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GUEST: Chip Smith, anti-racist activist and author of “The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism”

“The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism,” is a new book from anti-racist activist Chip Smith. By examining the genesis of white supremacy in the United States, Smith analyses how the social construct has impaired race relations throughout the nation’s history and how it has fractured efforts to achieve equality in society. Though the main focus of “The Cost of Privilege,” is race, other forms of identity such as class and gender are explored in depth in terms of how they figure prominently in the systemic oppression of white supremacy and racism. While heavily concentrating on structural and institutional racism, the book brings the political to the personal by offering suggestions on what people can do about the everyday effects of white privilege on our lives. In that spirit, “The Cost of Privilege” is much more than just analysis, as it outlines a plan of action as well. By investigating the role of white privilege and its effects on social movements of the past, Smith offers ideas on how to transcend previous mistakes in order to create a more just society.

Chip Smith will be speaking about his new book tonight from 7-9 pm, at the Pilipino Workers Center, 153 Glendale Blvd in Los Angeles. For information, call 818-521-8483 or email pespirit@gmail.com

For More www.costofprivilege.com/

Rough Transcript

Thenmozhi Soundararajan: Joining us in studio is author, Chip Smith, to talk about his book. Welcome, Chip.

Chip Smith: Thank you very much Thenmozhi.

Thenmozhi: Well, I think that we’ve talked a lot both on this show and you reference it again in your book, that race is a social construct. Can you start with the genesis of white social identity in the United States and how was it constructed and who benefited from it?

Chip: Okay. When the colonies, particularly Virginia, began back in the 1600’s, the British here explored a different approach to their labor situation and there were hard times in England at the time so they sent the poor people who were starving there to Virginia, and from about 1620 to 1676, just a rough time – about 55 years there – indentured servants actually were turned into near slaves. They could be sold and kept for extra years for minor infractions, that kind of thing. And so, the whole labor approach was based on white labor at that point but it wasn’t, people didn’t call themselves white. They identified themselves as Christian or English, and people from other European countries identified themselves by the country they came from. But then there was a rebellion in 1676, Bacon’s Rebellion, and that really scared the ruling elite because it included free and bonded laborers, it included black and white, and so they moved to, step by step, to impose slavery on black people and legally give white Europeans a benefit of just a certain time of indentured servitude and then when it was finished, they would give them freedom dues and that kind of thing. And it turned out that the word “white” only began to appear in the laws and all around 1700 as this process was being put in place. And it’s not like it was a conspiracy but the British elite could draw on experience in Ireland because earlier in that century the British had brought Scotspeople into Northern Ireland and they became a buffer between the British and the Irish people. That was the period of the Protestant ascendancy and any Protestant had privileges over and above the best-off Irish person, and the same thing then that they were able to implement here in this country – giving the white people privileges over any black person whether slave or free.

Thenmozhi: And, how did the – all of this happening in the context, of course, of the genocide and removal of indigenous people from their lands – how did that categorization occur vis a vis the Indians as well?

Chip: It’s complicated, because in the early years, it really made a difference to the Europeans which tribe was which, so they didn’t lump everybody together as like red people or something because they would ally with one people against another…

Thenmozhi: Setting indigenous nation against indigenous nation.

Chip: Exactly. And there was, slavery of Indians was commonplace in the early years. There were some 50,000, I believe, Indians shipped out of the United States to Barbados and traded for black slaves. So, there was a similar process to what was going on in Africa, where you pit the peoples against each other – capture certain ones of them, ship them out, that kind of thing. In that period, there were more Indians shipped out than black folks brought in as far as during the 1600’s up to about 1720. So, in the 1700’s, because as the terms, “white” and “black” began to develop among the conversation in the South in particular, the native people then began also to define themselves, distinct from the white Europeans, identifying themselves as “red” and beginning to talk about the Europeans as being “white”. And then, with the further dispossession of the native peoples during the 1700’s and into the 1800’s, the whole racial categorization of all native people as red people, redskins, became predominant.

