04 UNDERSTAND WHITENESS

Once you start talking about race, you are sure to encounter white privilege.

It’s hard to hear criticism of white people without taking this criticism personally or getting defensive, and you may feel that your own circumstances, background or beliefs exempt you from white privilege. But if you stop and think, you’ll discover ways in which you have benefited from being white. Did your grandmother receive a scholarship? Did your father get a promotion? Did you grow up in a neighborhood with high-quality schools which people of color, perhaps at some point in the past, did not have access to? White women are rightly speaking up more about making 78 cents to a white man’s dollar. And still, black men make only 72 cents and black women make only 66 cents for the same work.

From the glamorous depiction of people who look like you in fashion, music, movies and corporate leadership to the pervasiveness of white nationalism, white privilege is woven into the deepest layers of modern American culture. While you can ignore it, you cannot escape it. The past is not your fault, but as inequities are revealed and publicized, you bear responsibility for what you choose not to see, and what you choose not to change.