I was in my open garage last night - trying to record some musical tracks on my multi-track recorder, when this white teenager with a skateboard interrupted me to ask about the microphones I was using. Or rather, he saw the ones on the stands and asked what they were.
The kid's questions were in an of itself, harmless. But it occurred to me afterwards, him being a white male teenager in a largely white neighborhood could walk onto someone's private property and simply start asking questions to a perfect stranger - without issue.
Could I as a non-white male - ever do the same thing to someone else? The recent murder in Georgia came to mind in my hypothetical scenario.
When I tried going through all the possible reasons why one was actual, and the other almost always theoretical (and thus both improbable, and likely fatal), sadly the only conclusion I could draw was white privilege.
A definition -
White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.
When I look at that and think back to yesterday evening -it's hard to argue that what I experienced was just as described in the definition above. This kid (a teenager) benefited from his skin color and gender to do something which if I did would end violently or fatal for me.
In many ways, it's the 'pleasant' mask of White supremacy.
The kid's questions were in an of itself, harmless. But it occurred to me afterwards, him being a white male teenager in a largely white neighborhood could walk onto someone's private property and simply start asking questions to a perfect stranger - without issue.
Could I as a non-white male - ever do the same thing to someone else? The recent murder in Georgia came to mind in my hypothetical scenario.
When I tried going through all the possible reasons why one was actual, and the other almost always theoretical (and thus both improbable, and likely fatal), sadly the only conclusion I could draw was white privilege.
A definition -
White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.
When I look at that and think back to yesterday evening -it's hard to argue that what I experienced was just as described in the definition above. This kid (a teenager) benefited from his skin color and gender to do something which if I did would end violently or fatal for me.
In many ways, it's the 'pleasant' mask of White supremacy.
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