Patterico's Pontifications

2/3/2020

Privileged And Liberal White Women Shell Out Big Bucks To Admit They Are Racist

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:20 pm



[guest post by Dana]

This makes my brown skin crawl:

Freshly made pasta is drying on the wooden bannisters lining the hall of a beautiful home in Denver, Colorado. Fox-hunting photos decorate the walls in a room full of books. A fire is burning. And downstairs, a group of liberal white women have gathered around a long wooden table to admit how racist they are.

“Recently, I have been driving around, seeing a black person, and having an assumption that they are up to no good,” says Alison Gubser. “Immediately after I am like, that’s no good! This is a human, just doing their thing. Why do I think that?”

This is Race to Dinner. A white woman volunteers to host a dinner in her home for seven other white women – often strangers, perhaps acquaintances. (Each dinner costs $2,500, which can be covered by a generous host or divided among guests.) A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

These moneyed, white liberal women belong to a select group of malleable, non-independent thinking individuals. A group which notably excludes men and Trump-supporting women:

Rao and Jackson believe white, liberal women are the most receptive audience because they are open to changing their behavior. They don’t bother with the 53% of white women who voted for Trump. White men, they feel, are similarly a lost cause. “White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now,” Jackson says.

White women, on the other hand, are uniquely placed to challenge racism because of their proximity to power and wealth, Jackson says. “If they don’t hold these positions themselves, the white men in power are often their family, friends and partners.”

I simply lack the energy to do any analysis of this report. Yet given how painfully self-serving the leaders of Race to Dinner are, and the deep insecurity and neediness of its attendees, there’s really not much to say. Because honestly, the real issue with Race to Dinner is as plain as the problematic white nose on your face…

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

15 Responses to “Privileged And Liberal White Women Shell Out Big Bucks To Admit They Are Racist”

  1. What a bunch of sillies.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  2. 1. I’ve got a few words I could think of to describe them, all wholly inappropriate for a family blog.

    Gryph (08c844)

  3. I’ll note the classism involved in excluding white women not in the habit of plopping down $312.50 for a dinner with strangers.

    Kishnevi (5acb5b)

  4. Good point, kishnevi.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  5. I also want to note that, although my my feelings about Trump are well known, I have female friends, intelligent and thoughtful women, who voted for Trump and they are some of the most generous, giving and kind people I have ever had the privilege to know. So gracious to everyone, no matter who they might be or what they look like etc., that they are quite literally an inspiration.

    Dana (aaddb1)

  6. Vada retro me, Satana!

    nk (1d9030)

  7. *Vade*

    nk (1d9030)

  8. @1 that was exactly my feeling. “Hi, my name is (Janice) and I am a silly person.”

    Nic (896fdf)

  9. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

    Has this person never seen a TV show with wealthy white women. At least once a season they’ll throw down their napkin, knock back their wine, and storm off.

    frosty (f27e97)

  10. Having lived in the world while MLK was still carrying his message, I sometimes still find myself allowing my judgement to be affected by race, despite my desire to be free of the social constructs that I was born into. Particularly when a stereotype is re-enforced. Note that this can be any race; “white guy can’t jump” is just as bad as “Asian guy can’t drive.”

    But I can’t imagine paying to wallow in it.

    Kevin M (8ae2cb)

  11. But I can’t imagine paying to wallow in it.

    My attitude is very much like yours. But not everyone has spent their life trying to be unprejudiced.

    It’s imaginable to me that these people have come to the same understanding you and I have had for a long time only recently, much later in life than we did, and I wouldn’t mock them for realizing that they’ve done wrong in the past and wanting to do better.

    There are also people who, for a variety of reasons, may have never had friendly and sincere one-on-one interactions with people of different color (and that might include black people never relating to whites too).

    I grew up in an all-white neighborhood of Detroit, about a mile from the nearest black person, and while my grandparents and mom weren’t hateful to black people, they definitely feared them. When busing started, we moved to the suburbs (*many* miles from anyone with dark skin), and only moved back to Detroit after I got a scholarship to a private college prep school in 9th grade. It was really only then that actually met and interacted in a human way with black (and Jewish) people. And it was an incredible and world-altering experience for me.

    I still remember being a new kid at the school, during that first summer football camp, clumsy and out of shape, and getting a ride home one day from the star halfback of the Varsity team(*), who was also a scholarship student from Detroit, and black. It seems like a trivial thing, and it *should* be a trivial thing, but chatting with him in the car, realizing we could have a friendly talk, that as an upperclassman he was interested in helping me get settled into this new school, it was a watershed moment.

    (*) The star halfback was Courtney B. Vance, who went on to attend Harvard and Yale, and then had a successful acting career, being nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor for his role in Six Degrees of Separation, and also appearing in The Hunt for Red October and many other films. He finally won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in 2013…

    Dave (1bb933)

  12. I have heard it said that status-seekers will pay for anything that they perceive is fashionable. For some, it is shoes, for others, it is dinner.

    ” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

    I denounce this racism in the strongest terms! [is “denouncing in the strongest terms” still fashionable?]

    felipe (023cc9)

  13. Good comment, Dave.

    While at University, my friends and I decided to skip classes in favor of our first Mardi-Gras in New Orleans. Walking down-stream amidst a sizable crowd, M nervously declared “it’s enough to make you nervous.” I was puzzled by the remark, so I asked B (who was from Metairie) “what’s he talking about?”

    “Black people,” was his reply.

    felipe (023cc9)

  14. $2,500?????

    Heck, for $1,000 they can come to my house. I’ll serve them spaghetti and call them racist.

    Bored Lawyer (998177)

  15. Privileged And Liberal White Women

    Also known as AWFLs. (affluent white female liberals)

    Jacobite (a64030)


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