“White privilege doesn’t mean you’ve had it easy. It doesn’t mean you’ve never had to struggle to get work, to eat, to get an education.”
So what is white privilege and how do you know you have it? And what can you do about it?
White privilege, and why it matters, explained in about 4 minutes by Eleanor Goldfield, host of Act Out! on Occupy.com.
Talking and writing about race is difficult because most people don’t want to listen to the lectures and history lessons. It is taxing and herculean because you can’t make anyone sit down and listen. That can be said of transgender issues, feminism, immigration and so on.
But for one moment open your mind to this scenario. Two young boys around the age of 12 years old are playing in the park at noon. One is Black and has a toy handgun. The other is white and also has a toy handgun. Both are alone pointing their toys aimlessly. However, something changes. There are two men in the park who watching them. One of the men picks up his phone and calls the cops. Who do you think he called the cops on?
Two days before Christmas, a “thug” launched an “unprovoked attack” on a female MTA employee on a Bronx subway platform, “choking her” and causing injuries, according to the Daily News. The “hulking brute” then fled the scene, “grinning as he made his may through the turnstile.”
The newspaper’s description conjures images of a fanatical psychopath, aggressively assaulting an innocent victim and showing a twisted pleasure in his deranged actions while escaping. Several days later the perpetrator was located, but he was not arrested. On Friday, more than a month later, police announced he will face only misdemeanor charges.
The perpetrator was allegedly discovered when he saw video of himself on the news and turned himself in, police said. Incidentally the man, 37-year-old Mirjan Lolja, is himself an NYPD policeman.
