White Privilege
If you are white and aren’t familiar with white privilege, and privilege in general, it’s well worth your time to become familiar. It’s worth noting that if you are reading this and are white, you have benefitted from white privilege throughout your life, whether you know it or not.
While Ijeoma Oluo goes into far greater depth in So You Want to Talk About Race, Lori Lakin Hutcherson has written a post briefly explaining it to a friend that acts as a primer through examples; here’s just one:
When my older sister was 5, a white boy named Mark called her a “nigger” after she beat him in a race at school. She didn’t know what it meant, but in her gut she knew it was bad. This was the first time I’d seen my father the kind of angry that has nowhere to go. I somehow understood it was because not only had some boy verbally assaulted his daughter and had gotten away with it, it had way too early introduced her (and me) to that term and the reality of what it meant—that some white people would be cruel and careless with black people’s feelings just because of our skin color. Or our achievement. If it’s unclear in any way, the point here is if you’ve never had a defining moment in your childhood or your life where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.