Caveman,
You are probably aware that white privilege doesn't mean that all whites enjoy the same standard of living. There are more whites on government assistance than there blacks people on it, but it is our people who get called "Welfare queens" by whites.
All black people aint poor. My father grew up in country in Jamaica. St. Thomas parish. Wheeler field, near Golden Grove. This is how it looked in 2018:
My father walked miles to school, but he believed in education. He had to take a break for a year or two because his father died when he was young and he had to help take care of his family. He used to spear fish. I'm proud of my father, both for the life he lived in Jamaica, and for the life he lived in the US. He worked his way up from dirt floors and zinc houses to lower-middle class life in the US where he eventually managed a department for the city, working with computers.
Isn't that the American dream to some extent? And he pushed his siblings to educate themselves just like Haile Selassie said:
“Education develops the intellect; and the intellect distinguishes man from other creatures. It is education that enables man to harness nature and utilize her resources for the well-being and improvement of his life."
All the ones who did that and left Jamaica, became mildly (middle class) successful in the US and Canada (and one who went to England). They helped the ones who stayed so that they could have decent lives too. Again, I'm very proud of all of them and what they were able to do for their children. Most of them are doing well too. As for my father, I am a web developer and my sister is a doctor married to a doctor.
Why is all this relevant?
Because the difference is that there are things I cannot do and none of my brothas here on this site can do; things that you can. No matter how rich or poor we are, if we're not a celebrity that they recognize (and are therefore afraid to mess with) we are looked at the same. We are pre-judged because of the color of our skin.
Now you have a right to be mad. You can blame classism, in part, for your personal struggle. The rich are constantly disenfranchising the poor at the same time as redistributing the wealth from the poor to the rich. And Trump just made it worse with his tax cuts. Those tax cuts mean they get more money while paying less taxes to fuel everything the government does. Where does that money come from? You. The reason they have to pay more in taxes is because it's based on income. They don't feel the loss as much as you do because they still have millions after taxes. You don't.
We struggle, both from classism and racism. Because even if we somehow escape poverty, we're still a ni**** to them. And they still feel like they're superior. Even poor whites often wave confederate flags and deify confederate soldiers because they feel superior to black people. And when someone thinks you are superior to me because of the color of your skin, then you have an advantage over me. That doesn't mean you are qualified to take my job automatically, but it means that if you were qualified to have my job there is a good chance it would have gone to you instead of me. That's part (not the sum) of what privilege is.
I've seen many videos where a cop pulls over or detains a white person and they're pissed so they go off on the cop like he's their child. Do you know what happens to me when I see a police car driving behind me? My heart start pounding and I get nervous. I get so nervous that all I can think about is this cop getting out from behind me and how nice and polite I can make myself sound without throwing up. And I'm a big guy. I can think of few things that actually scare me outside of threats to my children. But I will admit, probably every black man in America is afraid of the police. I was a good kid growing up. Never ran with a bad crowd or engaged in criminal behavior. I didn't even smoke weed until I was 30 because I was that much a law abiding citizen. BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS to a cop. So when I had an officer's knee on my back I was furious. You can do EVERYTHING RIGHT... but still be the WRONG color. And I wasn't just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My father and I were responding to the alarm going off at OUR CHURCH!
But the cop would rather believe I was the suspect instead. Would he have made the same assumption if I looked like you!?
That's privilege. You don't have to see all the darkness in America, because one of the biggest and worst things we have to deal with isn't poverty. It's NOT. It's RACISM and WHITE SUPREMACY. We would be lucky to only have poverty to worry about. Want out of poverty? Listen to HIM. Get educated. But in the US, at every step of the way you're still black and people can still deny you because you don't look like them. And whites are actually nicer to black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa than they are to African Americans born here. Some of the same stigma isn't quite there. But you're still black and if they don't know where you're from they just treat you the same.
It is privilege that doubt one even has privilege because you don't fully see the American experience from the point of view of the ones who don't have white skin. Many whites only really start to wake up and notice more when they have black children. Sad but true. And it's not because they were bad people. It is simply that bad people didn't mistreat them because they were the same color.
Recently, a racist at one of the protests got cut off by his daughter. She said he can no longer see his granddaughter because his granddaughter is black. How did this not happen before? Because he was more racist than she ever realized. That's why. And racism hides. It comes out when it can cause harm to black people. But it hides around other whites so that they escape consequences just like the police hide behind the badge and unions and qualified immunity and sympathetic prosecutors and more. It hides. That's why the KKK wore hoods.
And so whites could avoid seeing the reason why Collin took a knee. Trump wanted him fired. Now they see why he did it and now they want him back after they 'black' balled him.
White privilege means that given the same circumstances it would be easier for me to be white than black. I don't care how poor you may have been. There were still a bunch of people who would have been better off if they could trade places with you. I believe it was wealthy whites who made poor whites believe they were superior to black people because of their skin; so that they would help the rich oppress and control black people so that they wouldn't have to get their own hands dirty. I believe most of the whipping and lynching was done by poor whites. It was poor whites on slave patrols, bringing us back to the plantation so we could be punished for trying to get free. It was poor whites who blocked us from success and happiness; poor whites who stop and frisk us, and poor whites who come when Karen calls the police on us.
White privilege mostly benefits poor whites because if you're rich then you don't need it. Because you got money. And your money becomes all the leverage and advantage you need. But understand, that us telling you that you have white privilege isn't an attack. It's not meant to make you feel bad, ashamed, guilty, etc. No, that's not the point. If you want to understand racism and understand more what black people have been going through, you have to understand that privilege you have. And maybe if you understand it you can use it for good.
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