Re: Privilege (a draft) for Sam

I read your post on “Privilege” and I took it as a chance to explore what I know about race and racism in America, and how this made me cringe while reading your words. You are my friend and are an intelligent person, and I believe your quest for knowledge is positive; but also that you should be seeking it without asking for others to do the work of explaining it all to you. In an effort to help begin your continued seeking and learning here is my response to your post:

— systematic exclusion and suppression of communities of color since the beginning of the American Colonies
— That social /public policies seemingly built for progress are explicitly designed to keep people of color from doing so (voter laws, predatory housing loans and denial of loans in areas minorities try to buy)
— How even after civil war and reparations Black people were criminalized (ex: states made vagrancy illegal, and then those with a record could not vote/ Poll taxes to vote/ Strict voter ID laws…the list goes on) and disenfranchised from participating in our democracy.
— (after 2012 election where more Black Voters than white…) 2013 US Supreme Court Ruling that ripped out section 5 of the Voter Rights Act (est. through the civil rights movement in the 1960s) – removing voter rights protection. Many states did not waste time putting old voter suppression tactics back in place. (same as above: strict ID laws, poll taxes, felony holders unable to vote. Don’t even get me started on the 1980s Reagan “War on Drugs” and how this criminalized drug use focused on Black Americans. and how this also plays into loss of voting rights for ostensibly low level drug related crimes; same as today for states who have not yet legalized Marijuana)
— Racism shapes everything for Black/minorities and for white people in america. from schools, to the quality of education at said school, what grocery stores are near you/what kind of fresh produce is available, etc.
–New Deal housing programs were to segregate/ “redlining” came from indicating where it was safe to insure mortgages, and you guessed it, Black and other minorities’ neighborhoods were not inside that line. Predatory practices still in place, like the average EIGHT percentage points higher a loan automatically gets raised if you’re trying to buy a home while black.
–Couldn’t buy suburban homes in the 40’s 50’s 60’s if black = no equity appreciation. So today, Black Americans may earn 60% of what Whites do, but they have only about 5% of the wealth. (i.e: unlike their White counterparts who used their home equity to send children to college or to have something to leave behind financially…black families could not progress this way)
— Despite Fair Housing Act in 1968, the inequalities and disparities continue, due to continued residential segregation and steering.
— Health disparities and access to care issues also very prevalent for Black and other minorities in the US
— Biases that establish white or fair as “nice” “good” and other positive attributes, and black or dark as “bad” and “dumb” and other negative attributes (Doll test for kids, in the 1940s and again in 2010 showed these results)

The Fucking “travesty is the inability or the unwillingness of White Americans to see clearly or understand fully this racist reality” – Joe Feagin

You cannot look at a mountain of evidence to the way our country was build around suppressing people, and still believe that everyone’s privilege is the same. Your ability to even think this, shows how privileged you are. This small but somewhat encompassing list I hastily threw together is merely several waves in the storm referenced in the tweet you want to know more about. We are not all in the same boat because we (white) people have not been affected by the systems in our country the same way as our black and other minorities have been. I hope this inspires you to read more articles, follow more people of color on social media, to listen more – and to learn. So the next time you talk about working hard to make changes in your life, you remember the context and the constructs people face who aren’t you. Everyone can work to make changes, but not everyone has the same freedom of movement or the same support (as black men and women and minorities face systemic inequalities, active oppression, or racism, or violence, or hell, even death by those who are sworn to serve and protect) along the way.