Bryan Reeves, a white man, reflects on white privilege and the refusal by many white people to acknowledge it.
___
I’m a white man born in the USA.
I’ve essentially been the most privileged person on Earth for 41 years – except that I was only born into the suburban middle class, but still.
I’ve traveled freely all over the world and across most every state of the USA. I don’t believe that a police officer has ever stopped me due to suspicions brought on by the color of my skin. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve been let out of a sure ticket or two aided by the color of it.
Growing up in Maryland, I was the clear victim of racism once just outside of Washington, D.C., however. When a white friend and I got lost and pulled into a gas station to ask for directions, a black man pumping gas nervously told us we better get out of that neighborhood fast. Although I’m sure he meant well, his suggestion that I wasn’t welcome in this place not even 20 miles from my childhood home … well, it pissed me off. My friend quickly got us back in the car as I fumed.
I recall that happening less than twice in my 41 years.
I’ve never been denied by a landlord to rent a home. I’ve never had retail staff follow me to see if I was stealing. Not a single girlfriend’s parents have ever objected to me dating their daughter. People never cross the street to avoid me.
|
Otherwise, I had no problems getting into college (even got a full Air Force scholarship). I’ve never been denied by a landlord to rent a home, even when my income was shaky. I’ve never had retail staff follow me to see if I was stealing, not even when I was 10 and I actually was stealing.
Not a single girlfriend’s parents have ever objected to me dating their daughter, and people never cross the street to avoid me.
Also, though I’ve never really had to look for work (I’ve mostly worked for myself), I’ve always just known that if I needed a job I am ridiculously employable: a former military officer with a masters degree, and a man, and white. It seems people have just always wanted to work with me, or for me. Easy.
I’m not saying that if I was black any of these realities would be different for me.
What do I know about being black? I’ve always been white.
It seems the modern world was custom made for me. The only real resistance I’ve ever experienced to doing whatever I wanted to do mostly came from inside my own head.
|
I’m just saying that it seems the modern world was custom made for me. The only real resistance I’ve ever experienced to doing whatever I wanted to do mostly came from inside my own head.
Just yesterday, I saw an awful video on Facebook of a skinny young black kid carrying a book bag get beaten mercilessly by other black kids apparently because he made honor roll at school.
My peers have never demanded I fail to succeed. Sure, I sometimes felt teenage pressure to do dangerous things like drink or smoke or fuck when I was scared to try any of that.
But pressure to outright fail at excelling? … Never.
It seems to me that being white has been a pretty good deal for most of us.
I am white.
But I am not blind to life.
I know I live with privilege.
A people made to feel insignificant in the eyes of their own country long enough will rise in desperate, furious flashes of anger as they attempt in all manner of ways to right that wrong.
|
I grew up between Baltimore and Washington and saw firsthand the gross disparities in living conditions between most whites and most blacks. At age 16, I felt viscerally, in my own body, a seething just-below-the-surface anger when I drove one evening down a grim and gritty trash-strewn DC neighborhood street as I took a pretty white girl to see the national Christmas tree by the Capitol.
Seeing dark faces stare intently at us from concrete porch steps was profoundly unsettling. I felt I was traversing a foreign land at war with my own.
Maybe those faces weren’t even angry. Maybe I was just scared of the unfamiliar and projecting my fears onto them. But the fact that I felt uneasy and wanted out of there immediately was my own contribution to a racist reality.
That’s been the exception. Most everywhere I ever want to be, I’m around far more white people than any other race. If I wanted to avoid being around black people, it would be fairly easy to do, and I could still enjoy the best parts of living a modern life.
I live in progressive California. Even here, mostly whites live in the nice plushy sweet spots with a few blacks scattered here and there (Beverly Hills is 90% white and 2% black; Santa Monica is 80% white and 4% black), while blacks (and latinos) mostly inhabit poorer areas that most white people just dismiss as dangerous (Compton is 1% white and mostly black and latino).
I’m completely aware of my privilege. I get Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. Black people get Compton.
(Author’s Note: No disrespect meant to Compton; I’ve been to a small horse farm there where amazing people were doing inspiring things for that community.)
When I hear white people say they’re tired of hearing about racism because they’re not the ones doing it; that they shouldn’t be held responsible for what people did 100 years ago; or for what they think the black community is apparently doing to itself … my heart aches.
No healing can come from a refusal to acknowledge the gross injustices still alive and real for millions of people today.
|
No healing can come from a refusal to acknowledge the gross injustices still alive and real for millions of people today.
I don’t do racism, either. But I have benefited greatly from a horrid legacy of it.
I’m deeply sensitive to all the inherent dangers, imbalances, insanities, and awful consequences of arrogance that come with living in this privileged reality.
Rampant racism exists. It’s unsustainable. Privileging anyone based on skin color does not serve the world.
