This is a complicated topic because
as a white woman it is not easy to completely understand the experience of a
non-white person. I would not say that I as raised up with “privilege” in the
sense of coming from a well-to-do family but we were not poor in any real sense
of the word.
For women such as Jane Fonda,
Maria Shriver and others who had the means, opportunity and the heart to be
activists in various ways. I recall an interview quite a few years ago that
Maria Shriver gave and she spoke about her father who asked her “what are you
doing now to change the world” and she said she had just published a book and
he waved that aside saying “that was yesterday, what are you doing today?” She laughed
about it but said that in her family they were always pushed to help make the world
a better place. I thought “wow that is really nice but some of us actually have
to earn a living first”.
Recently Jane Fonda spoke about
white privilege and while it wasn’t a new phrase to me the way she spoke about
it was interesting in the context of how we see through a very different lens
from those who are not white. We don’t have the experience of fearing being
stopped willy-nilly by police officers, the fear of being shot almost by random
and we don’t have the misfortune of being stuck in low income housing where
schools are under-funded so that opportunities can so easily slip away, if they
were even available in the first place. Yes,
of course I knew all these situations existed, indeed this past spring I
virtually wept through most of Black History Month as I listened to the stories
of individual women. But using the term “white privilege” in the same breath
with these other experiences really opened my eyes to how fortunate I have been
without ever realising. Does it make me happy? Well, yes and no. I am glad I didn’t suffer as African Americans
or other visible minorities have suffered but I also feel a sense of shame in
not really understanding sooner how much these people go through EVERY SINGLE
DAY.
Listen to her speech and that of
Patrisse Cullors here
“It takes more than empathy – it takes intention – to even begin to
comprehend what people of color, no matter their class, face every day. And how
much privilege, quite unconsciously, is enjoyed by those born white, even the
poorest of us.” Jane Fonda
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