so many white people don’t get this
[Image of a tweet by @decolonizeont saying “Friendly reminder that White Privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard, can’t be hard, or was never hard… It means the colour of your skin will never be a factor in what’s causing your difficulties.”]
I’m going to reblog this again, during normal hours. See, when I was first getting educated about the notion of ‘white privilege’, I had a really hard time digesting the concept. The kneejerk reaction is to say “I may be white but I certainly haven’t lived the life of luxury”. It took a lot of deconstructing what privilege actually was for me to finally get it. I had an AMAZING professor in my Psych of Gender class during community college. She had us learn about race issues in nearly equal measure to gender issues. Group activities, open frank discussions, and really thought-provoking projects were central to this class. I grew SO much because of this wonderful professor. I went in feeling like ‘oh ya, i’m color-blind i don’t see race, we’re all the same, i’m super open minded blah blah’ and had some classic white notions of ‘poc over-reacting to perceived racism’ among other things. What finally clicked for me in terms of privilege, specifically, was one single handout. One piece of paper finally made it all make sense. It was written for a white audience and gave examples of thoughts and concerns that I, as a white person, will pretty much never have. Examples from memory: -When I am pulled over by the police, I never wonder whether my skin color was a factor. -When I interview for a job I never worry about my skin tone or name affecting the outcome. -I’m never followed around stores because of my skin color. I mean, there was about 30 items if not more that all had a similar sound to them. (I wish I had saved a copy.) But it was powerful for me, because I had never really realized that point of view, in those sorts of terms. The professor’s lessons were endless and helped to really tear down a lot of those ‘kneejerk’ sort of reactions and self-placating beliefs. I could go on and on about the powerful lessons we all learned. And I’m *still* learning and working to deconstruct my unhealthy, inaccurate privileged points of view. Recently, my patient in our hospital complained about ‘someone wearing too much perfume’ which she said was affecting her ability to breathe. Which may well be a legitimate concern. From inside her room, she saw one of my black co-workers walk past and from then on insisted that the smell was coming from her. To the point where my supervisor asked my black coworker to change assignments. The patient was sweet as damn pie to me, so I was very much was on board with the perfume issue. My black co-worker was LIVID. In the privacy of the med room she called the patient racist and vented about the situation while I kept quiet. A little later, another co-worker asked my opinion and I immediately came to the defense of the patient, thinking my black co-worker had majorly over-reacted… my patient was so nice! As the shift went on, more and more of this patient’s behavior became apparent. She was rude and short with any poc employee, and nice as shit with white employees. But the bottom line is this: My automatic reaction was to doubt my co-worker over a patient because I just didn’t see the racism in the situation. Because I never, ever have to worry about my skin color. (It turns out the nursing station was loaded with perfumed lotions and was just across from the patient room. It had nothing to do with the employee she complained about.) I digress. The point is, the above quote is an awesome way to put it. There are plenty of white people out there (like me) that can get very defensive when our unhealthy behaviors/attitudes are called out. So, I really, really appreciate it when someone out there is able to articulate it so well. <3
@valgiraffe-ooc that was really well put!!
That article is called “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”! It was a major part of my Social Work education and something that is beneficial for everyone to read!!!
Here is a link to that article, if anyone wants to read it
Thx @valgiraffe-ooc for your honest post, to @pretentiousgrilledcheese for sharing the name of the article + @onyourleftbooob for the link! Fantastic article w/a killer first line “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” It’s too easy for whites to claim confusion between these two. Exhibit A: post midterm election US President going off on a woc reporter.
Reblogging for the article link. Thanks everyone! <3