I was extremely moved by Senator Obama's speech last week. I read the transcript and watched the full video. It was masterfully written and delivered with a sincerity and honesty I've seldom seen in the political (or any other) arena.
Today I was again moved by the personal reflectons of America Jones' diary Blue Eyed Devil: A Daughter’s Thoughts on Race. It is a courageous piece offered in the same spirit as Obama's landmark speech last week.
In the diary she mentions the phenomenon of White Privilege and that was something that really hit home for me, especially since it's something many white folks deny is real. A little background first:
I grew up in a middle class home in the Hyde Park (University of Chicago) neighborhood in Chicago in the 50's/60's, liberal parents and grandparents, multiracial community and school. But the neighborhood was surrounded on 3 sides by 'ghetto' neighborhoods (Lake Michigan was on the 4th side). A school in the Woodlawn community just south of us burned down and they began to bus kids in from there. They were all black kids, and very different from the middle class black kids in our neighborhood. They were much rougher and, to me, intimidating. My liberal parents were sometimes shocked at the anger I expressed against these kids, often in racist tones. They tried to educate me about the different kind of environment kids in Woodlawn experienced, and the kind of privileged life I led - my dad was a social worker so in no way were we rich. But both my parents graduated from the University of Chicago and all four grandparents had college degrees.
I spent several years in the 80's working with Hispanic and Black gang members in inner-city Chicago and became aware of white privilege in a very focused way, realizing the access I had to resources, and the freedom I had to move around without being molested by the police just because of what I looked like. I never had to worry about being pulled over for a DWB (driving while black).
But my recognition of white privilege became even more intense and personal about 10 years ago while I was working on a family genealogy. I realized that all four of my grandparents had grandparents who had been slave owners. This was brought home like a punch in the gut when I obtained a copy of an handwritten will from my paternal grandmother's great-grandfather from Jackson County, Florida dated 1839. The first thing in the "personal property" of the will was a list of 8 slaves listed by first name and dollar value. They had been dehumanized, not only by have a dollar value attached, but also by the fact that their only identity was a single name, probably chosen by their owner.
This brought home to me in a way nothing else could have that, while I may not have "personally" done anything other than harbor some anger as a child against other children who were "oppressing" me, I have benefited in an insidious way from the institutional racism this country fostered for more than 350 years.
My earliest forebear in the Americas arrived just over 400 years ago in Virginia; the first boat of slaves arrived 12 years later (two years before the Mayflower). So my family benefited from almost 250 years of slavery and the from an additonal 100+ years of segregation and other racist practices. While in school I read about Jim Crow and Brown vs. the Board of Education, listed to Dr. King's speeches and mourned his death, it wasn't until my experience working with kids in the inner-city that I began to realized the extent of my privilege, and not until seeing that handwritten will that I began to understand in a visceral way the depth of the evil perpetrated by slavery and racism.
So I do accept a personal responsibility for long history of past crimes as well as for the way those crimes continue to be present. I know this may be much more difficult for a white person whose first ancestors came here in the late 19th/early 20th century. Their ancestors, unlike mine, did not enslave Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas or hold them enslaved for generations. But I hope that many of them will come to see that they have, nevertheless, benefitted from a privilege which is real even if it is not always perceived.
I want to thank America Jones for continuing in her courageous diary the conversation begun by Senator Obama last week. I believe this is an important dialog which has the potential, over time to help heal some of the wounds. I believe that, though, that some progress has been made, and am hopeful that with the prescient leadership of Barack Obama we can move forward together.
UPDATE: Thanks to BentLiberal of the Rescue Rangers for the rescue. Diaries move through the queue so quickly that they disappear in about 5 minutes.