An Examination of White Privilege

BOOM! The crushing force of white privilege strikes you down. What to do now? Have you not experienced this yet in your life? Well let me enlighten you. 

White Scenario #1 - So you’re walking down the street, right?  You see a police officer walking your way. But, it’s the middle of the day, you’re not intoxicated on any level and you’re just on your way to get some coffee so you have no worries. You give a friendly nod to the officer, continue on with your day, and in five minutes you forget it even happened. 

POC* Scenario #1 - You see the cop, and suddenly you get a dirty look. You try to smile at the cop but he continues to stare you down. The only way you get the cop to stop is to swiftly walk into the coffee shop. You can’t shake the feeling of the officer’s eyes following you. 

See the difference?

White Scenario #2 - There’s only one week before Holiday Dance. You have a super hot date, so you decide to drive to Burlington to buy a nice outfit. You’re strolling through the store and you find the perfect dress/shirt/pants/suit and so you ask to try it on. You have to hunt down the salesperson in order to get a dressing room. You get progressively annoyed as you fight for the person’s attention when you decide to buy the outfit. After you leave, you completely forget about the person because you found the perfect outfit!

POC Scenario #2 - As you walk through the store, the salesperson’s eyes follow you with every move you make. You find the perfect dress/shirt/pants to try on and have no trouble finding the person because they’re right on your tail. As you ask to get a dressing room, the person asks to search your backpack before you enter the dressing room. You tell them that you refuse, they have no right to search your belongings. You get so mad and frustrated that you storm out of the store. You end up not finding an outfit at all that day, and drive home from Burlington upset and perturbed. 

As one can see in both of these scenarios, the white person has a much more positive experience. The problem with white privilege is that in essence it is the fact that you don’t realize your own advantages in life. Face it, if you are white you have certain advantages that POCs have not had. You don’t have to deal with the fact that 1 in 3 black men will go to prison sometime in their life. It’s true, even if you are in a lower socio-economic bracket, you have a societal advantage over POCs. 

Once you realize this privilege, and if you’re like me start to feel an immense sense of guilt. Your race has been oppressing POCs for the past several centuries, how can I turn this around? The first step is recognizing your privilege. It’s a tough task to tackle. Many people often want to fight this oppression, which is very difficult to do if your race is the oppressor, not the oppressed. Stand in solidarity, check your privilege, and understand that even though you can forget the plight of others, POCs have to live with this for their whole life. Be empathic and watch out for others, y’all. 

For further reference, check out this comical BuzzFeed article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelblackmon/17-harrowing-examples-of-white-privilege-9hu9

*Person of Color

A Quick Rant

A wise man by the name of Abraham Lincoln once said “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” That seems to remain especially true today. America seems to be this impregnable fortress; a mighty symbol of freedom and equity protected by the latest technology, filled with millions of patriotic citizens itching to throw themselves into the line of fire. However, just because we’re surrounded by legions of faithful soldiers doesn’t mean we receive such protection mentally. Perhaps our greatest vulnerability today is not to an attack by sea or air, but one that subtly steals into the minds of our citizens, corrupting them from the inside. Furthermore, the worst part is that it’s already started to happen.

Instead of reaching for the phone lines when disaster strikes, we grab the popcorn and slouch on our sofas, casually glancing at pictures of calamity as we mindlessly scroll through our phones. Instead of donating and raising awareness, the most we can muster is a few hastily-typed hashtags. Global calamities are no longer something that evokes a global response from communities everywhere, they’re merely a spectator sport; a side show to our daily lives. If somebody’s planning an invasion, they’ve almost already won: America’s been weakened from the inside, softened by years of inactivity. Unlike Europe, we’ve almost never experienced the brutality of chaos first-hand, isolated on the other side of the globe from the horrors of post-Communist Europe. Perhaps it’s that total isolation which drives us towards this veneer of comfort; conflict is rarely a stone’s throw away, and if it is, we have a 100-foot tall fence standing in its way. We’ve become a shred of the global citizens that we aspire to be, instead become apathetic slugs, bound to our phones more than any global cause. In a way, we’ve failed to keep the flame of our revolution alive, letting it sputter to nothing.

Reddit AskReddit: My Response

Q: What is your quietest act of rebellion?

A: I have a couple very quiet rebellious acts, most of which are small enough to not be noticeable but large enough to show my true rebellious spirit. First, I have a friend whose Mom is trying to loose weight but she insists on having her daily dose of diet coke. Now, as we all know, diet coke is really bad for the body as it contains chemicals in the place of sugar and does not sit well in the stomach. So, in order to remedy the situation, every time I open their fridge I open the diet coke bottle and poor it down the drain, recycle the liter bottle, then smile to myself.

Additionally, although the law requires me to wear shoes when I drive, I frequently drive without shoes. Since the cops can't see me not wearing shoes, they will never know both that I was breaking the law and my pure satisfaction of driving with no shoes.

Finally, as my final act of rebellion, I mix decaf coffee in with my parents regular coffee so they do not get as much caffeine in the morning. I'm told this is pure evil.

essays: a rant

i don’t think we should write essays. instead we should just talk to the teacher. tell them what we think about some topic. writing things down is too concrete and almost superficial, real learning comes from speaking your mind. when i write essays i spend too much time deleting things that i’ve written and not enough time moving forward. when you speak to someone there is no delete button. you can change anything after you’ve said it you don’t have to think of what to write next you just speak your mind and think. essays you think of the topic you answer the question but i don’t actually learn something from writing them. or even worse, i start writing an essay and naturally i change my mind about the whole topic. not because i can’t decide what to write about but because while writing the essay i did actually learn something. with speaking changing your mind is good, it means you’re learning and thinking. it’s much easier to change your mind while speaking than it is to delete however much of the essay you’ve already written and start over. but alas, here i am writing my thoughts down and contradicting myself. these words are set in stone now. i am a hypocrite. but the mind is a curious thing and i spend so much time using my brain and experiencing everything that it is only natural that i forget something.

i can speak for hours about one topic but once i have that paper infront of me. the blinking line just sitting there static. nothing comes to my head.

also, who needs capitalization?

quinn valence

Below is a slightly rushed answer to the classic prompt "if you could sit down with any person in history, who would it be?"

If I could sit down with a single person from any time in history, I would choose to chat with FDR. Not only do I find him to be the most effective of all past presidents, but I deeply admire his resolve, as his plate was stacked high with issues, ranging from polio to the second world war. His guile and determination in leading the country through its most difficult time is deeply admirable. One of the reasons why FDR would make a fantastic conversation is that he lived through one of the most eventful times in American history. In the late 20s and early 30s, he battled the infamous Great Depression, and in a mere couple of years, found himself in the midst of America’s second great global conflict, facing an any who regarded surrender as taboo. My interest in FDR originates from my first real encounter with him, besides hearing his name mentioned in casual conversation. However, two years ago, I went with my family down to see a local production of Annie. Having seen this movie before, I thought it was going to be quite the bore. However, upon viewing the play, I was enraptured with the character of FDR, who surprisingly played a large role in the play. This perhaps opened my eyes to the magnitude of FDR’s deeds, and also the man himself. Another reason would be fascination with history, particularly the early 20^th century, a time that one might refer to as America’s coming of age, or entry on to the international stage. Last year, as I was researching for my US-History Class the correlation in between the previously mentioned coming of age and WW1, the topic of FDR kept on popping up, as the timeline of some of the books extended beyond the Great War. There, I was able to get my first in depth view of Roosevelt’s policies, and their impact on American society. In my current social studies class, Contemporary American History, I again was able to analyze the actions of FDR, and truly realized how interesting this hypothetical conversation would be."