White Privilege

White Privilege
“This is not a free country, and life is not what ones makes it, many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.” In this article, it is explained that this man’s “whiteness” protected him from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence. As much as I hate to say this is true, it certainly is. In our society, there are people who discriminate against color, religion, sexual orientation, nationality and so on.
In the article, the author presents twenty-six reasons where whites are more privileged; some of these reasons being…
“I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.”
“I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.”
“If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.”
White people are put at an advantage which puts anyone else at a disadvantage. Privilege simply confers dominance, which is related to the “norm” of society. A male is seen as dominant due to religious and heroic figures of our past. Straightness and whiteness also appear as the norm. How did the world end up this way that people are so furious about who loves whom and who can and cannot be a symbol of supremacy? Age is an advantage, ethnicity is an advantage, physical ability, nationality, religion and sexual orientation. The one thing that everyone has in common, is that every one of these advantages and disadvantages are judged one way or another. There always seems to be a reason for someone hating another. Whether these reasons are personal, or worldwide, someone is always affected.
My brother, half black and half white colored was called the “N” word at school one day. He has gotten bullied in school and has had many racial slurs said to him over and over. It just so happens he is Italian, French, Nigerian, Hawaiian, etc. He technically is (according to his ancestry.com results), more white than black. It is a racial statement, that by the look of my brother, he needs to “go back to the ghetto”, as this other child said. Every day someone is judged, when really we are all a mix of a little something around this big world.