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"Reflections on White Privilege" by Tad Lawrence, dean of faculty

This essay is about institutionalized racism and about white privilege–the unasked for, but tremendously powerful advantages that have and continue to come from being white in America. If you think that institutionalized racism and white privilege don’t exist let me tell you a story, my story; the story of my grandfathers and father. It is a story about how white Americans could acquire wealth and prestige–not just on the basis of merit, but also because they had opportunities that were not available to non-white Americans. You do not need to have had slave owners in your family or to have directly exploited the labor of people of color to have benefited from being white in America.

I am going to illustrate this story with some images. I present them with caution, but they are a part of what we would now call pop culture; they are all–postcards. The postcards are part of a collection begun by my mother in the 1960s. At that time she wrote that she collected them "in an effort to acquaint students with the sorts of prejudice that are part of their heritage and in this way to help them understand themselves better." I show them so they can, as she hoped, have an educational use.

Postcards, like the ones I will show you were sold openly without embarrassment from approximately 1900 to 1960. They were mailed from all over the United States by and to regular citizens. They are racist and they are shocking. As denigrating of African Americans as they are, I want you to remind yourself that like slavery in America they are the invention of white Americans. These images tell us much more about the people who made them, bought them and sent them than they tell us about the subjects of these cards–African Americans. In places, I have also included the text written on the back of the cards–at times the text is also racist, but to me more shocking is that the messages are usually totally mundane; the stuff of everyday life. That white Americans would send cards such as the ones I will show you for the most ordinary of purposes indicates the frightening extent to which they had internalized, accepted and condoned the presentation of African Americans that were the public face of the cards they sent. If you find the images too upsetting and need to step out of assembly, I fully understand.

My Grandfathers 1900-1920

My maternal grandfather was born in a lumber camp in northern Michigan in 1893. Although his father owned the logging concession, it was not a glamorous life, but it was a white one. Miraculously, I have photos taken in the camp in the 1890s and they show all white faces; there were no black lumberjacks at what was known as Stiles Corner. Would they have been hired, I doubt it, but in any case they were not there. Sources I have studied on lumbering in Michigan make no reference to African Americans working as lumberjacks let alone as owners or mill operators. The great white pines of Michigan made huge fortunes for some, and fueled the jump into the middle class for others–essentially none of these opportunities were open to people of color.

My grandfather learned to read by practicing on the wallpaper, newspapers, plastered onto the plank walls of the cabin where he grew up. But unlike the children of black men and women working in the turpentine camps of southern softwood forests, my grandfather did not have to stifle his desire to read. His quest for literacy was encouraged and did not put him at risk as it did Fred Rochelle who was born around the same date as my grandfather and lynched—murdered by a white mob, in Florida while only a teenager. Education and any means for upward mobility were encouraged in my grandfather while for countless black Americans aspiring to "advance beyond their station" put them at risk, even at risk for their life.

My grandfather and his brothers took the proceeds of cutting trees and founded a lumber business in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is unlikely that a black family who even had the resources to found a lumber company in the early 1900s in Michigan would have been able to do so. In Detroit, the most racially diverse city in Michigan in 1910, there were only 5,700 African Americans. In 1924, when my grand father was 31 and a successful young businessman, Ossian Sweat, an African American doctor bought a home in a white area of Detroit and race riots ensued. At that time 35,000 residents of Detroit were in the KKK. White robed Klansmen marched openly, ran for political office, and burned crosses in Detroit. This was the cultural backdrop when my family's lumber company was founded and thrived.

By the time my grandfather died, six months after I was born in 1957, he had parlayed his success into property that would support my grandmother for another 30 years. Ironically, although his successes would not have been generally possible had he been black, by the time the family property was sold in the late 1980's it was practically worthless because the neighborhood had become African American and no businesses wanted to locate in the area that had once been the thriving lumber company.

My paternal grandfather was born in Lake Odessa, Michigan in a small farmhouse. I have been in the room where he was born in 1890 and where returning in 1958 to visit the place of his birth, he lay down to take a nap, and never woke up. Banks in the late 1800s and early 1900s that were located in the rural United States were small affairs. As a smart, honest young man who had graduated from high school, my grandfather was asked to become the first employee other than the bank owner in the small private bank in Lake Odessa. If there were any black residents of Lake Odessa at that time, and it is unlikely, it is inconceivable that they would have been chosen for the job. Even had the owner been enlightened and willing, he also would have known that the residents of Lake Odessa would not have patronized a bank staffed by a black man.

Eventually, my grandfather became chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and then the equivalent of the chief of staff for the governor of Michigan. Needless to say, since Deval Patrick is only the second black governor in the history of the United States, there has never been a black governor of Michigan. Not to minimize my grandfather's talents, but he never would have been offered the job had he been a person of color—never. In politics then, and to some extent to this day, to be acceptable to a cross section of the American electorate, one had to be white.

The depression was not easy for my grandparents and their young family. Yet, despite the difficulties, they were able to emerge relatively unscathed because the financial resources and contacts that they had built in their community–their white community, were enough. People would still do business with my grandfather in ways that they would not with a person of color–especially when times were tough.

