Axar.az presents an article, "Privilege In Four Parts​" by John Samuel Tieman.

I

I don't see green. It's a genetic defect. It came as a shock when my wife told me that the Statue of Liberty is green. I once dressed in a green tie, green shirt, green blazer, and green slacks. I thought I was cool. My beloved's reaction was, “Oh, hell no.” She made me change before she'd be seen with me at the symphony.

Folks ask, “What do you see?” I don't experience a presence. My experience is an absence. Like white privilege. It's hard to convince white people that such privilege exists. Why? What white folks experience is not the presence of privilege but the absence of prejudice.

What is white privilege? I'm white. I ran a stop sign the other day. I never thought about danger when the policeman pulled me over for a ticket. I don't worry about being detained and questioned. Such thoughts are not a presence but an absence. It's part of what makes white privilege difficult for white people to discern. It's like the fish discerning the water or the bird discerning the air.

II

Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, says simply, “Slavery didn’t end in 1865. It evolved.” The abolition of slavery did nothing to end the ideas and conditions that made it possible. In the years after the Civil War, the belief in racial hierarchy justified racial terrorism and systemic exploitation.

“Slavery didn’t end in 1865. It evolved.” This cannot be said enough. As slavery has evolved, how has the damage to the souls of white folks evolved? I am mindful of “The Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass”. Douglass spoke of how slavery corrupted Mrs. Auld, “a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman”, who suddenly found herself in possession of a slave, Douglass himself. “Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” When white folks fly a Confederate flag, ignore segregation, multi-generational poverty, the ghetto, inadequate education, unequal opportunity, the legacy of red lining, when we justify mass incarceration, when we elect a racist president – How are we different from Mrs. Auld? What is the damage to our souls?

III

I am the president of my neighborhood association. One day, right after I became president, I was glancing at our indenture. It was written in 1954. There are many things you would expect. No one can paint a sign on the side of their house. No billboards. I'm rather fond of the passage prohibiting the grazing of cows. Then there's this. “That no land or interest in the Subdivision shall be sold or resold, conveyed, leased, rented to, or in any way occupied, used, or acquired by others than those wholly of the Caucasian Race, except that the foregoing does not apply to bona fide servants employed and living with families of the Caucasian Race residing in said subdivision.” 1954. That's within my lifetime. As is the white Christian nationalism of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

My beloved wife once said, “The question is not, Am I a racist? Everyone is a racist to some degree. The more meaningful question is this, How am I a racist?” The greatest damage here is not rational. It's emotional. Racism is not a static fact. Racism is a state of being, a state of being in which the greatest damage that a person can do is to tell another human being, “Because of your color, I will never love you.”

IV

I have the experience of being forgiven. So what do I mean by this? I worked in the St. Louis Public Schools. I taught many poor people. Indeed, many of my students were the poorest of the poor.

Most of my students were Black. My family once owned slaves. I came to those schools from a class, the middle class, and I enjoyed a privilege, white privilege, that ultimately is responsible for the poverty in our country. I could have expected my students and colleagues to say, “Well, typical Ph. D. liberal Catholic. Over-educated and too late.” I could have experienced rejection and scorn when I went to work in the schools. But that's not what happened. Instead, I experienced acceptance and kindness. And forgiveness.