Every time I walk into a women's clothing store, the employees assume I am there to spend some money. Some days I wander in wearing old sweats with messy hair and no make up, looking as if I rolled out of bed moments before my shopping trip. But they greet me when I walk in, offer to help, and the moment I have a couple of items in my hand, they take them from me to get a fitting room started. They are confident that I have money to spend. They give me the benefit of the doubt.
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While walking my dog late last night, I ran across an older woman with two small critters of her own. Because my dog is fairly aggressive, I pulled her to the side and began to head to the street but the old woman yelled, "Oh your fine hun! We are headed in here." She pointed to her house. She did not move quickly away or cross the street or pretend like her house was not HER house. She felt confident that I would not put her in harm's way. She gave me the benefit of the doubt.
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In my early twenties, I got pulled over on the highway for driving almost 100 MPH. When the officer approached my vehicle, he did not scold me. He laughed. I gave him my ID and some line about being in a hurry to get somewhere. He rolled his eyes. When he returned from his vehicle after what seemed like an ETERNITY, he gave me a ticket and sent me on his way. He didn't follow me afterward. He never called me any names or accused me of wrongdoing other than speeding. He didn't ask me to step out of the car. He didn't reach into my car. He seemed confident that I was just a young girl, in a hurry, who broke the law for a moment. He gave me the benefit of the doubt.
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As a teenager, I traveled in a gang. By gang I mean, a pack of teenage girls. We were loud and obnoxious. Sometimes we dressed alike. We would roam my neighborhood, walking through the alleys, in the streets, across the park. We would sit in a parking lot near my house and smoke cigarettes. We would meet up with the boys we liked and hang out. We would go to 7-Eleven or some fast food restaurant or Vickers gas station to get sodas. We would walk past the Amoco where all the hot guys from the local high school worked. Nobody ever called the cops on us. And we were never stopped by the police for being suspicious or because they wondered what so many of us were doing walking in the street or down an alley. The world seemed to know that we were just average teenagers having fun and that we had no intention of causing trouble. It was as if the whole world gave us the benefit of the doubt.
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When we hear someone use the term "white privilege," we stop listening. It is phrase used to identify the inequality in the life experiences of brown-skinned people versus white-skinned people. For "white" people the term hurts our ears. It sounds offensive because it feels like an accusation. It feels like each individual person with a European ancestry CREATED the situations in which they are regularly given the benefit of the doubt.
Giving it the title "White Privilege," made the conversation divisive. It created an even greater gap between the members of the HUMAN RACE who just happen to be different shades of pink and peach, and brown and tan. People stop listening when we say "white privilege." That gap is growing because on all sides we are unable or unwilling to seek the understanding of what it is like to live in the skin of another man. NOT TO WALK IN HIS SHOES, but to LIVE IN HIS SKIN. What would the differences be in my life, in times of trouble and difficulty, if I was a little more brown than I am now? And on the flip side, how different would my life be, in times of trouble and difficulty, if my skin was a little lighter and had a little less pigment? What freedoms would I gain or lose? How would I experience little things differently every day?
I hate the term 'White Privilege" because while it is TRUE that living in white skin earns a person the benefit of the doubt more often than not, it has created a seemingly insurmountable gap. I hate the TRUTH in the phrase "white privilege." I hate that we equate it with meaning that we grew up rich or we grew up with great education or we grew up not having to work for everything we have because THAT IS NOT what "white privilege" is. I also hate that people hate me because I have white skin. I have often wished that my native blood pushed through a little bit more to the surface. I would much rather be OBVIOUSLY a red man than white on many days. I would much rather experience the oppression of my native heritage than be given the benefit of the doubt some days if only so others would not like me or tolerate me EVEN THOUGH I am white.
I want us to start calling it, quite simply, THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. I don't know if doing so will change minds or hearts or open up acceptance or conversation. I don't know if a bridge can be built by refocusing the conversation on when and if and why we receive the BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. But I sure would like to give it a try. I would like to IN ALL THINGS remove reference to skin color from the terms we use when trying to decide how we move forward as a people and a community and a country. But I do NOT want us to forget that the tone of our skin, of the skin of each and every person on the face of the earth, does MATTER. And so do their lives.
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