I did not grow up poor. My upbringing, I consider to be, a middle class existence. I lived briefly in subsidized housing but that doesn’t necessarily make one poor. I never went without and never felt hungry. Classism is real in this country but I have been shielded from it. Poor white Americans often have difficulty accepting the concept of white privilege because their own struggle is real and their lives feel devoid of any privilege.
It’s a valid point but the reality is that classism and white privilege are inextricably linked to each other.
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Throughout the years I have often been taken to task and criticized by folks for ignoring the impact of classism in this country. It’s a valid point but the reality is that classism and white privilege are inextricably linked to each other. This intersection of the two is where folks could find an alliance and common ground. Instead it’s divided them presently and historically. During the period we typically associate with the era of slavery, poor whites were eventually brought out of indentured servitude while black folks remained in bondage. Some whites were given jobs as overseers (or other positions of limited or perceived power) during slavery and then post slavery. White folks in poverty were told, via the national narrative of the time, that even though they may be poor or immigrants that at least they weren’t “niggers”. Yes, there’s that word. The word that still carries so much weight even though this slavery ended over 150 years ago. This is the word that displays so perfectly our white systemic power, exacted upon others, through language. There’s a reason derogatory words for white folks don’t carry as much weight; power.
Today, those who fall below the poverty line – and even those who fall under the classification of working class whites – have an advantage (privilege) over black folks. White folks don’t have to think about race or racism if they don’t want to. Poor white people, when comparing themselves to wealthy people of color, may feel like they have no privileges whatsoever. However, they would be mistaken. Freedom of choice and freedom of thought are enormous privileges that are so intrinsic to simply being a human being that their possession, their presence, may go overlooked. The privilege of pondering the ramifications of race and racism, when it’s convenient, is vastly different from the experience of walking around in the shoes of someone who can’t, for a second, forget about their skin color when it becomes inconvenient.
This seems like a small privilege to those who are white. That’s the privilege of it. We get to blow it off and ignore the stark truth that people of color face. We get to minimize it and trivialize it. We get to compare it to your own plight and discard or downplay it. We also can try (although very difficult) to move out of our class, but if you’re black, you stay black. LeBron James will always be black. He may be a very wealthy man who is known worldwide but at the end of the day he’s a black man that faces the underlying and sometimes blatant racism this country still pumps through its veins. He faces a status quo that has a white lens.
A man holding the most powerful position in the world and still he faces intense racism.
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President Obama can attest to this himself. A man holding the most powerful position in the world and still he faces intense racism. After all, he’s a black man who has been trying to lead a country while having to slog through the morass of white status quo despite his elite class of “leader of free world”. I’m sure he’s faced a type of hatred no other president has had to face. We don’t have to concern ourselves with what he’s faced. He may have power and wealth but even the poorest of white folks still gain the power of whiteness – instantly and without effort – granted to them through a society whose lens views white skin as normal and everything else as suspect.
I can’t say I know what poverty feels like. I do however recognize the fact that my pigmentation carries weight. I may not always feel the weight but that’s how privilege works; we don’t feel it. Those who are oppressed by it feel the weight. They carry it with them every day. I’m not asking folks to feel guilty for being born white. All I’ve ever asked is that we recognize the privilege it carries and more importantly the consequences of privilege that will continue to wreak havoc within the society we all belong to. Once we come to know, understand and make connections between privilege and the damage it has done to our ability to empathize, only then can we move in a direction that has any possibility of peace, justice and community.
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@ Mike Sliwa Something to consider. The prison system is a system, correct? The state of Texas’ prison / law enforcement system is large enough that it can be looked at as a system of it’s own, correct? Here is a study that looked at deaths in police custody in Texas over about 10 years. http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/ White are about 42% of those who die in police custody. non-Hispanic Whites are about 43% of the population. So there is a statistically insignificant difference. Blacks are 30% of those who die in police custody, but only 12% of the population of Texas.… Read more »
So being that you’re neither black nor poor, what exactly qualifies you to declare, definitively, that one is worse than the other? You haven’t experienced one, let alone both
Not comparing, just pointing out a privilege that generally gets ignored or brushed aside.
Being human qualifies us to share and relax with one another. Don’t put a man down for opening a conversation of heart.
Thank you.
I agree with you. Yet there are people who have experienced both. I am one, but I have friends who are very light skinned Mexican and have been mistaken for being white. I can tell you without reservation and having seen it from both sides that Mike Sliwa is wrong. Not that white people aren’t privileged or that white people aren’t privileged in many pr most situations, but there are instances where people of other races are privileged over white people. For instance, my friend who was being objectified by a group of women because they thought he was white… Read more »
John you’re talking about racial prejudices and I’m talking about systemic racism which has been built and reinforced over centuries via conquest, slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, white washing of history, police brutality, torture, a white mainstream media, a white dominated education system…and on and on and on. Yes there are folks of color who discriminate but their discrimination does not hold sway politically, economically or socially because it lacks positions of power to do so. One black president doesn’t erase centuries of injustice.
@ Mike Sliwa “but their discrimination does not hold sway politically, economically or socially because it lacks positions of power” That is complete;y untrue, but you wouldn’t know it because (I’m assuming) you’ve never been in a situation were it was. A hiring manager has power over a person looking for job. Sa Bam Nim had power over the students in his dojang. Was it overt discrimination? Not necessarily, but the white students didn’t get to utilize the dojang and equipment when the school was closed. The white students weren’t given private lessons and taught technologies outside the scope of… Read more »
You’re still talking about people and I’m talking about systems of power ….institutions. These massive institutions have been shaped and run primarily by white males for centuries. Are there some individual exceptions…yes. That doesn’t change the system of white systemic supremacy.
@ Mike Sliwa “You’re still talking about people and I’m talking about systems of power” I am talking about systems of power. They are just on a smaller scale. Let me try and explain the disagreement as I see it. Let’s say we have a hypothetical company. It’s run by women. They hire women managers and the HR department is tasked with protecting them. One manager hires a man and starts sexually harassing him. He tells her to cut it out and she doesn’t, He goes to her boss and complains and she tells him he should be flattered because… Read more »
Okay. White folks dont have to think about racism.
You know what rich people (even black ones) don’t have to think about? Rent. Food. Paying a damn hospital bill. Clothes. A house. A car. Insurance. Obama will never have to worry about being accosted by the police because he’s surrounded by armed security guards. And he will be for the rest of his life. Likely, so is LeBron James.
You think either of them will trade lives with some guy living in a shack in the Appalachian Mountains? I mean, he’s white so…
All of those are true and zero of them eliminate white privilege. I’m pointing out what you still clearly can’t come to terms with.
I’m white with a black daughter. Not until her 40’s has she been able to discuss she has had problems with that, but separated herself, instead. I gave her space, as both of us were trying to understand just how deep the pain can be. We both were not given the true history of blacks in American and just how cruel slavery had been. The White man kept the most “true” histories out of the American school system. Now, thru the internet, so much information is at our fingertips; it is very overwhelming and eye opening. With the dead middle… Read more »
Right there. I’m even “liberal” about most issues, but I am SICK of being made ashamed of my race, and being told I have some kind of magical privilege. I am working poor class. I have been targeted for my social-economical status, and people assume I’m “stupid” because I’m poor. I get NO. ADVANTAGES. because I’m white. I get nothing, except an uphill struggle, like every other person living at or below the poverty line. THAT’S the reality.