Reflections on the Racial Domination and Privilege Interest Group

Jodie Kliman

As a white Jew in a multiracial, multifaith, and multiclass family, I always appreciate the Racial Domination and Privilege Interest Group's explorations of how privilege and marginalization influence interactions across differences. My thanks to Volker, who is always accountable as a German to me as a Jew, for this chance to share my experience of the group.

After some white participants in the 1996 Black Families interest group didn't respond to people of color's repeated requests to stop interrupting them and talking more than anyone else, David Trimble (my spouse), decided to be accountable for his own dominating behavior. He first invited AFTA members of all races into an electronic conversation to explore and resist each of our (mostly unwitting) participation in the reproduction of racial domination and privilege at AFTA and elsewhere. We have met annually ever since, led by different combinations of David, Sarah Stearns; Jackie Hudak, and Theresa Messineo; John Lawless takes leadership next year.

Our first meeting in 1997 was largely dominated by a white man who insisted that people of color acknowledge his pain at being seen as privileged. Several participants of color were distressed to find themselves responding to his demands, a process Hardy and Laszloffy (2002) describes well. They later determined to become thoughtful observers of white participants' struggles with their own issues about their racial privilege and its costs, instead of teaching or caretaking them in difficult interracial conversations at their own expense. Several white members committed to being allies to people of color by taking responsibility for our own learning and for our own dominating practices. White members agreed to be accountable (Waldegrave, 1990) to our colleagues of color when they tell us we are drawing on our privilege or acted in dominating ways with them – even when we don't experience ourselves in that way. That is, we agreed to take responsibility for the effects of our actions, regardless of our motives. The multiracial Racial Domination and Privilege Interest Group soon spun off the White Members Conversation about race, which meets, in alliance with (but not in response to) our colleagues of color. Both the Interest Group and the Conversation share a commitment to recognizing and resisting the hidden costs of racial (and other forms of ) privilege and domination to everyone involved in their enactment, at personally, professionally, and at AFTA.

Over the years, the Interest Group has provided many exchanges, between and within races, about how we perceive our respective parts in perpetuating racial domination and privilege. We give and receive support in the difficult, sometimes painful, process of owning our own participation in that perpetuation and learning new ways to resist the effects of racism. Many exchanges have been rich and meaningful, and have taught me a great deal. At other times, we have fallen into bogs of over-politeness, self-congratulation, or polarization. Some meetings have provided in vivo evidence of how easily one can draw on one's privilege or, conversely, fall into reassuring the privileged – as when white members in difficult interracial interactions feel entitled to insist on particular responses from those with less racial privilege or to take the lion's share of the group's attention. At times, we have focused on AFTA processes and at others, on participants' personal and professional experiences elsewhere.

This year, Jackie Hudak began by connecting September 11th to the themes of privilege, domination, and justice. She asked how 9/11 had moved us to act and think differently and, sharing her own ambivalence about the recent upsurge of patriotism and prevalence of flags in the U.S., asked for our thoughts. The open-format group discussed the processes of racial domination and privilege internationally, nationally, at AFTA, and in the room itself. People made connections between tacit ideologies of white supremacy and of US supremacy and domination over nations in the Arab and developing world.

We worried over "us/them" (e.g., US/Arab) thinking in US racial and international relations, particularly with the developing world and Arab nations. The personal, political, and organizational converged when a woman of color critiqued the Women's Institute's historical oscillation between asking women of color to teach white women about how white privilege and domination hurts people of color and glossing over racism altogether. Either way, she pointed out, racism prevails, despite good intentions. A white newcomer who defined himself anti-racist heated things up by challenging the group's focus on white privilege as reflecting a toxic and unproductive white guilt-induction. Strikingly, many people, myself included, gave him a good deal of the group's energy by asking him to elaborate and by arguing with him.

His stance, however problematic, points to the need to distinguish between guilt over the advantages and comforts whites receive and accountability (responsibility to resist the tendency to take advantage of current and historical privilege at others' expense. The distinction between causing racism and benefitting from it has been well described by Elaine Pinderhughes at several AFTA meetings. People in dominant groups won't be convinced to relinquish power at macro or micro-levels unless they recognize the hidden costs to them of the privileges and protections that fit so comfortably that they don't have to notice them. White anti-racism doesn't require inducing or wallowing in guilt, but rather accountability for one's acts and one's advantages. This stance benefits one's own spiritual well-being even as it benefits the less privileged.

The meeting heated up still more, toward the end, when a woman of color asked the same man, and later the group, "How did you, personally, cause September 11th?" When he was offended by the question, he challenged the question and questioner in ways I found entitled and disrespectful. Thus, group members had a new opportunity to see racial (and other forms of) privilege play out. My own (then unspoken) answer to this thought-provoking query is that I am responsible (not guilty) in that I have too often been silent rather than actively resisting US exploitation, domination of, and aggression against less powerful Muslim peoples for our – my own – benefit. I don't think I directly caused September 11th, but I let it happen.

I end with questions. Who felt obliged to answer a difficult question, as asked? Who felt entitled to challenge the question? Who feared the question? How much did our responses relate to our racial (or gender, class, or other) privilege or lack thereof? How do we ensure respectful dialogue when people differ not only on their beliefs, but on the rules for dialogue? How can our interest group – or any group addressing potentially polarizing issues – ensure a welcome, orientation to our goals, mutual respect and careful listening between those in conflict (Public Conversations Project, 2002), and also protect the group's agenda from derailment?

References:

Hardy, K. and Laszloffy, T. (2002). Couple therapy using a multicultural perspective. In A. Gurman and N. Jacobson (Eds.). Clinical handbook of couple therapy. NY: Guilford Publications.

Public Conversations Project (2002). About PCP. Website material retrieved July 1, 2002 from htttp://www.publicconversations.org/pcp/index.asp

Waldegrave, 1990. Just therapy. Dulwich Centre Newsletter,(1), 5-46.

Jodie Kliman, Ph.D. is a psychologist and family therapist in practice in Brookline, MA. She is on the faculty of the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, in Boston, and has written several articles and book chapters on the interplay of gender, class, race, and culture in family therapy. She joined the AFTA Board in 2000 and served as Pre-Conference Workshop Co-Chair in 1995 and as AFTA Program Chair in 1997.