I’ve been thinking through the events of the past couple of weeks trying to find the right things to say during a time when it seems like we’ve completely forgotten how to talk to each other. Let me start by establishing that police brutality is wrong, and officers that commit violent crimes must be held accountable. I can tell you as a man in a mixed-ethnicity marriage, with a mixed-ethnicity son, that police profiling and the violence that it often leads to is wrong. I can also tell you as a man that spent the first 12 years of life on Austin’s East Side in a single-parent home but now lives in the suburbs, that there is indeed a difference between how policing looks in impoverished, mostly minority neighborhoods, and the suburbs. That, too, is wrong.
Yesterday in my community, I drove through a protest against police brutality. I admire those folks for leveraging their right to protest for what they believe. That is a beautiful thing. I can also promise you that black lives matter to me.
But at this protest, I saw several signs held by protesters that contained the term “White Privilege.” Over the past several days, I’ve also seen and heard this phrase used more and more, even from people that I deeply respect. I want you to know how problematic that term is and how it is based on hate as much as the very things that the black lives matter movement is fighting.
First, I feel it’s important to acknowledge the fact that all of us are privileged. Some of us are smarter, richer, and better looking than others. Some of us come from two-parent homes, while others don’t. Some of us are more fearful than others when the police pull us over for varying reasons. Our privilege isn’t always outwardly visible, or even domestic, for that matter. Most of us were born in a country that people in other countries are willing to risk their lives trying to experience. The bottom-line being, the discussion shouldn’t be about who does and doesn’t have privilege. The debate should revolve around how all of us work harder to deserve the privilege that we have.
The point of calling this out is not to disregard or silence anyone that has been a victim of racism or to claim that we can’t do more to end racism. There also is no denying that privilege exists across a variety of variables, including race, but to apply this lens on nothing more than ethnicity to one collective group is abhorrently wrong. Combine that with how “White Privilege” is becoming more and more associated with police brutality, and it only serves to convolute the critical discussion around improving police relations that needs to happen.
If you stand against racism, we should all agree that there is nothing more racist than the idea that you can charge an ethnic group with some sort of offense or crime based on their skin color without any regard to the individual constituents within that ethnic group. It’s not just racist, it’s dangerous, and exactly the type of racism that we should stand up against when we see it.
We need to continue the discussion around these issues and always strive to be better, but we must not let flawed ideology that will only further divide us become normal.
