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White Privilege From Inside-Out
“That was the first time I really felt I was different,” said my Chinese-American friend; “that I just did not belong.” She was speaking of a contentious group experience we had shared, a discussion about a program to support immigrants. She had spearheaded the effort and provoked opposition that was, at times, rancorous. I had been supportive, but not particularly outspoken. After all, this was a no-brainer. Wouldn’t any rational, progressive-leaning person want to welcome and help the immigrants coming into our country? Sure, there were dissenters, but I understood their struggles with change and figured they’d come around. To me it was simply another hurdle everyone would eventually leap. To Amy — I’m giving her an alias because she doesn’t need any more guff from me — it was a personal blow to the gut. A confrontation between white-privilege adults and one child of immigrant parents.
Who knew? Certainly not I, at the time. I wasn’t the one in pain.
Nor was I the one in pain during the recent killings of African American men. Or the countless affronts, indignities and terrible sufferings of black, brown and in any other way ‘different’ fellow humans who happen never to have been protected by the shield that has silently separated Them from Me since the day I was born.
