I don’t have any idea what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be white.
Being white has given me privileges without the need to deserve or merit them, like shopping in a store without having to think about being under surveillance, going for a job interview without wondering if the color of my skin was going to be a strike against me, or worrying about being pulled over by the police in a black neighborhood because I was white.
To be honest, I never think about being white because there is never any reason for me to think about it. Being white is the race card I have never had to play. It has never been the reason I was treated in an unfair way, spoken to or about disrespectfully, or been denied my civil rights.
I realize some whites like me believe they have been discriminated against when applying for a job or to a college, but frankly my reaction has always been that they needed to grow up, that “affirmative action” was and still is our society’s effort to level the justice playing field that will in fact never be level because being white will always trump being black or any other color here in America, at least for the foreseeable future.
In fact, I apologized to my children when they were in high school in case it turned out that they had to pay the price for my generation’s prejudice and discrimination, and all the generations before me.
So when I walk down the street, or go into a convenience store, I never think about the police, I never think about the possibility that being white draws the attention of the police, or that because I am white I need to be careful not to appear suspicious to them.
It is no wonder that I don’t understand the anger, frustration, hurt, and desire to strike back that a lot of black Americans are feeling because of the killing of Michael Brown or Eric Garner or 12 year old Tamir Rice or any number of others white America knows nothing about.
I have never walked in their shoes, and they have never walked in mine, only they are the ones who are getting the short end of the stick.
You see, I don’t know what it feels like to suffer injustice simply because I am white, but they don’t know what it feels like for race not to be a factor in their daily life. They are hardly the same thing.
So I say it’s time for those of us who are white to stop assuming we know how black Americans should think, feel, act, and react to and about all that has been happening between them and the police.
Until we get that being white in this country is a radically different experience from being black, or a member of any minority community, we will do little more than continue to justify our own privilege and blame those who do not share in it for being angry.
