Privilege

After reading the chapter titled privilege by Tim Wise, I do agree with most of the things that he says but there are a few points that he makes in which I do not agree with. Early on in the chapter, Wise states, “ We love to accept things we didn’t earn, such as inheritance, but we have a problem taking responsibility for the things that have benefited us wile harming others.” I agree with this quote entirely. At first, I had a hard time figuring out where this quote was going and what it meant. Wise then compared it to racial privilege which totally made sense. White people as a whole have never taken responsibility for slavery or segregation and that is where Wise is going with this quote. White people have never paid the debt for this and have had “a problem taking responsibility for the things that have benefited us while harming others.” I think this quote is a basic outline for the rest of the passage. It sets up the chapter to show how Wise thinks white people benefit from racism.

There are times in this chapter where I feel like Wise brings up examples that say that show how whites get the benefit of the doubt, but I questioned if white people actually benefit from these things. An example is when Wise is talking about some of his high school teachers. He states,” So many of them reinforced racism and white privilege every day, punishing kids of color disproportionately even when whites break the rules just as often or blaming poor performance by kids of color on their dysfunction families or presumable defective cultural traits.” Do white people actually benefit from not getting in trouble when they should? Yeah, maybe in the short term it would be nice to get out of trouble for something that you did wrong but does that make you a better person in the long run if you never learned how to deal with your mistakes? This part of Wise’s idea I somewhat question.

There are points in the story where Wise does make good points about how white people do get advantages over black. Wise makes this point while talking about the “color line” and how when it comes to race, black people need to know how to navigate the color line every day. Wise states, “ When black mothers have to teach their sons to keep both hands on the wheel if stopped by a police officer so as not to get shot- something I have never heard a white mother speak of doing with her white son.” In these kinds of cases, yes I do feel privileged that I don’t even have to think about these types of things. White people are very privileged in this case because the racial line is a significant burden to bear.