My wake up call came when I was in fifth grade. That was the year my cousin who lived in California came to stay with my grandma for the entire school year. I was so excited because Jasmin was one of my best friends and I only got to see her in the summers when she came to visit. Now we’d get a whole year to hang out and have sleepovers and climb out onto grandma’s roof and try to throw things in her birdbath. We could talk about things that happened at school and which boys we liked and which girls we thought were snotty. I was disappointed when we were put in different teachers’ classes, but we still saw each other after school and at church. Maybe it was good that we were in different classes because that was the year Corey Carmen called my biracial cousin the ‘n’ word. I heard about it secondhand, of course. I wasn’t there, and I’m glad because I don’t know what I might have done. I was angry enough just hearing about it after the fact. And it shattered any illusions I had that racism was a thing of the past.
I’m sure you can guess what the impetus for this post was. There’s a ton of internet chatter about the Trayvon Martin case. Some people say race is an issue, some say it isn’t. Not surprisingly, it is generally white people who are accusing others of playing “the race card” and dismissing any claims of racial injustice. I’m not a person who sees racism everywhere, but I’m also no longer so naïve as to think we’re living in a post-racial society. The fact is that Martin was viewed as suspicious because of his race. It is a scenario that is repeated over and over across our country every day. Numerous investigative reports have done experiments demonstrating how people of different races are treated when put in the same situations. From trying to rent or buy a house, to a recent one depicting a bicycle theft in progress, whites are consistently treated differently from blacks.
Conversations about white privilege make a lot of white people uncomfortable. Confessing that you have privilege takes something away from you. We like to believe that all of our accomplishments are a result of our own effort alone, that we got no “breaks.” We want to believe we have what we have because in America, anyone can be/do anything. That’s what we were taught in school. The “American Dream” means hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps while poverty is the result of laziness and poor life choices. It’s time we recognize that that interpretation of the American Dream is a lie. Some people have advantages over others, and in our country, being white is an advantage.
I’m sure this is where some people will say that affirmative action victimizes whites, but we all know that’s not true. So a few rich snots with less than stellar SAT scores can’t get into Harvard because a couple minorities with talent and potential (but no legacy status) are being given a shot. Boo hoo. They’ll land on their feet. It is absolutely insulting to suggest that the scales have tipped the other way and whites are disadvantaged now.
In the internet age, it is getting harder and harder for whites in the U.S. to remain blissfully ignorant about racism in this country. Within the last month alone we have examples from Paula Deen to Big Brother to the Asiana pilot names debacle to the hate mail Cheerios received for featuring an interracial family. Yet some people remain incredulous that prejudice occurs here. If we were to believe the Supreme Court, racism is over. And there are those who conclude that because we have a black president, race is no longer an issue. I think for many people, it really is a blissful ignorance brought on by the fact that all their friends are mostly like them. When all your friends are white, you’re not going to hear about racism. When all your friends are middle class, you’re not going to hear about class warfare. When all your friends are straight, Christian, Republican, American, etc. you’re not going to hear about bullying or prejudice. You’re going to hear your own ideas and experiences reflected back to you. But when you befriend people of different backgrounds, you are suddenly given the opportunity to have honest dialogue about how life is experienced differently by different people.
I don’t have “white guilt.” I think it’s stupid to feel guilt (or pride) over something that’s out of your control. (Also I don’t know that I’m entirely white. For levity I’ll point out that according to the quiz in Stuff White People Like, I’m only about 20% white.) But I recognize that just as growing up in a two parent household and having a dazzling smile gives me advantages I didn’t earn, so does having my skin color. When more whites are willing to recognize this and address the implications, when we’re ready to listen to minorities tell of their experiences without reacting defensively, that’s a step in the right direction.