White privilege

Let’s say you are a 55-year-old unemployed coal miner in West Virginia, you’ve been laid off for over a year, your wife has stomach problems, your 30-year-old son is a meth addict and your 27-year-old daughter with three kids recently divorced her husband.  You hear some black college student at the University of West Virginia talk about “white privilege,” and you become enraged.

Let me make an effort to explain what that term means.

Let’s say this 55-year-old goes to the pharmacy in Wal-Mart, or walks into the town library to use the computer in a job search, or steps into the local bar for a beer, or just walks down the sidewalk in town.  Does he think to himself “I’m a white guy” on any of those occasions.  Is he ever self-conscious about his race in his day-to-day activities?

In her book Negroland by Margo Jefferson (Vintage Books, 2015), Ms. Jefferson quotes her mother’s statement, “Sometimes I almost forget I’m a Negro.”  But, of course, in America she couldn’t.

I am not a black person, but I am reasonably sure that in this country, most black people are self-consciously black in a way white people hardly ever are self-consciously white.

That is what I think is meant by “white privilege.”