Privilege

I thought this was interesting after our conversation today about scholarships. On the front page of Tuesday's Norman Transcript is an article entitled Empowered. Below the headline is a picture of three women of color. The story is about the University of Oklahoma's Empowerment of Spirit Award, which is a new scholarship for single mothers at OU. Are they privileged? That's a tough one.

As assigned by our professor, I thought about my privileges today. Number five in Peggy McIntosh's invisible knapsack of privileges is:

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

Normally this is the case barring the Tuesday paper mentioned above. But I watch more sports than anything else, so I also see many other races, especially since I watch a lot of soccer, represented, and generally positively. In fact, since I watch mostly soccer, and some basketball, I would say I see much more people of color than people who look like me. That's fine by me. But I will admit, and I don't think this is racist, that I have taken notice when an NBA team has four whites on the court at the same time. 

Number one on McIntosh's list is:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 

As a white male, yes, I have this "privilege." However, I would hardly consider this a privilege. Like Joe Hight said and I agree, we are creatures of habit and enjoy going where everyone knows your name, but this does not mean I search out places where everyone looks like me. We lived in London for a year and lived in the middle of the Arab district. This was just a couple of years after 9/11. In fact, we flew over on 9/11, 2003, which is a great day to fly if you want some space. I never feared for my safety because I was white and a minority in the neighborhood. I feared for my safety on a few occasions because I was AMERICAN. We often told strangers who asked that we were Canadian. Looking at McIntosh's list of 26 privileges, we did not have many of them in our year in the United Kingdom. I guess this is probably as close as I'll get to being "underprivileged" (no red line), unless I am still around in 2050. I was credited on occasion for being not like other Americans my friends and coworkers had met. Sorry, I know this comparison may be too global. But I was proud when told I wasn't like other Americans they had met, which basically meant I wasn't loud and obnoxious or ignorant of the culture.

Side note, if I could take my family and friends with me, I would totally switch places with Chris Rock. Or even someone less famous and rich like, a Mos Def or Andre 3000. I realize that they may have had a tougher childhood but I think their success now may have made up for that.