Aarrgghh! I might have known by my reaction to the term “white privilege” that it did indeed apply to me. The way my jaw clenched and how defensive I got were dead give aways.
Often/sometimes/usually when I get called on stuff, I’m able to stop, take a look at myself and either accept or dismiss the behaviour I’m being accused of without much angst.
Say, a friend tells me she’s concerned that I am “isolating”, staying alone in my home too much. I check myself for any reaction I might be having. Yeah, none. I grin and tell my friend that I’m an introvert; I get my energy from being alone, I enjoy people but they drain my energy. I also like my house, it’s a very very very fine house.
A business associate tells me that I’m not charging enough and giving my services away for free too often. Again, no big feelings of reaction. Yeah, guilty. I give it away for free a lot, its part of why I’m poor, but that’s ok. It will come back.
Tell me I’m exercising white privilege or just say the words in my presence and I’m pissed. But why? It’s something I’ve never felt guilty of. It’s not the way I feel I’ve lived my life. It’s not the way I was raised or the way my father was raised. So why was this term eliciting such a strong response?
Jump back to a week or so ago (because, welcome to my ADHD, Aspie world where my mind jumps in many directions at once but usually/sometimes/often ends up somewhere
good, so stick with me) and I’m talking with Dr. Ferguson Reid Sr. on the phone.
There is a group in VA that wanted to throw Dr. Reid a 90th birthday party. He wanted to register voters. So they had this idea to register 90 voters in every precinct in Dr. Reid’s honor. Now, I have become increasingly interested in voter registration so I like this idea.
It was an unexpected pleasure speaking to Dr. Reid on the phone. This old dude has quite the background story.
Dr. Fergie Reid grew up in Richmond, Va., the historic “Capitol of the Confederacy", in the racially segregated 1920s, 30s, and 40s.
He graduated from Howard Medical School and went on to serially integrate;
his Korean War M.A.S.H. unit Surgical staff, the Bethesda Naval Hospital Surgical staff, and the Richmond Memorial Hospital Surgical Staff, the premier, "Whites only" hospital in Richmond at the time.
He started his political activism in the mid 1950s, as a co-founder of, "The Crusade for Voters", a voter education and advocacy group helping Black citizens "pass" their state mandated literacy tests, and "pay" their poll taxes; thereby, bringing waves of new, Black empowered voters onto the rolls in Virginia.
He was elected to the Virginia House of Representatives in 1967, becoming the first Black person to serve there since the "post Civil War Reconstruction Era".
He served there with distinction until 1973, opening Virginia's "political doors" to many, including the man who would go on to become America's first Black Governor; of any state, in the history of our United States.
Throughout these described times, Dr. Reid was repeatedly introduced into previously segregated situations, which he had to navigate intuitively; he did so with great success and unimaginable patience.
I have some questions for him, the first of which is “Where do you get your patience?”
He laughs this wonderfully soft laugh he has and never really does answer my question but he does tell me step by step how he went about registering voters. (My little atheist self, still traumatized over being in a church in NC, assumes that his patience comes from religion and that he just doesn’t want to go there with me.)
Now flash forward to a few days ago when a friend of mine is asking some pretty pointed questions. He wants to know why I won’t support the Democratic Candidate in the general election no matter who it is.
I give a bit of a sigh because he’s not the first person to question me on this. I’ve had people bugging me about this since I first started voting. I’m not a Democrat and I’ve never felt an allegiance to the Democratic Party. I’m a socialist. I was probably born one but I knew for sure by the time I read Dr. Seuss’s “Sneetches”. I grew up believing that
“no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beach” that Sneetches were equal wherever they are regardless of whether or not they had "stars upon thars".
So my friend is yammering away in my ear about how it’s not a choice between sucks and sucks less, it’s a choice between decent and good. Yada Yada Yada. I know the candidates voting records; I’m not basing my decision on their looks.
Then he goes into the “it’s the supreme court stupid”. Well, it’s really not. I’ve had this same argument with constitutional scholars and I know my points are valid.
He says I’m being childish. I say, yeah I am! I want the game to be played my way or I don’t want to play, I’m taking my ball and going home! It’s become a heated discussion by now. My dog is barking like mad, wondering why my voice is raised.
Then my friend hits me with it. He says “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but that’s just White Privilege talking.” I sat back stunned. Incredulous. I really got schooled then, for over 30 minutes, and I deserved all of it.
I flash back to Dr. Ferguson Reid – remember the old dude at the beginning of this saga? I think about what life was like for him while he was doing voter registration and running for office. At first it was separate water fountains, back of the bus, poll taxes and literacy tests.
Even when those laws were changed there were still lynchings and beatings and roads you didn’t drive down at night if you were a person of color. It just wasn’t safe. And it still isn’t safe.
I like to drive fast, really fast, and I am able to risk it because I am white. I may get pulled over, I may get a ticket, but there is very little chance that I will be beaten or killed. Which is NOT true for a person of color, even how many years later?
Somehow I forgot that, was unconsciously minimizing that, or just didn’t want to see it or believe it. My friend called me on it and it didn’t feel good. It hurt. It’s not at all the person I think I am or the person I want to be. As my friend said “You are too smart and empathic not to get this”.
The big thing I wasn’t getting was that my decision to not vote for the Democratic candidate if I didn’t think they were close enough to my definition of good was an example of white privilege.
That was my answer to where Dr. Reid got his patience. What the fuck was I thinking? Patience wasn’t something he had a choice about. How dense could I be?
People of color voting then weren’t choosing between “okay” and “better”. They were choosing between bad and awful.
I think maybe Dr. Reid’s patience comes (admittedly not voluntarily) because he believes in playing the long game. That incrementally ever so slowly things change for the better when you move people toward that goal. That’s what he’s been doing for years and that’s what 90for90 is doing now.
I realized that my insistence on wanting to take my ball and go to my safe home if the game wasn’t played my way is an indulgence. It IS white privilege. People of color don’t have that option because they have no “safe home”. Home is the skin they inhabit and the pigment of that skin matters. Here in the United States of America in the year 2015, it is not safe to be a person of color.
That’s why from now on I’m voting for ANY Democrat in any race ALL the time.
Another way to say that more succinctly (something I’ve never been accused of so I don’t know how I’d react) is this below.
Mr. Willis of Ohio, in an episode of the West Wing, explained it much better but here it is from the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Sure, there has been an amendment but that amendment didn’t seem to reach the hearts and minds of white American people. The laws that were put in place to enforce and ensure that this amendment is a reality are being chipped away bit by bit by the Republican Party. That’s why I’m now convinced I need to vote for the Democratic Party in every race.
* I deeply apologize for it taking me so long but I’m here now.
