For my Social Justice Event I watched, "The Whiteness Project" which is a film and an interview by filmmaker Whitney Dow. The documentary and discussion is about white people exploring their personal relationship with their race. Whitney Dow has spent most of his career creating documentary films that deal with race. Whitney, like many people believe that we live in a world we live in is a white-supremacist society. The purpose of Whitney's documentaries is that white people need to confront all stereotypes and talk openly about their whiteness.
It is true, that white people and black people think of race in completely different perspectives. Dow wants to be able to show that race is directly linked to privilege. Dow interviewed all people from Buffalo, New York. He wanted to change peoples stereotype that all racism issues lie in the south. When in reality Buffalo is still one of the most racially segregated areas in the United States. He said that the point of this project was, "Essentially to give permission to discuss this. And I believe there is a huge hunger in this country to engage this topic." This project was actually 18 years in the making.
The many voices of "The Whiteness Project" vary by age, gender, income, and education. They talk about what it is like to be white in our society. Whitney talked about how he wanted to show white people and give them the same experience that children gave him. He was shown that he had the most powerful racial identity in America.
When the backlash started online, it was brutal. The people were so angry about the videos that they were posting mean comments on every form of social media. He said that this was expected, but not to this extent. Whitney doesn't see the problem with speaking the truth in society. But the craziest part about the backlash was that a lot of it came from Caucasians.
Whitney states in an interview that we as humans are all a bit racist towards something. It is just in us as humans to feel differently about things were are unfamiliar with. Some of the people really did blow my mind when watching this documentary. It is sad to see that the world we live in today when there should be so much change, some people still remain the same. A lot of people in the world today are still very racist and this documentary brought that to life for me.
There were many cases during this documentary that I was put in uncomfortable situations. The people that were speaking did come off as very racist. I have not been around racism my entire life, my family was very open and honest with me when I asked them any questions. My family that was older, i.e my grandparents and great grandparents were much more old school and could come off as racist at times. Now at my internships, I have seen racism in schools in such different ways. The teachers can be very racist and group the children as a whole rather than looking at the individuals. The children know that they are not being treated fairly like many of the other students, which in turn causes them to lash out. They see how the smarter, more well behaved, and white children are spoken to in class and then a lot of the time, they just get yelled at for small things. I think I don't have many connections to this article personally because I have not seen a lot of racism throughout my life. I have been raised what I see as the right way. I look at everyone on the same playing field.
When connecting it to course readings of course I of course connected this to our readings White Privilege, The Silenced Dialogue, and Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us. While watching this documentary "The Whiteness Project" the first thing that came to mind was White Privilege. That reading discussed how people that are white do not even realize they are stuck in an oppressive mindset because that is how they have been brought up. People look at whites as superior and better than others. There was a quote in this reading that stuck out to me that I connected with "The Whiteness Project" as well, "If you don't believe in White Privilege then congratulations you're enjoying the benefits from it." Me being brought up in a predominantly white community, I connected this to my Social Justice Event because many of the people were speaking in a way of showing racism and discrimination towards anything but white. When connecting it to The Silenced Dialogue I took it in a different way, in that reading the student was not able to be heard and was silenced because of his race. In "The Whiteness Project" the people in the documentary were able to speak what they felt no matter what the repercussions were. They faced a lot of backlash for what they did, but they did it anyways. When connecting it to Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us, there was a quote in this reading that stated, "the impact of racism begins early. We are exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves." It talked about how Whiteness was shown more than blackness. It was seen as "better" than any other races.
When taking a deeper look into White Privilege I found a website called Teaching Tolerance which took all that I knew about White Privilege and added to it. It discusses the many perks of being a privileged white person as opposed to being a different race. Things as small as having only white pantyhose at the store as opposed to a darker shade. These are things we do not ever think about. I remember I said in my blog when reading White Privilege during the semester I talked about how I have literally NEVER seen a bandaid any other color than flesh tone or tan. Another article I came across was The Limits of Talking About Privilege to Teenagers it states that the only way to teach children about privilege is having them talk about it with others. It it apart of the learning process that we look into ourselves and our lives and dig deeper into all that we have and what we have more than others do not.
Check out a few of the videos and let me know what you think: The Whiteness Project
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