Where’d you go to high school?
Jules M. Marquart,
Louisville, KY.
In Louisville during the pre-busing 1960s, this “screening” question was based on assumptions and generalizations about race and class. A high school in the West End of the city–African-American (Negro or Black back then) and poor; in the South End–white and red neck; and in the East End–white and privileged.
Born privileged, living poor. Gained perspective.
Elizabeth Foster,
Little Rock, AR.
Growing up in a mostly-white suburb of Chicago, I was isolated from cultural and socioeconomic differences. Through my privilege, I was able to travel to countries both more and less affluent than that of my upbringing. Now that I live independently & make much less money than my parents, I live in “the hood” & appreciate my life exactly as it is. I have the perspective of many walks of life, and now realize both how good, and how ignorant, I had it growing up. My wish is for others to be able to walk both sides of the fence to reach a better understanding of their fellow Americans.
I hate South Korean beauty standards.
Ally,
USA.
I know that in the past, it was better to have lighter skin because that meant you weren’t poor, but now, with all that disgusting skin bleaching, it makes me want to rip my ugly dark skin off and bleach it too.
I never even thought about race.
Ric Leczel,
San Gabriel, CA
I grew up in a firehouse with every race. We spent every holiday together. Black and Mexican and Indian firefighters were just that – firefighters. Not a race doing a job. A man doing the job and their families interacting as families on the most special of days. It never dawned on us the colors.
The separation was the class – the money. Some firefighters had more than others. They lived in a better part of town – not b/c they were Black or Mexican or White, but b/c they were “rich”. It wasn’t color.based
White Slavery & The Myth of White Privilege
DeAnna Calderon,
Austin, TX.
I grew up poor in the Southside of Chicago. We were extremely poor and even homeless at times. Sleeping outside in the middle of winter when I was a child. When I was 22 I joined the Army. The treatment I faced as a woman in the military felt like it was 1954, instead of 2004. A man of any color was treated better than a female. When black people and white liberal suburbanites talk of “White Privilege” I asked myself, “Where was my ‘White Privilege'”?’ A lot of poor whites live in the same neighborhoods as blacks and Hispanics, go to the same schools, and work at the same jobs; yet, white privilege is thrown in our face as if we do not have the same struggles. Slavery didn’t start with the Atlantic Slave Trade and black people were not the only victims. In the Bible, Egypt (in Africa) enslaved the Jews. Millions of Europeans were enslaved by North Africans and brought back to the Barbary Coast (http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm). The first slaves in America didn’t come from Africa, but from Ireland. The Irish Slave Trade dropped the population in Ireland from 1,500,000 people to 600,000 within a decade. “African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African” (http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/). The term slave actually comes from the Slavs or the ethnic Polish. The Slavs were enslaved by the Ancient Romans. Slavery even continues today in most countries, but the victims are women and children that are sold into sex trafficking. Life isn’t easy for anyone. The only privilege that exists today isn’t white, but green. Money and power will get you whatever you want. Michael Jordan, Russell Simmons, and other wealthy minorities have Green Privilege and with that privilege comes power.
Thankful mom embraced non-white cultures too.
Adrianne Tomkinson,
Aurora, IL
I am white. I am female. I grew up poor with black, brown, white and yellow neighbors. I loved and felt loved by them all. I wish everyone grew up with that opportunity.
DON’T ASK ME TO JUST FORGET
Thaddeus,
Nashville, TN.
I was raised poor in Louisiana where the generations of my family before me farmed and picked cotton, fished and lived off the land. Our water was rain water caught in a ground cistern and we used an outhouse for a toilet and boiled water for each night to bathe. So please don’t tell me how “privileged” I was raised. My first year of junior high, I was suddenly bussed halfway across the parish for desegregation instead of going to school with the kids I’d known since first grade. Our family cemetery started as the cemetery for a Confederate fort because it was high ground that never flooded. I cannot and will not forget the sacrifices that my ancestors made and the path that was blazed for my life. I’ve researched my genealogy back to the early 1800’s and there’s no documentation that any of them ever owned a slave. Instead, pictures show that the families as poor farm folk who led hard lives and were devoted Christians. They worked hard for what little they had. Even with more education and 12 years of military service, I, too, have had to work and scrimp to save for what I’ve accumulated over the years. I certainly don’t count myself as privileged, merely that I’ve been taught how to be happy with little and have some peace of mind with a hope for a better life on the other side of this one. I’ve learned to quit looking at what everyone else has and be thankful for what little I have. After all, it’s unlikely anybody is going to give you much. You’ve got to take some responsibility and get it for yourself.
I’m Picket White fence Family White
Abi,
Aurora, CO
I’ve grown up in the suburbs where the families all seem perfect and happy life the picket white fence families, Mine wasn’t lived that way, but I’m still counted as one.
Racism is an ego-based human dysfuntion
James E Washington,
Rochester, NY.
