Virtue signaling: “The sharing of one’s point of view on a social or political issue, often on social media, in order to garner praise or acknowledgment of one’s righteousness from others who share that point of view, or to passively rebuke those who do not.” – dictionary.com
I am white. I was lucky enough to teach at one of the most diverse universities in the US for 28 years. In my intercultural communication classes, I assigned reading on and taught students about oppression, systemic racism, unconscious bias, and white privilege. I showed various hidden camera videos to prove to students how white people could count on being treated kindly in stores, at work, when seeking housing, etc., by the very same people who were awful to people of color minutes later in those same situations – denying them customer service, employment, a home… treating them as if they were criminals. I taught public speaking courses for historically low-income, first generation college students in the Educational Opportunity Program and every year, we took field trips to low income areas to speak to black and brown youth about going to college. I’ve also designed and facilitated workshops on unconscious bias and social justice for professionals in higher education and in the corporate world for close to 30 years.
Is this virtue signaling? Possibly. We white folks who think we are the “good ones” are masters at it. But what I shared above does not signal my virtue. In fact, it demonstrates one of the more insidious aspects of white privilege. As long as I felt I was “making a difference,” albeit in my comfortable, elite world of higher education or corporate consulting, I could avoid the more painful realities of the injustices that people of color suffer. I could also avoid doing anything that made me truly uncomfortable or forced me to look at my own unconscious bias at a deeper level.
I heard countless stories from some of my students of color about watching friends get shot and killed right in front of them, having parents they rarely saw because they worked three grueling minimum wage jobs or were incarcerated, being tossed around from one abusive home to the next in our broken foster care system, being harassed by police and held in jails despite their innocence, going hungry for days without food, being told by high school counselors that they were not, and would never be, “college material.” Those are just a few examples. Trust me, there were many, many more. So much injustice. Pervasive. Murderous. Heartless. Endless. At the same time, we can’t generalize these stories to assume that they represent the experience of all people of color. Many of my students of color grew up in incredibly loving, supportive families and communities. Yet, they too had examples of the daily indignities they experienced out in the world due to their race or ethnicity, even if their home was the uplifting, safe haven that we would want for all the world’s children.
As heartbreaking as these stories may have been, I had the privilege of hearing them in the comfort of my university office hours or on a drive with students in my Mercedes on one of our community service-learning field trips. Is that not one of the worst kinds of white privilege? The kind that allows us to feel smugly better than other white people, the ones who aren’t “doing anything” to help people of color? And all the while, enjoying every luxury of white privilege and ignoring it 99% of the time?
There’s an even more sinister possibility here that I’m working to confront. It’s called moral licensing. In short, scholarly articles on moral licensing suggest that people who feel they are taking action to be ethical and egalitarian in one realm, may be more likely than others to turn a blind eye to injustices in other realms. For example, someone who thinks they are a “good white person” because they volunteer a small number of hours at a homeless shelter, may actually be more likely to ignore discrimination in the workplace, because those few hours feel like enough to justify checking the box of being an antiracist. This is called the moral credential effect.
In contrast to my minimal action as an antiracist, after my daughter came out as transgender, I propelled myself into massive action as a transgender activist and ally. I attended Los Angeles and San Francisco Pride marches two years in a row, two of which featured me briefly on the local news advocating for trans youth. I was in a YouTube documentary called State of Pride with my daughter. I spoke at a large conference about family support for transgender youth. I volunteer for our support group, and I wrote an article on Medium called What to Do When Your Kid Comes Out as Transgender, promoting it fiercely enough to have garnered over 15,000 views to date. When my own child was suddenly in danger, I was able to find unlimited hours and space in my life to fight for her rights.
I have not, as of yet, marched in a Black Lives Matter protest. I have not, until now, written an article about white privilege or racism. I have not really done anything for people of color that was not part of my career in some way. I played the game as smoothly and comfortably as it can be played.
Now, as women, men and nonbinary people of color are asking us all to step up and dig deep and speak out in new ways, what can we do to respond to the call? I, for one, am ready to dive deeper into understanding the ways my unconscious bias still drives my choices. I am ready to be a student and a teacher again. I will read, watch films, listen to podcasts… digest any material that can help me understand, no matter how uncomfortable and guilty it makes me feel. I will share what I learn. I will partake in difficult conversations on racism. I will no longer allow my fear of doing and saying the wrong thing or my white guilt to hold me back. I will use my voice to advocate for greater awareness and change – even though I may get it wrong and have to learn some lessons in difficult and shameful ways.
Will you join me? Let’s get to work.
In love and solidarity,
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