“Most Whites, particularly sociopolitical liberals, now endorse racial equality. Archival and experimental research reveals a subtle but persistent ironic consequence: White liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other Whites—that is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent.” (Tyler Cowen.”The competence downshift.” Data Source Political Science. March 15, 2019)
Not only do white liberals conceptuallty and linguistically patronize minorities, they assume a certain role when in positions of real or assumed authority. Among white leftist and liberals there is a certain type who, in order to prove to himself that he is not a racist, treats everyone equally, would make sure that he will not prevent himself from scolding a brown or black person in public, just as he would a white one. Some of her friends are Yorubas or Mexican or Chinese, therefore some of her values are not racist-based. What that type of person does not realize is that in order to demonstrate his impartiality, he makes a great effort to be the hardest judge disregarding at times the context, when evaluating a person of a different ethnicity or skin color. Some of them live in my Coop in the Heights and some were my colleagues at CCNY. In Puerto Rico I met their version. Prior to knowing my “jíbarería”, I was considered part of their “group”, and they dared to show their true selves and say things like, “yo no discrimino, pero a ese hay que dejarle saber”, to project a certain attitude, value. I have a neighbor who talks to the Latino cashier and bagmen in the market as if they were her servants, in what seems like a friendly manner, but the haughty tone is there. As I waited for a friend in the lobby of my building in a Harlem neighborhood, a white man stood by the mailboxes and package tables, staring, not moving at all, at whom I think is an Indian guy, a neighbor, who was checking if he had any mails on the tables. The white guy kept his position until the man of color left. Was he making sure the dark skin man was not going to steal the mail, since he left the area immediately and did not check his own mail? The woman at the market and the white man at the lobby, most probably, do not see themselves as racists. In the White Supremacist world they are part of a continuum.
“educated (white) elites who look down on those (minorities) with less education and deem them unable or unworthy of being able to make personal decisions for their own lives.” Nikki Johnson Houston. “The Culture Of The Smug White Liberal.” The Huffington Post. August 18, 2017)
This power game is not limited to class-skin color differences as might have been the case at the market nor linear or asymmetrical as what could have happened at the building's lobby. Often, it becomes a tool that the person of color uses to get ahead, to obtain benefits from that type of white person. In this blog there is the story titled “The Gringo Bully”, describing a similar case. What that story does not tell is that the Gringo Bully, a white man, was an instrument used by a Puerto Rican woman who wanted to exercise power over other colleagues. When meeting with the Puerto Rican colleagues, she pretended to be "solidaria." Years later, the white male liberal realized what had happened, and at a different college, "spit the beans." That type of white person becomes a tool. In the Gringo Bully story, the white man was a means to gain control, to hold petite academic bureaucratic power. In return the white person used the Puerto Rican woman to try to get ahead in the “system”, and to prove to himself that he was a believer in "equal opportunity". Unfortunately, he did not, as the Puerto Rican was using him too, until no longer necessary. He had to go someplace else.
These power-related dynamics do happen among groups who are of the same skin color and ethnic background, previously documented and posted in some entries on this blog, reduced to the line from one of Facundo Cabral's songs, "Pobrecito mi patrón, piensa que el pobre soy yo."
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