For the 1000th time, and for the people in the
back, white privilege is not a tangible benefit you get for being white. It’s not extra money deposited in your bank
account for being white. White privilege
is not a coupon code you get for whitewater rafting trips and pumpkin spice
lattes; it’s not a trophy you get to hit Black people with when you don’t like
them in spaces where you don’t think we belong.
White privilege means never having to know the pain of being something
other than the norm. White people have
been the norm since the architects of history erased Black accomplishment and
rewrote white people as the heroes. You have what no Black person, no person of
color can ever hope to have in this lifetime; you have the benefit of the
doubt. The world will always see you,
your opinion, your voice, and your beliefs as more valid than mine because of
your whiteness. That is white privilege.
Society has never hated your whiteness. You were not born into a society whose
foundations were predicated on the assumption that you were less than
human. The fact that you have never had
to contemplate what it feels like to have skin that is universally despised,
the fact that people with your skin color are seen as universally right, just,
beautiful, and smart, the fact that you have never once been seen as a threat
because of the color of your skin is the very definition of white privilege.
You've never had to manipulate your identity to compensate for the fact that
you are seen as less than right out of you mother's womb. Unless you have been
raised in a society where you, where who you are as a person, is hated for
superficial and false reasons, unless you are powerless to change that
perception, you will never understand what the pain of not being white in a
society that worships whiteness feels like.
White people, you have never lived in a world where your
whiteness has been viewed as inherently inferior so you have that advantage
over Black people. That is a privilege. You have lived your entire life in a world
where God was created in your image, that’s not anything close to what I can
say so you have that advantage over me.
You exist in a world where you’ve been told that every invention of
everything good was from someone who looked like you. That’s not true by the way. White people stole Black/Africans knowledge,
wisdom, wealth, art, and secrets and claimed them as their own. Your anger at
that statement, is racism. That feeling of anger boiling up in you is your subconscious
mind insisting that Black people are inferior and incapable of creating
anything worth stealing. I wish I could
say that I grew up in a world that accurately told the tales of the great
accomplishments of my people, but white men have written history so they are always
the victors and Black people are always pawns.
I wish I could know what it feels like to live in a world
where Black people were Gods, where Black people performed magic and understood
the heavens and the seas, where we were the architects of civilization and art
and science and mathematics, and we lived in harmony together. I can’t live in that society, however. I was born into a society that falsely
believes that people who look like me have never contributed anything to the
world stage. You have no idea what that
feels like because you were white and born into this world created by white men
just for you to feel like you were superior to everyone else.
So, your argument is going to be, “I don’t hate Black
people, I’ve never seen Black people as inferior so you’re not talking about me.”
There are multiple levels of error with that sentiment. First and foremost, you are unaware of your subconscious
beliefs. You can’t live in a society
that broadcasts Black faces as criminals as the first new story every night and
not have that negatively color your perception of Black people. You lock your door when you see a Black
person in a neighborhood. You wait for
the next elevator because you fear a Black person is going to rape and rob you. You shake your head in disgust when you see a
Black woman in Walmart with loud kids and you don’t even care if white kids are
loud. That’s your inherent bias. You might SAY I’m not racist. That doesn’t mean that every single belief
system you have isn’t based on racist beliefs.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled deprogramming. You’ve never turned on a television and been
stressed out because every single show on TV is about people who look nothing
like you, don’t have anything to do with your reality, or make the people who
look like you a fucking criminal or a clown. If you want to find a TV or movie where people
who look like you are the heroes, all you have to do is flip a few channels,
you’ll find it. Me, I have to wait for
February. I have to subscribe to a
streaming service. You don’t know what that feels like, so you have that
advantage over me. You say that’s not a
big deal, that no one cares about that sort of thing. I say that if you turned
on the TV and every show, every movie, every person you saw was Black, every
storyline was about the greatness of Black people, every Black character saved
the day, you would lose your fucking mind.
Every fucking channel is White Entertainment Network. Every fucking channel has white programming
executives creating content based on their personal racist perceptions. Every Black show, every Black movie has white
people behind it inserting their privilege and racist perceptions. Every fucking month is white history month
because your false history, the history where white people are the heroes and
saviors of everything, is all that’s taught in schools.
You are privileged. You’ve
never looked for a book about a topic and discovered that not one single person
who looked like you had authored one. You’ve
never even had to think about something like that, right? That’s a privilege because that is my
experience every time I go on Amazon. Well,
there are no published books, because surely, the publishing community rejected
all the authors who looked like me because they didn’t think Black people have
a valid voice on the subject, whatever the subject may be. You’ve never had to experience anything like
that in your life. That’s privilege.
