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 😞

Not me but DH registering dd1 birth in Wandsworth (we lived in Balham). Middle class white guy, positively fawned over by the council workers.

I rarely notice it, I guess that's part of the problem. People have mistaken me as mixed race before, and it's weird how differently I was treated by them, very subtle.

I also believe, in this country especially that people are treated differently according to what class they're perceived to be, it's not nice. I know from experience that it's a rude awakening when people don't treat you the way you're expecting. I.e. lady at Heathrow speaking to knackered and scruffy me - "the flight is full, I'm going to have to take your bag, you really should have checked it." "I'm travelling business, they said I could keep it when I checked in" "oh, of course." suddenly her cats bum face turned to a lovely saccharine smile and she wished me a pleasant journey

MrsPear that is indeed racial discrimination but not quite the same. In the country of their birth your friend would not have experienced this. Every country has power structures and equality but black people have that no matter what ( western country) they are in. They do not have to wait for their accent or that for discrimination to happen.

I would never compare any discrimination that I as white Irish experienced to anything near what black people live through. I have lived with white privilege every day of my life.

I experience the absence of racial oppression every time I buy makeup, "nude" hosiery or underwear, or plasters because these things were designed to be the same colour as me and I don't have to go to a specialist shop just because of my skin colour.

I have mentioned already on this board that in Germany, I faced more sexual harassment in two weeks than in the UK during the other fifty weeks of that year. When I walked with my then-bf, the harassment mysteriously stopped. An east asian couple who were walking about four metres behind us were racially harassed. I turned to check on them and she looked visibly scared so I went back to walk with them and make small talk until they were clear of the area. Walking with my then-bf stopped my sexual harassment, her walking with her bf didn't stop her racial harassment.

Germany is a shithole if you are female and/or brown.

One of the things that always stands out to me as my white privilege is being able to stick my arm out and hail a black cab. When i was with an ex boyfriend who was black, it was basically a waiting game for who would stop for us or not, all because he was black. We'd often end up walking the whole way to a place with no one willing to stop.

Another is that when i was expecting a baby with a black ex, one of our conversations of excitement about what sex the baby might be was intertwined with fear it would be a boy and the additional struggle he might have had to go through. That was an actual conversation we had. I've now got 3 (white) dcs and never in any of those pregnancies did this come up as a concern with my dh. How fortunate we are.

I wasn't thinking about skin colour/ black people when I wrote the post. It was more about religious attitudes.

Not directly experienced, but when I was a teenager and able to visit my dad down in England during the summer holidays I can still remember all the times we would be walking past a black family and he would sneer, or roll his eyes, or mutter under his breath when they were out of sight.

Plus the one particular time back in 2014 where I brought up the awful, awful case of Tamir Rice and he had the audacity to accuse him of being a THUG for playing with a toy gun!

So part of my white privilege is not being sneered at and having the worst assumed of me by bitter, racist people just for walking down the street or playing with toys.

I disapprove of the Islamic code being applied to European society, unless/except where women want to embrace it. My default is to regard it as a repressive sanction applied and enforced by their male relatives.

@XingMing interesting. What religions do you think are primitive?

@ChaoticGouda I had the same with my dad and step mother. Both awfully racist, the straw that broke it for me was when he purposely accelerated his 4x4 at a young girl because she was wearing a hijab. She is my neighbours daughter and she looked terrified. I haven’t spoken to my dad since.

Then you're on the wrong thread @Xing, this is about experiences of white privilege.

So much I probably don’t even notice the half of it. 😔

Being able to confidently say to my dc that they do not need to fear the police. That the police will help them.

@RosesandAnts I think it’s safe to say that she is expressing islamophobia which often goes hand in hand with racism, so are you really surprised by their response to the thread?

I'm sure I must have done at some point, but I wasn't particularly well off growing up and we only had 9 children in our secondary school who weren't white. I then had a Sri Lankan partner for 10 years from 18-28 and a black best friend. I also work in an industry where most people aren't white.

The only two things I can think of are my partner being patted down in a tube station just after the 9-11 bombings and I wasn't and also when we were going into the US together they were a bit more cagey about him (but that could have been because he didn't know where we were staying).

I was part of a social group for 10 years in London and can honestly say that I don't think that London is a racist city at all.

@DayKay Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew, but not an Arab.

Sorry I've forgotten to mention that I was the only white person in the social group.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz really? Plenty of young white boys round where I live would beg to differ.

I think most of the times we're experiencing white privalege we'd be completely unaware.

@Whitepriv How is that ‘white privilege’? You needed help and he was loitering. Skin colour was just a coincidence 🤦‍♀️

I've seen both sides, white privilege & whilst working as a Civil Servant, managers being terrified of disciplining BAME staff for fear of being taken to race relations.

@EmbarrassedUser you are an example of the very problem. Whenever there is a possibility white privelege has resulted in someone's mistreatment you immediately dismiss it.

You are correct, it could be a coincidence - but it also is highly likely it could be white privelege. Why can't you acknowledge that??

With dimwitted statements like the above, it's no wonder that you are embarrassed.

Every single day of my life, I experience white privilege.

The bra colour I prefer is usually called "Nude".

I'd be happier with "beige".

Race/religion are intertwined. I acknowledge my white privilege.

But most of what I see in Islamic cultures sets my teeth on edge... the treatment of women especially.