To ask when you’ve experienced white privilege

[Whitepriv]

Sadly I know I have. In East London at a high rise, was checking into an Airbnb and couldn’t find the lockbox despite instruction so was looking extremely dodgy, looking under lots of the block of flats windowsills. There’s a young black man hanging out a few metres from me smoking a cig.

Police come by and ask me if I could do with any help and if I’m okay. I tell them that I’m fine but thank you. In less than a minute, I see the same police moving on the young black man for hanging around outside the flats, with a ‘you can’t loiter here’. Sad 😞

I am not white, have a foreign accent, middle aged woman in male dominated industry, no wonder I am so undesirable when it comes to interviews.

Therefore, if you don’t mind, I will leave the guilt-ridden performative self-abasement to those who have actually experienced privilege and have a modicum of self-awareness and decency.

I’m sure all the time.

An Instance I remember and noticed:

• getting on an airplane with three friends, two white men, me (a white woman) and a black woman. Three of us just walk onto the plane not problems. Black female friend has her bags searched supposedly at random.

When I went to the USA on holiday a few years ago.

I remember asking myself if I’d be going if I was black. The answer was probably not. I’d be terrified of being stopped by a trigger happy traffic cop.

I’ve since discussed this with black friends and several of them would never ever travel to certain countries, the US, the ME...

Ok Im blonde, green eyes & pale, my younger sister is dark haired, brown eyed & olive skinned of mixed race appearance.

So in comparison to her we both went to the same rough comprehensive 20 years ago but I didn't miss the last 2 years of school & I got to go to sixth form as I didn't get constant racial abuse from the other pupils that was ignored by the teachers.

I don't get searched every single time I go through security at British airports like she does.

I can walk past groups of men without being afraid of being told to go back home or worse.

I can go shopping with my mum who looks like me & not have people shout 'black man's bitch' at her.

I don't get extensively questioned on my ethnicity by every man I date.

Etc

There are lots of other ways I experience white privilege I'm sure but I'll start with those.

@JesustheCabbageVan What sort of explanation were you expecting? I gave an honest answer - no, I have never experienced white privilege.

@AgeLikeWine Yours is an interesting point. I am old enough to have experienced sexism in education and the work place in the 1970s and 80s and it wasn't a great feeling. I too grew up in a council house and watched while upper middle class kids received more privileges than me.

So perhaps I do have some idea of what it is like to be discriminated against on the basis of my sex and class. I think that it still goes on but it's a bit more subtle now

When I go out with friends who are black, at least once in every night out someone assumes they are a dealer and asks to buy drugs off them. That never happens to me, ever.

When I was a student social worker with a black practice educator, the number of times we would attend meetings etc and people would assume I was the qualified experienced SW and he was the student was appalling. (Also appalling was my initial response which was to bring up to him afterward how uncomfortable that had made me .)

There are too many examples to list here. I have white privilege all the time. There will be millions of incidents I haven't even noticed, because of that privilege.

The second viewing was with the seller rather than the estate agent and I felt really hesitant about going without DH because I felt they would respond more positively to a white buyer so we'd be more likely to get it if he was there.

Were you treated differently?

It's really depressing that this is a concern in 2020. I hope you weren't treated differently.

Yes every day.
My niece & her friend are on a beauty course they paid €1000 for the course with supplies. Her friend was given white people's makeup she explained all her family friends for models have black skin this makeup wouldn't do. Since this she has been bullied, she has been with Dniece since junior infants p1 she was bullied in secondary school and now as an adult. It is disgusting how in an apparently diverse Ireland this happens.
Apparently she is the first black girl to question the makeup of the 100's of BAME who qualified there, the college changed it reluctantly.

Obviously - when my non-white colleagues get stopped at passport control or security, every time, whilst I usually sail through. We all have British passports and work for the government.

But actually, all the time in so many different ways.

I too grew up in a council house and watched while upper middle class kids received more privileges than me

Of course, because class confers a privilege of its own. Your lack of class privilege doesn’t negate white privilege.

@2010Aussie You experience it every day if you're white. Irrespective of gender or social class. It's that simple. I know as a woman it's harder for us than the average mediocre white man. But that's not the same as being a POC. It's just not.

'performative self-abasement'

Yeah. It's just smug tedious wokery, isn't it. Just so dull and embarrassing, this recognition that white people never need to think about the fact that they're white.

FFS.

Lots of these examples aren’t to do with white privilege. I’m not white and I’ve experienced a lot of these examples, including getting a job over equally qualified black candidates.
I worked in the City but I was actually terrified of applying for jobs because it was all run by middle class white men. I thought I would experience more racism than I had, luckily not but all people of colour know that their opportunities and pay have a lower ceiling than their white peers.

I’ve grown up knowing I had to work harder to have opportunities. I pass that on to my children. They know they have to get better results than their white peers.
My brothers and dh have had to change their first names in their cvs just to get interviews.
We have to continually deny part of our experiences and culture in order to fit in and be more acceptable.
I know Black people who will never eat a banana in public.
These are the things that give you white privilege. It’s stuff you’re not even aware of.

