Speech- Ji-Hae Kim

The white majority having it easier than the minority—that’s what people say white privilege is about. Now I’m not trying to say everything you’ve accomplished is because of your race. Definitely not. There’s a lot more to it than that. But there are certain privileges, not particularly noticeable, that exist. 

It’s not like I’m saying it’s your fault—after all, you didn’t ask to be born white and I didn’t ask to be born asian. This isn’t something personally against YOU nor is it something you or I could change just because we felt like it. No one is particularly angry at YOU. I’m not trying to put you down or accuse you of something not am I trying to reverse discriminate against you. No. That’s not it.

Also, it’s not like all white people have everything set up for them. It’s like two different paths up a hill. One is bad enough and exhausting but the other is bumpier and a bit more exhausting. It’s admirable that one went up the hill in the first place (some would just stay at the bottom) but the people of the harder road look at the people who went up the slightly less bumpy road and feel some resentment. After all, why all that extra effort if you end up in the same place? Maybe the resentful person couldn’t get up all the way because the bumpy road was too hard for them. Is it fair?

Well, we all know that life isn’t fair. White privilege is a hard topic to talk about. I mean I really didn’t even know that was a term until two days before I started this topic and even then, I didn’t know what it was. I had no idea what I was getting into until my friend sent me link upon link of articles about white privilege in the context of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I didn’t understand how I was going to talk about a topic I knew so little about. This topic is a big left/right thing and I’m an uninformed primitive with no knowledge about political topics—being a first generation South Korean with parents who don’t talk politics with me. What was I supposed to do? I’m a person who likes staying out of conflict and controversial topics. This was a hard thing to speak about.

When I started researching, I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this topic or not. So I tried to look at the topic objectively. Seeing how a single source that look at white privilege didn’t really exist, I looked at it from as many sides as I could. The extreme proponents of the existence of white privilege and the opponents who called white privilege a “myth that minorities made up to reverse discriminate.”

An argument of the opponents of the existence of white privilege said that whites didn’t have it any better than minorities. “What about the quota of minorities that they would have to look over non-minorities for? What about ethnic-based scholarships?” White privilege doesn’t exist!, they say. There was a freshman who wrote an article called Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege in The Princeton Tory about the phrase “check your privilege”. He wrote about how he didn’t get where he was just because he was white and that all these people screaming “check your privilege.” He said he didn’t accuse those who “check” him “but they can’t [he claimed] be telling me that everything I’ve done with my life can be credited to the racist patriarchy holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton. Even that is too extreme.” And I agree, saying that everything that everything one personally accomplished was due to an “invisible patron saint of white maleness” who placed it out for him before he even arrived is extreme. There are other factors to consider—there are economic, class, intelligence, personality, and appearance differences as well. One article I read called “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Privilege” that evoked many negative and positive comments. The writer felt like you couldn’t just group all white people into one entity.

People also say white privilege is about about the deeply ingrained stereotypes and racist beliefs. They say it’s about privilege that came from those beliefs. The unseen and unheard issues POCs deal with that the white majority would never know. The economic, social, and historical privilege white people have because of their skin color. Because they were born in the white race. It’s about the unawareness of the struggle of those minorities and the claim that white privilege doesn’t exist. That there is no one who has it better. That the playing fields are level and that whoever doesn’t make it didn’t do so because they were inadequate.

Well, I mean, why all this talk of racism when it isn’t so bad anymore? It’s practically gone, right? Negligible. In 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the Unites States of America. Isn’t that a good thing?

The most common misconception and belief was that racism became a thing of the past. That it no longer existed and that we should all move past it now.

But it still exists. On the contrary, now it’s worse for those who don’t succeed and move through the social “castes”. They think, ‘this one guy became president, so why can’t they?’ There seems to be a “what’s wrong with them” mindset and whenever minorities try to say that it’s hard to climb up, people just say they’re lazy. That there isn’t a privilege that the majority have, but that there’s just an unremovable laziness from entire races of people.

Now let’s talk about the other side of things. When I looked at the people insistent of the existence of this privilege, I saw that it wasn’t all debunking the white elite (although most was), but trying to get the word out that this privilege existed. They wrote that there simply were things that minorities had to deal with that the majority weren’t forced to deal with. In Peggy McIntosh’s article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, there was a “privilege checklist” that the author wanted to use to get people thinking about the things that they never even saw as a privilege.

Some things on the checklist that I found interesting:

“5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.”

Now there were some things I found rather silly. I mean it may be a big deal to some, but bandages? What are you going to do, go around saying, ‘look look! You can hardly see it!’?

But there are some more serious issues that really should get you thinking. Police brutality has been a big topic lately with Michael Brown and Eric Garner (in which neither police officer got indicted). There’s also the problem with racial profiling. Some people have a hard time being anywhere without getting harassed by police.

Let us not forget about that whole issue about how if you’re a minority, you have to worry about being the representative of your entire race. I mean if a caucasian male turned out to be a maniac, it doesn’t make it out to be that all caucasian males are. But if a Hispanic male, for example was a killer, that debunks his entire race. There’s a lot of claims that crimes were mainly being committed by minorities, but, when I checked FBI.gov, there wasn’t a big difference between white and minority. It was close to fifty-fifty. There are also less criminal things that could create stigmas—like being smelly or a smoker, or whatnot.

I think there needs to be an awareness of this “privilege” no matter how much or how little it actually affects you. Now, I’m not saying that you need to change your entire life and somehow handicap yourself to “level the playing fields”—which were and never will be level. But just the knowledge of this “privilege” as teenagers still developing their beliefs, can help. Maybe I’m not the right person to be saying this to you, but “knowledge is power” (as Sir Francis Bacon said). Knowing about a topic, from both sides, can go a long way. If every person in this world opened their ears and listened to the problem objectively, how much better would we be? That’s idealistic and improbable, but hey, baby steps. Thank you.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Ari. ""White Privilege": Myths and Facts." The Objective Standard. The Objective Standard, 08 June 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/06/white-privilege-myths-facts/>.

Fortgang, Tal. "Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege." The Princeton Tory. WordPress, 2 Apr. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://theprincetontory.com/main/checking-my-privilege-character-as-the-basis-of-privilege/>.

McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh." White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. Working Paper 189 Independent School, 1990. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.

"Racial Profiling." American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling>.

White Like Me. Dir. Scott Morris. Perf. Tim Wise. Media Education Foundation, 2013.