“Well, that’s dumb!
Information is information, it doesn’t matter what color the person is
who wrote the book! You’re the racist
for caring about what color the author is.” If the shoe were on the other foot,
if you were looking for a book on making stained glass or the history of the
organ in the Roman Catholic church, you’d be put off if the only authors on
said subjects were Black. If every book
you were interested in had a Black author, you’d say that they weren’t as
smart, they didn’t do their research well, that they couldn’t be as smart as a
white scholar on the subject. That’s
your racism whether you want to admit it or not.
What you’re feeling
right now as you form your empty arguments against me is racism. You need to prove that racism isn’t real,
that you don’t have any privilege, and that Black people are making it all
up. That need that you feel to put me in
my place, that anger you feel when you think about Black people saying that
things are unfair and that you benefit and that you perpetuate racism, is
racism. It’s your belief that we don’t
have a right to express any complaints, that if we are unhappy and/or poor,
it’s our own damn fault because you’re just lazy and dumb, your core belief is
that we are inherently inferior, it’s what you’ve been told your entire life in
ways you’ve never considered or contemplated.
You don’t want us to talk about racism because it makes you
mad to think that there are justified reasons we are angry, you want to believe
that our anger is unjustified because you don’t think racism isn’t real. I don’t know how else to explain it to
you. That’s racist. You being mad at me discussing racism because
you don’t like me saying that the system is rigged in your favor is the
definition of racism. It’s denying my
pain because it doesn’t make you comfortable.
And unfortunately for you, I won’t do any fucking more. I’m not going to let you get away with your
irrational, immature rant, telling Black people to go back to Africa in one
breath and screaming that you aren’t racist in the next, and have you walk away
thinking that your opinion invalidates racism.
Sit with it. Digest
it. Understand that you acknowledging
that you have white privilege, acknowledging that you can’t have the same or
even similar painful experiences that Black people have since birth if the
first step to you letting go of the fallacy of white supremacy. I know you
think that you can’t give up anything, if you concede and admit that racism is
real, you think that Black people are going to rise up and enslave whites. Hell, you were born into a world that was
created to make you appear as if you are perfect. And you’ve grown up believing that. Calm down, I’m not saying you don’t have
insecurities and fears or that you’ve necessarily had an easy life vis-Ã -vis your
whiteness. I’m saying your life has been
better than people with Black skin because we have been told that we don’t
belong here. You’ve been told that you
created everything in the world we live in.
If I had a choice, I would rather be the be living in a
world where Blackness was seen as beautiful.
I would like you to invite you to shut the fuck up because you are
screaming right now that you think Black people are beautiful. Society doesn’t. Society sees Black skin as ugly. Society sees Black noses as ugly. Society sees Black people as criminal, lazy,
stupid, and ugly. You don’t even see Black people as beautiful, you see us as
arousing. Two different things. You
pretending that society doesn’t see Black people as inferior because you
individually see Black people as sexually arousing does not negate racism, it
is an example of your racism. Please
stop being obtuse and insisting that racism doesn’t exist because you think
your personal experience and perception of race invalidates the heinous and
debilitating institution of racism.
Wanting to fuck Black people is not an indication that you
aren’t racist. Wanting to be submissive
to Black people is not an indication that you aren’t racist. I’m sorry, but
wanting to be sexually degraded, humiliated, and tortured by Black people is
not an indication that you aren’t racist. Are you getting it yet? Even if you swear your sexual desires are not
driven by race in any way shape or form, color doesn’t matter, kumbaya, the
whole nine, that doesn’t mean that you are self-aware or introspective enough
to identify your racism.
Racism is far more complex and nuanced than white people who
aren’t active and avid anti-racists have ever thought of. Unless you have dedicated your life to
understanding and fighting racism, you are incapable of speaking on racism
because you know nothing, you know less than nothing about racism. The clichés you repeat, the ones ingrained in
you, those aren’t going to work anymore. You are going to be really pissed off
in the next few years because I have new for you, your reign of having the last
word, of silencing anyone who doesn’t agree with you, the days of having your
opinion being considered more valid than everyone else’s is over.
I’ve got more bad news for you, white people. Denying that you have privilege . . . denying
that white privilege exists . . . that’s racist. Denying that white privilege exists is
essentially saying that the playing field is level and that everyone has the
same opportunity and that Black people are making complaints because we are
ungrateful, we are exaggerating, that things are fair and just and if there is
any evidence to the contrary, it’s all Black people’s fault for being criminal
and dumb. That’s not true. I know it’s what you believe, but it’s not
true. The truth is, that when Black
people are given even the smallest opportunity, even when it comes saddled with
racism and obstacles that white people don’t have, we excel at whatever we
do. If Black people had access to the
same opportunities as you, in a world that hates us, we would excel in every
possible way. You have yet to give us
credit for that. We have survived and succeeded
when you have had every advantage. That’s
testament to our greatness.
