This week I was slapped in the face with my white privilege.

I consider myself a “racially” conscious individual. I grew up in an all-white community but I have always been fascinated with other cultures. There’s more to that story but the short version is that I’ve worked with diverse populations of students and adults for years now. When I first began reading about white privilege, it made perfect sense to me. I try to always be conscious of it.

For example, a couple of years ago, I was walking into my district’s administration building as an Africian American male walked out. I had never seen the man before or since. However, I remember thinking, “I wonder how he feels encountering an unknown white female? I wonder if he is concerned that the woman will be rude to him because of the color of his skin…or worse, will she fear him because of the color of his skin.” You see, this is an element of white privilege. I never have to worry if others will be afraid of me because of my gender and skin color combination.

BUT, even with this consciousness, I was still slapped in the face with my own white privilege this week.

I was reading Ban This Book  by Alan Grantz. It’s my young adult selection for my Spring Break reading. I would never expect my white privilege to sneak up on me while reading a book for junior high students and yet, it did.

It happened on page 18.

“Don’t put your braids in your mouth,” Mom told me for the millionth time. My whole head is covered in braids, some of them with little beads at the bottom.”

It was at this point that I realized the main character in the book I was reading was an African American female. You think I would have been clued in earlier in the book when she describes her librarian as “a big white lady with short brown hair and rhinestone granny glasses that hung around her neck on a chain….”

Now, some of you may ask, “How is this white privilege?”

Well, for 42 years of my life, every time I’ve picked up a book (and that’s a LOT!), I have immediately imagined the characters as white (like me).  I would say that 95% of the time that its been a true assumption.

That my friends is white privilege.

When 95% of the time, the people I am reading about look like me, I am experiencing white privilege.

White friends, imagine that every time you picked up a book, that the main characters were African American. Would you continue to be interested in reading when the characters did not look or act like you?

I have always known that kids need to have reading material that relates to them. I even received a grant from my local education foundation to provide “culturally relevant” reading material for my students. I worked hard to purchase books and magazines dealing with African American and Hispanic issues because these cultures represented the majority of my students.

However, the need to have culturally relevant books i.e. books with characters that look, act, and sound like students did not fully sink in until page 18. Kids (and adults!) need to experience characters that are like them….AND students (and adults!) need to experience characters that are not like them. Meaning our white students need to be reading about African American and Hispanic students. They need to be reading about Christian families (Protestant and Catholic), Jewish families, and Muslim families. Why? Because we all share this great big world we live in. We need to understand our neighbor. We don’t have to believe like our neighbor but we do need to love our neighbor.

Notes – White privilege defined:

Excerpt from Teaching Tolerance

On White Privilege

White skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose. Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of racism described above, white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society. White skin privilege serves several functions. First, it provides white people with “perks” that we do not earn and that people of color do not enjoy. Second, it creates real advantages for us. White people are immune to a lot of challenges. Finally, white privilege shapes the world in which we live — the way that we navigate and interact with one another and with the world.

White Privilege: The Perks

White people receive all kinds of perks as a function of their skin privilege.

Consider the following:

• When I cut my finger and go to my school or office’s first aid kit, the flesh-colored band-aid generally matches my skin tone.
• When I stay in a hotel, the complimentary shampoo generally works with the texture of my hair.
• When I run to the store to buy pantyhose at the last minute, the ‘nude’ color generally appears nude on my legs.
• When I buy hair care products in a grocery store or drug store, my shampoos and conditioners are in the aisle and section labeled ‘hair care’ and not in a separate section for ‘ethnic products.’
• I can purchase travel size bottles of my hair care products at most grocery or drug stores.