Understanding my white privilege

I am white. I don’t know what it's like to experience racism. I do know what it's like to experience discrimination. I’m gay and a Gen X’er. When I was in high school, I knew there were several other guys, and probably girls, that were attracted to the same sex. But none of us spoke about it or even intimated it for fear of repercussions from our back-woods hick community. Once we were out of high school…we were all able to come out of the closet and start to live our lives as open as we could. And to their credit, many of the people who bullied me in school turned out to be very decent people.

Writing these few lines of what my fear was like when I realized I was gay are, in no way, a comparison to what it is like to be black or brown in America today. It is simply my way of showing I know discrimination. Not racism.

I have imagined in my mind's eye a black father sitting down with his son and having a very different conversation then my father had with me. My father started with “well son when two people love each other….” and “If you don’t get your grades up, you won’t get into a good college!” or in complete frustration arguing with a 15-year-old, “Be diplomatic in arguing your point”

 In the other case, I imagine a black father sitting down with his son and saying, “Son…I’m going to tell you what my father told me, and his father told him. You will be treated differently because of the color of your skin. You will be singled out in many situations. You will automatically be a target. You will be stopped walking down the street because you are black. The police are not your friend and they will not help you if they suspect you. Yes, it’s unfair and it isn’t right and one day we will rise up and be counted as equal but until that day comes, you keep your head down, you stay off the radar and you LIVE.”

Maybe that’s not accurate. Maybe there are black and brown families out there that don’t have to do this. I don’t know but this is what I see in my mind and my heart hurts. My heart hurts because I took for granted that my father never had to have that conversation with me.

I am ashamed to say that I did not understand white privilege until 5 or so years ago.  I had watched with equal amounts of horror and disgust when the Stanford swimmer was convicted of sex assault and the judge went easy on him. 

Or of course the ridiculous” Affluenza” case involving Ethan Couch killing 4 people, (who by the way is back in jail at the age of 22…. what a surprise.) 

And let’s not forget the NJ sexual assault that ended up in the judge telling the prosecutor, “the victim should have been told that pressing charges would destroy the accused’s life.” Along with, “the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades, and was an Eagle scout.” As if ANY of those things should disqualify a person from punishment for a crime.

THAT is what I thought white privilege was.

But I didn’t see how it had affected me personally. I was a middle-class white American that worked hard for what he had. I followed the rules, didn’t break the law. Ok, maybe I drove too fast but other than that I was pretty boring.  I never considered that I was being afforded opportunities and preference simply BECAUSE I was a white man.

It started with a conversation with my Jewish partner who has lived with anti-Semitism his whole life. I remember saying to him one night while we watched the news, “I just don’t get it. Am I white privileged?” His response was quick and simple “YES”. And that started me on a journey of heartache and introspection.

My mind started reeling over the years of my life and the opportunities I had, the jobs I was able to attain, apartments in nice areas of town, college education, (both financial aid and college attended). Was it all part of white privilege? I don’t know. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Since I am now asking the question hints that maybe some of it was. My heart hurts from the unfairness of it all. And I say that knowing that I was the recipient of said privilege.

Watching the riots and protests over the past several days in response to George Floyd’s death has made it even harder on me and my own self-evaluation. I understand the anger, the frustration, the years of not being heard, the years of no action being taken to change or fix the problem. And then another black man blatantly killed by police. Eric Gardner, Philando Castile…. add them to the list. 

I googled black men killed by police to see how many I DIDN’T know about and so many articles came up it shook me.

Did anyone know about Sean Reed? “On May 6, police in Indianapolis shot and killed Sean Reed, a 21-year-old U.S. military veteran who was unarmed. Unbeknownst to the cops, Reed was live-streaming the episode on Facebook, a circumstance that allowed the police to be recorded joking about the shooting.”

Or how about Ariane McCree? He was shot and killed by two Chester Police officers in South Carolina after being detained for allegedly shoplifting at a Walmart on Nov. 23.  Police claimed that the 28-year-old was placed in custody, then fled and showed officers a gun, yet Ariane’s family claims that he was handcuffed, with his hands behind his back, when he was fatally shot. There is a civil suit pending in his case.

To see the complete list, which is needful but disturbing to read, you can find it here. https://newsone.com/playlist/black-men-boy-who-were-killed-by-police/

Hearing a commotion outside our building on the street, we looked out our apartment window as we heard police sirens and people yelling on our corner in lower Manhattan. We were kind of shocked to see a crowd of protesters being dispersed by police. The NYPD loudspeaker conveying if they did not disperse, they would be arrested. We watched in awe and a bit of fear, as hundreds of people ran down our street to get away from the police. We sat back down stunned and thought, “This is bad.” I remember my partner saying, “That’s unusual for this area as its more residential.” Again…unwittingly white privilege?

