I am someone who finds it difficult to wrap my head around privilege. My childhood, I was made fun of, bullied, and ridiculed for being skinny, for having a nose that was "Jewish," for having bifocals, because "only old people have bifocals." As an adult, I have spent my whole adult life, up until the last year, in what would be considered poverty level income. When trying to get a job, I was told, "you are not the type of candidate we are currently looking for" (They were wanting to diversify, even though I was more than qualified). So when it comes to my life, I struggle. However, I also know, it is not about me. It is very easy to look at our lives and find the negatives and magnify those and say, "See there is no White privilege here!" And you know what, for some, that may be true, they are not privileged. However, when it comes to the system as a whole, whites do have a better chance than those that are black. Even with an equal amount of drug use between cultures, blacks are still twice as likely to be arrested. Blacks are more than likely to be profiled, and blacks are still more likely to live in poverty. The reason is because America is currently built to give the white man more of a fighting chance. Yet in order to see it, we often have to remove ourselves from the equation. I had to remove my experiences, my negatives from the equation. I had to look at the world without me. In one area in particular that I got to see it first hand was in the world of NASCAR. Only in NASCAR would you see a lone garage stall have a rope pull fashioned as a noose, have a crew member find it, and it turn out to be false, and have the one person, who was thought to be the victim and who did not see it, be blamed for the rush to judgement. Why is he blamed, I believe it is because of the color of his skin. NASCAR should probably get most of the pushback, but instead it is the driver. Most of it because he is fighting for what he believes is right. If it was anybody else, it would have been quietly pushed under the rug. While this is one example, there are many, who like Bubba, are not given the benefit of the doubt. Mostly because of the color of their skin. Again, in order to see it, I had to take myself out of the equation, because my experience does not equal truth. My experience would tell me that White Privilege does not exist, but then again, there is a lot of evidence that it does.
My final thoughts. While I do believe there is Privilege out there, the one thing I will not do is apologize, nor will I shame myself for being White. I will not hate on fellow white people, I will not beg society to forgive my of my whiteness. I will not apologize for something that I cannot control. But what I will do is live my life, and continue to be a person with true empathy. I will be a person that is willing to listen, and have that discussion. We may disagree at the end of the conversation, but that is okay. Freedom grants us that opportunity.
(I know it has been years since my last post, and I probably won't post often, but if I have things to say I will say it.)
