Hiding the White Numbers

Many theorists on race have pointed out that the white race is the one that need not speak its name; this certainly pertains in the case of theology, where we can now find black theology, womanist theology, Latina/o theology, Latin American theology, liberation theology, feminist theology, African theology, Asian theology, queer theology, Native American theology ... a plethora that points out the obvious: anything without a label or hyphen is by definition a white theology.

But not a consciously white theology; not theology written from a perspective informed by a critical understanding of what it means to be white. Rather, before the critiques and constructions of marginalized communities, most theology was written by white (presumably straight) men who regarded their perspective as either objective or universal.

The advent of people of color and feminists and eventually lgbt people noted the falseness of that objectivity and universality. (Of course, the white feminists immediately got it wrong, too, thinking there was a universal female perspective and failing to realize white feminists could not speak for women of color, but that women of color needed to speak the learnings and visions of their own experience.)

Perhaps not too surprisingly, the U.S. government continues to do its part to render whiteness invisible ... conveniently also making white privilege more difficult to discern. For instance, the Census Bureau's Quick Facts web page on the United States as a whole notes that of the total number of business firms documented in 2002 (22,974,655), Hispanic persons own 6.8 percent of those firms, African-Americans own 5.2 percent, Asian persons own 4.8 percent, and indigenous peoples own .1 percent (i.e., one-tenth of a percent).

Conspicuously absent is the statistic for white ownership of business firms, which – based on the figures for other ethnicities – I would estimate at around 83 percent (a figure that might be rounded down somewhat for the inclusion of some Hispanics who might designate themselves as being white). And these are predominantly male owners, across all racial/ethnic category: the percentage of woman-owned firms, unparsed by race or ethnicity, is 28.2 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also organizes its data in a way that renders whiteness invisible. Its Current Population Survey data on employment and income is tabulated for workforce totals and then presented in subsets for women, African Americans, Asian and Hispanic/Latino workers. Data for men and/or white people must be extrapolated. But even as one extrapolates from the data, one finds that the data is presented in such a way that it can only be used to estimate white workers or male workers, but not – for instance – white male workers.

There are changes afoot; many authors and bloggers and theologians and just plain folks are working to make whiteness more visible, in order to render it critique-able ... and ultimately, many of us hope, transformable.

White by the Numbers

Several months ago, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz challenged me to consider the question of what it would mean for white people to experience liberation from oppressing. That sent the chapter I was working on into a deeper place, which was a good thing.

I had been writing about Latina calls for liberation, and was about to document the white response so far. As I developed that section, I also began to address the question from Isasi-Diaz about liberation from oppressing, and as a result ended up with a 100+ page chapter, which I have now split into two chapters, one on Latina calls to liberation, and another on white liberation(s).

The chapter on Latina calls to liberation is about 25 pages. The white liberation chapter is about 80 pages. Hmmm. Maybe that's as it should be? Maybe that's what it looks like when white people do their own work? To be determined.

At the moment, I want to share a few numbers. One of the points of the chapter on white liberation is to illustrate the reality of white privilege (historical construction and present reality). Along the way, I did some research on white representation in certain job types. I was recalling a photocopied article I saw some years ago called "Blinded by the White," which noted the heavy preponderance of white people in positions that count, either by virtue of being highly salaried or societally powerful or both.

While the representation of women and men of color has risen in many positions, white people are still heavily over represented in the positions that count. We white folks represent about 66% of the (census) population. Hence, any position where we hold more than 66% of the jobs is a position where white people are overrepresented, in my simple way of thinking. So, here's what I found:

White representation in higher-salaried positions of power (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey 2007*)

Occupation	Percent held by whites	Males	Females
Chief executives	87	75	25
HR managers	78	30	70
Education administrators	79	36	64
Medical/health service managers	76	30	70
Property/real estate managers	79	50	50
Business/financial operations	76	44	56
Architecture/engineering	79	86	14
Lawyers	88	67	33
Magistrates	83	57	43
Education/training occupations	79	27	73
Post-secondary teachers	79	54	46
Health-care practitioners	76	26	74
Dentists	80	71	29
Pharmacists	75	47	53
Physicians/surgeons	72	70	30

By the numbers, white people still hold a preponderance of the positions that count, out of proportion to our presence in the population, from which I would argue we are able to maintain white-privileging control over the systems and institutions that shape our society, including business, legislative and judicial systems, property sales and management, education and health care. (Note that the percentages of non-white, non-male legislators was considered too small to be tabulated.)

Of course, not all white people are employed in positions that afford economic power and privilege. Whites represented 44 percent of the 37 million U.S. citizens living below the poverty line in 2006. The (historically constructed) sad thing about that is that most of the white people living in poverty think they have more in common with wealthy white people than they do people of color also dealing with poverty. And that keeps folks from banding together and working together to insist on change in an unjust reality.

Tim Wise put the point admirably his book, White Like Me:

"I am not claiming, nor do I believe, that all whites are well-off, or even particularly powerful. We live not only in a racialized society, but also a class system, a patriarchal system, and one in which other forms of advantage and disadvantage exist. These other forms of privilege mediate, but never fully eradicate, something like white privilege. … But despite the fact that white privilege plays out differently for different folks, depending on these other identities … whiteness matters and carries with it great advantage. … [A]lthough whites are often poor, their poverty does not alter the fact that relative to poor and working class persons of color, they typically have a leg up. No one privilege system trumps all others every time, but no matter the ways in which individual whites may face obstacles on the basis of nonracial factors, our race continues to elevate us over similarly situated persons of color." (ix-x)

More on all this later ... at the moment I have a honker of a chapter to get closer to done.

* Sources of data include "Household Data Annual Averages: Median Weekly Earnings of Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers by Detailed Occupation and Sex," Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf. as well as personal calculations.

** Although women outnumber men in HR management positions, men are compensated more highly, earning a median weekly wage of $1581 compared to women’s $1073, as reported in “Median Weekly Earnings.” A similar discrepancy exists for education administration, where women hold 64 percent of the positions, but receive less compensation than men, $1371 to $960.