The Invisible Shield of White Privilege
White Privilege. Many white people resent the term. Many deny or simply ignore the idea that there is such a thing.
Some simply don’t understand it. They think of privilege as a special right or advantage and because they don’t seek or expect any special treatment, the cannot accept that it exists for them nonetheless. It’s hard to see the “advantages” we take for granted every day. And, we don’t think of the other definition of privilege . . . “immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.” We don’t ask for immunity from police brutality or other mistreatments so we’re unaware that that how we are treated is not how all people are treated.
Mostly, we don’t think about our white privilege — except when times like these force us to when we recognize and admit that if George Floyd was white and paid with a counterfeit $20, he wouldn’t have been handcuffed, let alone thrown on the ground face down and kneed in the neck until he died.
If Ahmaud Arbery was white and seen coming out of a building under construction, he would have just continued on his jog and that would have been that. No white person would have been hunted down by vigilantes and killed for a curious look at a construction site.
If the Central Park bird watcher, Christian Cooper, had been white and asked Amy Cooper to leash her dog as required, you know damn well she would not have called the police and fabricated being “threatened.”
On The Late Show (6/8) Terry Crews told of the racism in the NFL and of being stopped by the cops while driving in LA during the 1992 riots. Two cop cars pulled him over and 3 or 4 cops approached him WITH GUNS DRAWN were yelling at him to keep his hands where they could see them, etc. and he knew that if they PERCEIVED him not doing exactly as he was told they would shoot him!
This is white privilege! It is our white privilege that protects us from these life-and-death situations that people of color are subjected to.
While these are glaring examples, there are also subtle ways racism raises its ugly head that we white folk are also immune to.
This video exemplifies covert racism:
Nicole Byer, comedian, actress, writer, and TV host on the same show as Terry Crews, told of selling her house and the realtor telling her to remove family pictures. She thought: OK. Then she was told to remove the artwork as well and then she realized . . . The realtor was concerned that potential buyers might not want a house that Blacks had previously owned and lived in.
This is white privilege! It’s about the humiliations and indignities we are not subjected to, have never experienced.
White “privilege” is a safeguard from both the overt cop beating and killing forms of racism as well as the covert and insidious forms of racism. It’s never having to tell our children how to act if stopped by the police. It’s never going to an apartment listed for rent and being told it’s been rented, while the sign is still in the window. It’s not being followed in stores. It’s not having to live this way regardless of your educational level or job description. It’s the comments you overhear, the side glances . . . the fear in people’s eyes that you represent a threat or danger simply because of the color of your skin.
White privilege is the difference between being a man walking alone at night in a city and a woman doing the same simple thing. It’s not having to live in fear. Neither men nor whites asked for to be spared fear and violence, but neither have women or people of color asked to be victims of it on a more frequent basis. The basis exists. Some are spared and some pay a heavy price for it. We cannot claim to be color blind and ignore these glaring differences.
Recognizing our white privilege is recognizing that we are not all playing on a level field but that racial profiling exists and people of color are far more likely to get pulled over for minor offenses and when they are, they are far more likely to have their cars searched for drugs or weapons than their white counterparts. It’s recognizing that criminal “justice” is very much dependent upon your financial status. He who has the better lawyer, wins and gets acquitted or receives far a shorter sentence than those who rely on legal aid to defend them.
Add to that the well documented disparities in health care resulting in more untreated or under-treated underlying conditions such as diabetes’s in minority communities which led to had a far greater impact on people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic. Horatio Alger is fiction. When you are born into poverty, chances of escaping it are monumental. Inner-city minorities live in neighborhoods with only small over-priced grocery stores and no access to travel to larger chain super markets. When schools closed for the pandemic, many children lost two meals a day. These are disparities we can no longer continue to ignore. According to Feeding America:
“37 million Americans struggle with hunger, the same as the number of people officially living in poverty. Based on annual income, 72% of the households the Feeding America network served in 2014 lived at or below the federal poverty level with a median annual household income of $9,175.”
Racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S., such as African Americans and American Indians, are disproportionately at risk for food insecurity, especially in counties that have consistently struggled with poverty.
If all people received equal treatment everywhere, then we could say “All Lives Matter.” But as long as these inequities exist we must shout and chant “Black Lives Matter” and work to change differential, biased policies and treatments that favor us.
The world will never be a safe and equal place for all of us until white people begin to consciously think about their invisible shields of immunity and what it is like to walk through life without the protection granted us by virtue of our paleness.
We didn’t ask for privilege, but we have it and to ignore that it exists makes us part of the problem. Those who refuse to accept the different treatment of white versus black blame the victims of racial inequalities and injustices. We hear this in the claims that George Floyd and Eric Garner and others “deserved” what they got because of the minor infractions that caused the police intervention in the first place.
Life for people of color has more barriers and challenges than life for those of us born Caucasian. It’s not our fault but awareness of differential treatment needs to be our reality as much as it is theirs.
We did not ask for privileged treatment. But we must recognize that the discrimination toward and bias against black and brown people leaves us unscathed. We could either do nothing and just enjoy the safety our melononan provides us, or we can work to dismatle injustice based on race and ethnicity.
If you don’t think you have white privilge — ask yourself if you would have wanted to have been born Black, and if not, why not.
What Do We Do?
We listen. We support. But we do so as allies allowing Black voices to be heard, not speaking for them.
Join marches and hold signs and chant “Black Lives Matter” is good. Better is putting our beliefs and good intentions into action. If you believe, for instance that affordable housing is needed to level the field, when such buildings are proposed vote in favor of it, even if it’s in your neighborhood.
Keep learning. Keep trying. I am.