My Father 1920 - 1950

My father was born in 1922, two years before the race riots in Detroit, and he attended Central High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, graduating in 1940. I have studied the photos in his yearbook and of the 468 students in the senior and junior classes; there were 12 people of color, all African American. Dad says the black kids–and there were some in Grand Rapids by then as a result of the great migration, generally went to a different high school, a school well known to provide a less good education. After two years of junior college my father attended Albion College, then closely associated with the Methodist Church, and where his father, a very devout man, would later serve on the board of trustees. I requested information from Albion College about the racial identity of graduates in the first half of the 20th century. The registrar informed me that they did not have information on the race of students attending Albion at that time. The reason, in all likelihood, is that it was not an issue because all of the students were white. My father remembers no students of color graduating the year he did. It would seem that the good works of the Methodist Church did not extend as far as making an effort to educate all Americans. The doors of higher education were only open to some. Since an education translates directly into prestige and economic success, these things were also effectively only available to some, not others. Not people of color.

After graduation from college my father served in the navy in the Pacific. Had he been a Japanese American he might instead have ended up interned like 110,000 others–but that is another story. When he returned home he was accepted into the graduate program at the Harvard University School of Business. He had no black classmates; there were also, by the way, no women—but that, too, is another story. When he graduated and joined the faculty, there were no faculty of color. He says he remembers teaching one black student in the 50s. The Harvard Business School hired its first black professor in the 1960s and he recalls that Martin Luther King’s assassination prompted the school to conduct a study on how to increase minority representation, but that was less than 40 years ago. Until then, it was an essentially white institution. The doors of higher education were only open to some, not others. Not people of color.

My father is one of the smartest people I know. Over the years he has worked to assist black-owned businesses in Roxbury and mentored many graduate students of color. While these are laudable accomplishments, in some cases in fact quite unusual, they do not mask the fact that neither his intellect nor his goodwill can fully explain his success–his race helped. In the 1950s he wrote very influential works on the American auto industry, but back in Detroit it is unlikely the doors of General Motors and Ford would have opened to a black researcher with a clip board. Throughout his life, the fact, the simple fact that my father was white made certain things possible.

Me 1950-1970

On June 24, 1957, in Boston Massachusetts, I was born. On the same day, somewhere in Boston, but probably not at the exclusive hospital where I was born, an African American boy was also born. It is tempting to think that I have achieved what I have because I earned it. Certainly I think I work hard, but I was probably given a long head start compared to that other baby. The financial and educational resources that were made available to me resulted from, yes much hard work and ability on the part of my immediate ancestors, but they also resulted from institutional racism and white privilege. As I hope this brief history has demonstrated, the opportunities available to my grandfathers (and note, I am talking all about men here) were not open to all Americans. Institutional racism is pervasive in American culture, my family could not, and did not avoid benefiting from it–yet they did not deserve it, they did not earn it.

I have told you a story, a history; the question however is what is the relevance of this history to me and by extension to you? The fact is, white privilege has shaped my life. Of course, the money made by prior generations has directly and indirectly benefited me, supported my education and helped in a myriad of large and small ways; but it is not just about the money. There are other more important ways that this history has shaped me. I grew up with the privilege of access. As a child, I never remember ever thinking that something was not possible. In fact, most things were possible because my race helped make them possible.

You remember that my father did research on General Motors? Well when I was a senior in high school for my senior project, the equivalent of a mod off Capstone, I wanted to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in South Texas. The Fish and Wildlife Service had work they wanted me to do counting birds, but there was, however, a problem with transportation—none was available and 18 year olds can't rent cars. My father called contacts at GM who found a car dealer in Texas that happened to want to do a favor for the bosses in Detroit and I had a brand new, four wheel drive vehicle available to me for a month. It was that simple. Dad walked through the doors of the Harvard Business School in part because he was white, he walked into GM in part because he was white, and I drove off into my Texas adventure, in part because I was white. You could say these things were possible because of power and money—social class. But take a step farther back, our race helped my family acquire these things.

It so happened that while I was in that Blazer I was stopped by the Texas State Patrol while standing on the roof of the truck in the median strip of a highway. I was counting migrating hawks. They didn’t bat an eye at why I had an odd dealer registration and in response to questions about why I was in the median strip on the roof of the truck they simply said with a dripping Texan drawl, "whatever turns you on," and literally drove off in a cloud of dust–imagine if I had been black or Hispanic. I don’t think it would have gone down quite the same. In any case, the car was trivial, the fact that my aspirations where boundless and that I assumed their attainment was a forgone conclusion because of the benefits, the inexorable momentum, the legacy my family left for me—my color—is life altering. I am not suggesting that people of color cannot aspire to and obtain all of the things that my family has. Simply that my family's skin color has made it much easier for us to do so.

Being white, and the benefits that my race confers on me, has profoundly shaped who I am and my experience of the world. I don’t say this to expose my own guilt or to make some of you feel guilty. I say it simply so all of us can be exposed to a truth. If you think this is old history and no longer the case, you are wrong. Make no mistake about it, my daughters are still benefiting from being white. It has been the American Way and will continue to be, until we change it.

I want to close with a word of thanks to my parents. My father shared his experiences with me as I wrote this piece. My mother, in the 1960s decided that postcards were a compelling way to document and expose racism in America and she set out to collect them. As a child I helped her in this undertaking. I thank her for having the foresight and courage then to try in small ways to document and resist racism.

I realize this presentation may have been upsetting or confusing to some of you. I’ll try to make myself available at lunches and open blocks if you want to talk with me about these issues. Advisor block tomorrow will also be devoted to talking about any issues that this talk raised about white privilege.

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