White Privilege defined
What is white privilege? As a white man who has had to fight and struggle for everything I have, I have certainly never felt privileged. Nobody gave me anything and I don’t remember a single time when my whiteness afforded me the chance to step to the front of a line. Life has been an uphill battle for as long as I can remember.
In light of the social upheaval and current events in this country I have struggled with the concept of white privilege, and I must confess I was a little annoyed that anyone would say that I was possessed of white privilege.
I think the problem is that the phrase is misleading.
I think most white people, including myself think that white privilege means we were given an unfair advantage, such as being automatically upgraded to a first-class seat just because we are white. It was only in watching the events of January 6th, and writing a recent post about the meaning of BLM that I came to understand the meaning of white privilege.
The idea of BLACK LIVES MATTER doesn’t mean black lives matter MORE or ONLY black lives matter. It simply means that black lives matter. Likewise, WHITE PRIVILEGE doesn’t mean whites have extra privilege; it just means that whites haven’t been routinely or systematically been deprived of privileges based on race. White privilege is not about all white people having something extra or being privileged. The very name connotes some kind of benefit expressly conferred on whites, and nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than thinking about it as something extra given to whites, it is more accurate to think of it as something less given to minorities, and specifically, black Americans.
I have several examples to illustrate my point.
The first is a normal white man (Are there any normal white men?) driving down the road who gets pulled over by the police. He worries that he will get a ticket or that his insurance will go up because of that ticket.
The second is a black man driving down the road who gets pulled over by the police. He worries that he will not live to see his children again. This is a very real fear and goes through the mind of every black person pulled over by the police. It even happens to off duty black police officers!
When a white person comes home to discover that someone has broken into his home, he calls 911 knowing that the police will come out to investigate. The worst thing that will happen is that nobody will catch the bad guys.
When a black person comes home to discover that someone has broken into his home, he has to stop and think; balancing the odds of the police investigating the robbery with the possibility that the interaction with the police will not go well. Often times, no call to 911 is made, because the fear is simply too great. Black people want protection, but are too often afraid of the police. In the white community, the police are viewed as a source of protection; in the black community they are viewed as a source of oppression. The race of the police officer(s) is irrelevant.
Click on the video below for an example: