The misunderstanding of white privilege

When we each consider our lives as a whole, our existence, what we have achieved, where we have failed, it can be measured, or rather scaled, against a spectrum of our happiness. At one end we can put our happiest moment, our greatest triumph, and at the other end, we can place our darkest moment - the lowest to which we have ever been. To quote the most unlikely of sources, Richard Nixon analogised this idea in another way when leaving the Whitehouse when he said, "only when you have been in the deepest valley can you understand the magnificence of standing on the highest mountain."

Depending on the length of your spectrum or the height and depth of your highest and lowest moments affects how you view both your life and that of others. For example, take a star musician or actor who may have spent much of their life living the high life on top of metaphorical (and literal) mountains of money, success and admiration of fans. If their fame dwindles and they return to the 'normal' everyday life that most of us live, they might not be able to cope. They may fall into a depression and addiction because the good times have seemingly gone.

In contrast, for someone who had suffered all their early life, who was perhaps poor as a child, badly beaten by a parent and missed out on many things when they were growing up, then when they beat the odds and get to the normality of an 'average' life then they might see themselves richer than anyone in the world.

Everyone's spectrum is different. Some people get to the peaks of incredible mountains and never venture into the deep valleys in which some people have to live their entire miserable lives. Others clamber tooth and nail out of crevices so deep that when they reach the flat plateau of the mundane, they see it as heaven. And many people, probably most people, in reality live on quite a narrow spectrum spending most of their lives rollercoasting up and down only hills rather than mountains.

There are hard human experiences that pretty much everyone will have to face at least once in life, and which we all have to deal with - the loss of a loved one being the most obvious. Similarly, for many people, their most significant achievements when listed might fall into similar groups: "landing my dream job", "the day I got married", "the birth of my children". These high and low points of our lives act as markers that we consciously and, most importantly, subconsciously are continually measuring our lives and happiness against.

Of course, through life, your two spectrum end points may alter. You are sent to prison, you are diagnosed with cancer, you lose a child then dramatically, and suddenly your spectrum lengthens and skews in the wrong direction. You have a new low against which your life will now be measured.

But if instead, you win the lottery, you find the love of your life, your child recovers from a disease then now you have a new high by which to measure life. The point is we all have a concept of our life and existence, and in these very basic terms, we have distinct points by which to measure how easy or hard, how happy or sad, how successful or failed our life was, is and will be.

Life and the human condition isn't easy. Nobody is saying it is. When I look at my own life, my spectrum has sadly skewed at times towards some very dark low valleys. My achievements in life by many people's standards are remarkably mundane. (I am not married, I don't have children...yet) Still, to me, I am standing on Everest when I compare my life now to the Grand Canyons of the soul and indeed, the very real and dark places I have found myself having to exist.

But what I also know, and I realise more each day, is that at no point in my entire white life has any of my living in the lows nor my existence at the sad end of my spectrum been a consequence or due in part (or wholly down) to the colour of my skin. In truth, most of my low times have been down entirely to my own poor choices, failures or shortcomings. At times like anyone else on this planet, my life has been soul-crushingly hard but never once because of the levels of melanin in my skin. And no matter how I cut that fact or look at it, that is my white privilege.

To say you have white privilege is not to say your life hasn't been hard. There are undoubtedly plenty of white people who have a lower standard of living than many black people do, but that's not the point. Are there are lots of great black cultural icons who are worth millions, billions even, who have more money than lots of white people? You bet there are, but again it's not the point. And, haven't you heard about positive discrimination for jobs now and how hard it is for white men to get one? Again, not the point.

The point is that every black person that now has a better life than some white person somewhere, every black person who has made a million, and all those disabled black lesbians who are (apparently) stealing jobs from white men because of some (imaginary) corporate tick-list have done so against people, systems, institutions, societies, governments and cultures that have judged, limited, restricted, prevented and persecuted them entirely because of the colour they were born.

I do understand when people get upset about the word privilege. It's a loaded word. Here in the north of England where I live and have grown up the word implies you haven't worked hard to get where you are. You haven't grafted, and God forbid in Yorkshire "you dint graft". Privilege means many things to many people, and rarely are they positive. Occasionally, it can still be linked with the concept of honour and doing what is right - "It was a privilege for me to help," for example. But frequently and indeed, in the case of white privilege, it is associated with getting something for nothing. And nobody likes to be called lazy or undeserving. To be told you are privileged when you might be abjectly poor, or had a miserable life, understandably hurts and can enrage someone who has worked hard all their life. But that is still not the point.

