The Character of White Privilege

For the life of me, I've consistently found it hard to put my finger on exactly what is white privilege.  Being White, and Privileged, I'm sure this doesn't help.  Tough to see yourself.  And reading other attempts to inform me hasn't been all that successful.  Until recently.  I subscribe to an instagram account @teachandtransform that I find thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and worthy of praise praise praise for its insight into matters of the racial context of teaching and learning in an elementary classroom in LA.  Recently, the teacher (Liz Kleinrock), in my mind a brilliant young woman, wrote about her own privilege which created some pushback, crude and callous.  Supporters of her writing took her model and ran with it to counter the opposition and I found, in total, the responses educative and inspiring to me regarding thinking about how to clearly frame that which has avoided clarity for so long - my own privilege.  Here's a bit of what was on Instagram that got me going.


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from @teachandtransform

Privilege:

A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.

Notes:

            • privilege can be something you’re born with, or something you gain over time…ex: white privilege born, financial privilege gained

            •privilege is often invisible to those who have it

            •privilege has to do with social power.

Examples:

            •education privilege

            •cisgender privilege

            •able bodied privilege

            •neurotypical privilege

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In light of @teachandtransform story, I’d like to speak to the privilege I hold with y’all.  The hope is that readers will analyze their own identities and privileges to further the discussion and amplify voices.

            •I have a roof over my head.  At the end of the day I know I have a home to come back to.

            •I graduated from what is considered a “good” school.

            •I’m cis.

            •I don’t have to fear deportation nor think of it – I get to opt out of those conversations.

            •I have access to clean water.

            •I’m neurotypical.

            •I speak English.

            •Mental Health – I’ve never struggled with anxiety, depression, mania, etc.

            •I’m heterosexual.

            •I’m never misaddressed in terms of pronouns.

            •People from other countries don’t come to the country I live in to “save” it.

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I am white, heterosexual, cisgender, neurotypical, able bodied, middle class, employed, higher educated.  If we can’t own our own privilege, how an we recognize and fight against oppressive systems?  Go check @teachandtransform story.

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I hold and/or benefit from the following privileges: cisgender, able bodied, English speaking, straight sized, neurotypical, financial.  I also recognize that I benefit from white privilege because while I identify as brown, I’m lighter skinned and in spaces with other BIPOC I hold white privilege and will be less doubted, questioned, targeted, looked at, etc.

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In the spirit of @TEACHANDTRANSFORM, here are some ways I’m privileged: white, cis, hetero, able bodied, neuro typical, English speaker.  Also I’m not automatically recognized as an immigrant.

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Kara Walker's "The Marvelous Sugar Baby" of "A Subtlety". 2014

I'm reading "Flavor and Soul", a personal reflection by John Gennari (of UVM) on Italian America and its shared intersections with Black America. In it, John mentions an installation at the old Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn created by performance artist Kara Walker in 2014. I went to the internet to look it up, found it immediately, and was amazed at the size of the installation Walker achieved. From the book...The installation drew "hundreds of thousands of visitors over a three-month period. Visitors inhaled the pungent aroma of burnt sugar and molasses still glazing the factory's colossal walls. Some solemnly contemplated the enormousness of Walker's concept, its evocation of the intertwined histories of the transatlantic slave trade, plantation labor, and food history; others snapped selfies against the backdrop of the sculpted woman...working in a cane field...full of the self-possession and sovereign repose of a Buddhist icon or a monumental Egyptian sphinx." And I remain amazed at how much there is to learn in this world, and so little time. Anyone with a remote interest in the interpenetration of Italian and African-American culture (food, music, sport) in this country in the 20th Century would find Gennari's writing wholly engaging.