Reflections on Chapter 1 of The Great White North

I find the topic of whiteness to be a very interesting and multidimensional issue. As such I have chosen first to respond to question 1 posed at the end of chapter 1 in The Great White North

In what ways did/has whiteness entered your life in Canada as either privilege and/or oppression?

First off, I would like to clarify that most of my experiences relating to whiteness have taken place in the United States, since I have only been in Canada for a few short years. Having said that, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced both ends of the spectrum, which I hope will allow me to avoid a singularly dimensional perspective when it comes to issues of race and whiteness.

Since I went to a Spanish school which catered predominantly to Latin American families, I experienced a great sense of “otherness” as an outsider to the prevailing culture of the school. For a significant portion of my life, the overwhelming majority of my peers were Hispanic, and I often felt a tinge of self deprecation for not being able to fully participate in their heritage. I felt boring, drab, uninteresting and separate. It wasn’t until we moved and I attended my third high school; a very wealthy, suburban, upper-class school where the average parental income was in the millions, that the tables turned. Suddenly ninety percent of the student body was white and I started to see the impact it had on the non-white students. I started to notice groups self-segregating themselves based on racial identities, and the suspicion that authority figures had towards the non-white groups was very distressing for me. In addition, my neighbor, an elderly widow, would regularly make comments about “her Mexicans.” She had hired help for her yard, and rather than using names or job-titles, she simply referred to them as “her Mexicans” which offended me horribly, though I kept silent about it, a fact that I still suffer guilt over.

In what ways can you and your students/clients/family work to articulate and transform the authority of whiteness at the individual, societal, community, and institutional levels of the local and national levels of Canada?

I think the most important thing to do is to recognize the reality of white authority and to discuss it openly and honestly. As teachers, I believe it is important for us to incorporate lessons of diversity in our classes and to have the students, if they are old enough, think critically and challenge one another’s perceptions of race, whiteness and power. Without recognizing the status-quo, we can’t expect to change it. Individually speaking, I feel it is important to remain aware of ones own privileges and not to allow oneself to become blinded by comfort.

Societal, communal and institutional change will only occur with a shift in the individual mindset. It is important for whites to acknowledge their privileges and to be willing to fight for the rights of non-whites, even if it means giving up the seat of power. We mustn’t allow ourselves to stagnate or accept anything less than total equality. Improvement does not mean achievement!