White privilege doesn't mean you, your Dad or your Great Granddad didn't work bloody hard to get where they are in life. It doesn't mean you don't have struggles with money. It doesn't say you weren't bullied or beat up as a kid. But here's the point, white privilege doesn't mean you won't face hardship, but if you do, you will face it irrelevant of your skin colour and not because of it.

For all the tiny violin-playing and faux-rage I have heard recently so many people (white people) say the same things: "it's hard to understand what white privilege is", "my family is too poor to be privileged". And here's the best one, "I don't think I have ever seen nor have I ever experienced any privilege just because I am white." E - fucking - xactly! Not seeing it is the fucking problem. Not seeing it doesn't mean it's not there. You simply haven't had to see it. You don't see it because you have the privilege. You haven't had to experience life without that privilege.

When you walk down the street in nice comfy pair of shoes do you ever think "Wow! I am not feeling any sharp stones stabbing into my feet." No, you don't even think about it. Hell, you've probably accidentally stood in dog-shit enough times to know that sometimes you are not even looking at what you step on (or step over) to get where you are. You don't need to. You have those good shoes on, remember? But walk along the same street bare-footed and soft-skinned, and you will dance around and avoid every potential sharp object you see. Just imagine standing in dog-shit without shoes? It mushing up between your toes...

Now imagine being shoeless and having to watch every single step you had to make for fear of stepping in shit. Now imagine the shit comes looking for you too. Furthermore, imagine the shit is thrown at you as you are trying to mind your way through it. And finally, now imagine there's only shit on the ground to walk through. Are you going to do it? My analogy is crude, I know, but white privilege is like that. People don't see the privilege if they are not having to look for it and don't even think about it.

White privilege is never having to factor in the colour of your skin to the decisions or choices you have to make. Nobody is suggesting that being white means you don't suffer or feel pain or that you won't face obstacles in life. But you will not face those obstacles, restrictions, or persecutions simply just because you are white. That might be hard for many (white) people to hear, believe or understand, but it is true. It's a truth that might be hard to hear but remains a damn-sight easier to hear than to live on the other side of.

The thing is, I don't think it is hard to see white privilege. You don't have to look far to be exposed to examples of it, some more toxic than others, every single day. Here are just a few I can think of that I have witnessed or experienced in my life that show that deep-rooted and sometimes 'invisble' unfairness and inequality.

As a child, I never struggled nor needed to go looking for white heroes in the books I read or the films I watched.

Growing up, I never once had anyone shout abuse at me in the street, or on the sports pitch, or out in the pub because I was white.

Never once have I seen or heard someone almost whisper the word white before describing a white person. Come to think of it when describing a white person rarely do you hear people even feel the need to include the adjective of colour to describe them at all.

Never have I heard someone complain that a white comedian talked too much about being white in their comedy.

Never have I heard someone ask how white a mixed-race child was.

Never have I heard someone make a correlation between the colour of white skin and sexual promiscuity.

Never have I heard someone give someone a compliment only for it to be so undermined seconds late by the words "for a white person."

I could go on, there are too many examples, and hopefully you get the point, but too often do you see or hear something when the colour of a black person's skin has played an entirely superfluous factor in the judgement of what they are doing or experiencing that as a white person, like me, you would never have to experience.

I don't want to imagine that being white has been an advantage to me in life, but the truth is on numerous occasions and often without knowing it will have been. But I don't want it to be. It shouldn’t be. I don't want any of my hard work in life to be tarnished by a privilege I haven't earnt, and I don't deserve. I did nothing in life to be white. I had no say or choice in the matter. I want all the difficulties I have overcome and everything I have achieved to be due to the content of my character and not the colour of my skin. Everybody should want that and for everyone.

White privilege is something that does exist. People need to see it. They need to recognise it in their lives and how damaging it is for everyone. The desire to tear it down and to remove it from their lives should be as powerful as the desire to tear down the racist systems and institutions that surround us. You have the right to be angry when someone accuses you of having a privilege you haven't earnt. But more importantly you should have the same anger when someone isn't given the same equal opportunity as you just because of their skin colour.

We should all be angry that anything any of us do, achieve, feel, hurt, love, experience is affected by what colour we are. We are all human, and the spectrum of human experience on which we all live and all face is ultimately colour blind.

It’s time to understand how powerful privilege truly can be. It’s time to understand that the only privilege that truly matters is the one that comes when you fight for what is right, for what is fair, for what is just, for what is human. There is no greater privilege than that.

We should all want and have the same desire to say, "It was a privilege to stand together on the right side of history."