Joshua Soloman
Oprah talks with Josh Sullivan about his social experiment of transforming himself into a black man for a day.www.oprah.com
If you do not believe that everyday white privilege actually occur there have been several cases where Caucasian have changed their skin tone by taking pills and completely changing the way they live in order to attempt to live a day in the life of a person of color.
Joshua Soloman decided to do this experiment and live a day in the life of a black man. He decided to journal his experience.
He stated that he immediately saw a difference in how he was treated from “A white woman on an airport shuttle looked away when I smiled at her” to “The hostess at a restaurant told me there would be a long wait, even though there were several empty tables.”
He continues to talk about some of his experience as a black man, one that stood out to me because I, like many other people of color, have personally encountered similar situations like this numerous times was:
“I went to a nearby drugstore, a white employee followed me around the store. At the drink refrigerator, I turned suddenly and stared right at her, letting her know that I knew what she was doing — shadowing me as if I were a potential thief. I’d hoped to embarrass her, but she didn’t flinch. She stared right back, hands on her hips.
‘Are you gonna buy something or not?’ she asked.
I grabbed some orange juice.
‘That’ll be $ 1.94,’ said the woman behind the counter.
‘Pretty expensive O.J.’ I said. ‘Then don’t buy it,’ she countered.”
After travelling all across America Soloman talks about how he cried numerous nights and was in total disbelief about how he was treated completely differently as a black man then he was as a white man. Another one of his statements that resonated with me was:
“A young black woman leaned against the seat next to me. She dozed off occasionally. In her arms she cradled a sack of books. Around her neck hung a stethoscope. Why hadn’t she given up? I could return home to my comfortable world. I could wait for my skin to turn white again. She would have to endure.”
After living as a black man he was able to recognize that he had certain privileges being a white man. White Privilege that is.
