Eye Recommend --- A Mother's White Privilege

  

A MOTHER'S WHITE PRIVILEGE, from the Manic Pixie Dream Mama blog

http://manicpixiedreammama.com/a-mothers-white-privilege/

A friend of mine shared a post from the above blog this morning.  It is fairly long and I have condensed it somewhat; but the point is still potent.  No matter how many minority friends or co-workers we have, white people cannot really know what it is to be black in America.  And this mother points out that if we don't educate our white children about the inequalities, we will never be completely equal. 

"As the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri show us, America's racial tensions didn't disappear when George Wallace backed down from the school house door...White America remembers this at ugly flashpoints: the Rodney King beatings...Trayvon Martin's death.  White America recoils in horror not at the crimes--though the crimes are certainly horrible.  It's not the teenagers gunned down, the police abuse, the corrupt trials.  It's this:  at these sudden, raw moments, in these riots and demonstrations and travesties of justice, White America is forced to gaze upon the emotional roil of oppression, the anger and fear and deep grief endemic to the Black American experience. Black America holds up a mirror for us.  And white America is terrified to look.

To admit white privilege is to admit a stake, however small, in ongoing injustice.  It's to see a world different than your previous perception.  Acknowledging that your own group enjoys social and economic benefits of systemic racism is frightening and uncomfortable...But think on this.

I have three sons...They are various shades of blond, various shades of pinkish-white...Their eyes are blue and green.  Basically, I'm raising the physical embodiment of The Man, times three.  The White is strong in these ones.

Clerks to not follow my sons around the store, presuming they might steal something.

Their normal kid stuff--tantrums, running, shouting--these are chalked up to being children, not to being non-white.

People do not assume that, with three children, I am scheming to cheat the welfare system....

...When my sons are teenagers, I will not worry about them leaving the house.  I will worry--that they'll crash the car, or impregnate a girl, or engage in the same stupidness endemic to teenagers everywhere.

I will not worry that the police will shoot them.

If their car breaks down, I will not worry that people they ask for help will call the police, who will shoot them.

I will not worry that people will mistake a toy pistol for a real one and gun them down in the local Wal-Mart.

In fact, if my sons so desire, they will be able to carry firearms openly.  Perhaps in Chipotle or Target.

They will walk together, all three, through our suburban neighborhood.  People will think, Look at those kids out for a walk.  They will not think, Look at those punks casing the joint.

People will assume they are intelligent.  No one will say they are "well-spoken" when they break out SAT words. 

Women will not cross the street when they see them...

...My sons will never be mistaken for stealing their own cars, or entering their own houses.

No one will stop and frisk my boys because they look suspicious...

...My boys will carry a burden of privilege with them always.  They will be golden boys, inoculated by a lack of melanin and all its social trapping against the problems faced by Black America.

For a mother, white privilege means your heart doesn't hit your throat when your kids walk out the door...

...It carries another burden instead.  White privilege means that if you don't school your sons about it, if you don't insist on its reality and call out its oppression, your sons may become something terrifying.

Your sons may become the shooters."