Thenmozhi: I want to remind our listeners – we are in studio with author, Chip Smith, and he is talking today about his new book, The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. He is also in Los Angeles speaking tonight, Thursday, September 13th, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Filipino Workers Center at 153 Glendale Blvd. in Los Angeles. We’re going to give out more information about that show, but I just wanted to be able to let folks know that he is here with us in studio and will also be available tonight. I want to actually go back into the history but before we go back into the history I want to define some terms, and I know that you have a very interesting definition of white supremacy. And, I wanted to say “interesting” mostly because I think that when people hear the term “white supremacy”, I think people automatically go to images of the Ku Klux Klan. They don’t really look at kind of more structural uses and everyday uses of how white supremacy affects us all. And so I was wondering if you could actually talk about that.

Chip: Yeah, well, the key difference between the Ku Klux Klan is, as you say, a systemic matter. And, what was set up in around 1700 was a system of systemic privileges and those were maintained, at that point, in relationship to the plantation economy. But then, over the years, the forms of that economic structure changed to the capitalist industrialization of the late 1800’s and then, with the spread of the U.S. around the world, beginning in the last century, basically an imperialist relationship to the rest of the world. But in each of these different structures, race played an important role and the top elite, the rulers, were white people, all white people. And in order to, basically this tool that had been developed in Colonial times had been worked so effectively that the system just sort of morphed each time to maintain those divisions among people and to, you know, de-power the ordinary folks in their ability to counter the rise of the immense wealth. And today, that increasing wealth and increasing divisions in equality around economic power and so on, continue.

Thenmozhi: One of the things I really appreciated about the book was how you then really examine how white supremacy has traveled through different historical periods and there’s lots of really meaty moments and lessons from different historical eras and one era you go into really well is the period of Reconstruction and, I wanted to ask you: What does the period of Reconstruction really illustrate about the possibilities of race harmony and what led to Reconstruction’s demise?

Chip: I think Reconstruction is one of the most critical times in the history of the country. There was the greatest opportunity, at that point, to actually move toward a democratic relationship among the various peoples in the country, particularly with the black people coming into power in a number of the states in the South working through the Republican party and their white allies, you know, given the name, “scalawag” and “carpetbagger”, but these were courageous white people who, you know, both aided in the power of and implementing an advanced program of social services and education and economic support for tenant farmers, very advanced policies, even in relation compared to today. So, it gives an example of how, when people at the bottom actually come into power, it benefits all of society because white kids were benefited from the educational programs that were instituted as well and once Reconstruction was smashed, because it was violently suppressed, the spending for education in the South dropped off greatly. And, you asked, how did it die? Unfortunately, I would say probably that the white allies were, in different forms, were less than consistent in their advancing of black freedom. And it showed up in, for example, the National Labor Union was a white kind of grouping of unions at that time and, rather than unite with the black slaves and the freed people in power, right? they opted to try to work out a deal with the elite within the Republican Party. So, it’s that kind of division where people go different ways. Then, when the economic panic of 1873 hit, people were shortsighted about trying to build a labor movement that included both black and white and tended to just see themselves as white workers. And then, in that opening, then the old plantation leaders and owners and politicians were able to mobilize night riders and so on to suppress the black voters in the South, so that by the time – usually people mark 1877 and the Tilden-Hayes Compromise – by that time that that had happened, that came around, really Reconstruction was already dead at that point.

Thenmozhi: You touched upon this in your last response, but maybe you could also talk a little bit about both the gender and class dimensions of the white supremacy system?

Chip: Yeah, the class piece is easier and more obvious because, really, the institution of whiteness at the time of the slavery was clearly a method of social control at that time and that’s the main thing about white privilege and the whole racial preferences system is that it divides ordinary people, working people and, as a result – for example, there’s a table in the book that compares the U.S. today to Europe and the conditions for working people here compared to Europe in terms of health care, maternity leave, vacations, how long a work life you have to have, that kind of thing – and we come up short. And, in part, that’s because we lack power at the base to be able to implement something like a national health plan, for example. As far as the intersections with patriarchy, there were always, right from the beginning, Europeans imposed and carried over their “rule of men” – that’s what patriarchy is – and so black women were on the bottom, they were projected as sexual objects. Meanwhile, white women were put on a pedestal and refined and so on, and what ended up with the definition of or characterizing of black women was that there was an epidemic of rape for 200 years. So, that’s one aspect of it. Then, Ida B. Wells, in the late 1800’s, began to take on the turning around of that reality of white men attacking women of color. What was projected in the media was that black men were raping white women and this was used as a mechanism to re-impose white power in the South in the late 1800’s and Ida B. Wells made a study of it and realized, because she herself had begun to think that there might be something the matter, right? That when she thought about it and examined it, there was no evidence at all for the black people doing these rapes. And what about during slavery, what about during the Civil War when the black men were on the plantation and the white men were away? There was no history of rape at that time and yet that whole period of the re-imposition of white power in the South and part of that was to associate the idea of rape with black men, which continues to this day.