The ego thrives on identification and separation. We seems to be a nation that thrives on dualism, having an “other” a “they or them” as a means to distinguish ourselves from. White, Black; Rich, Poor: Republican, Democrat; Christian, Jewish; Fat, Skinny; on and on. The problem appears to be “ego run-a-muck.” We see it at the very highest levels of society in a divided government That division trickles down to the community level and further. We are a nation divided in so many ways that racism seems to be just a part of the larger systemic dysfunction. Racism will be undone when we elevate our level of consciousness. undergo an “apotheosis” thus minimizing the ubiquitous ego-driven dysfunction that now permeates society.
I’m optimistic that our society will be transformed. But I also understand that before the transformation can take root we will experience deeper levels of dysfunction. Hit bottom!! I’ve undergone the very type of transformation of which I speak.
Sipping lattes, we call it racism.
Michael,
Livonia, MI
It strikes me over and over again that we confuse the problems of being poor with racism. Dr. Martin Luther King understood the problem isn’t race: it’s economic.
The reason we see a deepening divide, and a growing sense of racial tension, is because more and more middle-class white folks — the factory workers — are being disenfranchised by neo-liberalism. The jobs they used to have — the ones that paid for the snow-mobiles, jet skis and little camps up north — have been shipped overseas. Now, these poor white folks have nothing to do but get hooked on opioids and listen to their proto-fascist leader tell them it’s the government’s fault they don’t have work. And all the while he bloviates, their leader works with the rest of the bourgeoisie to make sure their pockets grow fatter.
These same poor white folks are the ones lighting tiki torches and blaming the black folks for their problems. To fuel the feedback loop, university professors write papers and books about our screwed-up criminal justice system and conclude it is racist cops who are to blame. And in the poorest parts of our cities, children can’t read, or write, yet cling tenaciously to the hope of “becoming somebody” by playing basketball or football. Meanwhile, the rest of us worry about whether our skinny lattes will be warm enough and that the kids won’t be late for soccer practice, and every once in a while, we’ll give a few scraps from our excess to help-out the poor kids in the city.
We would do well to remember why Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.
I’m rich because I’m from here
Madi,
Scottsdale, AZ
Actually, this is the opposite of what is true, but what everyone assumes. I’m from Scottsdale, Arizona where there are many extremely wealthy neighborhoods and fancy resorts. It is also a predominantly white city, which my family is as well. Growing up my parents really struggled with making money after the market crash. Now it’s not something that upsets me as much because I know there are much worse issues to have, but it’s the most common thing people assume based off how I look and where I live.
-Chapman University
1963 Respectful, Uneducated, Dependant, Poor, Grateful, Happy
Louis
Wausau, WI
2013 Attitude, Uneducated, Dependant, Poor, Feared, Unhappy
We all hurt in different ways.
Christine Farrell,
Naches, WA.
My dad was an Italian/Irishman who grew up in the Bronx and Harlem areas of New York City. He grew up tough and he grew up mean. He was the only white kid in many of the schools he attended. He was involved in gangs, had been in and out of jail and had made some horrible decisions, until his mother made him choose between the military or prison. He chose the military where he later met my mother.
My mother was half Irish, half Scottish and was abandoned on my now grandparents door steps when she was two years old. She struggled growing up, trying to fit into the perfect molded “white” society my adopted grandparents had been raised in. When she could no longer mold into their image of what she should be, she left and later met my father.
My parents gave life to me and my younger sister. My father retired from the Navy and started a career in aerospace mechanics. My mother became a nurse. A short time after they sailed off into the sun set, however, their demons came back to remind them of where they came from. After the mortgage was gambled away and the rest of savings found at the bottom of a bottle, it didn’t take long for them to lose their jobs and become homeless. We lived in a motor home for the first two years of my life and they traveled the country looking for whatever jobs they could get. They ended up in a very small, very white town 3 1/2 hours outside of Seattle Washington.
We lived in the boonies in a town where everyone knew everyone and no one liked us. By the time I was 5 my parents marriage had dissolved completely and soon after, my dad packed his bags and left us. I never heard from him again. My mother often times worked 3 jobs. There were many Christmas’s where all we had was each other, not even enough money for a tree or food. My mom would be away from the home for days at a time, trying to work as many hours as she could to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. I remember sleeping in a garage and in the back of my mom’s car when she had been evicted from her home. There were days where there was no food, no electricity and no hope. I heard my mother cry more times growing up than I ever heard her laugh. The town we lived in was so small, everyone knew everyone and they all knew we were poor.
I remember being told by other kid’s parents that their kids couldn’t play with me because of who my mother was and how they didn’t want their kids to be around my mother. There were times where I hated her for being poor. Times where I didn’t understand why I was treated differently for something I couldn’t control. If I wasn’t being teased for being poor I was being called “white trash” by other white kids just because I wasn’t in the same tax bracket as them.
