Is White Privilege A Problem

And why white conservatives should learn to love BLM

Last fall I worked for about 3 months as a Census enumerator. Most people completed the decennial census either online or mailed back the questionnaire. However, about a third of households failed to reply to the census requiring enumerators such as myself to visit their homes to collect the information. The reason I’m explaining all this is because I noticed a consistent difference in the responses I got from African Americans and white people. I’ll go into more detail in a bit, but this got me thinking about why this was, and what it meant. Further, I think this might say something about the larger issue of race relations in this country. This is a complex issue that has been created over generations. My hope is to give the readers something to think about and stimulate a conversation. The comments section should be interesting, maybe it’ll even end up serving some purpose.

I need to clarify a little about the differences in the response between white and black households. Approximately 80% of people I talked to were willing to cooperate with the census regardless of race. It was only in the 20% of refusals to complete the Census that there was a consistent racial difference. So this is only referring to about 20% of the third of households who didn’t respond to the Census online or through the mail. In other words, this difference along racial lines only applies to 5 to 10% of the overall population. I still think it’s significant, but I don’t want to overstate the magnitude of this difference in responses between the races.

The first time it happened I thought it was just an amusing anomaly. I went up to a house and told the person that answered the door that I was with the Census Bureau and just needed to ask a few questions about who lives at this address. This African American individual said he didn’t live there and was just babysitting. I let him know that was fine, anyone with knowledge of the residents of the home could answer the questions. To this he responded he didn’t know the people who lived there. Wait, you’re babysitting, but you don’t have any information about the people who live here. I went back and forth with the guy a couple of times, but he doubled down on the obvious lie. Eventually, I had to accept he wasn’t going to tell me anything and left.

I didn’t make much of it that first time. Yet, over the ensuing weeks that scenario kept repeating itself, always with black respondents. A variation of this occurred several times. They would answer the first question, “Do you live at this address?” with “yes.” However, then someone else would either give them a look or clear their throat while shaking their head. After that they would clam up and claim none of the other people present lived there. I’d give them the spiel about how the census helps direct government funding and that individual responses are confidential for 72 years. Attempts to convince them to complete the Census were rarely persuasive though.

Like I mentioned earlier, the percentage of refusals was about the same regardless of race, but white people’s refusals were completely different. If they wanted to be civil they would just say, “I don’t want to participate.” Sometimes they would add something about mistrust of the government. Again, I’d attempt to convince them to answer the questions. However, if they continued to refuse there wasn’t anything I could do to compel them to cooperate. At other times I experienced open hostility from white respondents who weren’t concerned about civility. I heard “get the hell of my property” multiple times. Threats to call the police were also common. No black person ever responded with that kind of hostility.

So based on my unscientific sampling of responses as a Census enumerator, white people who don’t want to give out information to a man from the government will just refuse. A black person in the same situation will come up with a lie to explain why they can’t comply. Why?

The term “white privilege” has been bandied about in recent years. When uttered in proximity to a white Trump supporter it risks causing their head to explode in rage. There does seem to be something in the term that implies guilt by virtue of being white. However, I do think there’s an important idea in that phrase that needs discussing. When a white person wants to tell mister government man no, they feel entitled to just tell them no. An African American person in that situation doesn’t feel they have that privilege and must justify their actions.

I think one problem is the term “white privilege,” because it misidentifies the problem. The fact that a white person feels like they have to privilege to just say no isn’t the problem. That’s not white privilege, it’s just normal privilege that anyone living in a free, democratic country should feel. You should be able to talk to the police without fear or go into a store without automatically being a suspect. It’s the denial of that privilege to African Americans and other non¬ white people that’s the problem. I think reframing it in that way might reduce the defensiveness that some fair skinned people display when they hear

the term “white privilege.” It also fits in with how I see the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The whole “all lives matter,” and even more problematic “white lives matter,” fails to see the problem. This movement is claiming the privilege we white people have always assumed was ours without even being conscious of it. When someone says black lives matter, implicit in that is black lives matter also. You don’t have to say white lives matter because that’s already assumed.

And here’s the thing, the vast majority of Republicans and Trump supporters are not racists. At least not in an active way they probably would have been 50 years ago. I’ve gotten to know enough Trump supporters over the last several years to feel comfortable saying generally they don’t care about mixed race relationships or have a desire for segregated schools. Very few want to go back to the 1950s in terms of race relations. There’s a recognition that society had to change. I’m not saying they won’t be quicker to be suspicious of a black kid or make negative assumptions of a brown skinned person. That kind of latent racism is all around, and not limited to Republicans.

Where conservatives fail is in refusing to recognize how we got to this point. It seems they feel if I’m not racist then there’s not a problem. From their point of view the coverage of BLM protests looks like these people are just making a fuss. There’s a cultural blind spot that prevents white conservatives from seeing the problem. The denial of societal privileges whites take for granted to African Americans has had a corrosive effect on American culture. Most conservatives want a world in which the African American community is fully a part of society and racial discord is history instead of current events. Yet, they don’t want to do the work, or God forbid, the self-reflection required to get there.

Black Lives Matter is black people demanding to be an equal part of society. This is exactly what is needed to get to the point Republicans profess to want. But it’s only half of the equation. Until white conservatives recognize that by focusing on the one BLM looter instead of the 100 peaceful protesters they’ll continue to be part of the problem instead of the solution.

It wasn’t until my lifetime that most white people embraced the idea of full equality for black people. Four hundred years of oppression and institutional racism doesn’t just go away. That equality will only come when we see both, black people demand it, and white people recognize how ongoing racism has created the current situation. The events of the last several years have led to more progress than we’ve seen in decades, even if it hasn’t always been obvious. It’s time for white conservatives to face the reality of how we came to this place and embrace Black Lives Matters. Unfortunately, too many of them seem determined to distort the facts to make the movement seem like a threat. Ultimately, those efforts are working against their own interest.