I know there are places in the country that being white may give you "privileges" depending upon that place, and how the people are there. I've also been to places in the country where not being white gave you the "privileges". I can tell you now that I didn't actually give much thought to racism most of my life. I saw some of it when I was 4 or 5 years old back in the 70s when I briefly lived in parts of Texas. For me it was mainly in the form of my grandmother down there asking me why I just spent so much time playing with the black kids down the street. I'm am sure I acted confused as skin color wasn't anything any of us kids really thought about. We just played. My mother picked me up (very much a hippie at the time) and told me not to worry about it and we left. That grandmother was a very bad alcoholic. She moved a lot. I think that was the only time I actually experienced it. I do remember my not racist parents being concerned when our car almost broke down in one neighborhood as it was a neighborhood that if you were white and not police or something and got caught there that you were in trouble. This was the 70s.
My mother was actually friends with the author of Black Like Me, so she definitely was not racist. Those bad areas to get trapped didn't actually have anything to do with skin color. They had to do with the culture that arose in certain areas.
You see most of the problems people blame on skin color are not. Racism is a cultural thing. It can quickly swing in completely different directions.
I love the line from Morgan Freeman when he is asked how we are going to deal with racism. "Stop talking about it". He expands upon that but, basically it comes down to when we stop referring to each other by race then racism doesn't really have anything to build it's twisted cultures upon. This is important. That doesn't mean stop talking about black, brown, red, yellow, green, purple. It also means stop talking about white.
I shake my head at so-called white privilege. I was born white, just like being born black I cannot change that. Yet, I lived in trailers most of my life, and we were often on food stamps or barely getting by. We still managed to be happy. We lived in part of Colorado (and this is true of all Colorado I've seen) where there is no white privilege.
When I want a loan from a bank, my skin color is meaningless. They follow a mathematical formula, look at my credit score, look at my collateral, etc. Often they refuse me. Actually, in my case most of my life I've predominantly been refused and we find some other plan to do what we need to do, or we just cancel our plans and survive another way.
When I want a scholarship for college, I look at the lists of those available, and I don't bother with the ones that are listed for blacks, as I was born white. Therefore, I do not have the "privilege" to apply for those scholarships. There are also native American scholarships and IF we truly worked out the details I might have been able to apply for some of those as even though I am very pale skinned I do have a lot of that heritage in my background. The problem is that even there it is not pure enough. I have three different tribes, which if it were one tribe would be more than enough to qualify me. Yet spread across three it is not. Yet, I am not asking for that. I am simply pointing out another "privilege" I couldn't take when I was looking at scholarships, or when my children were looking at them. There are no white's only scholarships. Nor do I think there should be.
These days I can weekly go on the news and it is acceptable to talk about killing all white people, especially if it is some deluded white professor saying it. It is okay for a black person on the street to say that white babies should be aborted. I know this is not the norm and this is cherry picking. I didn't point these things out to indicate this is a pervasive belief. I do not believe it is. Instead, I write about it to explain that it is apparently okay to say these things. Whites have the "privilege" of being the only race I am aware of that many things can be said about without the same repercussions that would occur if it were some color other than white that these things were being said about. In those cases it would be considered racism. You see a white privilege I have is that it is okay for people to say bad things about me, threaten anyone my color, etc. It actually has been increasing. There have been times in the past when this was how blacks, or others were treated. It was wrong then. There may still be pockets of places where this is true for them as well. I have never been to one. Yet, if you watch or read news the only race it is acceptable to bash is whites. Oh and make sure if they are white that they are not a Jew. For then you are being anti-Semitic. Somehow, if you are white and a Jew you are often exempt from some of this. They have to know you are a Jew first.
Now before you start thinking I am now anti-Jew. I am not. I didn't state that to be anti-Semitic. I only stated it so you might get another glimpse of some of the odd reality that we live in.
I don't care what color you are. If you choose to identify as a race other than human, then that is not my problem, that is your mistake. I choose to identify people as human.
I see most of the problems that are being blamed on race as being cultural in nature. White power factions which are an extreme minority are cultural problems. It is how they were raised, and indoctrinated. There are equally bad cultures in other neighborhoods, towns, and built around race. Black power is just as bad. They are both racist.
I used to talk about how there is no White History Month, there is no White Entertainment Network, etc. Those things if they existed would be bashed and would start riots. Then to my disgust I did read that someone was starting a White Entertainment Network. This disgusts me. I do not believe you can fight racism, by being racist.
Yet those were examples of "privilege" that the white people don't appear to have. Nor should we. Yet I don't really think there should be a Black History Month, or a Black Entertainment Network either. Emphasizing race is how racism feeds upon us and grows. Black History Month was specifically what Morgan Freeman was speaking about.
Also I don't know of ANY of my relatives that owned slaves going back to my Great Grandparent's time. I've also never met a living slave in my entire life (unless you want to say we all are) so pulling out the slavery card as justification is almost like a social welfare built upon historical events that no one living experienced. There should be no special treatment due to what occurred generations past. We should learn from it, and not make the same mistakes. We should learn not to start handing out "privileges" based upon some misfounded guilt. We should instead learn from mistakes, and stop doing them. We shouldn't then turn around an make more mistakes. You fix it, by stopping it.
So why did I write this. I watched some video of people on the street of people talking about White Privilege. It was actually a video of people that thought it did exist. Yet, it was clear it was based upon opinion and what they imagined as the things they stated were far from true. Apparently, because I am white I should be able to get bank loans easier. It hasn't worked out that way in my life, in fact I don't have the privilege of claiming my requests were denied due to racism. I am white. If I speak to a black banker, and he denies me I cannot complain about racism. Nor would I. It feeds the monster that is racism. Stop speaking of race and you deny that monster it's food.
Revisionist history is another topic. These days if you do not include people of color in your TV series or movies it is racist. So we will see things like viking stories(Beowulf), and other stories based upon history where there really were no black people as far as we are able to tell yet the SHOW must make sure to add some. Being DIVERSE is more important than being accurate. So let's talk about "privilege" here. How likely do you think it is that they are going to remake Zulu or Shaka Zulu if you prefer and put some White Guys in the army running around with piercings, shields, long spears, and body paint and chanting?
IF they did it wouldn't be historically accurate. It would be diverse. The funny thing about diversity is that it doesn't actually matter if a white person is present or not. They can make all black shows that might also have some Latinos, Asians, or some other ethnicity and if you see a white person they seem like a token white person. I watched Empire for awhile and this was very noticeable there. I watched it as I like shows about music.
Yet that isn't my point. My point is that if you are not "white" you have the privilege to alter historical tales in the interest of diversity. This does not exist for whites now. It did back in the past when it was called racism so it was stopped, back when they had white people acting out all the roles in shows. Much like if you go back even further where there were periods where there were no women in acting, and all roles including the women were males.
You see racism is racism regardless of color. It exists when you choose to emphasize skin color. This includes when you choose to focus on white people, black people, brown people, etc. Until we stop thinking in terms of skin color this will continue to be a problem, and just because it is okay to publicly bash white people now doesn't make that any less racist.
The "White Privilege" narrative though is false. There may be specific narratives where this is true, yet I've given you examples of other things that Non-Whites have in terms of privileges that whites do not. These examples I provided could be due to geographical or cultural settings as well.
If you want to attack something. We have some sick cultures. We should not be admiring stupidity EVER. We should not be admiring those that prey upon others EVER. Yet often such cultures are popular. In admiring them, we are perpetuating and spreading them. So if we wish to stop spreading stupidity, and negative things we need to stop acting as though the cultures that produce them are wonderful things. This is true regardless of skin color.