Denying that you have white privilege is the blatant denial
of the fact that every system in this country is built to make white people
right and people of color wrong. You
don’t want to think about the fact that the justice system is rigged to
incarcerate Black people and let white people get away with murder because of
the presumption that Black people are more criminal. We aren’t.
We are more oppressed. We are
more disadvantaged. We are denied more
opportunities than whites. If you were
denied the same opportunities as Blacks consistently, for generations, I would
dare say that white people would not have been able to survive.
I had a white man tell me recently that white privilege
wasn’t a thing because . . . follow me with this one . . . white people are the
ones creating false identities as Black people, white people are actively
choosing and pretending to be Black so white privilege can’t be a thing. The basis of his belief is that if so many
white people are assuming Black identities, he reasoned, then white privilege
can’t be a thing because no white person would want to be Black, no white
person would want to assume a Black identity, because whiteness would be
better, thus white privilege is a made up concept and Black people are just bitching
about white privilege. Still with me? This highly educated white man has
convinced himself that white privilege is completely baseless because white
people have arrogantly assumed that they could navigate the world and speak to
the world as a Black person. He didn’t
see that as white delusional thinking. He
saw that as proof that Black people were insufferable whiners who complained about
racism where there isn’t any.
I confess, I lost it.
The more he made his ridiculous and insane assertions, the angrier and
more frustrated I got. I ended up yelling
at him to shut the fuck up and I hung up on him because his assertions were so
fucking stupid and he kept asserting that he had definitive proof that racism doesn’t
exist because it’s white people who are pretending to be Black. In the end he condescendingly said that I was
unable to handle candid conversations because I refused to even acknowledge what
he was saying was valid. That is white
privilege. I’ve never in my life had the
ego or audacity to tell someone else that their experience of life wasn’t as bad
as they said it was because my opinion is different. White men are so used to being told they’re
always right that they think they can negate 400 years of racism with the
actions of a handful of clearly insane white people.
This white man never once considered that Blackness is more
than color, blackness is an experience. Blackness is having grandparents who survived
Jim Crow and oppressive racism shape your sensibilities and your fears about
being Black in a world that doesn’t value you; Blackness is not wearing brown
makeup. Blackness is knowing that your
life isn’t as valid as white people’s, Blackness is not a posting #BlackLivesMatter
in a Twitter post. This guy created an
absurd truth based on his concept of what it means to be Black in his
mind. In his white mind, Blackness is
highly coveted. He thinks Blackness is
the ability of Black men to fuck white women with a big dick. He has no concept of the pain of being
Black. There is nothing painful about
being Black to him because he’s white, privileged, arrogant, and obtuse. More importantly, he never considered that
Blackness is a tragedy.
The tragic flaw with his delusional thinking is those sad
and pathetic white people pretended to be Black, they didn’t actually grow up
in a environment where they were called redbone, or high yella, or Sambo, or
house nigga by other Black people. They never experienced being called the many
creatie racist epithets that white people love to throw around when they are
feeling cocky and safe. They never experienced that sort of pain,
thus, their fake personas are not an indication that racism isn’t bad or that
white supremacy doesn’t exist. These
imposters didn’t grow up in a society where every magazine, every movie, every
TV show, fuck, every myth, fairy tale, and magical creature was Black and they
felt different and flawed for being born.
This guy failed to grasp that Blackness was more than just the skin
color he jerks off to watching interracial porn.
Racism can’t be reversed.
I know you want to yell and scream that it can be. You want to believe that someone calling you
a cracker in the 7th grade is the same as calling a Black person a
nigger. It’s not. Your failure to recognize the historical
context of racism, your failure to empathize and understand that being white in
a world literally created to falsely identify whites as superior, is
racist. I can’t, I didn’t grow up in a
world where my Blackness was revered as sacred, holy, righteous, and pure so I can’t,
we can’t have the same experience of racism.
You are always going to be the beneficiary of the fallacy of white
supremacy; the system was designed for me to never have power over you. I will never know what it means to know that
my identity, irrespective of anything that I’ve personally done, is worshipped
around the world as being the creators and originators of the world as we know
it. African accomplishment and
achievement has been erased from history.
African heroes have been written out of world history. African consciousness has been grafted with
the greed, materialism, and the petty insecurity of white consciousness so that
we have no access to our greatness as a people.
White people will never ever know what that feels like and that is the
ultimate white privilege.
