Thursday, September 30, 2010

The Mindlessness of Privilege

Last night, I was taking a big-picture look at my blog.  In particular, I was thinking about categories.  It occurred to me that in the past month of posting, probably the only category I didn't post in was "How White I Am."

Somewhere between surprised and sad and embarrassed, I decided that this in and of itself is a signal of how white I am.  I think about race and its effects on my family most days. But there are days when I can easily not and rarely a day when race related issues are really up in my face. Heck, I can go 29 days without a post mentioning race.

The mindlessness of being white is a privilege most of us white folks probably never fully recognize or understand.

2 comments:

The Bug said...

That is so true! I have to stop every now & then to address my unconcious racism & to remember that, at least in this country at this time, I am a person of privilege.

Anonymous said...

We talked about this in one of my sociology classes. I was infuriated when one student commented "If they can't take care of themselves, then why should we do it for them?" Normally I try to keep the peace, but I gave a five minute lecture on why that exact us/them mentality caused problems in this country and how we should take care of our brothers and sisters because we're all human. I suppose I saved the professor the trouble.