This is reposted from a comment I made on txanne's journal about the recent discussions of racism and privilege. The discussion -- largely substantive and thoughtful, and uncomfortable in the way that means growth is happening--has been making me think a good bit.

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In my history class last term we were talking about imperialism and colonialism, and I was trying to get my students to comprehend why many Europeans and Americans could not only accept colonial justifications, but do so thinking they truly were doing a good thing. (I pointed out that comprehending why someone thought something was not the same thing as agreeing with those ideas or personally accepting them, but that figuring out past world-views and perspectives is an important part of historical practice.)

Uniformly, of course, the students were scornful. Imposing one's perspective on people of another country and ethnicity was just wrong and had to have been done with full knowledge of how self-serving it was. So I asked them -- many of them current or ex-military (themselves or their spouses) -- if it was right to spread democracy throughout the Middle East by invading Iraq. "Yes, of course!" said most. "They're so backward--look at how they treat women, and they need better medical care, and ...." "No, it was oil," said a couple, but others said, "Yes, we have to keep the Muslim terrorists from hurting good Christians." (I am not joking about this response. I wanted to ask whether it was okay to hurt bad Christians, but mercifully put a brake on my mouth.) One woman looked troubled, and she said that *she* was a Muslim, and wasn't a terrorist. The group worried about "Muslim" terrorists said that of course *she* wasn't bad, but that "they" were out to get "us."

I let it run on for a while, and then asked them how thinking that Western ideas about democracy and human interaction, medicine, and law were superior to Middle Eastern practices was different from being a nineteenth century person convinced that European morals, laws, medicine, and social practices were superior to those of other people? One group just said that there was a clear difference, and only liberals couldn't see it. A larger group thought for a moment, and then looked rueful, saying that they weren't liberal but that they couldn't see much of a difference; and the two groups argued for a bit about whether there was a dividing line between imperialism and "making the world safe for democracy" or not (they concluded very reluctantly that no, there wasn't.) So then I gave them a quick and dirty history of imperialism in the Middle East, and asked if the issue was Islam or extremism or continuing covert imperialism, and they debated that. I pointed out some of the ways that current media employ gendered language (and age-related language) to belittle Iraqis, compared that to the language nineteenth and twentieth century dominant cultures used to talk about members of other cultures, and quoted "Darlin' Cora" to them ("Been working for my pay for a long, long time -- why does he still call me "boy?")

This is a very long anecdote to illustrate how far everyone has to go, as well as how insidious racial issues are. Privileged white internet chick that I am, I am aware of being othered because of my gender, but I can be blind to the ways I replicate that othering to members outside the dominant culture. But some of those people replicate that othering to people outside their religion or world view, and are blind to that. Is "us" versus "them" hardwired into our brains? If it is, that isn't an excuse. It means we have even more of a responsibility to keep on being aware and to change our behavior, but it also means that nobody automatically gets the moral high ground.

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I should add that descriptions of discussions always leave out the awkward places where nobody says anything, or where people are thinking out loud, or don't get my question; they leave out the places where I was confusing, spoke too soon, or (metaphorically) shoved rather than nudged and guided. In other words, just a bunch of adults, a largely black class and one privileged white chick sitting on her desk at the front, kicking around an idea and trying not to let the walls we create like race, gender, even not-so-invisible professorial authority kill that idea. (One of the things I do the first day of class is ask why they are there, and say that "because I had to" is a legitimate answer. The first person to say it always looks a little shamefaced, and I grin, and by the end of it they've figured out that they *can* tell me they hate history and I won't get pissy and hold it against them. I hope that sets the tone for the rest of class, and it usually does--they'll tell me when they think I'm full of it (the first time tentatively, and more boldly when I don't get mad), but I am not so naive as to think it eliminates all power imbalances.