I learned about white privilege from the streets—not the classroom.
–––
I learned about white privilege from the streets—not the classroom. My teachers were teenage criminals who spoke in plain, easily-accessible English (or French)—not jargon-laden academics with PhDs in sensitivity. The lessons I received from them were practical and experiential—not theoretical. And they made me pretty good at stealing stuff for a spell.
Like many bratty kids from Verdun, I went through a shoplifting phase when I was in my early teens. I’m not proud of this chapter in the story of my life, but, whatever, it is what it is. Anyhow, like many other social animals (such as wolves), my friends and I hunted in packs and employed a coördinated strategy that played upon the weaknesses of our prey. Our intended prey was the store staff; their racial prejudices were the weaknesses we exploited. We were four, more often than not, one black kid and three white kids. After carefully choosing a store, we’d enter it separately. The black kid would immediately attract all of the staff’s attention. It was amazing! The kid didn’t have to do anything suspicious. Didn’t have to smell like weed. Didn’t have to dress like a thugged-out rapper. Didn’t have to wear dark sunglasses. Nothing. He just had to be black. That was enough. The staff would be totally fixated on the black kid and follow him around the store while me and the other three white kids robbed the place blind. The four of us would meet up about an hour later—usually at a metro station—and divvy up the spoils. Incidentally, the dude who finally caught me (at Galeries d’Anjou)—and ended my brief shoplifting career—was a sweet, middle-aged Haitian guy. He caught me and my degenerate friends precisely because he wasn’t blinded by racism.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2015)
Originally published at Committing Sociology. Reprinted with permission.
* * *
We talk about the intersectionality of social issues in popular culture all the time. Want more stories like this? Sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter here.
Photo courtesy of author.
Beyond worse John. Let’s break this down:
Darren Wilson shot an unarmed black boy and is now a retired millionaire.
The system is flailing us with its arrogance.
Slavery never ended. It just evolved.
Well that was both intriguing and entertaining, as always! I know we should be focused on the racist sentiments that informed the shop-keeper’s attitudes which also led to his own downfall (and I certainly do not condone racism or any such isms) but I think it is important to understand that as social beings we also pick up on social cues that help us make our way through our habitat. So I find fault less with the individuals and more with the community which cultivates a sense of insecurity because there are disparaged groups (they could be black, white, Greek,… Read more »
Very true, Elly. Systematic problems like racism are always, well, systematic: which means that it’s not so much about individual virtues and vices; it’s about a rotten system that ensures nasty outcomes regardless of the virtues or vices of the people involved. As Philip Zimbardo makes clear, in The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil (2007), when you’re dealing with an institution that’s rotten to the core (like the American criminal justice system), it’s not about a few bad apples; it’s about a bad barrel. As such, scapegoating a few officers that get caught doing something really outrageous from… Read more »
Not to excuse shoplifting or theft, but it’s very tempting to say that the shopkeepers completely deserved to be robbed. To fixate on the kid who’s behaving himself, because he is different, and then ignore the criminals… And yes, I know that the black kid was part of a criminal conspiracy, but in terms of what he was doing in the store – not stealing, not doing anything objectively suspicious, he was being discriminated against, and the shopkeepers punished themselves for their prejudice.
Hi John I do not live in the US and see all this from far away and I do not understand WHY! Is this a society that treat all persons that they see has being at bottom of society badly? Is this a matter of class? I mean is this a question of looking down on anyone that had not made it ,”succeed “or have any kind of health problems like mental illness, being homeless,being poor,being not able to live The American Dream with social mobility ? Do you treat persons with mental illness ,the disable, the old,the homeless and… Read more »
Hi Silke, yes, the rich also have contempt for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breath free. There is a separate layer of contempt to people of African ancestry, but due to this and the prejudices of history, most people of colour suffer from both of these. If your ancestors came from Africa, being rich will not protect you from racism – look at the language that the more extreme parts of the American right use about their president, because his father was Kenyan. The fact that he is considerably to the right of much of the… Read more »
Amen, Brother Phil!
Brother Phil broke it DOWN.
thanks for sharing your story
You’re welcome, Sam. As a teacher, I’m often confronted with white suburban kids who find it hard to believe that racism is real. They imagine that it’s a relic of the past, a problem (like polio) that we solved long ago. I find that if I begin my lecture on systemic racism with this anecdote, it gets us past that denial, and into a place wherein they’re more receptive to an honest assessment of racial inequality.