As I grew up, the town I lived in also grew and in came a new group of people. The Hispanics. They traveled up the California coast and when picking season was over they went back home. Every year more and more Hispanics showed up and stayed. I never viewed them as any other race. They were the only race of humans that actually took me in. I worked in the orchards with them, picked cherries with them. I saw the hard work it took and understood their way of life and I loved it.
I’m older now, at this point and it’s my senior year of high school. Halfway through the school year, my mom had lost her job and decided she had, had enough of this life and committed suicide. I was a 18 year old kid who now had to support a 15 year old sibling. I dropped out of school, got my G.E.D and enrolled in college. I lived in the back of my truck after sending my younger sibling off with distant relatives to give her the best shot she could get in life. I found myself right in the same place my mother had been so many times and I wasn’t angry with her. For once, I understood her pain and I was determined to break the chain.
The first year of college went great until the Financial aid rules changed and minorities were given the financial aid first and this meant that I no longer got free college. I couldn’t qualify for FAFSA and my dreams of beating the stigma that was placed on me slowly faded.
I tried to get a higher paying job to pull me out of hole I was in but surprise, surprise, only bilingual people where given the best paying jobs due to the high population growth of Hispanics that couldn’t speak English. This is still a problem in the town I grew up in so not only was I up against highly educated white people, I was also up against bilingual individuals in a fight for a better paying job.
For the past ten years I have been working 2-3 jobs. 15 hour days just to put a roof over my head. I have self studied multiple subjects so that I would not fall even farther than I already have from my peers. I have had to claw my way out of the darkest of places, on my own to get where I am and I am sick of being made to feel guilty and blamed for being white. White privilege is a lie told by those who hate white people. I have been discarded, overlooked, beaten down, lied to. I have been told that because I’m not bilingual I don’t get the job, because my last name is not Escelara I do not get help to pay for school. I have gone without help from DSHS because I’m white.
I’m tired of being blamed. My ancestors didn’t come to America until the 1930’s. The truth is, we have all been enslaved at one point, we have all been hurt, we have all been victims. We have all been tossed to the side because of our skin color or because of our income. We have all been judged. I’m not going to feel guilty anymore for being who I am but I will treat everyone with kindness, the type of kindness I longed for from others. I will chose to make a positive impact and to help people realize that with hard work, dedication, humbleness and kindness that anyone is capable of becoming better then they are now. Anything that comes easy in life is not worth having and being angry all the time will just make you sick.
Not aplogizing for my white skin
Jillian Kurekova,
USA.
I am a 21 year old white female living in the ghetto. I have always been the outcast. I grew up in foster homes with black foster mothers and siblings, I have lived in all-black neighborhoods and went to all-black schools. I have never felt out of place surrounded by black people or white until now. I don’t know of it’s because of the fact that I am not a teenager anymore or because of the current events but the racial tension has gotten unbearable. Black people consistently refer to me as “the white girl” and not in the joking matter that they did when i was a child. For all of you people who think black people can’t be racist, I am here to tell you that they can. No, not prejudiced; racist. They genuinely feel superior to you. It is hard for a black woman in America and I will never understand but I can tell you that it is also very hard for a white woman in the ghetto and that’s something a black woman will never understand.
Privelaged white descendant of poor immigrants.
Melissa Brendtro,
Nashville, TN.
Thank you.
I’m genuinely sorry about my family.
Katy Wilkerson,
Houston, TX.
In the deep South, in my experience, racism is pervasive, especially when you talk about poorer and poorer white people (not just men). There truly does still exist a level of social acceptability that is just not OK. I’ve always been extremely disgusted by it, despite being white and having these people in my family, but I am well educated now and I did grow up poor in a mostly black community. My husband is white, from a poor white family, and they’re all less educated and living in white, rural communities. The racism they display sickens me. My father in law refers to black children as “nigglets”. And that’s a tame example. They are not alone and the culture is pervasive– otherwise hardworking, loving, and “good” people can do horrible things when there is social acceptance and pressure behind it. My husband is not, I believe, a racist, but when around his family he has to “play along” and I generally have to physically leave when this is going on, since I refuse to “play along”. If we continue to tell ourselves, as white people and as humans, that this isn’t happening anymore or acting wounded and dismissing it, we are making it worse for whichever generation finally addresses it and doing ourselves a great disservice. There is no “acceptable” racism in the modern world, no reason that makes it OK, it’s ALWAYS wrong, and this will be a problem as long as it’s ignored.
Poor White Kid, Wheres My Privilege?
Chris,
Redlands, CA.
Growing up on welfare, to a single mother in rural Michigan, I learned not to expect help from anyone. However, my whole life I have heard of this privilege that we all are given given because we are white. While I’ve never been in another persons footsteps, life hasn’t been very easy, and I have earned everything I have gotten. While there are definitely some racist people in this world, not always does it work in the white mans favor. Racism goes many ways, and I should not have to feel apologetic for being born white. What I have I have earned and fought for, NOTHING was given to me out of privilege.
CBU HIS311
