I’m a white woman, and I believe white privilege is real.
I’d like to tell you why.
Please bear with me, because my explanation is a little roundabout.
It starts like this.
* * *
About five years ago, a long-time friend of mine – a black Jewish woman – posted on Facebook that the time had come for her to have The Talk with her pre-teen son. I assumed that I knew exactly what she meant – puberty! Oh my gosh, isn’t it amazing that he’s that old already – and blithely rattled off the name of a book that I’d bought for my own son. It’s great, I said. Straightforward, presents the facts about changing bodies and hormones and all that in a clear way.
No, she told me gently, not that talk. Not the birds and the bees. The Talk. The one about what he, as a black boy who is already approaching adult size, will need to do if he encounters the police.
Oh. That Talk. Gulp.
I’d like to say that I recognized immediately that I’d entered an arena where I had no experience and no wisdom to offer and perhaps ought to start by opening my mouth and inserting my foot, the better to listen. But I’m afraid I didn’t. If memory serves, I commented to the effect that I hoped her son would never have such an experience.
That’s kind of you, she said, but not exactly relevant. I’m glad you love my son and want him to know only love. But as his mother, it is my job to help him, as a black boy and soon enough a black man, to navigate the world as it is, not as you might wish it to be.
That shut me up.
Her words have never left my mind, though.
* * *
The main reason I assumed that I knew what my friend was talking about was that both she and I are parents of autistic children. Her firstborn son is autistic, and so is mine. (She is also a convert, as am I, but that’s beside the point.)
My son has a hard time in this world. It can be overwhelming and bewildering for him, and it makes demands of him that he doesn’t always understand and can’t always meet. It drives him to respond in ways that make him seem odd. His speech follows unusual patterns and often centers on the imaginary worlds he constructs for himself. He moves his body in unusual ways and gets in other people’s personal space. He has a hard time in places where there are lots of people and voices and noises – including places such as shul and the kiddush hall. He asks extremely nosey questions to people he’s just met. He is a constant source of smiles and jokes –and also extreme anxiety.
When he was very young, these things were easier to deal with. He was cute, so the first things people remarked on were his blue eyes and blond hair and wide grin, rather than his habit of walking on tiptoe with his hands poised in mid-air and communicating in phrases picked up from books and cartoons. He was small, so it was easy for me to pick him up and physically remove him from situations that were distressing or confusing.
He’s not small and cute any more. He’s the size of an adult, taller and heavier than I am. It’s no longer endearing when he marches up to a complete stranger and asks if he can hold her baby; instead, it can be somewhat alarming. He stands too close and talks too loud. He gets personal too quickly. He curses freely. He doesn’t understand why his behavior sometimes makes women and girls take a step back. And he’s too big now for me to drag him away to a place where I can explain what’s happening and suggest that he try a different approach. If I tried, I’d likely provoke a bout of anxiety on his part, because he tends to fall apart and cast himself down on the floor when he perceives that he’s done something wrong.
So: his anxiety. Oh, his anxiety. It’s intense. It’s extreme. It’s also very, very loud.
It tends to manifest in the form of catastrophic speech – stream-of-consciousness wails about the possibility that he might be punished with every possible variety of the things he fears most.
And what he fears most are things like arrest, injury, violence, imprisonment and execution. Those are the things that get him crying and sinking to the floor in terror.(And then refusing to move.)
As a result, it’s been my nightmare for many years that one day he’ll walk into a classroom and run afoul of a badly trained teacher who’s heard one too many zero-tolerance lectures. Or that he’ll arouse the suspicion of a police officer who’s never learned to interact with developmentally disabled individuals. That he’ll get scared and start shouting about beatings and murder. That he’ll ignore orders to stand still. That the situation will escalate to the point where he gets handcuffed, restrained, arrested, jailed. To the point where there’s lasting trauma, where his anxiety becomes not just a factor but a driving force in our lives.
That is my nightmare.
* * *
And yet – and yet.
Even in my nightmare scenario, I envision my son coming home. Traumatized and scared, but alive. It doesn’t occur to me that he might never come back.
That’s not how it is for my friend.
That’s not how it is for mothers of black children in this country.
They worry about whether their children will come home alive after an encounter with the police.
I don’t have that worry.
That is white privilege.
It exists.
Think about it.
Think hard.
Think.