NOTES 1. Below is the Peggy McIntosh list of unacknowledged white privileges: 1. “ I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live. 3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. 4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. 8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege. 9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair. 10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. 11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them. 12. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion. 17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider. 91 NOTES 18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race. 19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race. 21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared. 22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co- workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race. 23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen. 24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me. 25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones. 26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin. I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.” 2. BROOKLYN FREE SCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT The Brooklyn Free School (BFS) places the highest emphasis on the personal development of each student and seeks to minimize, or if possible eliminate completely, undue influence, pressure and stress that accrue from expectations on students to acquire the accepted wisdom of present day society or meet arbitrary standards, so that each child can become an independent learner and thinker. BFS is a true democratic school for children of all ages. Each child and staff member will have an equal voice in major decisions (and minor ones) affecting the day-to-day running of the school. BFS believes that all children are natural learners and they are fully supported to pursue any interest they have, in the manner they choose, at their own pace, and for as long as they want to, as long as they do not restrict any other person’s right to do the same. Admissions to the school are not based on ethnicity, income level or geographic location. 92 NOTES The school takes full advantage of the tremendous diversity of individuals, businesses, organizations, and communities that the City of New York, and the entire Metro area, has to offer to build on students’ interests. At the Brooklyn Free School, no one (students, staff, or visitors) is discouraged from offering a class, event, or activity to the school, provided that it is non-compulsory. The school will spread the news about the effectiveness of democratic/ free schooling in the New York area to promote the growth of non-coercive education throughout the country and the world. The Free School is dedicated to the belief that all students must be free to develop naturally as human beings in a non-coercive educational environment and empowered to make decisions affecting their everyday lives and that of their community. The Brooklyn Free School is a democratic, free school founded on the principles begun with Summerhill School in 1921, and adopted in one form or another by many schools in the late 1960s in the United States such as The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, MA, and the Albany Free School in Albany, NY. Both of these schools are successful proponents of the democratic/free school model and The BFS incorporates major aspects of each of these schools in developing a unique culture for the NYC area. The school has accepted students aged 5 through 15, and will serve students up to 18 years of age by 2007. Students are not segregated by age. There is no set curriculum except the establishment of an all-inclusive democratic system that runs the school, and the communication of that system to all members of the school. The communication of the twin philosophical underpinnings of the school, including the democratic system stated above, and the understanding that students are free to pursue their individual interests for however long they want and in whatever manner they choose, thereby placing the responsibility for learning on the students, also constitutes the curriculum of the school. There are no compulsory grades, assessments or homework. The students are in charge of their own learning and progress and are able to adequately assess themselves and perform any additional work or learning outside of the school that they want to in line with their interests. The school strives to provide a multi-disciplinary, reality-based/project- based and applied learning approach to further the students’ understanding and appreciation of interests that they are pursuing. This includes the use of a varied and differentiated assortment of learning materials, supplies and resources, as well as frequent trips to visit individuals organizations, businesses, and/or communities in the New York Metropolitan area that can enlighten and enrich students’ understanding, knowledge and experience in a given area of interest. The school is independent, funded by tuition, grants, and individual contributions and donations and operates from September through June, as a 93 NOTES day school, essentially mirroring the NYC public school calendar in most respects. The school opened in September, 2004. The annual tuition is $9,500 per year for 2005–2006, with reduced tuition granted on the basis of need. The goal of the school in this area is to be open to all. The Brooklyn Free School (917) 715–7157 120 16th Street, Brooklyn [email protected] Google, JUAL, AERO and IDEC for two high quality organizations which support and promote what the Brooklyn Free School does. 3. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn in Race Course: Against White Supremacy, offer the following additional evidence for action on the part whites to seriously work towards reducing racism: …So in fact the United States was conceived as a white supremacist nation, and the American idea and experience was, from the very start, shot through with the assumption of white superiority. The consequences of this for African-Americans are too familiar. Both the corrosive and advantage advantageous implications for whites remain only like the examined and largely misunderstood. While white supremacy has been resisted and contested – primarily by its victims – it has never been upended, never massively rejected, never defeated, it changes form and shape from time to time, it is shot through with contradiction’s uneven exceptions, but back it comes, again and again, living within and among us right up to today.