White Privilege...Continuing the Conversation

On July 1st, I sent out an email asking for your thoughts and feelings when you first heard the term, "White Privilege."

Click here if you didn't happen to read that email.

Yup. It's over a month later and I'm just now following up. I'll tell you why--it is because I'm doing so much internal work on antiracism and sometimes I can feel like I don't know enough (I don't--it's a lifelong process). And I'm scared of saying the wrong thing.

BUT--I KNOW that this conversation is just SO DANG IMPORTANT. So here's the thing--I may say the wrong thing! In fact, as so many of my teachers right now are saying (teachers are: Desiree Adaway, Trudi Lebron, Myisha Hill, Andréa Ranae and so many others that I learn from every day on social media platforms and books I read!) to me in their teachings: YOU WILL MESS UP. DO IT ANYWAY. Sigh.

Do you relate to the fear of saying the wrong thing and letting that stop you from having conversations about racism?

FIRST OF ALL--THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR FEEDBACK IN THE SURVEY!

To all of you that took the time to respond to the survey with your beautiful, open honesty, I SO APPRECIATE YOU.

I want to share some of the responses with you:

• "I did not believe it existed, I was defensive to the idea that it existed." Short and to the point--this response sums up what a lot of you felt and thought when you first heard the term.

• "Guilt, confusion."

• "I thought it was all going to get out of hand. Then realized it needs to get out of hand . I was kind of mad to keep returning to the same topic and wondering if we’ve gotten anywhere over time. I felt sad. It made me reflect on my past and my families past. I really had to keep returning to being open and listening. Just empty my cup consistently."

• "I was vaguely aware of not being pulled over just for driving around, but I had no idea the extent of my privilege in the world until recently. I didn’t react to the terminology the way I’ve seen some white folks but I just didn’t realize the depth."

• "I first thought, but I'm a woman."

• "I felt defensive, like it negated any struggle or hard work I had done just because I'm white."

Those are only a few examples. I'm so so grateful for the raw honesty everyone brought to this question. As we continue the conversation I will be sharing additional responses as they correspond to what we are talking about.

As you can see (read), so many of the responses were simply about NOT GETTING IT. Not believing in it. Not believing it applied to "me." Thinking it applied only to rich white people...you get the gist. I think some version of this response is what most people experience--however that is an anecdotal observation on my part.

So what exactly IS White Privilege???

I am going to start by listing what White Privilege is NOT (quoted from this article by Pamela Capalad):

• Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had to struggle.

• Privilege doesn’t mean you don’t work hard.

• Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had tragedy in your life.

• Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had to suffer.

• Privilege doesn’t mean you haven’t been discriminated against in other ways (including, yes, for being White).

I think it is really important to understand that having White Privilege DOES NOT MEAN that your life has been easy. Maybe it has. Maybe it hasn't. However that is not what the term is claiming.

BECAUSE THE TERM OFTEN MAKES PEOPLE FEEL DEFENSIVE, it is SUPER IMPORTANT to define what it is NOT. Right? Because when we feel defensive we are NOT in an open-minded, curious, listening place. Period.

So what the f*@k DOES it mean?

Whew. That is actually a longer discussion so we are going to explore that further in a future email(s). If you've read this far today, THANK YOU. YOU ROCK. I'm SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE.

That said--I don't want to leave you hanging, LOL! So l'll share a brief definition of White Privilege. Please note that, as I said above, this is a longer conversation. As is true with most of life, there is nuance and layers. So we will go there, I promise. Taken from the same article I quoted above, a simple definition of White Privilege is:

"Privilege means you’ve never had to wonder if you’ve been held back or passed over or treated differently because of your skin color, race, gender, or sexual orientation, of things fundamental to who you are as a person."

I KNOW you have lots of thoughts and feelings come up around this. Please feel free to share them with me (in a thoughtful way). As I said, this conversation is so important and I plan on continuing it with you one step at a time.

Love,

Elijah

P.S. I'm having really great conversations around the Patriarchy and how to dismantle it's internal paradigms in my FB Group, The Feminine Rising. I'd love for you to join me there!