On the Response to Dear White Law Students

Back in April of this year, the Advocate published my article Dear White Law Students. The article generated two responses also published by the Advocate, and quite a bit of dialogue on social media and in person, most of which was critical at first. Over time, the critical response has become more balanced with supportive or complimentary comments (almost all of which was in person). There is a clear contrast, in my experience, between the criticisms and the compliments: the criticisms have been nearly all white men, and the compliments have been nearly all people of color and, at that, mostly women of color. I’ll let this evidence of epistemic standpoint speak for itself. But what about the published responses Sorry, Not Sorry and Dear Law Students?

I’ll begin with the latter Dear Law Students. It’s difficult to take this article seriously as a critique—though I don’t dismiss for a moment that it reflects a paradigm wherein whiteness is situated—rather, the author’s ad hominem veiled as satire approach fails to engage my article charitably but also accurately. For example, I explicitly admonish the attempt to manifest my paper as white persecution, and yet, Mr. Godwin’s paper suggests my article attempts to regress and discriminate against white people the “EXACT” same way black people were discriminated against in the 1960s. There’s also an appeal to definition fallacy that, ironically, is raised again as a hypothetical about a black man being racist, by definition, that fails to meet Mr. Godwin’s stipulated definition; however, the fallacy carries its own misgivings and shortcomings the reader can attend to and as I warn against in my original article. Lastly, Dear Law Students, in all of its rugged individualism—despite my original, explicit plea for personal accountability—is just the kind of paper that might be expected on this topic: one where whiteness purports to define the conceptual narratives of how race is interrogated and sets the terms by which it is understood.

Sorry, Not Sorry presented a very precise thesis: white privilege proposes to debase white people of their experiences, relegate their opinions, shame them into guilt, and demand their apology, all of which is regressive, unproductive, and illogical. When I first read this article my honest reaction was, “Googling ‘white privilege’ might have saved this individual some time.” My second thought was that I have a whole paragraph that rejects the very attribution of white privilege Mr. Taseff employs. Allow me to quote the pertinent parts from Dear White Law Students: “This is not a guilt trip. . . It’s not a moment to manifest white privilege as white persecution. I’m not being asked to shut-up, deny and be ashamed of my whiteness, or take a secondary status.”

Mr. Taseff takes us through a proud narrative of great male accomplishments in his family including honorable public service and laudable successes. However, white privilege does not convey that white men, cannot do the things Mr. Taseff proudly recites; nor does white privilege convey that by being white one cannot experience hardship. What is lost on me is the white privilege interwoven in his own retelling. He fails to appreciate the exclusivity in U.S. immigration legal history. Yes, even European immigrants dealt with harsh treatment upon arriving to the U.S. Of course, these same European decedents were voluntary and actually capable of assimilating (while also being able to maintain a distinctive and openly acceptable cultural heritage). Furthermore, he fails to appreciate the historical exclusivity in the legal profession of white male privilege. Note, that none of these historically accurate examples of white privilege cast an aspersion on the quality of person Mr. Taseff’s male role models are. So, hopefully I’ve addressed the mistaken conception of white privilege discussed. This erroneous idea of white privilege could explain his incorrect conclusion that white privilege is regressive, unproductive, and illogical. However, I think it would be a mistake to forego the consequences of white privilege’s invisibility that makes it frequently so dangerous and obstructive.

In 1944 there was a movie called Gaslight. In the movie, the wife becomes dubious of her own perceptions of the world and her memories. This is caused by her husband who undertakes the goal of convincing her she is crazy and delusional, he even has her committed to the hospital. Gaslighting as a form of psychological abuse and intimate partner violence is now recognized. I want to mention gaslighting as epistemic injustice1 in Sorry, Not Sorry. White privilege affords white people the ability to be white and to not think about it. When this self-perception is ignored or transparent, the dismissal of very real and abundant scholarship and testimony on how whiteness provides unearned advantages in society becomes even more harmful. Calling white privilege regressive, unproductive, and illogical is more than ignorance of about white privilege, it’s also an effort to suggest those who advocate its awareness and explain its implications are to be discounted, ignored, or, perhaps, are even crazy or delusional. Calling white privilege regressive, unproductive, and illogical welcomes a dubiousness about how the lives of real people are affected in a society that still favors white skin.

Mr. Taseff has a promising career as a lawyer. As a lawyer, he’ll be privileged as all other lawyers are. Such a privilege, without sounding too aphoristic, comes with a great responsibility. Now I can confidently say that if I asked Mr. Taseff if racism exists and if racism is wrong, that he’d answer in the affirmative to both questions. Yet, when we fail to appreciate and understand the far-reaching and pervasive effects of racism’s sociohistoric, cognitive, and systemic implications, we fail our burden of individual accountability. Furthermore, gaslighting needn’t be intentional, though its consequences are nonetheless real.

In closing, Mr. Godwin is right that we’ve made progress on race in America. With this progress, we’ve been able to discover how racism operates and expand our understanding which includes identifying white privilege. To dismiss white privilege and what it can teach us in mitigating racism is regressive. To dismiss white privilege and what we can learn from identifying it in our effort to realize a more equal, meritorious society is not just unproductive but counterproductive. To dismiss white privilege as entailed from the systemic racism in America’s past and present is illogical for failing to recognize an antecedent of white supremacy and a consequent of white privilege.