No Apologies Necessary - Part 2

Professor Charles Milliken

Let me admit up front: I am white. Therefore, as you read my remarks bear in mind that these are filtered through my lifelong privilege, reflecting my perch high on the hill of oppression lording over everyone else who is non-white.

As I reflect on some of my fellow holders of white privilege, confessing -- sometimes in tears -- how absolutely awful they feel about their privilege and how they wish to apologize to others for being white and, by definition oppressive, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess crying is more appropriate, since people who despair of being what they are are in a very bad place. Jumping off high bridges is often the solution.

I’m afraid I do not have the slightest inclination to apologize for something over which I have no control. If I did, I’d have a great deal more to apologize for. I am a male, and therefore part of the patriarchy, oppressing females. How Bonnie, my bride of 45 years, has endured all this is a tribute to her near sainthood. I also have the privilege of being American, being brought up with a mother and father at home, who gave me a high IQ. My ancestors did all sorts of reprehensible things including, but certainly not limited to, joining with William the Conqueror while invading England in 1066. not to mention the Crusades, but then Presidents Clinton and Obama have already apologized for that.

So, what is the answer to my question about what to do with whiteness and its privilege? The extreme anti-Semites in Germany faced the same quandary. They absolutely knew, and repeated endlessly, how Jews were oppressing the Aryan race. We know now how that ended, but before the “Final Solution,” various disabilities were visited on Jews to take away their “privileges.” No more government jobs, a rather extreme form of affirmative action. No more free exercise of professions or business. They were also the targets of less-than-peaceful protests, with the all-too-familiar looting and burning of businesses and houses of worship.


There was a slight catch, however. How does one know a Jew is a Jew? Racialists always face this problem. In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were propounded essentially saying if you had only one Jewish great-grandparent, and didn’t act like a Jew, you were an Aryan. The Bolsheviks in Russia, wishing to eliminate entire classes of people, had to define who was an aristocrat, a rich peasant or other highly disfavored grouping. These distinctions were literally matters of life and death, but today in America such distinctions can have considerable privileges. Native American heritage can have many benefits, not the least of which is free tuition to public colleges in Michigan. You have to demonstrate at least 25% “blood quantum” Native American inheritance. So, both Nazis and the Michigan legislature agree that 12 ½% doesn’t certify you as a member of a given group.

Although I have admitted to being white, there is a slight flaw in my whiteness. It turns out, thanks to DNA research, and a search of family genealogy, that around 1750 or so an English sea dog slaver acquired my seven-generation back great-grandmother from the coast of Africa, specifically Benin. She and their children were carried back to England. So my question becomes: When exactly in my family history did whiteness and its privilege attach? Her children, half African, grew up by the 1780s or so. Her grandchildren reached adulthood in the very early 1800s. Was 75% white enough to attach privilege? My great-great grandparent was 87 1/2% white – and so on. Looks like we became white about 1830, given the 1/8 th rule.

Alas, I guess my paltry .75% African heritage is not nearly enough to shield me from the stain of white privilege. So what can be done about my whiteness? Nothing. Therefore, what will be done? Nothing. Despite the hatred – and self-hatred – there are simply too many of us who are unapologetic about being born.