I was so upset by what I was watching happen around me that I reached out to my sister and asked, “how is it possible that we were never exposed to racism like we're seeing now?” She helped me put perspective into my question with her answer, as she often does when I’m in a crisis of thought.

She immediately picked up the phone and said, “well, the short answer is our parents raised us right. It helped that our Grandparents adopted a daughter in the ’50s and fostered Mexican children in need.” I had forgotten that.

She went on to say,” You remember our dad was the youngest Lion’s club member in Vancouver WA back in 1957. He brought a black friend to a meeting and the lodge wouldn’t let him in. Dad said that if his friend wasn’t good enough for the lodge, then neither was he and he quit it that moment.” I had also forgotten that.

She went on to remind me that we had cousins in interracial marriages in the ’70s and that in the early ’80s our family moved to Papua New Guinea where we became the minority as the population of PNG is black. I had never thought of it like that. I had friends in PNG and they were just people. I do not remember having one thought that their skin color was different than mine.

When I said that to my sister, she laughed and said, “of course not…they were no different. We were all just people.” It was our innocence of youth that we were lucky enough to not see color.

I watched as peaceful protests became violent. I watched as many cities in the united states, including my own, began to burn. I watched as some of the violence was instigated by people conveniently covered from head to foot in black, including full face masks. I watched the video of the white man (seen through his face mask) take the baseball bat and smash windows in Minneapolis. I saw a peaceful protester garbed in street clothes and a bandana over his nose and mouth, step in between him and a window to try to stop the destruction. I saw the instigator simply walk around him and continue to smash windows and then walk away.

Today I see more and more news coverage of alt-right and white supremacist groups infiltrating the protest solely with the intent of causing chaos and destruction. This too is white privilege but knowingly engaged in. Purposefully used to sow division, discord, and hate. It makes my stomach turn. But I have learned I can expect no less from those in our society who thrive on inequality and power. Perhaps that is why I became a union leader and mediator….to try, in my small way, to fight for the underdog and equality.

Also, today I have seen a video of two black women peacefully protesting in Los Angeles who confront two black-clad white women who were defacing a Starbucks. They handled themselves amazingly. I’m not sure if I was in their position, I would have reacted the same way. But then again, what I saw was years of oppressive experience showing through as wisdom that violent confrontation is NOT the answer. These two women continued to verbally question the other women’s reasons for defacing the property, all caught on camera, and wouldn’t you know it, the other women walked away and out of sight. One of the black women turned the camera on herself and said, “they were NOT asked to do that. They do NOT speak for black lives matter.” Kudos to you both. https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/31/black-woman-confronts-two-white-protesters-tagging-starbucks-blm/

So the war rages on. It is now spreading around the world. The White House Tweeted at China that the US disapproved of the Chinese acts against Hong Kong. China tweeted back “I can’t breathe”

Syria has an entire mural on a piece of blown up rubble saying “I can’t breathe” and “No to racism” with a picture of George Floyd.

Years of anger, frustration, fear, and disappointment have festered and boiled up. George Floyd was the catalyst for the explosive release of this infection. Not only here in the United States but being seen around the world. “I can’t breathe” protests in the UK, Germany, Israel, and Canada, and strongly-worded statements from Italy, Russia (yup…Russia) along with tweeter storms from Iran and Syria in some cases condemning the US for being hypocritical when condemning them. Ouch.

And finally, there was the question from an 8-year-old boy to his mother which was mentioned on the Stephanie Miller talk show. The little boy asked his mother if they were going to be made slaves again after all the rioting was over. I was so stunned that I cried.

To that little boy know this. While injustice and inequality will still be present, there are those of us who now know, privileged or not……we KNOW. We will NOT sit back and let you be considered less than anymore. We have seen as the world has seen. The answer to your question is not simply no but a resounding huge outcry from all like-minded Americans NO. It is time to realize that until EVERY American is treated fairly, none of us are.

I get it. I am with you. I may not know that anger and that rage from hundreds of years of oppression but I feel it THROUGH you. I feel it and I want it stopped as much as you do. I vow to do my part to continue to self-examine my whiteness and yes, my privilege.

At the beginning of this piece, I said, “I am white” but I am now so much more. My skin may be white but my heart and soul are a bit black, a bit brown, a bit Asian, a bit Native American a bit of all of us. I am now open and understanding of all of us. Hopefully out of this destruction and chaos we can rise like a phoenix being reborn and realize…truly realize that we are, as my sister said, just people.