{"id":31190,"date":"2013-05-20T02:59:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T02:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=31190"},"modified":"2016-01-27T22:41:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T22:41:38","slug":"bullying-pulpit-racism-barack-obama-and-the-selective-call-for-personal-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=31190","title":{"rendered":"Bullying Pulpit: Racism, Barack Obama and the Selective Call for Personal Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bullying Pulpit: Racism, Barack Obama and the Selective Call for Personal Responsibility<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator<\/a>
\n2013-05-19<\/p>\n

Tim Wise<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes, white privilege isn\u2019t about stuff<\/em>. It\u2019s not always about better opportunities, or more money, or even greater access to those things than people of color.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, white privilege is as simple as knowing that, generally speaking, if you\u2019re white, you\u2019ll be perceived as competent and hard-working until proven<\/em> otherwise, while people of color \u2014 even those who have<\/em> proven themselves competent and hard-working \u2014 will still be subjected to presumptions that they just might not<\/em> be, and that somehow, they (but not you) need to be reminded of the importance of hard-work and personal responsibility, lest they (but never you) revert to some less impressive group mean.<\/p>\n

To wit, President Obama\u2019s<\/a> commencement address today at Morehouse College<\/a> \u2014 one of the nation\u2019s preeminent institutions of higher learning, and perhaps its most famous historically black college or university \u2014 during which, among plenty of rather standard commencement speech boilerplate, the president lectured this year\u2019s graduates<\/a> about the importance of taking personal responsibility for their lives, and not blaming racism for whatever obstacles they may face in the future.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know what\u2019s more disturbing.<\/p>\n

Either that President Obama thinks black grads at one of the nation\u2019s best colleges really need to be lectured about such matters; or, alternately, that White America is so desirous of exculpation for the history of racial discrimination that we<\/em> need him to say such things, and he<\/em> knows it, thereby feeding us the moral scolding of black men we so desperately desire and love to hear.<\/p>\n

Either way, the result is tragic…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bullying Pulpit: Racism, Barack Obama and the Selective Call for Personal Responsibility Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator 2013-05-19 Tim Wise Sometimes, white privilege isn\u2019t about stuff. It\u2019s not always about better opportunities, or more money, or even greater access to those things than people of color. Sometimes, white privilege is as simple as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,394,20],"tags":[7870],"class_list":["post-31190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-tim-wise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45437,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31190\/revisions\/45437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}