So, I tweeted about the SpaceX launch on Saturday and how it was nice to see overwhelming positivity on my social media timelines for an hour or so. As a huge fan of Elon Musk (I think he is fascinating) and science I was enthralled with the coverage of the launch and tried to capture it in a tweet.
Relatively innocuous tweet, or so I thought.
Then yesterday the aforementioned tweet was quote tweeted and I was asked about #BlackLivesMatter. The same organization did similar things to other educational speakers, authors, etc. While I think this relatively poor Twitter etiquette and called out the ‘organization’ trolling me as such, I answered the question the best I could in a tweet. It was a fine answer, but incomplete.
And as I went to bed last night, I was pissed for being called out. The twitter account that does not even have a face has no idea who I really am or what I have done in my life was the refrain running through my head. But, upon reflection, I realized I have not addressed the topic of George Floyd’s murder and the resulting riots and protests through social media. Still, I was angry for being called out, because I have felt that if someone knew me they knew I had worked a lot of my life to ‘be about it, not talk about it.’ Still, it prompted me to write this down and share it, so maybe they were right.
So, here is my story and my thoughts.
I was raised in an upper-middle class small-town/suburban environment. I went to a high school with over 4,000 students. I remember ONLY one of them being African-American. Leaving high school in no way would I have thought myself to be privileged. I had no concept of what that even meant at 18. Certainly, I would not have thought myself to be racist. Although, in hindsight, I certainly had some racist predispositions.
This back story is important because I think this is where so many Americans are right now.
Out of luck, two of my first roommates in my post-secondary venture were African-American. No, this is not a story to say I have black friends so I am not racist. I became great friends with both, one of them stood up in my wedding and we still speak to this day. After more sophomore year of college, my roommate had elevated from college buddy to the stage of being one of my best friends. We were now at the point where we would travel the 45 minutes to and from each other’s house to hang out together on breaks from college.
The important part of the upcoming story is that we had lived together for multiple years and at this point I had not taken the mental energy to understand my privilege. To be clear, it was not as though he was trying to teach it to me. We were just 20 year olds being young and dumb and enjoying each other’s company. Still, the point remains – unless you actively want to take your brain forward to understanding privilege you most likely will not get there through typical life experiences.
Then, two events happened in the course of three weeks and it forever shaped my thinking.
The first event happened during Spring Break. I told my friend I did not feel like driving out by him to go out one night and told him to just come out by me. He lived closer to the city so we typically hung out up by his place. He did not want to come out. I badgered. He acquiesced. He was clearly nervous. I asked him what was up. This is one privilege hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. He did not know if he would be welcomed out in the bars we were about to go to.
I had never experienced that feeling. That is privilege.
Then, incident number two. A few weeks later back at school he was talking to a girl at a party and it seemed to be going very well. Then, he abruptly shut it down. I asked why. He articulated that his first interaction with a white girl cannot be while she has been drinking. It is way too risky for him. While there are many layers to consent that indicate my friend should have been applauded then and now, it also underscores the point that he was thinking differently. Our privilege had allowed my friends and me to never have to consider what he was FORCED to consider.
This is something I never had to deal with. This is something that had never crossed my mind. This is privilege.
At this time the world started to make a little bit more sense to me. This shift in thinking led me to understand that I was living in a world designed to work for me and not so much for my college roommate. These thoughts were clarified and amplified after spending the entirety of my teaching career teaching in inner-city schools.
Said simply, I had fundamental opportunities my students did not have. They had generational and societal obstacles, both visible and invisible, that I did not have in my life. This was not because they lived in the city. This was not because they were poor. This was not because of poor decisions by their parents. This was because of one thing – they were black. Understanding this is undestanding privilege.
After multiple years teaching in that school and teaching Sociology, I came up with the one sentence synthesis to what I was feeling (this was long before discussion of privilege was as present as it is today). I would say this to my students all the time. My students had an opportunity to get an equal opportunity to be successful. And even then, it often times hung by a thread at no fault of their own. Whereas, I just had opportunity. This is privilege.
The reason I have written 700+ words on privilege is simple. If we do not understand privilege, we can understand the necessity to change. If we do not look hard enough, we see the opportunity and not the struggle to just get a chance to have an opportunity.
Moreover, if we do not understand privilege then there is no way a deeper discussion into what is happening in our country can be fruitful. So, I write this for the people up and down my timeline that are now focused on the riots and looting more than the systemic racism that got us here. I ask that you try to understand WHY what is happening is happening right now.
And understand that I will never ask you to condone the actions of looting and destruction. And I will never condone those actions. And yes, there are some people taking advantage of the situation and are not trying to change society. Yes, I get it. But, please. Try and understand.
While I cannot speak for any individual, my sociological training would teach me that when a group is marginalized and held without voice and power for an extended period of time they will do what is necessary to regain that power in order to engage in the necessary dialogue.
So, you may disagree with the actions. Heck, I disagree with the actions. But I am attempting to understand them and I am willing to look past the actions to see the root causes that needs attention, dialogue, and solutions in order to propel our society forward.
So, twitter troll, I bet you did not expect 1000+ words in response, but yes, I have feelings on the #BLM movement. And yes, I would like to think that the years of my life I dedicated to teaching in inner-city and administrating in urban environments would speak to that. But since you asked here are my thoughts.