I'd like to share something with you. I'm white. Like grew up in the suburbs, 2 parents, 2 kids, 2 dogs, soccer on Saturday's - white. Ok I'm Portuguese. But unless it's July, you can easily tell, I'm a white woman who grew up middle class.
Is my life perfect? Not even a little bit. People actually don't believe a lot of my stories because shit like that doesn't happen in real life. Let me tell you - it does, it has, I made it through. I wish someone gave me the souvenir photo but I probably threw it away because it didn't have a puppy filter.
I used to struggle with the idea of white privilege. It absolutely used to offend me. I doubted its existence. Realistically though, I never took the time to understand it.
But I asked some questions, did some research, mostly talked to people other than myself, and then asked some questions of people who are like me and here's where I'm at:
Having privilege does not mean I have not struggled. Being white is not something I'm expected to apologize for. White privilege isn't a label I've got to wear that says my life is rainbows and unicorns.
For me - understanding that I have privilege just simply means I get my struggles are different than someone who grew up in the same world but is black. Or Latino. Or really anything other than white.
The thing is - I am white. So while I can listen to the stories of those not like me - those without that privilege - I don't know what its like. Realistically, I never will.
But I'd like to use my voice to speak about it because I would hope that others would do the same for me. I'd really like to work towards making life a little more equal. I know, bet you guys never figured me for a good person, I didn't either but here we are.
Now I get it - life isn't equal and it never will be. And you don't ever have to apologize for the life you have. Being born wealthy or lucky or privileged is not something you have to stand up and apologize for. You don't owe anything to anyone. In fact, if you want to call it life's lottery and leave it at that - go right ahead. You may even believe everyone has the same shot and needs to put in the same work. I'll give you that life is hard and takes a lot of effort. But given two people who are giving the same effort, coming from the same background but one is a minority and one is not - history kiiiiiiind of shows us the white guy is going to win (and I don't say GUY on accident).
You know - while we're at it - someone remind me to do a piece on male privilege because I'm currently living in the South (Texas, calm down, you're the South to the rest of America) and male privilege is flourishing.
Cool Cool - back to privilege. Here's the thing. Privilege is also widely associated with wealth. And it's associated with being bad - making privileged people bad. It doesn't mean any of that. I'm not wealthy (Why hasn't anyone started a Go Fund me for this lifestyle) and I'm not even that bad of a person. But there are people out there who will experience struggles I won't ever experience, simply because of the color of their skin.
To recap - privilege is not something to apologize for, to feel guilty for, or to even take on as a burden. But if you realize it's there - it is an opportunity to learn about the struggles of other people and to work for inclusion in a world that quite frankly is trying to be anything but.