On examining privilege

The first time I heard the term "white privilege," it made sense to me.Of course, I grew up a solidly middle class white Jewish girl from Long Island, so it wasn't that much of a stretch to me. We weren't even remotely the most well-to-do folks in town, but neither were we anywhere close to the least well-to-do. Solidly middle - we didn't get everything we wanted, but we wanted for nothing.That might be to some a matter of class privilege, and it is. The difference is, anyone of color who has that same class privilege still would face other difficulties that I would never have to deal with.I do recall times when I was called a "cheap Jew" and a "dumb Jew" - despite being about a third Jewish, my village wasn't immune to anti-Semitism. As I got older, I didn't really consider myself Jewish, as I came from a barely practicing family. I decided at one point, not long after being on the receiving end of one of those slurs, that because I was non-religious, I wasn't really Jewish.Sure, nice of me to feel that, but the rest of the world sure didn't regard me as non-Jewish just because I said I wasn't.And even though I didn't really regard myself as Jewish, I would get mad when I would hear other Jews say negative things about other people based on their racial makeup. If we, as the survivors of the Holocaust (literally or figuratively), couldn't find a way to overcome our prejudices, how could we expect better of anyone else?In theory, of course. I still had a ways to go.Freshman year of college, I was talking to a male friend. We were both in the journalism school and talking about career prospects.It was much easier to be in the business as a woman, he said. It used to be great for men, but now the industry was trying to bring more women and people of color into the industry, so it's a lot easier for women and black people in the industry than it is for white men, he told me.I stared at him as if he had an extra arm growing out of his head."Are you kidding me?"He truly believed this. Because before, virtually all jobs went to white men, the fact that some publications were trying to fix this and bring diverse perspectives into their newsrooms, it felt oppressive to him.Years later, this type of thinking would be encapsulated in this quote, which appears to be of unknown origin despite the efforts of myself and others to find who originally said or wrote it:

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

At the time, though, I had no such pithy remark to share. I tried to explain that it was still easier for white men to get jobs in journalism (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) than for women or people of color. That none of us were getting jobs handed to us.It didn't help that the industry was going through a tightening around this time, with afternoon papers across the country shutting down and flooding the job market with highly qualified journalists, making the job prospects for anyone wanting a job at a newspaper that much more difficult. It made that push for equality (which, I might add, has yet to be achieved) feel that much more oppressive, I suppose, because there were fewer jobs than ever before to start with.My first full-time job was as a clerk-reporter at The Miami Herald. I was fortunate to get the job, given the state of the industry. But then got jealous when other people got jobs I felt I was qualified for - and sometimes applied for. I'd put in my time, how were these people from the outside getting these jobs?I am ashamed that I occasionally fell victim to the type of thinking that there were people getting jobs over me because of the color of their skin or their gender. Instead of looking at myself and what I was doing. Or looking at their resumes. Or realizing that if white guys were getting the jobs and I was blaming that on their gender, how could I then blame a person of color getting a job over me based on some sort of quota.I got my head on straight and realized that was exactly the trap that many wanted people like me to fall into. By separating us and making us all look at each other as the other, we continue fighting against each other instead of focusing on the institutional problems.I'd like to pretend that I became "woke" then, but I'm sure it was many more years. At the time, I was nearly broke, making just enough money to pay my rent and for food. That sure didn't feel like privilege. At the same time, I saw that I could go into any store I wanted and no one would bat an eye, because I was just a small white girl. I knew too many people who were just like me except for the hue of their skin who had quite different experiences when they went into stores.Being asked to understand when you have white privilege is not a personal slight. It is not a pretense that you have lots of money and can do whatever you want. It is not an accusation of selfishness.It is simply a way of saying, "Hey - understand that wearing that white skin affords you a status in society that people of color can never achieve, no matter their economic standing."That's not a personal insult. It's not your fault that you have white privilege. No one blames you for that. What is your fault is that you refuse to recognize that you have it and to pretend that people are just complaining or "playing the race card" or if they just tried a little harder and did as they were told, everything would be peachy.The best explanation of white privilege is from Feminist Breeder, and it's worth a read. More than once.As a Jew, I and family members have faced discrimination. One of my great-uncles got kicked out of dental school because he beat the crap out of someone who attacked him for being a Jew. We have family lore of escaping pogroms in czarist Russia. My family members who didn't get out of Russia by the Russian Revolution either died during the Stalinist Purges or during the Holocaust. There are people who, to this day, think I should be dead simply because I'm Jewish.My name and my nose and my skin color let me easily assimilate and escape notice. I've been told many times that I don't "look Jewish", as if that's a compliment, because my hair isn't super-curly and my nose is kind of "regular" (whatever that even means).As a woman, I've faced sexism and discrimination simply because I have a uterus.All of that doesn't prevent me from also benefitting from a heaping plate of white privilege, something I don't regard as a personal insult. I have it. It's not fair that's even a thing, but it exists.It's only a bad thing when you can't recognize that it exists and you benefit from it.Photo by Walt Jabsco via Flickr Creative Commons.