Thenmozhi: Absolutely. I want to remind our listeners, we are speaking in studio with author Chip Smith, author of the new book The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. I want to actually go to now kind of your individual journey because I think one of the things I really enjoyed about the book was, in addition to the systemic analysis and the historical analysis, you also take a very personal political view to the journey of people recognizing their own white supremacy and I was wondering if you could speak about your own journey and how that connected to the steps that you have inside the book.

Chip: Well, I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It’s a very unnatural setting in terms of relating to people of different races, and had all the baggage, which I’m still getting out from under in many ways. It’s amazing how many years it takes to unlearn stuff you learn when you’re young. And then, I went to Laos with the International Voluntary Service and I pretty much carried my racial attitudes and whatnot with me there, unfortunately. But, because of the, basically, the struggle of the Vietnamese people at that time, and then the civil rights movement and the black freedom movement, you know, I began to more come to terms with what was going on in the world. Many people who live through that time realize how energizing the whole period was so that began me to understand more out there what was going on in the world, right? in terms of race. Coming to terms with your own attitudes and so on takes longer than that. I feel like I was kind of in the wilderness for some 20 years before kind of settling out more in the early 80’s, feeling comfortable with the political work I was doing, the circle of friends that I had around me who keep you honest and when you say something wrong or do something wrong, people can call you on it. And that kind of mutual support, I think, is very important in a process of kind of coming to understand your place in society. But the other thing about white supremacy being systemic is that: when you come to understand that, it kind of takes away the kind of feeling of personal guilt or original sin or whatever you might want to call it. Right? Because you realize you’re born into something, you have no control over that and then you can become conscious of how you fit in and then that privilege, it doesn’t go away. You still got your white skin but you can turn that to advantage and apply it in support of the social justice movement.

Thenmozhi: And, I think that’s actually a very important part of your book – that you connect the history with the present and you offer practical solutions. I want to kind of look at solutions both on an institutional level and on an individual level. On an institutional level, how apparent do you feel is white supremacy in our progressive institutions and what are solutions or suggestions you would actually apply to that?

Chip: Well, the book has a letter that was drafted, I think 2002 or so, about manifestations of white supremacy, racial attitudes in the New York anti-war movement.

Thenmozhi: And what were those manifestations?

Chip: Well, what I’d like to do rather than that is use an example from Fayetteville, if I could, because I’m from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and we have anniversary demonstrations each March. The largest was in 2005 and with military-related organizations there. But this past year, organizing was mostly by a white group in Fayetteville and it had been going on for a year and doing a good job and all that, right? But it turned out that in February, the head of the NAACP in North Carolina called a meeting in Raleigh and several thousand people came out, mostly people of color. It was a legislative program. The fourteenth point was bring the troops home now. When that was mentioned the hall erupted. And so, it showed the deep opposition to the war among people of color in North Carolina. But, when the suggestion was brought up to the white organizers to why not sit down with Rev. Barber, who’s head of the NAACP, and negotiate and change the character of the anti-war demonstration in March so that it really was reflective of this deep grass-roots opposition, it was basically turned down. People were so invested in the kind of organizing that they did that they went ahead and had this march – less than 500 people turned out. It was overwhelmingly white. So, I think that shows the blind spot that many white peace activists have about their willingness to kind of really genuinely unite with the agendas and campaigns of folks of color and then, on that base, find a new basis to organize against the war but really by uniting with the need, the movement of folks of color as being key.

Thenmozhi: And this is not something that just happens currently, it’s something that’s been historically part of the white supremacy system.

Chip: It has, for sure.

