On Race, Gender, and Being “Unbiased”

Rachel Held Evans recently posted this on her facebook page:

Observation: It seems like a lot of young theologians assume that being male makes them unbiased about gender, that being straight makes them unbiased about sexuality, that being privileged makes them unbiased about oppression, that being white makes them unbiased about race, that that being relatively wealthy makes them unbiased about poverty/economic issues, and that being highly educated makes them unbiased (and uniquely qualified) to engage in theological discourse. Therefore, perspectives from women, the poor, the marginalized, the less educated, and the oppressed are discounted as “too emotional” or “too personal.”

One of her followers responded to a critical comment on her post with this:

I think the point is that EVERYONE is “biased,” because we all come from a particular perspective. But because whiteness, maleness, not-poor-ness have been accepted as the “default” perspective in Western culture for so long (and not just in theology, but in medicine, politics, academia, etc.) that perspective starts to be mistaken for the absence of perspective. 

I found this very on point. As Rachel Held Evans notes, is often an assumption that women are “biased” when it comes to gender issues, or that people of color are “biased” when it comes to race issues. It is men, and white people, who are (supposedly) able to maintain calm, rational distance—and who are therefore unbiased. Except of course that this is not true.

Male people have male experiences, and white people have white experiences. These experiences are often treated as a sort of default, but they do not make the people living them unbiased or neutral on issues of gender or race—and they are not unemotional or uninvested either.

There is a lot to be said about the problems with discounting those who are “emotional” and treating “emotional” as mutually exclusive from “has a point.” But there’s another point to be made, too. Men are not in fact unemotional or uninvested in discussions of gender, and white people are not unemotional or uninvested in discussions of race. Here is an excerpt from an article about what is referred to as “privilege distress”:

Once you grasp the concept of privileged distress, you’ll see it everywhere: the rich feel “punished” by taxes; whites believe they are the real victims of racism; employers’ religious freedom is threatened when they can’t deny contraception to their employees; English-speakers resent bilingualism—it goes on and on.

So am I saying that men and women have equal insight on gender, and that white people and people of color have equal insight on race? Not quite. When we discuss gender, we generally discuss what are often called “women’s issues.” Women have lived experience when it comes to these topics—lived experience men don’t have. To understand issues that affect women, men need to listen to women. Similarly, when we discuss race, we generally discuss issues pertaining primarily to people of color. People of color have lived experience when it comes to these topics—lived experience white people don’t have. To understand issues that affect people of color, white people need to listen to people of color. The same is true when it comes to class and poverty.

We need to lay aside this common idea that men are somehow neutral or unbiased on gender issues, or that white people are somehow neutral on race, and so forth. It’s simply not true. In fact, not only are they not neutral and unbiased—and not unemotional or uninvested—they also have less lived experience when it comes to issues that affect women or people of color—and let’s face it, those are usually the things we mean when we refer to gender issues and race. We badly need to change this conversation.