Let’s Talk About Privilege

The idea of white privilege can make a man cringe. This concept can make an adult lose their composure behind a keyboard as they execute an impressive amount of finger pushups in their battle to defend themselves. I have seen tweets burn, friendships lost, and even myself fallen victim to the almighty block (*sniff*). If my social media feeds are indicative of the hive minds beyond my fiber optic cables, then I am led to believe that there is a great deal of confusion about what “privilege” is. If I am not being truthful, then I apologize for not expanding my network to represent an accurately diverse swath of opinions.

Let me teach you about white privilege by breaking down my own privilege. I am the son of African immigrants who moved to Canada in the early 1980s. Within my own family structure, I have a privileged experience over both of my siblings. I have privilege over my older sister of eight years, as my parents’ struggle to obtain solid footing in their adoptive new country was essentially complete by the time I was born. My parents had fully integrated into Canadian society by the time I was a twinkle in my father’s eye. They were financially stable home owners in the York Region suburbs of Toronto. I started pre-school with exposure to other children from outside of my culture, so my English was much better than my sister’s at the same stage in life. Being raised during my earliest years of school in a city as diverse as Toronto allowed me time outside of the racial crucible of the South that my younger brother had to endure for his entire life. I remember living in an environment where our differences were celebrated. Not to say that there are no racial issues in Toronto, but as a child, my differences did not make me as big of a target living in Canada as they did in North Carolina.

External to my family, I have always felt different from my black classmates. I was slapped around and stomped out on a school bus in 2nd grade for reading books and “talking white.” I could never understand why my classmates wouldn’t just study and get good grades like me. Looking back I do not condone being attacked for this, but I fully understand that the rage was a result of me not recognizing my own privilege and being able to adapt. I later became a master of code-switching and to this day I cannot identify my real accent.

I was one of two black male students in my 5th grade class (let’s estimate that my school in North Carolina was 50% black) who lived at home with their biological father and saw him every day. This other student and I were also the only black students in my class who were not part of the free/reduced lunch program. I went home every day to a safe neighborhood. Air conditioning. Electricity. Internet. A bicycle. A mother who was not juggling raising me along with being a sole bread-winner for the family. When they separated our classes into the academically gifted groups, the make-up of my class turned into me% black. When I got to high school, I stopped having other black male students in my class in 10th grade. AP may as well have stood for Anti-Pigment. I’ll address the cause of this after I talk about my time in college. This introduction of my own privilege is critical to my explanation of white privilege.

I graduated from the University of Alabama in 2013. Fifty years prior I would not have been allowed to attend a well-funded, integrated university in the state of Alabama. Governor George Wallace fought to the last step to not allow black students to enter Foster Auditorium — which I walked past every week of my freshman year as a reminder — to receive a public education. Black people in that state have a fifty year history of access to the same level of higher education as their white counterparts. White people in the state have a two hundred year legacy of being able to receive this level of education and even longer in surrounding states if they sought it out. This also permeates to other facets of life such as manufacturing, shipping, real estate, farming, and other services in which black people were not able to participate as equity holders for centuries. To this day many black students from underserved districts still do not have access to equal college preparation and are forced to start the race from a step behind when entering college. There is also a notion that black people are able to enter university with lower test scores and qualifications. While I cannot speak for every school’s admissions criteria, please note that in Fisher v. the State of Texas this was found to be patently not true in that case.

While at school I was accused of being an affirmative action case on multiple occasions. Other students would passive-aggressively imply that I was considered for my programs based on attempts at racial equality. This is despite the fact that I fully (over)-qualified for a presidential scholarship which fully subsidized my living and educational costs by going above and beyond the requirements for students of all races (I also have debt-free privilege). This is the same psychology used to justify the deaths of black people across America by police even when video is released. These people did not know me, but I could not have done anything they would have done to get what I earned. I must have had it given to me. Some people see blacks as incapable of achieving. Some people see blacks as incapable of behaving. I was accused of this by students with far inferior resumes to my own (the accusers are rarely high achievers) and lived for years with the mentality that I had to prove myself in every interaction. Perfect elocution of every syllable that escaped my lips was a must. My clothes needed to be perfectly ironed at all times. I could not joke around or have a sense of humor. I lived with this warped mentality and focused on white people’s perception of myself for years. I was not worried that I was not intellectually good enough, but rather that a first impression would cause me to miss opportunities based on the prejudices of someone in a position of power. I always had to be a good little nigger. To this day I still can’t identify an affirmative action program from which I have knowingly benefitted. I haven’t needed to benefit from these programs due to my own immigrant privilege.

