If you admit to white privilege you’re only compounding your condition, says a graduate student in an article published in “Feminist Philosophy Quarterly.”
As The College Fix reports, Claire Lockard claims in “Unhappy Confessions: The Temptation of Admitting to White Privilege,” that a acknowledging one’s white privilege or racism might, like a confession, be “pleasurable to enact but ultimately reinforce white people’s feelings of goodness and allow them to avoid addressing this racism.”
Lockard, who graduated in 2016 from North Carolina’s Elon University, refused to talk about her theories when provided the opportunity by The College Fix this week, saying she was too busy being a “smasher of patriarchy,” pursuing her PhD at Loyola University Chicago and tweeting her latest thoughts to her followers:
New favorite thing: interrupting white dudes in my classes to say “I think some other folks want to join the conversation.” #feministkilljoy
— Claire Lockard (@ClaireLockard) March 1, 2017
While attending Elon, the university decided to give Lockard a scholarship to “re-imagine the possibilities for diversity on college campuses.”
In the “Unhappy Confessions” article, white-skinned Lockard says admitting white privilege is of no use in the fight against racism because it merely offers white people the opportunity to feel good in their anti-racist rhetoric without actually taking taking any actions.
Though she allows that owning up to white privilege might be difficult for some, that only deludes the confessors into thinking they have “already done the hardest part of anti-racism” activism.
Lockard would prefer that white students use their white privilege to bring other white students in line and “create a space for non-white students to share more of their experiences and ideas.”
While at Elon, she attended an anti-racism rally and noted the differences between the white and black participants. While blacks talked about the “bias incidents” that allegedy provoked the rally, the white students insisted upon speaking “at length about white privilege.” One female student went so far as to confess her white privilege and to having used the n-word.
All very nice but of no real effect, says Lockard, who labeled the protest a place “for white confessions and white feelings of goodness rather than a space for anti-racist action,” and didn’t promote any real change. She says the only time talking translates into action is when a state governor condemns school segregation.
“Such a declaration breaks down breaks down rather than builds up white privilege,” Lockard writes.
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