You were the “good white person” because you grew up among people of color.
TINGE OF GUILT FULL
Now that you’re living in a community that, at 75 percent white, roughly mirrors that of the American population, you’re feeling the full force of what it means to be white in a white supremacist culture and it makes you feel uncomfortable because up until now, in some unconscious way, you’d exonerated yourself from it. It’s possible your status as a situational racial minority gave you the illusion that you didn’t have much in the way of racial privilege. You grew up in a neighborhood and attended schools where you were one of the relatively few whites.
TINGE OF GUILT HOW TO
“We have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.” You’re not going to empower others by disempowering yourself.Ĭheryl Strayed: I think Steve’s onto something when he notes that your anxiety is acute now because the racial mix at your college is reflecting your privilege back to you, but I’ll go even further: My hunch is that you’re truly seeing it for the first time. “Privilege is not in and of itself bad what matters is what we do with privilege,” she writes. Instead, heed the words of the writer bell hooks. But the solution to this injustice isn’t to wallow in self-hatred. We do live in a culture steeped in white supremacy and class bigotry, as well as patriarchal values. This feeling is especially acute right now, I suspect, because you’re suddenly immersed in a milieu that reflects your privilege back to you. What you really feel is trapped within an identity that marks you, inescapably, as an oppressor. In fact, your letter describes your place as a kind of prison cell of privilege. You write that you don’t know your place. And yet your central struggle is around identity. Steve Almond: Shame and anger are powerful emotions, Whitey. I know who I am, but I realize how people perceive me and this perception feels unfair. Every school I attended, elementary through high school, was minority white, but I’m now attending an elite private college that is 75 percent white. My family has lived in the same apartment in East Harlem for four generations. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?Īnother part of it is that I’m currently immersed in the whitest environment I’ve ever been in. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. I take courses that will further educate me. I engage in conversations about privilege with other white people. I research proper etiquette, read writers of color, vote in a way that will not harm P.O.C. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of color.
0 kommentar(er)
