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White Privilege

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Charles E. Curran
Charles E. Curran
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University
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Extract

This essay, an autobiographical narrative reflecting on my awareness of racism and white privilege in my theological journey, has not been an easy paper to write. In the last few years, I have become somewhat educated about racism and white privilege. I have to face the reality that I barely recognized the problem of racism in my own somewhat extensive writings and was blithely unaware of my own white privilege.

The references to racism in my writings are very few, and there is never any concentrated discussion of the issue. This lack is especially telling in a moral theologian who often dealt with social ethics. Other theologians because of the focus of their discipline might not have the same opportunities to discuss and evaluate racism.

In my 1982 monograph, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth Century Approaches, I analyzed and critiqued the writings of five figures in Catholic social ethics. The index has seven references to race discrimination and racism. The two most extended discussions (at best, a few pages each) deal with Paul Hanly Furfey and John A. Ryan. Looking back now on what I wrote then, I am both embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Type
Editorial Essays
Information
Horizons , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Fall 2005 , pp. 361 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2005

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References

1 Curran, Charles E., American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth Century Approaches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 149–58.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 166.

3 Gilligan, Francis James, The Morality of the Color Line (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1928).Google Scholar

4 Curran, , American Catholic Social Ethics, 83.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 Massingale, Bryan, “The African American Experience and U.S. Roman Catholic Curran: White Privilege Ethics: ‘Strangers and Aliens No Longer?’,” in Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folks, ed. Phelps, Jaime T. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1997), 79–101.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 94–95.

8 Pfeil, Margaret, “Option for the Poor: Dismantling White Privilege as Part of the Theological Vocation,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003.Google Scholar

9 Roberts, J. Deotis, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971).Google Scholar

10 Maguire, Daniel C., A New American Justice: Ending the White Male Monopolies (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980).Google Scholar

11 Curran, Charles E., “J. Deotis Roberts and the Roman Catholic Tradition,” in The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation: Essays in Honor of J. Deotis Roberts, ed. Battle, Michael (Louisville: Westminter/John Knox, 2005), 82–92.Google Scholar

12 Copeland, M. Shawn, “Racism and the Vocation of the Christian Theologian,” Spiritus 2/1 (2002), 15–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Ibid.

14 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 191–203.Google Scholar

15 Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies.” This paper is available through Wellesley Center for Women on line at www.scwonline.org/author163html.