Dismantling Global White Privilege
Copyright 2022 by Chandran Nair
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First Edition
Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-0000-5
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-0001-2
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-0002-9
Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-0003-6
2021-1
Book producer: Susan Geraghty
Text designer: Paula Goldstein/Westchester Publishing
Cover designer: Alvaro Villanueva
This book is dedicated to all those people from around the world who have suffered discrimination because of the color of their skin.
It is also dedicated to those who enjoy White privilege but are honest enough to recognize it and are committed to changing the status quo.
It is dedicated to all those who want to take action within their families, workplaces, and organizations to dismantle White privilege wherever they see it.
It is dedicated to all of these people because they will need the strength, determination, and information to embark on an important journeywhich will take at least a generationas the global community transitions into a fairer, post-Western world.
Finally, it is dedicated to you, the reader.
All proceeds from direct sales of the book by the Global Institute for Tomorrow and from worldwide royalties will be directed toward furthering the cause of dismantling global White privilege.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface: White Privilege: Its Woven into the Fabric of Globalization
Introduction Black Lives Matter and the Tip of the Iceberg
1 Geopolitics of Dominance: The White Knights of Chess
2 The Retelling of History: This Version Aint Mine
3 The World of Business: Uneven Playing Fields
4 Media and Publishing: Captive Minds
5 Education: Schooling and Grooming
6 Culture and Entertainment: Gone with the Wind
7 Sports: Match Fixing
8 Fashion: Little Black Dress
9 Environment, Sustainability, and Climate Change: Zero Carbon and Other Myths
Conclusion How Change Happens: No Whitewash, Please!
Discussion Guide
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Working on Equity: The Global Institute for Tomorrow
FOREWORD
C handran Nairs book is, in the best sense, a revolutionary one. A few years back, the title alone would have made that clear, but now, deceptively, the title may lead readers to think it is another of the books about race relations in the West. It is notis about decolonizing our world.
Thanks in particular to the transformative impact of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, conversations about White privilege are no longer taboo. Fortune 500 CEOs, newspaper commentators, and even chat shows are all talking about it. As welcome and overdue as those conversations are, they are nevertheless, as Nair points out so powerfully, the tip of the iceberg. White privilege is not a domestic US or European issue alone; it is, rather, a descriptor of a global aspect of dominance. White privilege globally shapes not only economics and politics but even culture, ideas, and both White and non-White peoples sense of identity.
Those of us who grew up in the developing world during the generation after decolonization held powerful conversations about challenging the structures of racial dominance. We were clear that although White domination had come with empire, it had not gone away merely with the lowering of European flags and the raising of new independent flags on Africa and Asian soil. The Bandung Conference of 1955; the pan-Africanist movements; the bold challenge made by leaders, from Sankara to Lumumba to Nyerere; the international antiapartheid movement; and the movements in the Frontline States battling the racist South African government all spoke to confronting White privilege and global Western hegemony. We were demanding change and were clear in those conversations, which could be heard not only in parliaments and international conferences but in university halls and street markets by the village water pump; they could be heard, too, in the food halls in the West where young African and Asian diaspora communities met.
With the imposition of neoliberalism across the world, much of that conversation was silenced. Nairs powerful book will help bring it back, in a new frame, for a new generation. Of course, you dont have to agree with everything Nair saysindeed, I think he wouldnt want you to; he enjoys a good argument too much! But I hope that the book will help reignite in you, as it has in me, that spark that can kindle the determination for a truly global shift of power and status so that every person on earth can live in dignity.
Thomas Sankara told us that we have to work at decolonizing our mentality. Bob Marley told us to emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / none but ourselves can free our minds. Nairs book is an invitation to do just that. And all of us, because we all deserve to be free, deserve the opportunity to get to read this book.
Winnie Byanyima,
executive director of UNAIDS,
undersecretary-general of the United Nations,
and former executive director of Oxfam
PREFACE
White Privilege: Its Woven into the Fabric of Globalization
Me only have one ambition, yknow? I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live togetherBlack, White, Chinese, everyonethats all.
Bob Marley, Marley
I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to live and work in different parts of the world, thereby experiencing the people and cultures of many countries. I was also lucky to have been born in one of the most racially and religiously diverse countries in the world. This was a most enriching gift and gave me an early sense of living with diversity and not feeling threatened by people of other races and religions. Thus I had little fear of other people and no sense of superiority.