Generalizations about racists only widen gaps

Wednesday, March 4, 1998

Generalizations about racists only widen gaps

POWER: Schwartz oversimplifies issue by applying fallacious
stereotype to whites

By Marc Angelucci

Michael Schwartz, in his Feb. 27 article "Power and Privilege:
Who’s Really Got It?" makes the following argument: 1) racism is
prejudice plus power; 2) whites have all the power; 3) therefore,
"only whites can be racist." He then adds that "if you are white,
then you are racist."

Schwartz’s overly simplistic argument takes a general truth and
mistakenly applies it to all cases, a fallacy sometimes called an
"accident." By his reasoning, when a group of inner-city high
school girls lit my friend’s hair on fire and beat her in the
locker room because she was white, that was not racism, because she
had all the "power." When Native American nations like the
Chickasaw and Choctaw enslaved African Americans, it was not
racism, because the Native Americans had no power (and yet those
whites who risked their lives in the Underground Railroad were all
racists).

Schwartz himself is white, so he chivalrously "admits" he is
racist. Of course, he does not simply mean he is susceptible to the
same prejudice that all humans are. Rather, he means he is racist
on account of his being white. His stereotyping of all whites as
racist is ironic given that he also says whites have the privilege
of being "classified as individuals."

After explaining that he benefited from affirmative action,
Schwartz says: "Any white person, who upon reading this thought I
was black or Latino, there’s your racism." A good point, but I’ll
bet some minority readers thought the same thing for the exact same
reasons as some whites did. Why were the whites automatically being
racist but not the others? Such generalizations do not foster
understanding; they only widen gaps.

By parallel reasoning, Schwartz’s position is that all whites
who favored Proposition 187 did so because of racism. Never mind
the fact that half the African American population and close to
half of Latino voters favored 187. Despite my opposition to 187, I
believe the reason a surprisingly high number of minorities favored
it was because they feel that illegal immigration hurts the lower
class more than anyone, since they have to compete for low-cost
housing, jobs and public school space. Isn’t it possible that some
whites favored it for the same reason, rather than because of
racism?

I, like Schwartz, am a white male who benefited from
socioeconomic affirmative action. In fact, my story of delinquency
and expulsion is similar to his. Yet my perception of white
privilege differs sharply. I was raised on the east side of Los
Angeles in a family of five with one small income, an old clunker
car and plenty of unmentionable hardships. My life-long Chicano
friend was raised in a family of four with two good incomes, a
Mammoth condo, new cars, computers, etc. And, if I didn’t have
Latino friends backing me up, I would not have survived the
provocations I faced being blond and blue-eyed in a tough Latino
neighborhood. My case may be uncommon, and being white may have
given me some privileges. But Schwartz’s simplistic generalizations
will never convince me or my Latino friends that I was the racist
one with all the power.