Walking back a recent comment here at FotM by a guy named Jack Stephens (of whom more in a later post), I found some nifty material on the subject of white privilege. It struck me that it's been a long time since I gave the topic the attention it deserves--or plugged Chip Smith's superb book, The Cost of Privilege. So that's the plug.
What I want to do now is praise JJ Kissinger and Susie Becker, a young couple who were based, at least through this spring, at Seattle Pacific University. (SPU is a liberal arts school, although one which takes pains to let visitors to its website know that it "provides more than 3,800 students with a high-quality, comprehensive education grounded on the gospel of Jesus Christ." What does this mean? I don't exactly know, although Comrade Google informs me that the Discovery Institute has held an "intelligent design" conference there. Hmmm.)JJ, by his account (which I recommend everybody read) pretty much climbed out of bed one day and decided
to create an exhibit that would visually and interactively educate people at SPU about the idea of White Privilege.So he and Susie drafted friends, brainstormed, polled, built and assembled what looks to have been a challenging visualization and expansion of Peggy McIntosh's work on the "Invisible Knapsack" of white privilege. Throughout, they were driven by a simple conviction:
In order for true racial reconciliation to take place on this campus, our majority-white population MUST consider the implications of our whiteness.
The duo and a conscript work crew spent the better part of a Sunday night putting the whole thing up for a one day show which rang the changes on the theme of "Liberty & Justice for All." (It had such an impact on those who saw it that they held it over for Tuesday.) I highly recommend going to the well-captioned slide show JJ has posted at Flickr to document their exhibit, and giving it a look-see.Note that JJ and Susie incorporated responses and reactions from non-white friends and acquaintances at SPU to drive the point home.
Thanks and respect to the both of them. Read more!
