My Big Fat White-Privileged Life

White privilege, or at least how to blog about my take on it, has been on my mind of late.

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.

Should Goldilocks always be white?

There is a series of kids books that re-tell European and European-American fairy tales with all African American characters. Jump at the Sun books include Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and more.

My four-year-old granddaughter, Rya, has two of those books and we used to read them all the time. That is until about a month ago, when she said after we finished reading Goldilocks, "Grandma, this book isn't right. Goldilocks is supposed to be light like you." Meaning white. Meaning blonde hair. Meaning definitely not brown.

She caught me up short. At four, she is all about figuring out everything. Her family is a favorite topic of exploration since we are a complicated stew of skin color, culture, sexuality, chosen and given family, and so much more.

Rya likes to point out all of our shades of brown -- she lines us up in order: Ti Ti is the darkest (my wuzband), followed by Mommy (my daughter, who is mocha-colored), followed by Rya (light tan), followed by me (the only white person in the family). She tells me I am "just a little lighter than sand," and that Ti Ti is "like yummy chocolate brown."

I love when her mom explains to Rya why she has such light brown skin and sandy curly hair: "You just didn't bake in the oven as long as some other kids."

Us.

So back to Goldilocks. I don't think Rya was making a self-effacing, anti-brown skin or anti-brown people comment. I think she was speaking her truth. I actually think she was being supportive of me -- pointing out a character who is "really light" like me.

She loves, loves Dora (don't we all love Dora). And she loves her books starring African American characters and families -- Amazing Grace, Jamaica's Find, Lola at the Library, Dancing in the Wings, and more.

When my kids were little, I had to scramble to find books with characters that looked like them. There was no amazon.com to search the world for stories that fit us. I would have been very happy if the "Jump at the Sun" books had been around back then. And books about interracial families? I found just one, Through My Window. It's a little better in book and video land now, but not by much.

"Jump at the sun" comes from Zora Neale Hurston's famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston said, "Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." The phrase is, as the book is, all about Black self-love and empowerment.

I think Zora would want kids to read African and African American folk and fairy tales full of illustrations of Black people and Black life, and to read European and European American stories illustrated as the characters were intended and imagined. She'd insist a story be true to its roots.

So maybe Rya is just thinking like Zora.

Which makes me wonder: Should Goldilocks always be white? Blonde? Was "The Wiz" misguided?

What do you think?