m concerned that Mubirumusoke gives too much credence to the problematic, almost Zeno-like forms of problematic argumentations of impossibility as well as the concomitant Stoicism of individual resignation — perhaps even ressentiment — that such arguments occasion….” (N.B.: in this quotation, the notes in brackets are Gordon’s.)

Gordon’s philosophically nuanced critique of Mubirumusoke takes the critique of “White privilege” to a whole other level. It’s a level above my pay grade, to be honest. But let’s be clear, Gordon is not some “anti-Woke” political conservative, like the ones who dominate U.S. politics these days. Trump and company cannot take comfort from this philosophical conversation. By the same token, political liberals who get uncomfortable when their White privilege is called out aren’t going to find much comfort in Gordon’s critique, either. Gordon even goes so far as to criticize that idol of liberalism, the individual:

“Added to all this is the larger history of Euromodern thought as emerging with the global expansion of enslavement while centering freedom in its discourse. The history of political theology and its role in racism and the advancement of capitalism offered rationalizations of a philosophical anthropology in which ‘the individual’ collapsed into stoic models of rationalization instead of understanding the fundamental incoherence of an individual, treated as real in and of itself like an Aristotelian substance, or, worse, a minor, or perhaps egologically inflated sense of self as, a god.” (N.B.: in this quotation, the emphasis is mine.)

Whoa. Take that, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gordon is striking at the root of our theological commitment to “the individual.” Because — following Emerson — we Unitarian Universalists really do have this tendency to treat the self as a god. Which is idolatry. And we are fundamentally opposed to idolatry.

Well, as I say, all this is well above my pay grade. But I’d also say both these essays are worth reading. Every time I read Lewis Gordon, I find myself getting insight into problems that have been bothering me. And based on what Gordon says about Mubirumusoke, he might be another one of those thinkers….

An interesting anecdote

I’m still slowly making my way through is Fear of Black Consciousness, by Lewis Gordon. I’ll read a few pages, which will get me thinking hard about something, I’ll go follow those thoughts for a while, until eventually I come back to Lewis Gordon’s book. The latest bit that’s sending me off on a tangent is this interesting anecdote:

“During … [a] conference … in South Africa in the late 1990s, the hosts took the presenters to a wildlife preserve. I hate even the idea of a safari, but I went along in the spirit of being a good guest. As the game warden and the resident veterinarian were explaining safety measures at the facility, I glimpsed one of the guests, a white Frenchman in his thirties, straying away from the group. Curious about what he was up to, I watched as he made his way over to a fence, behind which rested a lioness. Seeing him coming close, the lioness rose on all fours. The Frenchman looked at her for about a minute and then slowly extended his hand to pet her. The lioness licked her lips.

“‘Stop!‘ yelled the game warden.

‘The Frenchman paused, his hand near the fence. ‘Why?’

“‘Because she’ll eat you!’

“There is something many people of color, especially those of us from the Global South, know about white people as a group but rarely discuss with them. Although many white people despise nonwhite peoles, especially blacks, they love animals. The love is to the point of many if not most whites seeming no longer capable of imagining animals as wild.” [pp. 40-41]

I have noticed this tendency among some of my white friends, a tendency I don’t quite share. I remember walking into a city park with a white friend, when we passed an eagle sitting, quite fearlessly, fairly close to a boardwalk over a constructed wetlands. We both looked at the eagle for half a minute. Then I continued walking, but my friend decided to stay and commune with the eagle for the net half hour. I didn’t share their impulse, but I could understand it.

Contrast that with another young white friend, who was majoring in biology and managed to get a summer job working with a field biologist banding birds. After that summer, she no longer thought birds were cute, nor did she particularly like them, although she did respect them. Or another young white friend who was in 4-H. After milking goats, and cleaning up their shit, and watching them give birth, and taking care of their illnesses, and sending them off to be slaughtered for food — she did not see goats, or any other animals, as cute and cuddly. Then, too, when I was working lower middle class jobs, I had a number of white friends who were hunters or trappers. They lacked any sentimentality about killing animals; in fact, for some of the older ones, hunting and trapping had been how they got through the Great Depression. So there are white people who, because of their experiences, lack sentimentality when it comes to animals. However, it’s worth noting that these white people tend to see animals in utilitarian terms, or as resources to be conserved or exploited.