Immigrant privilege is a very rare type of privilege and I have not seen it defined to my situation. Most cases I have encountered online are from conservative publications using the term to shame minorities as being lazy. Immigrant privilege is a type of privilege which gives immigrants generational benefits over only descendants of African slaves, Native Americans, and some groups of early immigrants to the United States (note: a descendant of Asian immigrants in the 1850s to California would, by nature of laws enacted by this country, face different obstacles than a descendant of Asian immigrants in the 1980s). Immigrant privilege is not uniform across the board and does not pertain to all immigrants as you really cannot form a more diverse demographic than “immigrant” other than, perhaps, “American.” Many immigrants have faced their own dire levels of oppression in their homelands which would exempt them from the shelter of this umbrella term. Immigrant privilege also does not protect minorities from “perception bias.”

The majority of black Americans in the United States did not have legal standing to become literate until the time of reconstruction (1865–1877) and even that federal legal standing did not protect many who attempted to better their lives. Intimidation, poll taxes, and literacy tests for almost another century, depending on location, denied many blacks access to the political system, created a system of punishment for becoming educated, and as a result forced most to live in a cycle of generational poverty over which they had no control. It was not to the black man’s benefit to become educated if he wanted to succeed in white society.

This is where my immigrant privilege barges through the door. Dating back to the 1700s, my family has been educated in the Western sense. I have African and Dutch ancestors from that time period who were educated in universities and also trained as merchants, sailors, and tradesmen. They were able to profit from these skills and thrived in Africa even under colonial rule (which is also not uniform across or within countries). This 300 year legacy my family had of being educated had my parents not only raise me to value education and understand the benefits it could provide, but more importantly put them as exhibit 1A and 1B in front of my eyes to show me what was possible. My classmate in 2nd grade who slapped me for “talking white” had no such guidance or legacy in his household. A black guy like me existing was so alien to him. My classmates in 5th grade may have had influences in their lives telling them to value education, but they did not all have the means and examples that I went home to every day. It isn’t right that as a black man, I have had less state-sanctioned obstacles in this country than someone who would have roots dating back here 200–400 years. And I do not believe that I need more obstacles, I believe that those people need less.

Yesterday Joe Walsh posted a telling tweet about the place of blacks in America. RIP to the officers and families of those affected by this senseless tragedy in Dallas.

This is a man who was elected — and thankfully voted out — to serve the interests of the people in his congressional district. He shows that black people who would like to stand up for their rights do not even have the privilege of being perceived a part of “the real America.” Sorry for abandoning decorum in my next statement: that’s fucked up.

I have not even touched upon generational wealth, prison sentences, arrest rates vs. rates of drug use, representation as leaders in media, and many other factors, but I think this paints a basic picture. White privilege is not a slur. It is the unfortunate result of centuries of oppression. It is not a term meant to call a white person an oppressor. It is a term which refers to the existence of the fact that a person has benefited from those conditions through no fault of his or her own. My hope is that by pointing out my own privilege, those who see white privilege as a myth can at least take a second to read historical facts and study data to question their current opinion. As a black American, my ask is not for people in positions of privilege to cede their advantages at the drop of a hat. Acceptance of the fact that it exists while understanding what other groups of people may go through as a result would suffice. This enables us to have a conversation about issues that affect us all. Without the acceptance of this fact, we will never be able to take steps forward in our society to actualize racial equality. This is what prevents racial harmony. Not people fighting for their rights to be seen as equals in eyes of the government, law, and their neighbors. If you believe that all lives matter, you would believe that ours hold value as well.