Tim Wise on the Power of Privilege

Tim Wise, anti-racist activist and author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, spoke about white privilege on November 6th to a packed auditorium as part of the annual Four Freedoms week held at St. John Fisher College.

[From the lecture…] It's a matter of really good advice when somebody stands up in front of you and is proclaimed to be an expert on something whether it is an outside speaker like myself, or whether it is a professor in one of your classrooms, or whether it's a politician or a talking head on a television show trying to tell you what to think about something, that it's probably a good practice to get into to asking yourself, if not out loud to others, why is it that I'm listening to this person and not any number of other people to whom I could be listening.

Regardless of the issue, not just race and racism, but the reality is that the person in front of you is not necessarily the most qualified person to give the talk.

Virtually any person of color in this country could get up on this stage or any other… and give this talk or one very, very close to it and have it be every bit as expert, in fact quite a bit more so, because folks of color, unlike myself as a white man, have to understand what racism is as a matter of survival.

Truth is either true or it's not. It is not any more true because I say it; it is not any less true because a person of color says it.

All of those accomplishments [read at Wise's introduction before speaking] are not about my superior intellect or my superior ability they are indeed about being white and almost no other thing. Were I not white I would not be here standing in front of you giving this talk this evening. How do I know that? Well it's really very simple… You see I've been doing anti-racism work for sixteen years… Want to hear more? Check out this link for hour one and this link for hour two c/o Rochester Indymedia Audiophiles.

Want to know more about Tim Wise? Check out his website at www.TimWise.org

Thanks to Tim Wise, St. John Fisher College, and Radio4all.net.