What does white privilege look like? (3 stories from my life)

"I'll take it without a bag." I said as I bought a snack at the corner grocery store.  The picture of the island of plastics in the Pacific Ocean has been getting to me, so I have been trying to cut down on unnecessary plastic.  I grabbed my Arizona Green Tea and headed out the door.  How easily I had saved the world the burden of disposing of a piece of plastic, a process that could take hundreds of years I am told.  Why doesn't everyone do this?  Then I looked around, and thought for a second.  What would happen if the young men of color in my job development program would choose this option?  Immediately it clicked.  There is no way in a million years they would want to walk out of a convenience store with anything not in a shopping bag. The optics of that could be dangerous.  If police would happen to be there, there is a good possibility they would be questioned or worse.  Its just not something you do if you are a young man of color.

It got me thinking about the relationship betwen white privilege and moral superiority.  I felt like I was doing the right thing, and for a second this satisfaction was making me feel a step above, but . . . white privilege was making it all possible.

It happened again the other day.  There was an incident at one of our internship sites.  Two customers got into an argument that escalated into an altercation.  Our participant, a young man of color, tried to break up the fight and got physically involved. As I was hearing about it, I thought immediately, "Noooooooooo."   I knew where the story was headed.  The security guards at the site responded and our young person was implicated along with the two who were fighting.  He was trying to do a good thing but lost his job because of it.

How would that have been different for me?  If I was in that situation, hopefully I would have done the exact same thing.  As with him, safety would have been my concern; losing my job would not have been.  Why is it that our young men of color have to be taught not to help break up a fight?  I, on the other hand, would have been considered a hero.

Allow me one more story, I like to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon each year.  People like the notion of a middle-aged guy staying healthy, raising money for the poor urban community of Cypress Hills. Then yesterday, I worked all day in the backyard doing normal stuff, setting a few stones for a patio, painting a chair, trimming the rose bushes, basic manual labor. At the end of the day, I was beat.  I was not interested in doing a training run for a half marathon.  Then I thought of the two men who pick up my trash each Tuesday and Friday, and the thousands of sanitation workers in this city, many who are middle aged men of color.  Every single day, they put in a day of physical work like I did yesterday, more physically rigorous actually.  They are not going to be using their evenings to train and run a half marathon for charity.  Yet I am the one lauded for fitness and overall good will.  They are no doubt much more fit and doing a more needed service.  What value is there really in running 13.1 miles when a train would easily get you there?

Why do I share these stories?  Who knows? but I wonder if one of the ways white privilege persists and remains invisible to us White folk is that it doesn't present itself like we think.  When I hear the word white privilege, my initial picture is a smiling Southern belle sipping sweet tea.  In reality, it is much more subtle, and often comes with a self-rewarding hint of moral superiority. I wonder what the rest of you think.