White Privilege?

A few days I found something on my Facebook feed. It was a photo of a modest apartment building, and the text mentioned that the writer had grown up there (in Canada) with a single mother. Basically, he was blasting the idea of white privilege. All sorts of commenters agreed with him, including one person who said they didn't have a clothes dryer in their house until they were 17. Well, boo hoo.

Anyone who doesn't believe there is white privilege in the United States has no idea what it is to be black in this country. Sure, there are poor white people, especially in Appalachia. I don't come from a long line of rich people. But I'll tell you what I've never had to worry about: being pulled over by a cop because of my race. Having someone cross to the other side of the street because of my race. Having someone follow me in a store on the automatic suspicion I'm a shoplifter because of my race. Being shot, unarmed, by police because of my race. Being systematically discriminated against in employment and housing over decades because of my race.

Being born white in the U.S. is starting a few spaces ahead in the game of Life. There are so many other things we don't have to face. I came across a startling statistic: a white man with a prison record has a five percent better chance of getting a job over a black man with a clean record. The notion that the playing field has been leveled from the pre-civil rights days just isn't true. The statistics regarding prisons are deeply troubling. One in three black men can expect to go to prison in there lifetime. Now, the yahoo may say that going to prison is because of bad choices, but then look at this statistic: people of color make up 30 percent of the population in general, but 60 percent of the prison population. Two factors are at work: a prejudice in the judicial system, which gives out lighter sentences to white people, especially those of means, and the difficulties faced by young black men growing up, where white men with a record get jobs before they do.

White people, and I have experienced this firsthand in my family, think that anyone can get ahead by working hard. This is true to a point, but when someone is born into poverty, it is that much more hard to be successful. Couple that with an innate prejudice against skin color, and it seems more a miracle that black people can escape poverty (of course, there is a black middle and upper class, but they are still subject to being pulled over for driving expensive cars).

The best answer to this is a routine by Louis C.K., who talks about how much he loves being white. Being white is clearly better than anything else, he says. "I'd sign up for that every year," he jokes. There are those who say that nowadays white men are the ones who are singled out. That is as insulting as it is ludicrous. To all those poor white men who are now being discriminated against, after their ancestors owned people, would you voluntarily change your race? I thought so.