I have a few responses. I think it is good to understand that as a white person and as a man (and as other categories) we will get treated is certain ways by certain people that differs from how a black man or woman will get treated. That’s knowledge, not guilt or being immoral because one is in a category. This is important knowledge because we often judge others based on what we experience often without realizing that their experience might be radically different. I can remember talking to a friend who was n attractive women who had been abused when she was a kid. Most people would not see her as vulnerable. She looked like any adult woman out there. Maybe a little bit shy, but not remotely cowered or frightened looking. But predators and many men seemed to pick up her past, probably often unconsciously.
In a fairly small city with a low crime rate men would regularly walk up to her and make very threatening sexual comments. Now women deal with this more than men, obviously and in general. But when I heard how much this happened to her, I realized that women in general, and some women in particular
are living in
a different world.
A world where regularly men walk up menacingly and say stuff that would likely start fights if they said them to men. That she was regularly approached by predatory energies, even in broad daylight. Some merely flirtatious, but sometimes things like ‘I’m going to fuck you in the ass.’
That’s not my world. I have had the equivalent experience once in my life. Someone called the motel pay phone where I was staying in a city that was new to me and said something like that to me with real malice in his voice. It actually shook me. perhaps he knows where the phone is. Perhaps he is watching me right now. But I went back to my room, I was a fairly big athletic guy and I also had a kind of ‘give it your best shot asshole’ attitude. But it was disturbing.
As a women this would have been a single, rather different experience. If it is regular it would shift how I viewed men. It simply would. She had a boyfriend she loved and male friends. She certainly didn’t decide all men were bad, but it affected her attitudes about men.
To me realizing priviledge is not about feeling like a kind of defacto asshole, it is realizing that my experience is likely different from people in other categories (and, fo course this can be true about other white men too, certainly poor ones, people less educated then me - just the way I talk will get me different treatment instantly from all sorts of professionals. I know I get more respect from doctors, lawyers, courts, bureaucrats, my kid’s teachers, whatever. Generally better.
So just knowing this should add a dash of humility when looking at other groups and thinking what amounts to Oh, I would handle that better, or Why are you so pissed off, a lot of smug judgments that amount to ‘I could live your life better than you are so you are fucked up’.
I notice how I react with rage to border guards and bureaucrats and police and professionals of all kinds when I feel mistreated, often minor things. And I can, using my knowledge, understand that while assholes will treat anyone poorly, I don’t get shit as a rule and if I did, I would
HATE.
Now, this does not mean I think any reactions is OK. But I instantly get the emotions.
And note again: none of this means I should walk around essentially feeling I am defacto bad or evil. In fact it is more like if I let this information sink in I am more likely to understand and feel compassion for others who like live in partly or radically different worlds than I do.
Since I grew up in a very diverse environment - not just diverse through race and religion and class, but also diverse in terms of mental health history, various kinds of PTSD survival and close to a lot of people who were really rather alternative in a variety of ways, I got a big education in how what one is or who one SEEMS to be or how being different can give you regular shit to eat, that generally I don’t have to eat. Though I have had PTSD and I am alternative or different in a few ways, these are less immediately obvious to others. So I can pass, in the sense that some light-skinned blacks can pass. And usually any short interaction with a professional or bureaucrat or police they notice nothing ‘different’.
Given that I have been close to a very diverse bunch of people, this different treatment is something that just sits in my bones. But I think even a more head based knowledge of this kind of thing is useful.
I don’t think guilt is useful. It just puts an unpleasant lid on things and adds more resentment no understanding and helps no one.
I mean if the guilt stops you from going up on a rooftop and shooting black people, well, ok, that’s a worthwhile temporary stopgap.
But otherwise it’s just going to add a mucky creepy vibe to interactions with people different from yourself. More noise and disease and somewhere in there a seething anger.