So out of everything that has been written about Trayvon Martin, this is what I chose to quote:
White privilege … involves the luxury of not having to have a conversation with your kids about how to avoid being murdered by the cops because of your skin color.
Those words are not be the most relevant to Martin’s murder and the events surrounding it, but they speak very starkly to me as a white parent. The concept of privilege that has come into currency in the past few years is very useful for understanding the unearned advantages that some groups enjoy without demonizing them. When I was young the more common formulation was along the lines of “Racism isn’t a matter of individual attitudes, it’s a power structure of oppression.” While it’s true there is such a power structure, and was even more so back then, this approach had the effect of making all white people racists by definition. If you can’t distinguish between Lester Maddox and Jimmy Carter, just to choose two Georgia governors, you’ve got a problem. So the concept of privilege recognizes the structural advantages the accrue to the privileged groups while understanding that most or at least many of them are not actively and consciously promoting inequality.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of stories have been posted in recent days of “walking while black” experiences. They’re easy to find, but here are a bunch all in one place: I Could Be Trayvon.
When my daughter was in high school she was part of a very diverse group of kids, and I found it gratifying and encouraging to see how readily the students of various races and ethnicities mixed. For them skin color seemed to matter no more than hair color. I knew that this was not true everywhere, maybe not even throughout her school, but in its small way it was an extremely positive environment.
Now here’s the thing: When S. was at school she had her nice group of multicultural friends, and when she was not at school she led the life of an upper middle-class suburban white girl. But what about the minority students among her friends, especially the African-American males? For them life outside of school may not always have been so peachy. Probably most of them, I now realize, even the ones from economically comfortable, professional families, have had experiences of senseless suspicion and harassment. My satisfaction in S.’s post-racial social environment was itself an expression of white privilege.
So that bright spot in my world is smaller than I thought, though not a complete mirage—I’ve read similar encouraging accounts of young peoples’ attitude towards race. It’s distressing to realize I was blinkered and complacent. It’s even more distressing that people still have to live with these attitudes and fears.
White privilege … involves the luxury of not having to have a conversation with your kids about how to avoid being murdered by the cops because of your skin color.
East Joppa Road, 200 block. Between Feb. 20 and Mar. 10. Someone used a key to enter an apartment, took a wheelchair and replaced it with a cheaper model.
This is actually a couple of years old, I’ve learned. So the young fellow is probably out of his wheelchair and into therapy by now. I wish I had seen this sooner so I could have felt so much safer all that time.
After all, we work in very similar industries — I’m a nematode who infests the small intestines of most mammals, and you host your radio program. But I also know that there is a line you don’t cross, a code of behavior. There are some things a guy like me just won’t do. Don’t you understand that? You’re making a disgrace of yourself. Really. What you said was disgusting. Sometimes I cause pica, which is a compulsion to eat dirt, so I know what I’m talking about. But this is worse.
I read all this stuff, I might as well link to some of it. Here’s a good piece on the racial undertones to much of the criticism of President Obama.
Again, my southern ears hear Franklin Graham’s words clearly. If President Obama were white, or Republican, given the President’s lifestyle and statements of belief, his Christianity would not be questioned. I hear the dog whistle, Franklin. Put it away.
I see in President Obama a quintessential American man, a family man, a Christian, a devoted advocate of justice, a lover of this country, an educated person, a wise and knowledgeable man. I have not agreed with each and every action (or lack of action) he has taken as president, as I am sure is the same for you.
But when Franklin Graham and his ilk wax judgmental about President Obama from a warped religious and political perspective, or when someone seeking to take President Obama’s job or to otherwise unseat him does so by claiming that President Obama, my president, is un-American, anti-Christian, a foreigner…well, this southern boy wonders what in the world we have come to, and where in the world we are headed.
Here’s just another small example of why newspapers are doomed. This is a quote from a New York Times article on former riot grrl Kathleen Hanna:
Once her work became known, “my joke is always like, I didn’t just hit the class ceiling, I pressed my naked” breasts “up against it,” Ms. Hanna said.
It took me a couple of reads before I realized what was going on with this passage and why it looked odd. Of course—Hanna said “boobs” or “tits,” and the Times doesn’t use those words. (Actually, I think it should have been written “… I pressed my naked [breasts] up against it,” but maybe that’s not the way the Times does it.) It’s a family newspaper. But what is the point of such squeamishness? Twelve year-old girls wear “I ❤ boobies” T-shirts. I love to read the Times and can’t imagine being without a daily newspaper, but is it any wonder no one under 30 reads them?
