SOUTH PORTLAND — I lived almost 60 years as a white person without realizing it. Like a lot of other whites, I didn’t get that being white is a thing. It’s not that I didn’t see race. I saw that practically the only Black kids in my suburban high school were the ones bused over from Boston, and that the one Black girl in my freshman college class was bullied for weeks by a group of white boys. I saw that the only people of color in the Maine town where I raised my children were the migrant workers who picked apples. It all made me terribly uncomfortable, but I just carried on. I thought racism was something that only bad people did, that happened in little episodes here and there, and that ignoring people’s race was the most just and loving way to live.
The first time I suspected I was doing something wrong, my daughter was about 2. We were shopping, and a very dark-skinned man walked by. My daughter pointed at him, and, in what seemed like the loudest voice in the store, she asked, “What is that?” He and I looked at each other briefly, and then I turned to my daughter and said, “That’s a man. He’s shopping just like us.” He laughed, I apologized and my daughter accepted my response. This episode proves that I’m not racist – right? It’s not my fault that I was raising my kids in a white bubble – right?
I’m sure you know the expression that fish can’t see the water they swim in. That’s what whiteness is in America: It is the default. People of European descent have defined how to behave, what careers are worthwhile, what is beautiful, what is valuable (and what is not). When we look at movies, the news and advertisements, we see ourselves. When we see people in power, we see ourselves. When we buy homes, we can choose any neighborhood that we can afford. We believe that police will protect us (and they do). In stores and restaurants, we are indignant when we feel like we aren’t treated well. We are members of the biggest (and most powerful) club.
I’m not saying that white people don’t experience pain, trauma, injustice, poverty. We have our share of bad things in life. But what we never have to contend with is racism, and, in particular, structural racism. Structural racism is when racism is so baked into the institutions of society that you don’t even see it. People who are against racism perpetuate it without even noticing.
Structural racism is when (and this is true) most poor Black people live in poor sections of large cities, where school systems have less funding, and where less access exists to health care facilities, banks and grocery stores. These communities’ food swamps (neighborhoods where unhealthy food is overwhelmingly more available than healthy options) contribute to bad health outcomes. A lack of banks drives people to use predatory lending institutions that charge high interest, building debt they can’t get out from under. White poor people are far more likely to live in mixed-income neighborhoods, where the resources are better because the wealth base is broader. White people build a credit score by borrowing money from banks, which helps them build wealth. White privilege means not being trapped into bad conditions because of your race.
If you don’t believe that the world should be set up along racial lines, where some human beings face roadblocks that others don’t, then I urge you to open your heart and your mind. Everything around us conspires to make racism invisible to white people, but you can overcome that. Educate yourself in whatever way works for you – read books, research statistics, watch documentaries – and when you do these things, listen to Black voices.
White is a race. It was invented right alongside Black, about 400 years ago, when Europeans and European Americans were building slave-based economies. Race structures our lives in ways that we white people have had the luxury of ignoring for far too long. It’s tearing up our country, and the only way to address it is to face it.
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