Other and perhaps more jealously guarded White privileges revolve around impunity. Doing and saying stupid stuff in general and getting away with it is peak White privilege. It may be more pronounced for tall, male, cisgender, heterosexual, rich White guys, but it still ranges from being able to say the most arrant nonsense in an authoritative tone of voice and getting away with it right through to committing the full range of criminal behavior up to and including murder and getting away with it, as well as—privilege of privileges—shutting down any and all discussion, or even mention, of White privilege. Some of that impunity is only happening because so many laws are deliberately designed to ensnare only people of color. And some of that impunity absolutely no one should have, because it leaves too many dangerous people wandering around out here sincerely believing that they can do anything they feel like doing and get away with it.
But what about the disadvantages of being White? Not, of course, counting someone else getting something to which I felt entitled after so many generations of affirmative action for White people, which may have more to do with family-of-origin dynamics than with what I thought just happened. The human race, besides being singular, is a family, and it’s interesting to note how, besides the absolute necessity of believing that the big people can’t be wrong when we’re small and dependent on them for our very survival, someone else getting something to which I thought I was entitled can bring up very old resentments of that other kid—there’s always that other kid, somewhere—who either got all the good stuff or got away with murder, or both.
The real disadvantages of Whiteness are myriad.
If you’ve ever done one of those exercises that involves repeating, “To me, being White means …” and the first thing that popped into your head was, “being expected to behave like an asshole,” you are not alone. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Membership in good standing in what we might call the Tribe of White requires us to be willfully ignorant and willfully stupid, and—worse—mean as shit. Those dues are high. “Woke,” used as a pejorative for White people committing the sin of being awake and aware and trying to be decent human beings, essentially means failing to be willfully ignorant and stupid, and not being anywhere near mean enough; otherwise, it’s basically just the new “n”-word. (This has been a public-service announcement for all those using “woke” as a pejorative who can’t quite put their finger on what exactly they mean by it.)
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