[Colleen32010]

Reading your question and reading the responses only reinforced my own opinion: Privilege is like oxygen – something you are aware of only when it is taken from you. Most white people don’t consider themselves racist. They don’t use the bad words. They try, or believe they try, to treat everyone they meet equally. It’s like this – if I go to rent an apartment, and the real estate agent has a big smile and a kind word for me when they open the door, I’m not going to think to myself, ‘I wonder if she likes me because I’m white?’ I’m going to think, ‘Wow, what a nice lady.’ Even if the Realtor is a blatant and unapologetic racist, I might never realize it unless she goes out of her way to make a comment, whereas if she opened the door and frowned when she saw my face, I would wonder what’s wrong. And if I’m black, I’m going to wonder if it was my skin color that made her frown.

Thousands of things are like that, little daily events in which black people or Latinos or Asians have to think about whether their race affected the way they were treated. And white people don’t have to. It’s not really a conscious thing. When I am discriminated against because I’m a woman, say, or hell, because I’m Irish, I realize it almost immediately. But when I’m given preferential treatment, I may not even realize it, and if I do I’m more likely to think it’s because of my personal charm – no one wants to think that people like or dislike them because of things beyond their control. White people know intellectually that racism exists, but once you’ve removed the blatant signals (no lunch counter signs or designated bus seats), it’s hard to see how it works in your favor. I don’t think about the fact that I’m not being followed when I walk around a department store. When I go to get a loan from the bank, I worry about my credit rating, not my skin color. So I think it’s hard for most white people to understand black people’s perspective – they simply don’t have to think about race all the time. They don’t consider themselves or their family or their friends racist. When they conjure up the image of a racist, it’s likely to be some Alabama klansman in a hood, not an ordinary traffic cop or store clerk. So from the persepctive of the average white person, racism appears to be much less of a problem than it is. I’m trying to be more sensitive to it, but it’s difficult; the benefits I get from it are almost invisible to me.

User Detail :  

Name : Colleen32010, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 21, City : New York, State : NY, Country : United States, Social class : Middle class, 

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