The first time I recognized my privilege
What was it like to be preverbal? As babies we soaked up a glorious kaleidoscope of sensations. Then we began to learn words, symbolic representations for objects, people, nature, our needs, and feelings. We focused on what we could say, which was reinforced with glee by our caregivers. Could we translate all direct sensations into complex abstract words and concepts? I doubt it. We screen in what we have words for and screen out what becomes background.
As a seventeen-year-old (in 1967), I traveled from my home in Phoenix, Arizona to Greensboro, North Carolina to attend a summer humanities program for high school juniors and seniors. Because I was the only White student, and on top of it the only student from the West, I had no comprehension of southern Black culture. I hadn’t paid attention to the continued suffering of Black people under White “rule.” I was missing a lot of words for what I began to experience.
At the first session with the band that summer, I was eager to show off. I was haughty about my “French Conservatory” silver-plated flute with a sterling silver headpiece and open holes, supposedly a superior way to keep fingers properly aligned. When I returned home, I would audition, again, for one of the two chairs in the Phoenix Youth Symphony, but that required competing with the best flautists in the city. To get a competitive edge, I had begun lessons with the first-chair flautist of the Phoenix Symphony.
As I write in my forthcoming book, Unforgettable: A White Girl’s Summer at a Black College, in that first rehearsal “almost immediately, the sound that blasted out from the whole band was an acoustical nightmare distorted by dissonant echoes bouncing off bare walls, like the cacophony of grating, out-of-tune sounds from my grade school band when we played together for the first time.” Shocked by the poor musicianship, I wondered if Black people were slower to learn. I’d unconsciously absorbed prejudiced ideas that Black people are inferior, not as smart, not as talented, not as capable. Hey, I was an ignorant seventeen-year-old!
By the end of my six-week program, I realized that other factors affected the skills of the Black band members: segregation, discrimination, lower incomes, restricted funding to schools for equipment, lack of opportunity, and other barriers I might not have. I didn’t know the concept of “White privilege,” but clearly, I was heir to it.
Although the ideas behind White privilege were recognized, with different phrasing, going back a few hundred years, it didn’t surface in our modern understanding until the 20th century. A scholar, Theodore W. White, called it “white skin privilege” and wrote a two-volume work published in the ’60s, The Invention of the White Race, that expounded upon that concept. Another academic, Peggy McIntosh, defined White privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets” in 1988. It was popularized even more with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter in 2013, which became a nationwide protest in 2020.
Further studies have revealed the complexity of these ideas, including “White defensiveness,” “White guilt,” and “outgroup disadvantage.” Academics tell us that White privilege is a global reality and not simply a product of American history.
You may have contemplated, as I have, what in my life exemplifies White privilege, step by step from childhood to the present. At the college, I finally recognized that I had learned about flute brands that were better than my learner flute, a Bundy, because of my access to opportunity. Why did I save up and buy a better one? Other players in my band had upgraded their flutes, included our high school first chair player, who bought a flute crafted by the studio of “old man Haynes.” He was considered the ultimate craftsman of the prestigious gold flute. White privilege (WP).
To gain the advantage in my forthcoming audition, I heard that the first-chair flautist in the Phoenix Symphony had openings for students. I jumped on it. WP. If Black players sought lessons, would their connections yield an opportunity like this? Would they have been rebuffed by a White teacher? Was it WP when my mother sought art lessons for me with the Toledo Art Institute when I was a child? Was it WP when my family moved from the Ohio farm to Phoenix and my dad easily found work? How about their acceptance as renters and then purchasing a first home? No redlines barring them. WP.
All doors opened to me when I knocked. I didn’t have to find a part-time job to contribute to my family’s income. I didn’t have to bear rejection after rejection because of my race. My family could go anywhere and not think about whether we could enter shops, movie theaters, skate rinks, or campgrounds.
Probably your communities still have segregation by real estate, even if unspoken. Some Black people may not be able to afford the highest-priced and often gated neighborhoods. Why? We continue to see a disparity of incomes among races. WP is everywhere evident. Would a Black person knocking on a stranger’s door for any (good) reason in some White neighborhoods have a higher likelihood of being shot? We know from the news that Black people get racially profiled by the police in most cities.
Where do you notice White privilege, in yourself, others, society? What doors have opened for you in part or entirely because you are a member of the race that has always had more money, more power, and received preferential treatment? If you are not White, have you seen or experienced White privilege in action?