‘White privilege’ on the march: The obsession of seeing everything in race-coloured terms is itself racist.

I understand why you may feel this way and here is why.

  1. Simply categorizing people into any group causes division. So I see how by invoking the phrase white privilege you, the authors, and others feel people are creating division.
  2. A person's group membership is a part of their identity. So I can see how if you believe that people say that white people are responsible for the death of Grey you would say all of them.

However I will have to respectfully disagree and here is why.

  1. The black community has a problem with racist police regardless of the race of the police. This is a issue that is salient and we know and discuss. It was the subject of a scene in Boyz in the Hood and a line of a song in Fuck the Police.
  2. The issue goes beyond Baltimore. Yes there will be situations where a black person is killed by a black cop but that is not what we usually see. If you look at Ferguson, the police force was primarily white where the population was primarily black. In San Francisco, a bastion of liberal America, cops were sending racists text messages. As they were in Florida.
  3. I believe that there are advantages in this country (and world) depending on what category you are in. As an example, you are at an advantage if you are male, straight, Christian, able bodied, English speaking, tall, healthy, and so on.

I am most of those the things on that list and I realize that I'm at an advantage because of them. But I'm also black and I realize the challenges that come with that.

Example...I live in San Francisco (where cops were sending racists text messages) and I walk to the gym in the morning. Now when I walk to the gym in the morning it is cold an I wear a hooded sweatshirt. And because

  1. I have been stopped by the police in the city
  2. I know there are racists cops in the city
  3. Unarmed black men are getting shot by the police

I have to make a conscious choice to not put my hoodie on my head so I don't look "suspicious" and not have my hands in my pocket so I don't pull them out so the police don't think I have a dangerous object. So now I'm walking to the gym cold as fuck so I can minimize my worry about being shot by the police. And my mother worries about me in that regard. That is me, a black man with a PhD and zero criminal record and I have to worry when the police drive by me.

Now I have never been, nor will I ever be white, but I would like to know how many white men have to worry about that.

TL;DR: I understand why the author feels this way, but as a black man I have to change my behavior in ways because I'm black so I don't risk getting shot by the police.

/r/TrueReddit Thread Link - nationalpost.com