Anyone remember this news story:

www.metro.co.uk/2017/07/13/racist-soap-dispensers-dont-work-for-black-people-6775909/amp/

A quote from linked article:

The soap dispenser is another example of technology not recognising different body types, in 2010 Gadgetwise reported that the Xbox Kinect did not recognize the faces of dark-skinned gamers, Hewlett-Packard’s uneven facial recognition software also had problems and Google Photos’ auto-labeling system misidentified two black friends as ‘gorillas’.

All the time but this is probably the most significant.

As a teen/ early 20 I smoked cannabis, and regularly carried it around. Not once was I stopped, questioned or searched. As a result I don't have a criminal record, and have gone on to live a normal life, completely unaffected by my miss spent youth.

If I was black and had done the same, I most likely would have ended up with a criminal record, which would in turn have cost me my university place (which I probably wouldn't have been offered anyway) and excluded me from my career.

I have never experienced white privilege, but I do experience Asian privilege every time I go visit family in China.

All privileges have borders.

When I used to work in retail, security guards would target black people to watch. Annoyed me as I caught white people stealing more than anyone else, so they were both racist and wasting their time following the wrong people. And white shoplifters did tend to be “let off” by management/security when caught.

The same management would promote white people into supervisor positions virtually instantly. We had 2 black team leaders and they had to work very hard to secure that promotion (1 year), whereas others who were new/shit got promoted within months.

I’ve certainly gotten away with things that I shouldn’t have, which may or may not be related to white privilege.

Eg I hit a man’s car and he didn’t even want me to pay or go through insurance, he said not to worry and was really kind. He said I was pretty and he wanted to take me on a date, I declined the date but he was still really friendly - he never did ask me for payment or contact insurance (he had my details)

Maybe that’s just a female thing though.

Hewlett-Packard’s uneven facial recognition software also had problems and Google Photos’ auto-labeling system misidentified two black friends as ‘gorillas’

Similar happened to me with facial recognition software. The computer for my French passport photo kept rejecting it because my eyes were “not fully open”. I’m Asian. My eyes don’t look like white eyes 👀

Most women would recognise that even men who have shit lives have male privilege. Why is it so hard to recognise that even white people with shit lives have white privilege?

BankofNook. !!!!! What? Bloody hell. Think about moving, how can you bear to live with these people?

Trying to think about this...

Countless times that I'll never actually know about because I can't be two people at the same time, witness things that occur when I am not there etc etc..

The only time I've been aware of it... still not sure tbh.

In Belgium, walking around Brussels, my friend was constantly accosted by homeless immigrant beggars, I was ignored...

Was that because she is Indian and I am white?

Or was that because she's able bodied and I was in a manual wheelchair?

Of all the commonly quoted examples...

I've never actually got a job at interview - because I am fat, disabled, female? (But I have had interviews so... did someone who was black not get one, I don't know).

I have been abused physically and verbally in the street due to my appearance.

I have had repeated experiences of strangers touching my hair, also stroking my skin without consent, to comment however they felt (extremely thick luxuriant very curly hair, tattoos, comments not always pleasant and never welcome!)

I have had people talk over me, ignore me and avoid me - fat, wheelchair, look like an angry bitch - dunno.

Been followed round supermarkets by security on multiple occasions. I either looked poor or dodgy, or both?

Had the police kick my front door in and search my flat without a legit warrant, on the word of a neighbour, accused of being part of a robbery of a convenience store across the road..... I was the person who phoned the police to alert them to the robbery as it occurred but due to my address was assumed to be guilty.

I am certain there are privileges I have that others do not, that black people do not.

But to imply that I have NO idea what it might be like is wholly inaccurate, I have SOME idea... not the full picture by any means.. but yes, some idea.

I will say it again you only have white privilege in the uk if you are a native.
Everyone else has shit. Example Latvian friend goes into estate agent In south London asks for rental list. There are no properties available. She comes out and tells me. I go in and ask and up pops the list. I Said you don’t want me I’m Mrs foreign name. H and I walk out of the tube in a whiter posher part, he is ahead cause of the barriers. Two bored po watch all the white Posh English Past then stop him. Demanding proof he is legal, why he is here etc So I then ask on what grounds did you stop him? He is telling me to cool it or I’ll be arrested. Or how about the time he was dragged down the steps at the train station because he bent down to check the departure board by 4 plain clothes officers? Or the time our kids come home saying our friends won’t play with us because daddy is a gangster? Or the fact that if I apply for a professional job in a private company I have better luck in my maiden name than married? Btw I tend to get more interviews in public bodies in mrs foreign name but then I get the shocked looks when I walk in. As for airport security - he is fine with me. Without me and he is stopped every bloody time.
Since that bloody disaster of a result a couple of years ago the list has got longer. The only white privilege h and I can think of is the children by virtue of British weather look quite white English and if we change their names now before secondary then they can pass as 100% White English. Then we could save them from a lifetime of explaining and proving themselves and oh they may actually get university and job interviews too. But why should they hide half their heritage? I naively thought, before marriage, that racism in the UK was a minority problem. I now see that it is a majority problem. It is entrenched in everything from authorities to financial institutions to business to schools to university to the service industry. Your name, your appearance all bring judgements and from where I’m standing they are continually negative.