Stephanie M. Wildman - Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America

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Privilege Revealed

Critical America

General Editors: RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC

White by Law:
The Legal Construction of Race
Ian F. Haney Lopez

Cultivating Intelligence:
Power, Law, and the Politics of Teaching
Louise Harmon and Deborah W. Post

Privilege Revealed:
How Invisible Preference Undermines America
Stephanie M. Wildman
with contributions by Margalynne Armstrong,
Adrienne D. Davis, and Trina Grillo

How Invisible Preference Undermines America

Stephanie M. Wildman

with contributions by
Margal ynne Armstrong,
Adrienne D. Davis, and Trina Grillo

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

Copyright 1996 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wildman, Stephanie M., 1949
Privilege revealed: how invisible preference undermines America
Stephanie M. Wildman with Margalynne Armstrong [et al.].
p. cm. (Critical America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Making systems of privilege visiblePrivilege in the workplacePrivilege in residential housingPrivilege and the mediaObscuring the importance of raceComparisons between racism and sexism (or other -isms)The dream of diversity and the cycle of exclusionThe quest for justiceTeaching and learning toward transformationConcluding thoughts on noticing privilege.
1. Power (Social sciences)United States. 2. EqualityUnited States. I. Title. II. Series.
HN90.P6W56 1996
303.3dc20 96-4483

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For

Becky Wildman-Tobriner

Ben Wildman-Tobriner

Luisa Grillo-Chope

Jeffrey Grillo

Rebecca Buckner Pierce

and the future of all the children.

In memory of Lena Sokol

Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman with Adrienne D. Davis

Stephanie M. Wildman

Margalynne Armstrong

Adrienne D. Davis and Stephanie M. Wildman

Trina Grillo and Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman

Stephanie M. Wildman and Margalynne Armstrong

Thank you first and foremost to Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, series editors of Critical America, without whose support this book would not have come to exist. I am grateful to the community of scholars involved in critical race theory, critical legal studies, and feminist critical theory, whose work has created a community that makes the expression of these ideas possible. Thanks also to my students and faculty colleagues at Santa Clara Law School, Hastings College of the Law, Stanford Law School, and the University of San Francisco School of Law, where I have taught about these issues.

I would like to recognize my intellectual debt to two colleagues, Adrienne Davis and Trina Grillo, both professors of law and both women of color. The three of us worked together for almost two years, writing several working papers examining systems of privilege. I know that I am able to see more now, because of my friendship with them. More recently, I have benefited greatly from time spent with Margalynne Armstrong, another African American law professor.

I also owe particular thanks to Trina, Adrienne, and Margalynne, along with Edith Wildman, Herman Wildman, Emily Goldman, Dr. Russell Leong, Carole Shauffer, and Catharine Wells, for patiently reading drafts of this manuscript. Gloria Gonzlez and the support staff at Santa Clara Law School have my appreciation for superlative assistance in preparing the manuscript. As always, Lee Ryan and Marian Shostrom provided professional and caring research support. NYU Press made the final stages a writers dream.

Finally, thanks and love to Michael Tobriner, Becky Wildman-Tobriner, and Ben Wildman-Tobriner, because it is not always easy to live with someone who is writing a book.

STEPHANIE M. WILDMAN

Many contemporary theorists have emphasized the social construction of race. The idea of race exists because people give it particular meaning, a meaning that changes with time, place, and circumstances. But one constant remainsthe privileging of whiteness through different devices, social patterns, and even laws. This racial positioning is maintained in part through an unwritten rule that it cannot be discussed. In fact, the corollary rulemandates that we talk about the societal desire for equality while avoiding an examination of white racial privilege or any other privilege.

This book describes how white privilege reinforces the existing racial status quo and overlaps and interacts with other systems of privilege, including those based on gender, sexual orientation, economic wealth, physical ability, and religion. Just as the systems themselves are made invisible by our language, the interaction between the systems is also masked. People of color, women, gays, and lesbians are words frequently used to name people who face discrimination. The phrasing suggests that people of color are male, that women are white, and that gays and lesbians have no race, but of course these terms are not mutually exclusive.

Our language, and how we read it, reflects the dominant cultural privileging of whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. We cannot combat these default assumptions without identifying race, sex, and sexual orientation more often than we are accustomed to doing. After all, the unwritten rule tells us not to talk about it.

Difficulties also arise with respect to words to describe race, such as white and Black. The Chicago Manual of Style uses lowercase letters for the word Black, and it appears that way in many quotations. Many legal scholars have disagreed with that convention, capitalizing Black to show that, as Kimberl W. Crenshaw explains, Blacks, like Asians, [and] Latinos constitute a specific cultural group and, (thus) require denotation as a proper noun. Neil Gotanda agrees that Black should be capitalized because it has deep political and social meaning as a liberating term.

Ian Haney Lpez makes a strong argument for also capitalizing the word white in his book White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. Nonetheless, because whites usually see ourselves in uppercase letters without even realizing it, because of white privilege, I have declined to capitalize white in this text.