I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the sixties and seventies. Upon graduating High School in 1982 I was told by my parents that I would not be able to attend college in Boulder, Colorado because they couldn’t afford it. At the time, I was ok with it because I didn’t necessarily want to stay studying in school. We were shown some information on career day, and I determined that the U of C in Boulder looked like the most fun place to go. I would be getting away from Minnesota, ski a lot, and live with the mountains in my constant view.
Perhaps if I decided to go to the U of M my parents would have found a way to afford it. We’ll never know for sure, but I took their statement at the time to mean they couldn’t afford to send me to college. Again, I was not devastated by that. I ended up, instead, attending Brown Institute for Broadcasting where my entire education cost $1500.00 of which I paid half while holding down a morning and weekend job at the local Super Value store bagging groceries and doing janitorial work. I was immediately placed at a radio station in Burns, Oregon as the news director and evening drive country DJ.
My broadcasting career didn’t last long because the pay was not something anyone could live on without living at their parents’ house. I went on to have about thirty-five jobs throughout the following eighteen or so years. I constantly struggled to pay rent, and often failed. I lived under the poverty income level most of those years.
Now, I own my own small business built around an invention I came up with in 2003. It’s a very successful business and my wife, daughter, dog, and I are living comfortably in a great house in an award winning superb school district with nice cars, motorcycle, and boat, among other fun extra unnecessary things.
My wife and I built this business completely by ourselves. One could say we lifted ourselves out of poverty by our bootstraps. But there’s more to the story.
Let’s start by pointing out that we had bootstraps to pull up in the first place. During my struggling years, my parents bailed me out many times. I never felt like I may become homeless or get evicted. And I earlier mentioned living at one’s parents’ house. This point alone shows the privilege I grew up with and took for granted.
When you have privilege in your life, it’s difficult to notice. But for those who don’t have privilege, just having the choice of moving back into your parents’ house is easy for them to see. They’ve never even had that choice available to them. If they fail to pay rent, they are on the streets, homeless.
I didn’t get along with my father very well and there are times where that’s difficult for me to deal with. But he was there. Even if he didn’t like it, or didn’t like me, he was there as part of my protective shield when I was a kid, and even helped me out when I was screwing up as an adult. And he taught me about privilege.
Don’t get me wrong, my dad didn’t teach me by design. By saying my dad taught me about privilege is to say, he taught me about it through racism. He used to get very riled when he would see a black basketball player on a commercial for sneakers. He would yell at the TV about how those ni***rs keep complaining about being poor and repressed when these guys are making millions.
I couldn’t understand how he failed to see the irony in his take on this. He, himself complained about being poor and being held back at work sometimes. Why does he not complain about the rich white guys on the Minnesota Vikings? Why can he not see the poor black peoples’ point of view, or the point of view of civil rights? I guess because there was no white persons’ civil rights movement, so why do “they” get to have theirs?
While criticizing my father’s inability to notice his own white privilege, I’m fully aware that I have, and will often need help in noticing my own. But I do try to be observant enough to do so.
I grew up in a rich community. My friends would actually have the new Boston album. I would borrow it and record it. Although I couldn’t afford the album, I could gain access, and I saw the possibility all around me of someday being able to own the album myself.
What about the poor young kid who never met his own father, grew up in poverty with everyone else he knows also being in poverty. He never had anyone encourage him to try and find a way to someday own his own Boston album, much less do anything with his life other than just survive somehow.
For most of my life I’ve felt hopeless about my future. I felt I was not included in the privileged groups of people who easily had more opportunities than I had. What did I have to work with? I hadn’t been to college. I felt I had no way of achieving anything other than uncomfortable survival. Yet here I am. If I did it, why can’t others do it? Why can’t people of color do it?
I’ll tell you why. Because they still don’t have the same privilege that I have. I’m a white male.
A few years ago I had a fifteen year old semi-crappy car that had been slightly modified with cheap darkened tail light covers and any piece of chrome had been spray-painted black. It looked like the type of car some young speed-crazed guy would be driving. I got pulled over because I was going nearly fifty mph in a thirty-five mph zone. The moment the police officer saw I was an older white guy wearing a nice shirt and blazer, he apologized for pulling me over. Not only did he let me clean off the hook, but he apologized!
Here’s another thing: I’m talking about this today, but tomorrow I may choose not to. I can talk about racial inequality and racism whenever I feel like it. People of color never know when they’ll be dragged into the subject. They can be walking down the street and have someone yell out of a car at them with some racial epithet. Or they can be pulled over at any moment even when not speeding and fear for their life.
There are myriads of poor people of color growing up in unofficially segregated, impoverished neighborhoods who are a lot smarter than I am. They may have more ambition than I do. They may have more ideas with the possibility of being successful in some way than I do as I develop various products for my small business, and they have better ideas than my patented invention which spawned the success I now enjoy in my life. But even though I didn’t go to college, lived at or under the poverty level, felt ostracized from more affluent groups of people all around me, I still had a huge head start on these people of color and poverty.
I used my privilege to build a better life for myself than a lot of people around me, most of my family members, even more than some people who had more privilege than I had to begin with. But I had something. I had the bootstraps.
Our country needs to do a much better job of making sure everyone has those bootstraps. Yes, the United States Government needs to do more to make sure everyone, no matter their race, sex, gender, or place of origin has a chance to improve their lives the way I was able to improve mine.
On this Martin Luther King Day, I choose to talk about white privilege. I hope you’ll consider keeping in mind whatever privilege you have when thinking or talking about racial inequality, racism, or sexism. Let’s help each other be more considerate of this too. And let’s constantly try to be more thoughtful of those who have less, little, or no privilege.
