Guilty of Being White

I love Minor Threat, but I simply can't listen to this song. Ian Mackaye's argument here seems to be that since he's not personally responsible for slavery, it's therefore okay for him to ignore his white privilege. As a white person myself, I simply cannot tolerate this kind of apathy.

If you need examples of white privilege, there are plenty to go around. First, consider the thousands of cases of housing discrimination reported in accordance with the Fair Housing Act (tjpdc.org/pdf/dsb/forumSmallGroups.pdf). Or look to the fact that the war on drugs disproportionately affects black and latino communities. Even though the majority of drug users are white men, the majority of people arrested for drug crimes are black and latino men (drugpolicy.org/communities/race/). We could also point to discrimination in the work place (findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_2_48/ai_97873146/), unequal access to healthcare (mcr.sagepub.com/content/57/suppl_1/55.short), and the list goes on.

If you're a white person who opposes these forms of oppression, you might feel like it's not you're fault. But the fact is, for every black family that gets unfairly denied housing, that's more housing for us white people. And while the cops are busy harassing black men on the street and searching them for drugs, I can feel free to roll by in my car with a bag of weed in my glovebox without being questioned, because cops don't target white people for these types searches. For every black person that gets denied a job because of his or her skin color, that means more jobs for you and me.

So you see, we as white people directly benefit from the oppression that people of color face every day. And while it would be so easy for us to just ignore this inconvenient fact, doing so would make us complicit in the very oppression that we claim to oppose. So while Ian Mackaye might not have felt guilty for being white (at least not at the time he wrote this song), the fact is we are all guilty, because we benefit from the oppression and racism that exist to this day.

This isn't to say that I hate Minor Threat or that white people are evil. Minor Threat is still an excellent band with some great ideas (apart from those expressed in this song). And if the claims about Ian Mackaye being beaten up for being white are true, that's obviously not something we should support either. I just have trouble listening to Ian Mackaye express this kind of aggressive apathy about legitimate social problems.