What’s Worse Than White Privilege?
On Tuesday, August 15, 2017, a young black man in a grey sedan attempted to switch lanes so as not to miss his exit onto the highway. In doing so, he cutoff an older white man in a black truck. The white man felt slighted by this act and sought reprisal. Once on the highway, the two drivers found themselves adjacent to one another, both with their windows down. Without warning, the white driver attempted to throw a water bottle at the black driver through his open window while shouting inaudibly and going 60 mph on the highway, hitting the side of his vehicle. Within a few relatively unremarkable minutes, an age-old American scenario played out — a white person feels slighted by a person of color and feels entitled to retaliate however they please, even if it means escalating the situation and endangering the other person or breaking the law.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that the driver was racially motivated in his actions. Although, quite frankly, it does not matter. This is a situation that plays out in varying degrees and forms all over the nation. This touches on something deeper within white America than racism. One example is the 2012 altercation between Michael Dunn, a 45-year-old white man at the time, and Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old black kid. In a gas station parking lot, Davis and his friends sat in an SUV, playing their music loudly. Dunn, who was in a vehicle parked next to them, “[hated] that thug music.” After a verbal dispute over the music, Dunn retrieved a handgun from the glove compartment and shot into the SUV, killing Davis. We could also look at the case of Dylan Roof, a young white man who killed 9 black churchgoers to start a race war. Roof walked into a place of worship filled with people who barely noticed his presence and decided they deserved to die because of the color of their skin.
Although Dunn and Roof have faced consequences for their actions, large portions of America consider people like Dunn and Roof to be isolated extremists. There remains a broad rejection of the idea that they are the results of a widespread culture of white supremacy. This refusal contradicts the historical and contemporary treatment and disenfranchisement of people of color. This country would not exist without the hundreds of years of genocide and slavery providing and tilling the land which established the American economy and consequently its independence. America would then not have sustained itself without the cheap labor provided by 90 years of Jim Crow in the south or the disenfranchisement of immigrants in the north and west. To this day, the American economy sustains itself on the backs of underpaid black and brown bodies either behind bars, in sweatshops or on modern day plantations. Our society would not function as is without the exploitation of people of color.
Only 53 years ago did the U.S. expanded equal protections under the law to people of color. For most of American history, all men were not created equal. Even with legal protections in place and a progressing society, white supremacy continues to rear its ugly head and remind us that in this land all men still are not created equal. The specter of white supremacy reminds us that, in this land, Eric Garner, unarmed, is murdered for allegedly selling loose cigarettes but Dylan Roof, armed and dangerous, gets taken alive and treated to Burger King by the arresting officers after a murderous rampage. And, it won’t let us forget that, in this land, 12-year-old Tamir Rice gets killed on sight for playing with a toy gun in a park; yet, 15-year-old Ethan Couch only gets 10 years of probation after killing 4 people while driving without a license, under the influence, and underaged.
Often, the conversation surrounding white supremacy focuses on the dehumanization of people of color and how it enables white privilege. This approach, however, remains incomplete. The dehumanization of black and brown bodies alone would not explain the current nature of race relations in America. White supremacy not only dehumanizes people of color but establishes a culture of entitlement for whites. This culture of white entitlement goes beyond white privilege. White entitlement is not solely based on the advantages in society that whites have over people of color. White entitlement is the conscious or unconscious belief that breaking laws and or deviating from civil conduct will result in little to no consequences. Unlike white privilege, society as a whole often rejects behaviors driven by white entitlement. The case of Michael Dunn serves as a good example. He felt justified in shooting into a vehicle of black teens over loud music, knowing full well he could do harm and that his actions were illegal. White entitlement insidiously shapes individual ethics and behavior and puts people of color at risk.
In the incident occurring on August 15, I am the young black driver. I would not dare consider my situation to be as severe as that of Jordan Davis or the many others who have lost their lives to white supremacy. Rather, I wish to share the realization I had that day — white supremacy influences our daily interactions in ways we may not even realize. I did not need to know the other driver’s motives to know that if he were a person of color he would be significantly less likely to throw something out of a moving vehicle at another driver. I know this because that is the country we live in — a country that resists condemning the disproportionate violence of whites but does not hesitate to condemn lesser actions by people of color.
Later that same day, Donald Trump claimed, “There’s blame on both sides,” when addressing the violence in Charlottesville publicly for the third time. To our president, the retaliatory violence of anti-racists and anti-fascists is equivalent to the instigative violence of white supremacists. According to our president, there were “good people” marching alongside neo-Nazis and white nationalists who were just out there defending the Jim Crow era confederate statues. It’s hard to fathom that good people would march alongside Nazis and avowed racists while championing memorials of white pride. Yet, that is what Donald Trump promoted. Donald Trump, however, did not create these standards which excuse horrendous transgressions of white Americans, and Donald Trump did not create white supremacy. Rather, Donald Trump is the result of these formidable forces. He is the embodiment of white entitlement and a social consciousness centered on one deceptively innocuous sounding yet sinister idea — white is always right.
It is difficult and irresponsible to deny the influence of white supremacy on the American psyche when our Commander-in-chief (someone nearly half the country voted for) equates anti-racists to white supremacists- a group that days earlier were responsible for a terrorist attack that left one woman dead and 19 others injured. Trump’s words exemplify how white supremacy fosters a sense of entitlement through the inadequate application of accountability. When consequences are unevenly applied based on race, society runs the risk of emboldening individuals who wish to do harm in the name of white supremacy. This is what the world saw in Charlottesville. This is what people of color see daily in America. Trump may have mobilized the masses, but he did not create them.
