This week in class, we got the opportunity to watch a filmed lecture from famed lecturer, Tim Wise. One of Mr. Wise’s main topics was that of privilege. From what I got out of his speech, privilege is the difference of treatment and judgment people get, just because of the color of their skin. He mentioned many examples, some of which have been kept under wraps by today’s media. If the mother of a white upper-middle class man happens to die in a hospital or nursing home due to neglect, it appears all over the news. But where was CNN whenever 1 million African Americans died in hospitals last year due to the same neglectful treatment??? Wise also mentioned the that police officers pull over, search, and assume that minorities are drinking and driving and contain illegal substances, when in fact white men are more apt to be doing those things. During a road block, the unsuspecting white man smiles, waves, and drives off with a trunk full of weed while the Latino working man is humiliated by being publicly search and ridiculed, and is found to be innocent.
Media was also discussed in class, and by Mr. Wise. Our class was asked the question of if we could remember the last time an Asian man had a romantic scene on screen in an American film or TV show. Hardly anybody could. Why is this? The only romance scenes I can remember are with Brat Pitt, George Clooney, or Jake Gyllenhaal. Although, Will Smith WAS just claimed the highest-paid actor by Forbes magazine… As mentioned earlier, the media jumps all over the white man’s neglected grandmother while the millions of minority deaths are left uninvestigated. And remember all those horrible school shootings, bombings, and sniper incidence in the recent past? All committed by white males. But yet we don’t look at the white males in our neighborhood and shake our heads at those hoodlums. No. We point our finger across the tracks and blame the minorities for our mistakes. The media has lots of power, and if it would only flex that muscle, maybe it could help to change this unfair path of white privilege.
Lately I have been keeping my eye out for privileges I have seen or heard around me. Not only have I seen privilege by race, but by bank account and zip code. Now some of these may seem minute and caddy, but they are privilege non the less.
1. I saw a store clerk help the nicely dressed mother and daughter, while completely ignore the Latino girl clearly needing assistance.
2. A under qualified student got an internship just because their father knew someone, while a perfectly qualified student did not even get an interview.
3. A well known family’s teenage daughter gets pregnant and it is just another “trial”, while other families are looked down upon as being irresponsible.
4. A member of a family with power is able to get out of a huge felony with nothing but a scratch on their record, while a black teenager is put behind bars for a petty crime because he is believed to be a “danger to society”.
5. A girl is praised at work because she is cute, while another one is criticized on things she did not even do, because she is not as good-looking.
6. A worker at an information table set up in a public place goes out of his way to talk to a group of cute girls about what he is promoting, but is short and almost rude to a group of a different race that walked up.
7. A person cut ahead in a line of people waiting to order food, but when another student of a different race is just trying to cut THROUGH the line to get somewhere else, people stop him and tell him not to cut.
8. An Indian person walked by and a group of white boys proceed to mutter terrorist comments at his expense.
A lot of these are things that I would not notice, or even acknowledge as privilege unless I was informed about this problem in class and asked to look for it. The ease of finding these examples of privilege is shocking to me.
I don’t think that society still believes in the one drop rule, but I am sure there are still a few individuals out there that secretly practice this horrific tradition behind closed doors- just like those white residents in the neighborhood across the road from one which was full of minorities, who tried to pass a rule that only relatives could reside in their neighborhood too.
I completely agree with Beverly Tatum’s suggestion that we as adults have a responsibility to educate ourselves and then change our behavior based on this new awareness. This class is a perfect example of that. I am already opening my eyes to injustices, but also strives we have made towards equality. It takes getting educated and informing yourself and others on the injustices of our world before discussion, action, and change can occur.
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated
http://www.afro-netizen.com/2008/07/tim-wise-on-whi.html
Before action must come awareness.
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