In a book called White Fragility, the author posits that all white people benefit from just being white. All white people are racist and are white supremacists. So the question I have for those misguided souls who believe this nonsense, where was this advantage for me when I grew up and made my way in the world? To answer this, a little autobiography is needed.
My father never finished high school, and was a farm laborer when I was born in 1942. Mom had gone to one quarter of a ‘normal’ school when they married in late 1939. An older brother was born a year after their wedding, and I came along 17 months later than that. One picture in my album shows my brother and I playing outside an old railroad boxcar, our home after the one we lived in burnt to the ground. Where was my ‘white privilege’?
Dad got a job at the John Deere plant in Waterloo, Iowa and we moved to a little town about 25 miles from there. Our toilet was behind the house, which was a little uncomfortable in the wintertime. Until I was 9, I walked to school each day; no school bus would pick up students who lived in the village even though we lived quite a ways from the building which housed us while we learned. I suppose it was at least five miles each way in rain and snow and bitter cold (that is a little hyperbole, folks; only about a half mile from our house to the schoolhouse). But did white privilege set me above other folks?
In 1951 we moved to a farm of 160 acres in north central Missouri, called Little Dixie because of the southern flavor of the people who were there. It was so Democratic that no Republican ran for local office until 1964. We got quite a culture shock when we found out that our new schoolhouse was a one room frame building, holding at most 18 students from grades one through eight. One teacher, strict discipline, but our parents were adamant that we learned and did our homework. Our only social outlet was the local 4-H club, which met in the schoolhouse. White privilege, indeed!
Ours was a hardscrabble existence. We had no running water and winter winds came through the walls almost unabated. With soil that was not too fertile, crops were always not quite enough for us to get ahead. Dad had to take summer work on road construction crews to make ends meet, leaving my older brother and me to do most of the farming and taking care of the livestock. My white privilege was, I suppose, riding that old John Deere ‘B’ in the fields from sunup to sunset.
After graduating from the eighth grade, high school beckoned in the town about 7 miles north of where we lived. My class for all four years never had more than 17 or 18 in it in any year. Those of us who came from the ‘country’ were considered lower class citizens by the ‘townies’ and this made life hard for the first couple of years. My only pleasurable outlets were the actual schoolwork (I really did like learning at that age!) and sports. Baseball and basketball were important to me, and even though I was never really good at them, the sports made high school bearable. White privilege wasn’t even on the radar for us.
With four kids to raise, Mom and Dad had limited resources when it came to higher education. My whiteness did not help me get into the college I wanted, so I was steered toward a small Bible college to prepare for the ministry. Three semesters later, I left the school and began my career as a preacher. By the time I had moved to Illinois, I had acquired a wife and two children; with another on the way I started to college again, to become a teacher.
How much did my whiteness help? Not much. A small (very small) scholarship from the county for prospective teachers helped in my first two years at university, but most of the cost came from my own work and various loans from those, including my bank, who specialized in student loans. After graduation, I got a stipend for being a grad assistant in my department as I began my Master’s program. Again, loans paved the way for completing that educational milestone. How much of that milestone was gained because of my whiteness?
It took me more than ten years to pay off the loans I had, even after some of the money was ‘forgiven’ because I had entered the teaching profession. If I had claimed privilege because of my skin color, the banker would have probably had a stroke laughing at me.
At the same time as I began teaching, my wife left me and I was on my own for ten years. During that time my finances were always on the precarious side of the ledger. My home was a house trailer, but it burned up one winter day. Before I married again, one of the places I lived in was in the house of a friend, who then gave the place away to his son. One of my next residences was a place with no running water nor indoor plumbing. Two college degrees and whiteness did not even guarantee any amenities in life, all I had were very quick trips to the outhouse!
Even after remarriage, our whiteness did not count for much. We managed to buy an old farmhouse in the country, but could only afford lawn chairs in our living room, a cooler for food and a hot plate to cook on. If only I had known it, I could have appealed to my whiteness for relief! Oh, and to ‘buy’ the place, we got loans from our mothers, from the seller and from a banker.
In my life I have enjoyed success. 38 years of teaching brought some satisfying events in my life. My wife and I have enjoyed traveling extensively. And from Thailand in Southeast Asia to Israel in the Middle East, we have journeyed, but most of the trips were in Western Europe as we have been in about 30 countries in the more than 34 years we have been married. Most of those trips were financed by working for a student travel company. We were able to build a new house in a subdivision of the city in which we lived and have a large circle of friends, colleagues and family to enjoy. All this, I suppose, was due to our whiteness! Did I mention that my wife is whiter than I? She is pure Scandinavian.
How much did our whiteness cause this to happen? From 1970 to 2016 I had two jobs I worked at all the time. At one time, my wife and I were bringing home five paychecks from the places we worked. No one stepped up and said that since we were white we could have those jobs; we went out and got them and worked hard to get the enjoyable things we now have.
I cannot understand the many people who look at skin color and say we were privileged over those of color. All that we have has been accomplished because we were not afraid of work, not afraid of putting forth effort to be able to achieve the “American Dream”. In fact, I resent anyone who claims I was allowed to the front of the line simply because of the color of my skin. It anything has been accomplished in my life it has not been because of favors given nor of people of influence I have known. There was no large inheritance which came my way when my parents died; there was none at all.
The claim of an inherent advantage because of whiteness is belied by the many who share my pale shade who, like me, have worked over years, nay decades, to get to the place we are today.
My advice to those in this country who want to succeed, be they white, black, brown, red, green is to get off their duff, get up, get a job or jobs and work to get what you want. It may vary because of ability or circumstances, but watching others get ahead while you don’t may simply be because you are not putting out the effort to climb the ladder of success.
White supremacy? Only in the minds of those where envy lives large and where a work ethic lives small.