Thenmozhi: I want to remind our listeners: we are speaking in studio with anti-racist activist and author, Chip Smith, who will also be speaking tonight on his new book, The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. And, he’ll be speaking tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Filipino Workers Center at 153 Glendale Blvd. in Los Angeles. For more information, you can call 818-521-8483 and child care will be provided. So, we have a couple more questions before we have to wrap this section, but I wanted to actually go back to some of the solutions you offer in terms of people struggling with white supremacy on an individual level because you do have some very specific recommendations.

Chip: Yeah, I believe there’s 10 of them listed there.

Thenmozhi: Yes, I like them – they were like the steps for people dealing with depression.

Chip: One part of it is identifying, coming to terms with recognizing one’s own privilege. And there are exercises for that that are mentioned in there. Peggy Macintosh has a famous one called “unpacking the invisible knapsack”. But, it’s important, I think, not to see the personal piece as kind of stopping there or at the level of self-improvement, but rather, I think the other nine, for the most part, reach out at trying to build relationships across the color line, for example, so you come to really identify, personally, at a gut level with the experiences of folks of color. Another is investigating and being proactive about where you can be active in your community, see who’s in motion and find out ways that you can kind of connect up with them. Things like that. And then, for people that feel like oh, it’s just too much, I’m too busy, there’s also a final recommendation that, in a sense, you don’t have to do anything, at the most basic thing, except to be open, okay, and to look around and really see what’s going on around you. Because, most of what goes on in a society is influenced by race, gender and class in many different ways and it’s important for us to see what that is and begin to talk to other people about it so that we develop a better idea of what our social reality is. If we don’t have a handle on that, you really can’t do much of anything.

Thenmozhi: And I really appreciated those individual steps because, you know, I think that in the United States, in general, we tend to put things in binary. Like, it’s white and it’s black; or you’re male or female; or you’re straight or you’re not straight. And, I think that, you know, we all experience privilege and we all experience some level of discrimination from these social constructs. And, I think, you know, for me, I was looking at it in terms of areas that I have privilege in and really thinking about ways I can be an ally. So, I think it’s actually really important for anyone who’s a thinking person in this society to really examine their own set of privileges and ways that they can work together. Because, the last piece, which I really loved about your book was, whenever people think about talking about race, we always talk about race in negative terms. And, what I loved about your book was, you’re like, imagine if we could actually think about what the world would be like without white supremacy. So, what were some of those things that you offered in the book that were just wonderful dreams that we could really put practical real solutions to moving towards?

Chip: Well, they’re dreams, but I tried there too to suggest that those possibilities are inherent in the social justice movement now, in the relationships people build now. In fact, that’s what keeps me going is the connection, the direct connection, the ability to talk about race and issues around gender and so on, right? Where people will help each other to work through these things. And, other examples were about, you know, a justice system that really practices justice and restores people rather than punishing people and overwhelmingly putting folks of color in the prisons compared to white people. The final one I think says it would be possible for the United States to have a respected role in the world and be looked to as a real benefactor and sharing our wealth with people around the world because what the idea is – if we’re able to overcome these racial differences, it means we’re going to have the power at the base to really implement a system that’s centered on people and people’s needs and if that’s the way we do it internally, it will carry over to our relationships outside the world, just like now, because we’re such a dog-eat-dog society, that carries over, too, and with the wars around the world and mostly targeting countries of color around the world.

Thenmozhi: Well, we are going to have to leave it right there. I want to remind our listeners that we’ve had with us this morning in studio, author Chip Smith, speaking about his new book, The Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism. Chip will be speaking tonight about his new book from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Filipino Workers Center at 153 Glendale Blvd. in Los Angeles. For more information, please contact Paulo Espiritu at 818-521-8483 or email: pespirit@gmail.com This program is sponsored by the Freed Road Socialist Organization, and child care will be provided. For Uprising’s subversive thought for the day, I would like to quote author Chip Smith in the end of his book, where he says: “History, strategy, a sense of where the movement is headed, and why folks should care – these ideas can help people of all races become true and effective freedom fighters. The struggle needs and has a place for everyone.” That is author and anti-racist activist Chip Smith for Uprising’s subversive thought for the day.