The White Fragility About White Privilege

I had an epiphany about certain cultural realities almost 20 years ago. At the time, I was newly married, in grad school studying medical anthropology, and living in Dallas, TX.

I had been reading copious amounts of scholarly works about ethnicity and culture. I had been trying to explain habitus and systemic racism to undergraduates who were mostly white. A few of my fellow grad students were not white and had become close friends, and they had shared some anecdotes of their own experiences with racism with me. In sum, I thought I had a least an inkling about how it must feel to live in systemically racist culture.

Then I pulled off one of the several multilane freeways going through Dallas to get gas, and realized I didn’t know jack.

The station was one of those where you didn’t pay at the pump, so I went inside to pay for the gas.  When I walked in two things became immediately apparent. First, I was the only white person in the station; everyone else was black. Secondly, the black people around me had changed their behavior instantly lest they scare me. 

When I entered the station, people were had relaxed body posture, were talking loudly, and joking with each other. The minute they saw me. everyone – especially the black men – lowered their voices. Everyone code switched to a more mainstream, white-adjacent form of address. People were careful not to crowd me. One tall, strongly built man even moved to put a woman between himself and me while we stood in line. Everyone moved carefully, in an obviously non-threatening manner.

If I hadn’t been an anthropologist, if I hadn’t read ethnographies and sociology texts about how minorities often have to learn certain behaviors to avoid being reported to police or being seen as axiomatically dangerous, I might not have noticed what was happening around me. However, I had been studying this phenomenon, so I did notice … and it broke my heart.

Why should this small crowd of human beings, people who were just minding their own business in their own damn neighborhood, feel constrained to modify their behavior for me? Why had I, just by virtue of my skin color, been given such importance, such power?

Here’s why.

In part, they were probably trying to be nice to a stranger in a strange setting. White people usually don’t have to think about how weird it is to be the only person of a certain ethnicity in a space, but most people of color have experienced it at some point. Black people are not supposed to be ‘nervous’ walking into a store filled with white people and avoid stores in white areas the way white people often unspokenly avoid stores/churches/neighborhoods that are predominately black.  Most people of color know how uncomfortable it can feel to ‘stick out’ that way, and were sympathetic to my position. 

The other, more horrible, reason they were being nice to me was they didn’t know if I was going to freak out about being a lone white woman in a group of black people. They had to worry that if they didn’t do everything they could not to look dangerous, I might call the police crying because I got scared. If the police came to rescue me, and tensions escalated, one of the black people around me could have gotten arrested and hurt. Someone’s life could have been ruined by accidently scaring me simply because I was a white woman.

Here’s the kicker: neither I or the police who theoretically came to save me would have been consciously trying to be actively racist. We would have been reacting to the constant and pervasive image of the ‘dangerous black man’ that saturates American popular media. I would have been legitimately afraid, and they would have assumed I had a real reason for crying and being afraid. 

Standing in line at that gas station, I realized how easy it was not to see systemic racism from the white side of life.  I had never considered the fact that in several of my classes, there was only a single black person. I had never thought, even once, that they may have felt ill at ease in a crowd of white people. Why should they? White people are good by default until proven bad, right? A person of color is expected to give us the courtesy of assuming we are NOT racist until we prove otherwise, but a black teen in a hoodie is ‘reasonably’ considered a threat to white people without proof.

Systemic racism and white privilege was, I realized, a million little things that I didn’t have to think about by virtue of my skin. My privilege didn’t mean life was easy for me — I have high-functioning autism and other problems – but white privilege meant that my problems are not made worse by the racism. I have been upset when I’ve been pulled over for a speeding ticket, but never afraid a police officer would harm me. Doctors have ignored my pain because I am a woman, but never because I wasn’t white.

During the time I was the only white person in that gas station, I wasn’t sure what to do to make it easier for the black people around me … to let them know I wasn’t going to flip my shit. I’m not great in social situations, but I felt holding up my hands and shouting “I come in peace!” was not the tact I should take. Thus, I turned to the older black lady next to me, smiled, and made a comment about the weather. She smiled back, and agreed it was hot enough to melt brass doorknobs. People around me relaxed a fraction, but I noticed the black men were still leery of getting too close. I paid for my gas, and left.

When I got home, I called a friend and fellow student, who was also black, and apologized that I had never thought about how hard it might be for her to be the sole representation of blackness in an entire anthropology department of the university. That I had never once thought of the fact she routinely went with me to places were 99% of the crowd was white, while she had always let me know in advance if we were going somewhere where most people were going to be non-white. I hadn’t understand why she had told me, until then. I never, as a white person, considered the fact that she may have been initially modifying her behavior around me so as not to scare me. I just thought she ‘loosened up’ around me and outside of class because she was shy and it took her a while to feel comfortable with new people. I had never had to think about the fact she routinely had groups of friends in her house where she, her husband, and her children were the only non-whites in their home. Her gatherings had not become more multiethnic over time because she had suddenly gotten non-white friends; she had found the white friends who wouldn’t gibber if they were the ones in the minority and had invited them to those parties too.

My friend was, of course, nice to me about it all. She told me she hadn’t expected me to think about systemic racism all the time, because there was NO WAY I could see all of it without living outside of my whiteness. It wasn’t my fault that I was given white privilege, any more it was her fault when people were racist to her. All we could do was to be aware, and try to make it better for our children and grandchildren.

I’m not sure I’d be as kind, if our circumstances were reversed. I am afraid I’d be bitter that my son might get shot for wearing a hoodie, while hers would not. I’m afraid I’d be angry about systemic racism, and hella pissed at the people who refused to acknowledge it. If I were black, would I like or trust white people who claimed I was their friend but didn’t care enough about me to step up to dismantle systemic racism? Would I see their concerns over looting as a way of saying the lives of black people were less valuable that storefronts?

I have think to that an underlying reason for the angst over Black Live Matter and anti-racism protests currently happening is white fear that people of color might be angry enough to lash out. It is why Facebook and other social media sites are filled with memes expressing the white fears that all BLM protesters are looters, and might be coming to riot in white neighborhoods. When white ‘counter-protestors’ show up with bats and guns to try to hurt and intimidate BLM protesters, they are telling themselves it is not racism – it is to ‘keep themselves safe’. When they defend police brutality and lack of accountability, it is because they think the police are the ones standing between them and angry gangs of rioting, looting black people who will hurt them for being white. That’s why alt-right hate groups like the Boogalou Bois are pretending to be BLM or ‘antifa’ and threatening harm … they want a race war and know that people can be motivated to participate if they are convinced the ‘Others’ are out to get them. If white people are made fearful enough, then killing black people becomes an act of self-defense rather than a lynching. It’s justifiable self-defense when white people or cops shoot a black person, because they can claim they were in fear for their lives. 

I also think too many white people see the BLM protests as the onset of ‘reverse racism’ — where they are the ones punished for their ethnicity –- rather than a quest for equality. White people must be aware of white privilege on a deep level, or they wouldn’t have such a knee-jerk fear of losing it. White people know it would suck to have to constantly prove they weren’t racist, the way people of color have to prove they are respectable.

Why else would something as simple as the idea that black lives matter  be causing social and political backlash – including physical violence on the part of “counter-protestors” — against it?

A lone young woman protests with a BLM sign while overgrown men scream in her face. Later on, her sign is torn away & she is assaulted. No protest is too small when calling out injustice. from r/PublicFreakout