I just read this quote from Maya Angelou: “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better I do better.”
Sometimes understanding a subject is a long process and requires experience beyond one’s own narrow world. One of those subjects for me is white privilege.
I don’t normally share this much personal information with anyone, but since these are the least normal times I’ve ever lived through, I am sharing my story in the hope that it may help others reach a place of empathy sooner than I did.
My life as a child was not privileged by anyone’s standards. My father left our family when I was ten and my sister was eight. My mother worked 48 hours each week at a local hamburger joint to keep us meagerly clothed and fed. I can remember asking for something that cost fifty cents and my mother replying that seemed like a fortune to her. For perspective, 50 cents went a lot further then than it does now, but even then it was not a huge sum in most people’s budgets.
We lived in a four-room apartment that would have fit into some of the living rooms I’ve had as an adult. The apartment was part of a concrete block building that was built to house military families after World War II. Most families lived there temporarily, just long enough to get back on their feet after their wage earner returned from active duty. We lived there eleven years; I was 17 when we moved out, into another low-rent apartment. Since that one was close to downtown and was a converted house, however, it felt posh by comparison.
So, absentee father–check. Tired, frustrated, angry mother–check. Being socially shunned as the child of a “divorcee” who lived in a neighborhood others hesitated to walk through–check. Never having enough money to feel secure–check.
Doesn’t sound much like a life of privilege. The black kids I knew had intact families and lived in real houses. They could afford to participate in activities I could only dream of affording. Their lives seemed so far above mine that for many years I couldn’t figure out how they could possibly be deemed less privileged than I was.
What I can understand and appreciate now is that when it came time for me to apply for college, my only concern was finding one I could afford, since I’d be paying my own way. Never once did I have to consider that I might be rejected solely on the basis of my skin color. That’s privilege.
As a young adult, I never had to be afraid to shop for a home, apply for a mortgage, or move into a neighborhood because I might be rejected by angry neighbors anxious about what my presence would do to their property values. That’s privilege.
Never once in my life have I been denied admission to a restaurant, theater, museum, restroom, library, or park because I have the wrong skin color. That’s privilege.
As a young mother, I never had to be concerned that my children would be denied admission to any of those places because they had the wrong skin color. That’s privilege.
When my two sons were teenagers, they gave me many reasons to worry, but not once did I worry about their being bullied or brutalized because of their skin color. I never had to fear for their lives because they were wearing hoodies, jogging, playing in a park, taking a walk in our own neighborhood, or driving home from dinner. Now that they’re grown men, I still worry about them a little but never because doing any of these things might cost them their lives. That’s privilege.
When my sons were out late at night and had missed curfew (pretty much every Friday and Saturday), being admittedly a bit of a Nervous Nellie, I usually went straight to visualizing them dead in a ditch somewhere. Not once, however, did I picture them detained by police officers or accused of a crime just because they had the wrong look. That’s privilege.
If one of my sons ever attempts to make a purchase using a counterfeit bill, I may kill him, but I don’t believe a police officer would. Therefore, chances are remote that I will ever have to spend my remaining days with the haunting mental image of my precious son (regardless how flawed) handcuffed, face down on the pavement, while a police officer has a knee on my son’s neck and a smirk on his own despicable face. Never will I live tormented by the sound of my son’s voice echoing in my head “I can’t breathe” and crying out “Mama.” That is blessed, blessed privilege.
I have three white grandsons who will enjoy the same privilege my sons have enjoyed. I and their parents are striving to raise them to understand that privilege, never to take it for granted, and to use their advantage to better the lives of those not so fortunate. That’s privilege.
Privilege is not always determined by financial assets and security. That’s part of it, but it’s not the whole. People of color can be extremely wealthy yet still live with the fact that their skin color will always influence what they can do, where they can go, and in what places they will be accepted.
People of color will always live looking over their shoulders. Honest men of color will know they are feared when in public and will instinctively learn to take measures to protect themselves. Some people of color live with the fear of deportation, never able to settle into a peaceful life.
Mothers with children of color live constantly on tiptoe, wondering whether this will be the moment their lives change forever, because some private citizen or police officer passed judgment on their son or daughter based solely on the amount of melanin in their skin and decided their child’s life was worth less than the need to calm the white person’s cowardly and irrational fear.
There is no such thing as black privilege. There is no single thing which people of color get to do just because they’re black or brown. Dark skin opens no doors, affords no advantages. If a program such as Affirmative Action gives preference in specific situations to qualified people of color, it’s only because white people have been assholes for so long that something must be done to level the playing field. It’s not just because they’re black.
After the events of the last two weeks–following the murder of George Floyd– no one can claim not to know better. So now that we know, we owe it to the thousands of black men and women, who have been wrongly killed during the 401 years since we abducted them from their homeland and brought them here in chains, to do better. Much better.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.