Tim Wise knocked it out of the Park with this article on buzzflash.
He says all that I have been feeling as a black person but he says it from his perspective as a white male.
This man gets it.
Jump to link and read some...
I am a black 46 year-old female and this article really hit me in the gut hard.
Tim Wise has put my feelings into eloquent words.
Yesterday my husband came home and told me that the same woman who had told him at his office that she has never worked with someone black in charge before was at it again.
This time she asked the only other minority in the office (an asian female) if she knew why when in Boston there were no animals to be seen in China town. Her answer was that they were all being eaten.
My husband and his Asian colleague just starred at her in shock and everyone else got quiet.
This is the kind of environment he goes to work everyday to in an office in New Hampshire.
Today reading this article from Tim Wise made me feel a little bit better.
I am happy to see someone other thaan a black person talking about white privilege and all it brings.
Hopefully, he will help others in his race to see how much crap we have to take everyday and still keep going.
Well, I can hope can't I? Please read on.
White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election
By Tim Wise / BuzzFlash / 13 September 2008
[Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005,
revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this
month, also by Soft Skull.]
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or
who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of
it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like
Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and
that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a
right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has
challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar
"challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological
and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fckin' redneck,
like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone
messes with you, you'll "kick their fckin' ass," and talk about
how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a
responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather
than a thug {snip}....
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly
allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W.
Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing,
people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is
increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters
aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too
vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same,
which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
http://www.buzzflash.com/...