I'll start here: This morning I was going about 75 on a freeway with a speed limit of 55. So were most of the folks around me. We were on a stretch of freeway that is a known speed trap. I was distracted and wasn't thinking. So I swore at myself when I flew by the traffic cop and saw him pull out and turn on the lights. Then I breathed a big sigh of relief when he pulled over another car and not me. I tried to look to see if the driver was black, but I couldn't tell.
The fact is that if he was black, he was much more likely to be pulled over and ticketed than me. Driving While Black (DWB) is all too real (Click on that link! It goes to "Why it Matters: The Connection of Driving While Black To Other Issues of Criminal Justice and Race," by David A. Harris).
Driving While White (DWW) is also a fact. Here are the two ways white privilege plays into this story. First, as already noted, I am less likely than a black person to be pulled over and ticketed due to my white skin. Second, I can drive around every single day with less worry about being pulled over for speeding, a broken tail light, a trinket hanging from my rear view mirror. This makes for less stress and anxiety in life, which in turn improves my over quality of life and well-being. And we wonder why diseases like high blood pressure are higher in African American communities? Come on.
True story: My daughter called me in tears a couple of months ago because a cop had pulled her over for a broken side mirror, and while she was stopped, her four year old daughter unbuckled herself from her car seat and he slapped her with another $150 fine for having a child not properly secured in the car. She's fighting that one in court. But did that happen because she is black? Or poor and in an old car with problems? Both? Yes or no. That's the crazy making. You both know and don't know. Every time.
As anyone who is a person of color knows implicitly, these driving stories are a couple of about 100,000 examples I could have pulled out about how we white people have it easier because of unearned racial privilege. But because most white people live in a place of complete unconsciousness about this privilege, we are clueless we are enjoying it each and every day.
Or if we do become aware of our privilege, our first reaction is to feel guilty, or to get really defensive, which is such a waste of energy. It is what it is. We could make so much more progress if we could just get over our guilt and stop running around trying to prove we aren't prejudiced.
When my kids were little (over 20 years ago), I flung myself passionately into "Racism 101," driven by my desire to be a good mom for my biracial children. (If you don't know what "Racism 101" means, read this great post at Racialiscious. It's also the title of a terrific book by Nikki Giovanni.) I was on a mission to become culturally competent. To not be one of "those" white parents of black children. I was over the top. I even recall tallying up the racial mix at my kids' birthday parties, making sure there was good representation. Ouch.
But all that effort was, in the end, a good thing. I obsessed my way, slowly, into real cultural competence. I get racism and privilege in a way that most white people don't (but almost not at all in comparison to a person of color, who lives with that oppression).
My life over the last 30 years has slid from a mostly white world and worldview to a place somewhere on a bridge between black and white. When a friend who is black tells me, "You're really just one of us now," I take it for the huge compliment that it is meant to be but I also cringe.
Privilege, at its core, is about power and choice. The truth is, I could choose at any time to walk away from the life I've made and disappear back into the great wide world of white people (not that I would do this, but the choice is there).
Which brings me to this: Having privilege of any kind feels good, even if we don't want it to. It is benefiting us even as we work to dismantle it or at least to put it to good use. Think of what could happen if we would just 'fess up about that truth and get on with it.
The racist right gets this of course, and it's why they are is so terrified of Obama -- he symbolizes a threat to their privilege. Our privilege.
I will end with a nod to the comedian Louis CK. Please take another few minutes and watch this video of his bit on why it feels so great to be a white male -- the first funny thing I've ever seen a white person do on white privilege. He speaks the truth and it's funny as hell.
I posted this video a while ago on my blog and absolutely love it. Reading your story makes me think of the position that my unhusband is in being the only white member of our family. I have watched him struggle with his white privilege even as he displays endless amounts of love to me and our children. Just like you each day he has the choice to walk away and disappear into the white world and he chooses to stay. I honestly believe if more Whites were to spend time interacting with people of color it would improve race relations over night. As long as white flight continues and whites purposefully segregate themselves we will continue to talk at each other rather than to each other.
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