The Wrong Side of White Privilege
ChicagoDem's diary of today, entitled "Getting on the Wrong Side of White Privilege" reminds me my own experience with racism, and so I offer two of them as poignant examples:
I am black man, and my best friend when I was seventeen years old was white. One summer evening, just before dusk, my older brother and I drove my friend into the suburbs to pick up his girlfriend for a date. Neither we nor my friend lived in this suburb or had any familiarity with it. About two blocks from the girlfriend's house, in an all-white neighborhood, my friend apologized to me for what he was about to say: He asked me to please wait two blocks from the (white) girlfriend' house while he went to get her, because "if her father knew she would be in the company of black men then he wouldn't let her out of the house." Because we understood that my friend and his girlfriend were victims of a situation (racism) that they hadn't created, my brother and I agreed to wait out of sight, in my car.
Now my brother was somewhat of an amateur social scientist and very eager to take polls. He and I got out of the car, he with a clipboard, and he began knocking on doors and asking some sort of improvised demographic questions, with predictable results. Within three minutes, a police patrol car arrived, while my brother and I were on the porch of the first house we visited. What struck me then was to hear the officer's radio, with a speaker that was audible from outside the car, reporting the calls that were coming in to and from the police dispatcher: "Black men on Elm Street!" "Two black men, one with clipboard." "Black men." "Two black men!" It seemed that everyone on this suburban street had immediately called the police when they saw two black men armed with a clipboard.
But what happened next was even more telling. While the police officer asked what we were doing and requested to see our identification, my white friend approached and asked a question that blacks learn from experience never to pose to a police officer, because we don't want to be beaten up: My white friend said, without identifying himself at all beforehand, "What's the matter officer? Is there a problem here?"
The stern expression on the officer's face suddenly turned surprised and apologetic. "Oh, you know these guys?" he said. When my white friend, stranger, I remind you, responded "yes", the officer apologized and said we were free to go.
My brother, my friend and I were dumbstruck! Apparently, ANY white man's word proved a black man's innocence without question, even if the white man himself was as much a stranger as the blacks for whom he vouched. If the officer had reason to suspect that two black men were guilty of something, then how could he know with such certainty that our white friend was not our accomplice, even when our white friend appeared out of nowhere at the scene of the "probable cause".
I will leave it to other readers to offer a plausible and non-racist explanation for this policeman's behavior, since I cannot think of any such explanation on my own. But I urge you to focus not on the suspicion that my brother and I aroused with the clipboard, but rather on the ease and finality with which a white man, a stranger to the police, was able to dispel that suspicion.
As we drove away, my friend apologized for his white privilege, but we all knew it wasn't his fault. This, mind you, all occurred in or around the year 1980, in a northern white suburb, much AFTER the Civil Rights Movement.
The implications, however, were obvious: If you are black, you are always perceived as suspicious. Imagine this entirely hypothetical scenario: If you were going to rob a house, you should do so in the company of a white man whose skin color renders him above suspicion. You drive the getaway car while he breaks into the house, and when the police come, your white friend can vouch for you while he walks past the police with stolen diamonds in his pockets. Perhaps the relative credulity that accompanies white skin explains why so many crimes go unsolved? Sound ridiculous?
(2) My black and some other white friends and I (but not the friend discussed above) actually tested this hypothesis when we pre-adolescents, and we proved it to be valid in variety stores. Here's how:
It must be said, first of all, that as children we all sometimes filched candy at variety stores, regardless of our color. However, we blacks, unlike my white friends, found that whenever we went into a store, the attendants followed us relentlessly up and down the aisles, as if letting us out of their sight was the greatest possible danger to their financial wellbeing. Meanwhile, we noticed that our white friends went relatively unnoticed. We saw this as an opportunity.
We began going to variety stores in mixed groups, with the black friends going in first. While the store attendants followed us blacks up and down the aisles, our white friends filled their pockets with candy, utterly unsuspected and with complete impunity. The next day at school we all sold the candy to our friends and told them our story of how racism had allowed us to steal candy together, without getting caught. Unable to change racism, we laughed at it and, in a small and ephemeral way, took advantage of it.
I think that, to make a significant dent in shoplifting, stores would have had to keep a watchful eye on the white majority of visitors as well as the black minority. I believe many white people who remember their childhoods will confirm that they, too, were capable of petty candy thefts.
As for the best friend who used his white privilege to intercede with police when we went to pick up his girlfiend in a white neighborhood, he remains a true friend to this day. We're professionals now. We don't steal candy today, or anything else, for that matter. When we get together, we remember the racism we saw as children and marvel at how little has changed. Thanks go to ChicagoDem for the courage and clarity he shows in addressing this issue in his diary of today.