I grew up in a smaller town along the beach; by no means a backwoods village. The folks that inhabit this town have been and have always been 99% white as white comes. 90% inhabitants of this town are rather affluent; bigger homes, boats, cottages up north, no worries of where food comes from, what name brand clothes they will buy, travel frequently, afford top notch college educations for their kids, etc. We live in a white, affluent, bubble. And you betcha! crime is low if almost unheard of!
From what I've heard from several colleagues in this beautiful beach town, the reason why crime is almost unheard of and that we are a peaceful community is because we don't have the problem of having minorities in our community. We work to not be very inclusive or welcoming of outsiders. After all, who wouldn't want to maintain our quaint, cozy, safe, beach town?! This also includes making sure we aren't very welcoming of those who practice religions outside of Christianity. We are pretty tolerable of non-believers because they don't pose a threat to the Christian principals that our city has been founded on.
An interesting thing happened yesterday. A friend of mine from high school posted something on Facebook in where he gave an honest attempt to apologize for posting something potentially offensive to homosexuals. This friend is someone who I've been fond of since high school, although distant now. I attempted to give light that using the terminology "homosexual" was derogatory and oppressive to the GLBT community. A gentleman responded with sarcasm. I responded with, "...said the privileged, white, straight, man". Six WHITE men and one WHITE woman weighed in on that comment repeatedly. All stating that being white doesn't carry any privilege. This sadly escalated to tearing apart gay esteem and everyone stating that white and gender privilege does not exist. All involved in this conversation are from my beloved home town.
It wasn't until my senior year of college, (a primarily white, extremely affluent college), that I was FORCED to acknowledge my white privilege through FORCED education in a psychology class. It was a painful process. I grew up being open to people of different colors, so that meant I wasn't a racist (ha). My skin color, in my head, did not give me some gold path to walk down. Turns out, I can have no money and no education and yet still have so many privileges that non-whites do not have. I implored those that responded with sarcasm and disdain yesterday to simply greet people with respect, speak to build others up (this is Biblical for those red, white, and blue bleeding Christians I dialogued with yesterday), act with compassion, and exude love before anything else. I was then blasted with all sorts of awful things about me being an ignorant, hippie loving, liberal.
So be it. I'm very much so a moderate but if acting in the above gets me called a liberal...then I fully embrace it. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." - Matthew 20:16 The main article that changed my mind in college on white privilege is below. I strongly urge ANYONE who is white to read it.
Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege
By: Peggy McIntosh
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/636447/10105735/1294338496063/Microsoft+Word+-+Unpacking+the+Knapsack+of+White+Privilege.pdf?token=CGJMykMl4i6GI1BIshRmHnXOIZ0%3D
