What’s on the menu tonight? White privilege. That’s what is being served up in America at a dinner event named ‘Race to Dinner’ where an increasing mass of white, liberal women are paying to confront their racist ideologies.
At $2500 a pop, a ticket to confront your white privilege at this dinner event doesn’t come cheap.
This is how it goes: (while dinner is simmering in the oven and a delicate entree is being prepped over a marble countertop) a rich, white liberal woman hosts a group of other women of the same status in her home. Here begins the discussion amongst the group who have paid around $2,500 to attend the evening; “how have you exerted your white privilege or demonstrated racism today?” Led by two women of African American and Indian American descent, the attendees are gently asked to admit the subconscious ways in which they think or act in a racist or discriminatory way in their everyday lives:
“Recently, I have been driving around, seeing a black person, and having an assumption that they are up to no good,” admits attendee Alison Gubser. “Immediately after I am like, that’s no good! This is a human, just doing their thing. Why do I think that?”
The two leaders of these dinner events, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao, are adamant that there is a purpose to the program which is gaining popularity; with fifteen dinners already held across popular wealthy areas of America.
“If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”
The idea is that these women will take their new ways of thinking about racism to positions of power and wealth to generate a shift in mindset around subconscious forms of prejudice.
Is this a genuine attempt at directing efforts to change the way we confront white privilege and racism across the globe? We’ll let you decide for yourself.
