“White privilege doesn’t mean white people have perfect lives. It means that white people do not have to deal with institutionalized, systemic racism in addition to their everyday problems. It means institutionalized, systemic racism does not cause white people’s everyday problems.”
But sometimes, institutionalized, systemic classism and economic disadvantage do. Every day.
And sometimes people of color may have to deal with issues of color, but not those other things. And sometimes we have to deal with all of those things.
But let’s not conveniently delude ourselves that there aren’t white people who really aren’t that all that privileged compared to some people of color. If you’re a person of color who has the luxury to be posting about social justice on social media, you’re probably fairly more privileged than that white kid who’s probably not getting three squares, may not have all their teeth, may be several grade levels behind in literacy, thinks Mountain Dew is an appropriate nutritional stand-in for clean drinking water, and will be lucky to ever find themselves in an environment in which the mere idea of social justice – even for their benefit – is even a thing.
I’m a woman of color, and I can recognize that I’m a hell of a lot more privileged than some white people out there.
Now I get that some white person is going to conveniently interpret this to mean they are not privileged in the ways in which they actually are.
It’s not that either.
It’s just that it doesn’t serve any good purpose to conveniently omit certain truths just to further our own agendas.
And I already know that simply saying something like this makes me an enemy of justice to some people.
I think it is simply just to acknowledge and say it.