Lewis Gordon points out: “Pleonexia — wanting everything — requires the absence of limits. White pleonexia transforms land, living things, including other human beings, and even thoughts, into property; the covetous mentality is applied to the skies, to outer space, and even to time…. This desire expands to the expectation, if not presumption, of invulnerability and absolute entitlement….” [p. 40]

[A side note: what I mean by “animals” in this post, and what I think Lewis Gordon means, are the charismatic mega-fauna and mesa-fauna, primarily in phylum Chordata, classes Mammalia, Reptilia, and Aves — we’re mostly not talking about poriferans, molluscs, arthropods, annelids, etc.]

Noted, with comment

I’m slowly making my way through Lewis Gordon’s new book, Fear of Black Consciousness. It’s slow going, because Gordon keeps dropping in this little observations that make me stop and think.

Like this one:

“The expression ‘black bodies’ pops up often wherever antiblack racism raises its ugly, and at times polite, head. It is there on blogs, in news interviews, in editorials in major newspapers, in broadcast lectures, and in award-winning books ranging from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me to Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist. It makes sense since racism involves a form of two-dimensional thinking in which black people supposedly lack inner lives. [Frantz] Fanon referred to this as ‘the epidermal schema.’ It refers to treating black people as mere surfaces, superficial physical beings without consciousness and thus a point of view — in short, only bodies. Yet in the midst of this attention to black bodies, many blacks are left wondering what happened to black people. How has it become acceptable — indeed, even preferable — for black people to refer to ourselves as ‘bodies’ instead of as ‘people’ or as ‘human beings’?” [pp. 31-32]

It is not for me, a white person, to tell black people how to refer to themselves. But I have been uncomfortable with the way it has become fashionable to refer to people, not just black people, as “bodies.” I suspect this comes from some kind of post-Foucauldian analysis, that is, an analysis that attempts to follow in the footsteps of philosopher Michel Foucault.

Foucault’s philosophy does place an emphasis on the body; his philosophy “aims to bring the body into the focus of history.” [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article on Michel Foucault, section 3.4]. This move by Foucault was brilliant and necessary, to help us understand how modern society uses hierarchy and discipline to control and punish people. I don’t think Foucault’s intent was to reduce persons to bodies; however, some of his followers may have adopted Foucauldian discourse without adequately reflecting on the deeply humanistic purpose of that discourse.

Returning to Lewis Gordon’s argument — Gordon points out that the term “bodies” is now being used in a way that can indeed reduce black persons to something less than three dimensional beings — reduce them to less than human. Whether Gordon is also offering a critique of Foucault isn’t something I can comment on, since I’m not up on Foucault (I admire his work, but reading him is a chore that I don’t care to put myself through). It does look like Gordon is suggesting that Fanon would be a more useful thinker if we’re going to explore this topic.

At the same time, I don’t hear Gordon telling people to stop using the term “bodies.” Rather, as a philosopher should do, he’s pointing out where public discourse has gotten imprecise, sloppy. He’s suggesting that writers and speakers should think hard about what they really mean when they use the term “bodies.” Is “bodies” the more precise term, or are the more precise terms “people” or “human beings”? It’s fine to use “bodies if that’s what is really meant (if you’re doing Foucauldian analysis), but Gordon clearly favors the latter two terms. If you’re talking about people, says Gordon, then say “people”; if you’re talking about human beings, then say “human beings.”

You can see how reading this book is slow going for me. I had to go look Foucault. And now I’m going to have to dig into Fanon. But this is what books by philosophers should do — cause us to think hard about the way we’ve been thinking.