A friend sent me a long and thoughtful email in response to my June 3 post about social unrest and the concept of “white privilege.” His comments prompt me to expound a little more.
The email started by citing a city councilwoman in Minneapolis—a supporter of “defunding” the police—who said that to expect a police response to a home burglary is an example of white privilege. I’m not sure what she meant, and I suspect she wishes she’d given a more nuanced answer, but the example got me thinking more about what white privilege does mean and how the term can be understood in various ways.
My friend finds the term white privilege offensive. I don’t. To me, it is shorthand for the undeniable advantages that I have in society merely because of the color of my skin. It’s as though at birth I was given an invisible packet of permission slips that non-whites are not given.
For example, in my packet I have a pass to stroll through my upscale neighborhood at night without fear that the residents will look at me with suspicion. But if a young Black man were to take the same walk, the first thought that would go through my neighbors’ minds (and mine too, I admit) would be to wonder, “What’s he up to?”
As another example: in a comedy routine 25 years ago Chris Rock said: “There ain’t a white man in this room that’d trade places with me … and I’m rich! That’s how good it is to be white.” (His routine is on YouTube, and the comment can be heard beginning at about 2:00 of the clip.)
These unconscious benefits that we have as members of the majority in
this predominantly White society are what “white privilege” means to me. The term
has been around academic circles for decades but has only recently been brought
into the mainstream through social media, the BLM campaign, etc. And it clearly
has provoked defensiveness and negative responses from many.
That’s the problem with shorthand expressions: they mean different things to different people. But we can’t always use 200 or so words (as I just did above) to define what we mean. There has to be some term to capture the thought. My friend suggested one in his email: “air of entitlement.” I may start to use that phrase.
My friend also finds some of the language surrounding the Black Live Matter movement to be problematic. He wonders why responding, “All lives matter” is inappropriate. I think the problem with saying “all lives matter” is that it dilutes the emphasis on race. People weren’t saying “all lives matter” before the BLM movement began, so saying it now is a bit of a putdown.
Consider this: after the Boston marathon bombing, which killed three people and injured hundreds of others, we kept hearing “Boston Strong.” Suppose someone had said “Yeah, but thousands died in the 9/11 bombings, so New York Strong too.” I think the people of Boston would have felt that the importance of healing Boston had been minimized.
And if after 9/11 someone had said “Yea, but tens of thousands died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the people of New York would likewise have been right to feel diminished.
One author I read about likens it to a wife asking her husband if she's pretty and the husband responding, "All women are pretty." That probably wouldn’t go over too well, right?
Returning to the Minneapolis city councilwoman’s issue, “Defund the Police” is another awkward slogan. The people who use that expression can’t seriously mean to abolish policing entirely. As I said in my August 6 post, without some mechanism to enforce societal standards, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” What the “Defund” slogan means instead, I think, is that some of the police budget should be reallocated to agencies better suited to deal with particular situations.
I believe it’s a fact that most calls for the police involve nonviolent encounters which might be better handled by different departments. They concern issues of mental health, addiction, and homelessness, for example. But people reflexively call the police emergency number to report these situations.
I did it myself once. About 2:30 one morning I woke up to the sound of a homeless woman half a block away shouting F-bombs. (I knew she was homeless and a little nuts because I’d seen her around the neighborhood before). Not knowing the number for social services, and doubting that they would have responded timely had I even known it, I called 9-1-1. Two patrol cars arrived within three or four minutes, and the officers were able to defuse the situation and send her on her way.
I went out to thank them when she had left the scene. They said I had done the right thing to call but also implied that it really wasn’t their responsibility; it was a mental health issue. Since the woman didn’t appear to be a danger to herself or others, there was nothing they could do but tell her to use her “inside voice” in the future.
I think the “Defund” folks are merely saying that it would be a better use of taxpayer money to shift some funding from police departments to other agencies that are better trained to deal with these kinds of issues. Doing so would be consistent with the push to decriminalize and destigmatize people with mental health conditions, addiction problems, etc.
The expressions “White privilege,” “Black lives matter,” and “defund the police” are examples of how words trigger different responses from different people. We should always try to understand the intent before we react negatively.
I’m reminded of a State Department official’s comment years ago in response to a confused reporter: “I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but what you don’t realize is that what you ‘heard’ is not what I meant.”
We must always try to ensure that what we “hear” is the intended message,
not just what our mental filters lead us to believe. ■
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