I’m a middle aged cis-gendered white guy that lives in a gated suburban neighborhood in Texas. Essentially, I’m the epitome of white privilege. Yet, I’ve been scared to go for a walk in my own neighborhood.
After the initial disgusted horror, my first reaction upon seeing the video of George Floyd being murdered in broad daylight by a police officer was to figure out a way to express some sort of solidarity with the Black community by protesting this latest atrocity. I went online and bought a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. There is nothing particularly fancy, artistic, or incendiary about it. It’s just a generic black t-shirt with white block lettering that says “BLACK LIVES MATTER”.
While waiting for the shirt to arrive, I watched as a revolution started in our country and then spread all across the world. I saw people from all walks of lives, races, and political parties standing together in support of Black lives and equality. Even as the situation started dividing people with different political ideologies and rhetoric in the news media strayed, I remained hopeful and wanted to get out and be a part of this movement for change.
Once the t-shirt arrived and I was about to put it on to go for my morning walk through my neighborhood, I found myself afraid. Afraid to put on a shirt with a message that I fervently believe in because of the ire and ignorance that the message evokes in people—many who look like me. I wasn’t afraid for my life (although I didn’t completely discount the fact that the state I live in is conservative on just about everything other than gun laws and safety), but rather the potential confrontations that might come as a result of it.
Full disclosure—I have social anxiety under the best of circumstances. One of the ways that manifests is playing what I call the “What if?” game. This is where I get myself so worked up from going through a cycle of so many questions about hypothetical scenarios that it can become debilitating to the point where I don’t do anything at all.
In this case I started thinking:
What if someone angrily confronts me?
What if someone wants to have a civil discussion, but I say something incorrectly and push them further away from the cause?
What if no one confronts me right away, but instead their distaste for my support builds slowly until one day, out of nowhere, they blow up at me or even my son?
What if?
Over the course of the next couple of days I put aside my “What ifs” and instead started focusing on the fact that I have the choice to wear the t-shirt or not, which in effect allows me to enter and exit this fight anytime I want. That is a privilege that Black people do not have.
If I, the poster child for white privilege, am afraid to put on a t-shirt and walk around the nicely manicured walking paths in my gated neighborhood—how must it feel to be a Black person at any given moment? What would my “What ifs” that lead to endless debates over things like “iPad vs MacBook” and “I really want to go to this con, but what if I get an upset stomach?” be for Black people in this country?
“What if I go buy some Skittles and get killed?”
“What if I am asleep in my bed and police storm in and I get shot 8 times?”
“What if I am buying a pack of cigarettes and a racist cop drives his knee into my neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until all the life leaves my body?”
What if?
Not having to think “What if I die because of the color of my skin?’ is the most basic example of white privilege that I can think of. None of us chose the circumstances that we were born into. And no, I’m not asking white people to apologize for or feel guilty about the privileges we were born with. However, what we do with that privilege and the choices we make as a result of it—that is absolutely on us.
White privilege doesn’t mean that we as white people have never faced any adversity, it simply means that the color of our skin wasn’t the cause of it.
So if you’ve read this far I would like to ask a favor. Take a moment and ask yourself these questions that I’ve been repeatedly asking in my head…
“What if I stop being defensive?”
“What if I listen more and explain less?”
“What if I tried every day to be a part of the solution?”
“What if?”
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