What I *Think* I Finally Understand About White Privilege

I'm white. All branches of my family tree reveal a hodgepodge of Western European ancestry. To the best of my knowledge, there are no Asian or African genes in my pool. I don't say this with pride or shame. These are simply the facts. My ancestors came from places like Czechoslovakia, Ireland, England and Germany. The last four or five generations on all sides were born and raised Americans. That's what I call myself: just a plain ol' American mutt.

I live in the middle of the middle of nowhere. The Midwest. Kansas. My town is tiny and most of the people in it look a lot like me. According the the last census, we're 95% white. Again, this is not a point of pride of shame, just fact.

Growing up, there were two Black students in my school and they were adopted by white parents. There were two families with Mexican fathers and white mothers. Neither spoke much Spanish. We had one family with an Asian father and white mother. That was it. I can literally count on two hands the number of minorities that I shared classes with from kindergarten to twelfth grade. We didn't have a Black culture or a Hispanic culture or a Chinese culture at my school. Even the people of color seemingly had assimilated into the white, rural culture of our small town.

It wasn't until college that I was really forced to deal with the issue of race. I remember sitting in a class full of freshmen from around the country and talking with a young man from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was handsome, on the football team and Black. The first two mattered to me, as I was a flirty thing who preferred athletes. The color of his skin didn't matter enough to me to even register. As was my habit, I talked to him (and all of the other cute boys) before, after, and sometimes even during, class. He didn't talk to me much but that wasn't much of a deterrent. I could talk to a brick wall, especially if it was a cute wall.  One day he turned around in his seat and asked me, "Why do you always talk to me? Where are you from?" I told him a small town in Kansas. He asked if I knew any Black people. I asked him what he meant and his response was something along the lines of, "You're a white girl. I'm a young Black man. You are not supposed to talk to me." He was sincere. He wasn't angry or mean, just honestly confused. For me, race wasn't something I usually thought of. It wasn't an issue at all for me. I never had to deal with it. For him, it was something he couldn't escape. He was reminded of his race every single day and had to live his life accordingly. Where he was from innocent flirting with a white girl could have dire consequences. I had never thought of life in those terms. He had never thought of life in mine.

After that semester we didn't have any more classes together. Although it was a small college, our paths rarely crossed. But I never forgot that conversation. Almost 25 years later, I can still see the perplexed look on his face as we talked about race. Though I didn't yet have a name for it, this was the first time I was confronted with my white privilege.

White privilege. Ugh. When you live in what is almost exclusively a white community, these words aren't often spoken and when they are, it's more likely spit out in disgust than in deep thought. Because the reality is, many people here don't really understand what this means. After all, they don't know very many people of color. The ones they do know don't seem so different from them.

The struggles of their few neighbors of color seem much the same as their own. They have served in combat Vietnam or the Middle East. They have lost jobs and struggled to make ends meet. They have worked to put food on the table and children through college. They have all been touched by cancer and the grief that comes from losing a loved one too soon. Their children go to school together and they work alongside one another. The struggles aren't so different.

And that makes it hard for much of white America to understand the need for affirmative action, anything about the Black Lives Matter movement or how someone could ideologically oppose Barack Obama and yet vote for him - twice!- simply because of his skin color. They - no, let's be honest, we - didn't understand. We still don't so many times. Because our struggles are the same and we should all be treated the same, right?

Except sometimes the struggles are very, very different. Like when some "good old boy" makes a racist comment that's "just a joke" and everyone is expected to laugh. My whiteness, my privilege, allows me to brush it off.

Yes. It's true. More Blacks than whites live in poverty. More are in prison. On welfare. All true. But do we even take a minute to understand why or do we just expect people whose great-grandparents lived under Jim Crow, might not have even been taught to read, much less vote or have the chance to go to college, to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves? It's not that easy. Generational poverty is a very real deterrent to success. Is it possible? Of course! But it's very, very hard.

I admit that I don't understand many things when it comes to race. Honestly, I'm not even sure of what labels I'm allowed to use and if capitalizing Black but not white is offensive or affirming. I am not sure that I can ever understand what would drive someone to loot and riot, setting buildings and cars in their own neighborhoods on fire. I don't get that. But I also don't get what it's like to be afraid for my life if I'm pulled over for a traffic violation. More often than not, I get a "slow down" and a warning. That is not the case for many people of color in this country. No, that isn't cop bashing I'm doing there. I have great respect for law enforcement. They do a job that is incredibly difficult, dangerous, and all too often, looked down upon. But not all officers are good guys and even the good guys don't get it right one hundred percent of the time.

A few days ago someone I love dearly told me about a meme they'd seen of an old white farmer in overalls and on a tractor, asking, "Where's White History Month?" While I get that it seems unfair at first, I also explained that history is most often told by the victors. In America, that's been almost exclusively white men. Their stories, from the days of colonization to the Civil War, to the Great Depression and beyond have been told. Without Black History Month would we know of names like Crispus Attucks, George Washington Carver, Madam CJ Walker or Benjamin Banneker? We know the name of John Quincey Adams but how many had even heard the story of la Amistad before the 1997 film?

I was well into adulthood before I learned about the Japanese internment camps during WWII. I had no idea what the Atlantic slave trade actually looked like until I saw Amistad. Generational poverty and its long lasting effects became real to me as, in my 30s, I read A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne and Same Kind of Different as Me by Moore, Vincent and Hall. The courage of young Ruby Bridges brings me to tears to this day but I had never heard of her until my senior year of college. These are stories that deserve to be told. Minorities get special months or days or museums to tell theirs because for so long they were unable to do so. Everyone deserves to have their stories told, regardless of where they come from or what they look like.

Black lives matter. Saying that doesn't mean they matter more than others. It doesn't mean that other lives are less important. It simply gives voice to a community that has oft been silenced. Okay, maybe "simply" isn't the right word there. We all know it's not been a simple issue. Not simple, but worth the time to affirm the God-given value of each life.

Maybe I've got this all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. I've said and done things in ignorance and in fear. I've let jokes and comments go when I would have done better to speak up for those less privileged than I. But I'm learning. I'm trying. I'm doing my best to follow Jesus, and he said we needed to do two things: love God and love people. May He give me the strength, wisdom and perseverance to do both.