The White Privilege Project

Race is a hot-button issue in the United States right now. With continuous reports of police brutality and injustice, change needs to be on the horizon. One person who is trying to open up new forms of communication between races is Whitney Dow, director of The Whiteness Project.

The Whiteness Project, a television series partially funded by PBS, interviews white people about how they feel about their ethnicity. Dow said in an interview with The Guardian:

“I made this project for white people, not for people of color …if white people are going to participate in changing the racial dynamic, we need to deal with our own shit first.”

According to the Whiteness Project website:

“Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race.”

The goal of the series is to provide a platform for whites to freely and openly talk about race within themselves, not with people of color.

This platform doesn’t address the political, social, and economic factors associated with race. It doesn’t serve to encourage viewers or interviewees to take an active role in combating institutional racism. Dow wants the center of attention to be on the subjects, who are then the reason for viewers’ discomfort about white people’s views on race.

Dow – who is white – is no stranger to producing content about race. He and his black filmmaking partner Marco Williams have been creating films on the subject since 2002.

The idea for the project was conceived when a a little girl asked Dow what his racial identity was. At first, he didn’t think he had one. Then he realized he was a part of the most powerful race in America.

Reasoning Behind The Project

Dow spoke of the importance of recognizing white as a race:

“White people think race is something outside themselves, and they don’t consider themselves a race. They consider themselves Irish or Italian — they consider themselves ethnic — but they don’t recognize that they’re a race. I think that’s a lot of where the disconnect and miscommunications happen.

“I find that once you fully own it and understand it, it enhances your life incredibly and enriches your experience in the world and your relationships with other people.”

The Whiteness Project’s first installment, titled “Inside the White/Caucasian Box,” is comprised of 21 interviews from Buffalo, New York, and was released in 2014. Their second installment, “Intersection of I,” was released in April of this year. It featured 23 interviews filmed in Dallas, Texas, and focuses on millennials aged 15-27.

The project is ongoing, but there is not yet a release date for the next installment. Until then, clips of the interviews are available on the Whiteness Project website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNagFVwiu28

Featured image courtesy of a Whiteness Project video.

Nicole is a recent graduate of Hope College, where she spent her senior year as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Anchor student newspaper. She has passions for journalism, documentary filmmaking and photography. She is also fundamentally opposed to the Oxford comma. Nicole is currently taking a gap year before pursuing a master's degree in journalism.