A people made to feel insignificant in the eyes of their own country long enough will continue to rise in desperate, furious flashes of anger as they attempt in all manner of ways to right that wrong.
The black community has been crying out to be seen and heard for decades, through marches, protests, music, speeches, violence, riots … anything to be fully seen and heard by a country most black people enthusiastically call their own and fight to defend, despite their ancestors’ tragic past here.
The anger continues to seethe as black people still sacrifice children everyday to disproportionate violence, lack of economic opportunity and poverty (1 in 4 black kids live in poverty; only 1 in 10 white kids do).
As white people continue to deny our privilege exists – or simply say, “I’m tired of hearing about it; I’m not the one doing it; get over it, black people!”—this injustice can only persist.
|
As white people continue to deny our privilege exists—or simply say, “I’m tired of hearing about It; I’m not the one doing it; get over it already, black people!”—this injustice can only persist.
We must be willing to talk about this. We can’t otherwise even hope to end the injustice.
Yes, I live with privilege as a white man. It’s an injustice I didn’t create, but one I benefit from at a cost to countless others I can’t even begin to truly fathom.
I believe a humble, collective acknowledgment of the realities of modern day racism may offer powerful healing for everyone.
I’m willing to talk openly about it because I believe the healing can start with me, a white man born in the USA, simply acknowledging the privilege and all the insanity and imbalance that comes with it.
Yes, I live with privilege as a white man. It’s an injustice I didn’t create, but one I benefit from at a cost to countless others I can’t even begin to really fathom.
The way forward isn’t to just end white privilege, but rather extend the “privilege of humanity” to all.
|
However, the way forward isn’t to simply end white privilege.
Rather, we must each take it upon ourselves to extend a new privilege, the privilege of humanity, to all.
We all deserve to be treated as the exquisite wondrous human beings we are, regardless of what we physically look like.
In the end, it’s on me to simply offer that privilege of humanity to everyone I meet.
♦◊♦
— Connect with the author, Bryan Reeves, on Facebook and his website
— Photo waywuwei/Flickr
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.” –Oscar Wilde
So, life has been kind to you, through no fault of your own and you,feel guilty about circumstances that you have had no control over? You have self-hate issues? If you feel that bad about how lifes cards have done you a favour at the expense of your fellow man, you know you could always give it all up. Go and live in Compton, or another one of the projects, maybe. Renounce it all as a gift of privilege that you earned solely on the colour of your skin. Or do you not quite feel that bad about it, deep… Read more »
I’m calling out the injustices I see in a feature article on the home page of The Good Men Project.
That’s called action.
On the topic of ‘calling out’ (others or one’s self), I found this to be an interesting perspective from an article by Ahmad Asam: “When people are reduced to their identities of privilege… it means we’re treating each other as if our individual social locations stand in for the total systems those parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out, narrow definitions of a person’s identity count for everything. No matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to… Read more »
If you really want to help people, then do something tangible like giving blood, volunteering or donating to a food bank. Going back and forth about “privilege” on the internet helps no one. Whenever someone says, “Check your privilege”, I ask that person what they have actually done to make someone else’s life better besides spouting slogans.
“Not a single girlfriend’s parents have ever objected to me dating their daughter” Have you ever tried dating a black woman? I have twice when I was in my early 20s. Her friends and parents were just as against it as mine. What I learned though was that sameness wasn’t about race, but about how we live our lives. Both women were light skinned with “straight” hair. I met the first one because I heard Van Halen playing and I went toward the source of the music. I saw her there with a “boom box”. It was so weird a… Read more »
“They were both smart and articulate.” If they were White women (or Asian) would you have characterized them as such, especially the articulate word? As if you do not usually expect Black women or maybe Black people in general to be “articulate..” Oh well. “if you don’t want to be treated with suspicion, you have to change your ways and hold other men accountable for their actions. Why do some people not hold other groups to this?” Excellent point!!!! Everyone knows that most White men get away with a lot bad behavior. Why just look at the Wall Street meltdown.… Read more »
@ Jules “If they were White women (or Asian) would you have characterized them as such, especially the articulate word?” Actually, I would because I was describing the things that drew me to them. The point being the attraction didn’t have anything to do with race, but what style, they had, what interests they had, how educated they were, etc. “How many White men were held accountable for their behavior?” Actually, it was a lot. I remember the going salary for an accountant with 5 years experience jumping to 80K a year after the fallout from Arthur Anderson because no… Read more »
“Bernie Madoff, Mike Milken, Jeff Skilling, didn’t walk away scot free. Hell, the stress probably killed Ken Lay., but let’s ignore that because you know white man privilege and all as if they’ll have a privilege in jail.” Again, how many of those individuals directly responsible for the meltdown in 2008, 2009 have even been punished let alone gone to jail? NONE!! In fact, this is the only recorded time in financial history I can recall where a group of people caused economic calamity and were given record bonuses! The vast majority of them were privileged white men. The people… Read more »