A diversity committee in Westport, Connecticut, a wealthy coastal town that was 93 per cent white as of 2010, asked high school students earlier this year to reflect on the role of “white privilege” in their lives.
The students were largely fine with the question, which was posed in an annual essay contest.
As it turns out, adults had much more to say.
Some residents in the town of 26,000, which has a median household income north of $150,000 and voted by a margin of 2-to-1 for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, chafed at the idea that race was a factor in their success. And after the story attracted media attention recently, many outsiders weighed in by calling local officials and storming the township’s Facebook pages.
The essay contest, which has run for four years and typically attracts 10 to 30 entries, offers prizes of $1,000, $750 and $500 to the top three winners. It’s run by a volunteer committee that is not associated with the school district, and the prizes are funded by private donations.
This year’s writing prompt, unveiled in January, reads:
“In 1,000 words or less, describe how you understand the term ‘white privilege.’ To what extent do you think this privilege exists? What impact do you think it has had in your life — whatever your racial or ethnic identity — and in our society more broadly?”
Harold Bailey Jr., a retiree and the chairman of Team Westport, the town’s diversity committee, said in an interview Thursday that the question — devised in September — was not intended to be leading.
“We are not implying anything about our town other than this town has an openness to exploring the topic and discussing it,” he said.
But merely mentioning white privilege seems to have struck a nerve, with much of the criticism coming from out of town.
The term is used, most often by those who lean left politically, to reflect what they identify as a wide range of societal advantages white people knowingly or unknowingly enjoy. The classic example of unequal treatment is the ability to easily hail a cab, but there are more serious ones, such as easier interactions with the police. The term tends to make some white people bristle because they interpret it to mean that their success is unearned or that they benefit from racism.
The national attention began this week with an Associated Press story that quotes one resident calling the question offensive, and one woman who said she “wouldn’t go there.”
Bari Reiner, 72, told The Associated Press that Westport welcomes anyone who can afford to live there.
“It’s an open town,” she said. “There are no barricades here. Nobody says if you’re black or whatever, you can’t move here.”
Some of the response on Facebook were much more spirited.
“This is nothing more than race baiting,” one commenter wrote on Team Westport’s page. “You are a joke.”
“Make no mistake, the idea of white privilege is just as racist as saying there is black privilege,” another commenter wrote.
Westport, which is about 80 kilometres from midtown Manhattan and about 20 kilometres east of Stamford, Connecticut, created the diversity committee in 2003 to “make Westport a more welcoming community on an ongoing basis,” Bailey said.
In an overwhelmingly white area, it’s all the more important to discuss race, he said. While the adults might commute into New York City or maybe once lived in more diverse areas, the students are less likely to have been exposed to people who aren’t like them, he said.
The committee, he added, is intended “to get folks to take a look at what’s not here demographically, and to think about it and talk about it and keep it in the forefront.”
So, mission accomplished.
For all of the hand-wringing among adults, the students appear to have greeted the essay contest and the resulting uproar with a shrug. Some students said the question wasn’t a big deal in the high school until the media spotlight arrived, and that they were comfortable discussing white privilege.
“It isn’t that much of a taboo subject,” said Franz Schemel, a 17-year-old senior at Staples High School.
He said he had read several essays in English classes debating the term. At the very least, he found the essay question to be the start of a reasonable discussion. Students who disagreed with the concept were free to say so, he said.
Claire Dinshaw, also a 17-year-old senior at Staples, said the discussion was important “because on a daily basis, we really aren’t exposed to much diversity within our town.
“It’s important to learn about that and figure out how the nation as a whole works, because the whole nation isn’t going to be 93 per cent white,” she said.
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