America Bleeds White

Ma'Khia Bryant. Sean Monterrosa. Jamel Floyd. Elijah McClain. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Alton Sterling. Tamir Rice. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. 

Letters and syllables carefully strung together: Say Their Names. 

Callely Shaw. A name that will never need to be said. A name that wakes up each morning and reaps the benefits of her pasty pigment. A name that can walk on a sidewalk with a phone in her pocket and not be shot at, assumed to have a gun. A name that has a prestigious education behind it. A name that grew up behind the expansive gates of her neighborhood, separating her from the outside world. 

My childhood was carefully curated by the gentle hands of my white, upper-class parents. I was afforded colorful, shiny environments to learn in, coaches and clubs that built personal relationships with me, worldly travels, and the gift of memories. Dinner tables overflowed with organic produce, the sounds of loving laughter, and discussions about which “passion” I should choose to pursue. Dinner tables did not sound like learning how to interact with the police force or empty chairs where parents would sit if they weren’t on their night shift.

The misguided belief that the United States is a post-racial society has led to the deeply institutionalized racism that poisons our country, birthing the principle of white privilege and enabling the systems that advantage the white. 

In our continually polarizing world, it is essential to analyze the historical roots of white privilege. It is often easy for people to note slavery as the main cause of racism in America, denying the obvious reality of continued bigotry in our country. Slavery might be responsible for the initial planting of racist seeds in America, but its emancipation was not the end of its effects. Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste, calls us to see slavery’s effects in the same way we converse with our doctors about our medical history. Our doctors feel it is important to understand our parents, grandparents, and further relatives’ medical history as it plays an influential role in our own health and well-being. Similarly, when understanding the ways in which racism still cripples many in America, considering the “medical history” that is slavery is essential to understanding personhood. Our society converses about slavery as if it is so far removed from our current population when the unfortunate reality is that its descendants bear the weight of institutionalized racism every day. Following the emancipation from slavery in 1863, white slave owners found loopholes in order to continue to practice the use of servitude. Practices such as sharecropping, in which white owners of land profit at the expense of their “freed” slaves, perpetuated the ideal of white elites holding financial and moral power and superiority over emancipated slaves. With this system in place, many families found themselves in positions where families “saw their wages treated as the landlord’s slush fund”, furthering financial dependency on the white upper class (Coates 5).

The Great Migration allowed many black Americans to move out of the deep south where systems whose practices were virtually slavery were accepted and normalized. Moving north meant the prospect of assimilation into neighborhoods housing people of different races and ethnic backgrounds. Instead of this assimilation being assisted by social movements, the fear of cross-cultural living birthed redlining systems created with the intention of keeping black people out. A prime example of this forced racial herding is seen through one of Chicago’s communities, North Lawndale. The previous homeowners who sold houses to black families created “contracts” which “combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting”, forcing tenants to pay for any cosmetic or relative issues with the home (Coates 7). Not only were these new, primarily black, homeowners required to pay for any issue with the home, but there also was a very stiff policy on payment. If payment wasn’t made on time, the homeowners gave up their down payment, monthly payments, and the home itself within the blink of an eye. This became a game for the middlemen, luring in specifically black families knowing that the family would be unable to meet payments, leading to a gaining profit for him. Not only were neighborhoods created for the gaming of African Americans, but also during this time black Americans were excluded from any home-mortgage market, further isolating them and gatekeeping essential information needed to make educated decisions about home-owning. Through the pervasive inequality within the housing administration, segregation within neighborhoods based on perceived personhood was encouraged. The Federal Housing Administration created a system in which neighborhoods were graded based on their judged stability, unironically synonymous with the color of the skin inhabiting the areas. Black neighborhoods tended to get graded D’s, or the color red, whereas all grade A communities were entirely whitewashed. 

The redline movement furthered the growing gap between the white population and the racially diverse populations within our country. The systematic rewarding of better housing opportunities, loan offers, and fairer contracts are components of just one of the many inequitably privileged norms in our society. In order to break through racial barriers, we must analyze the ways in which government-backed administrations, such as the Federal Housing Administration, not only support but also encourage the increase of opportunities for people who are white. 

The intersectionality of neighborhoods and education systems also perpetuates the separation of diverse communities from adequate resources. Because of processes such as redlining, in addition to general residential segregation, poorer communities increasingly tend to be home to minorities. Within these communities lie public schooling systems funded by local and federal taxes. Looking closely at the school systems that educate the youth of poorer neighborhoods, data shows that the Federal Government has continued to fail to make up for the tax gap between these neighborhoods and upper-class neighborhoods. Non-White schools currently receive approximately twenty-three million less dollars in funding. If white privilege does not exist, why are our education systems set up to favor the schools where white students are attending? Moreover, we must consider how unacceptable it is that our government has continued to turn a blind eye to the financial disparity between white and non-white schools. Our society, as a whole, prioritizes education, awarding those with degrees from wealthy, elite universities with profitable jobs. Job success inherently leads to a person’s achievements in life because of factors such as income, healthcare, and stability. In this way, our society continues to “inter-breed” success: allowing the white, wealthy elites to profit off of the long-instated biased systems built on the oppression of non-white folks. The failure of governmental reform and adequate distribution of funds across neighborhoods demonstrates the lack of attention from a top-down perspective. Without policy changes and legislative action, children attending malfunded schools will continue to be a part of our country’s cycle, weeding out minority groups. 

Considering the segregation encouraged by school districts, research shows that there is a large academic achievement gap between black children and white children. Factors that play into this data take into consideration the lack of resources provided to schools educating minority groups inclusive of, but not limited to, less experienced teachers, absence of academically advanced programs and honors courses, and undersupply of learning tools like smartboards, tablets, or other classroom enhancers. Providing these resources to the wealthier schools inherently ignores those who are not white, playing into our society’s continuation of racism and unacknowledged bias based on the color of skin. 

When you turn these observations and statistics on their head, one thing rings unavoidably true: white privilege in America never died, and in fact, is more alive now than it was one hundred years ago. Simple statistics such as school funding, access to safe neighborhoods and steady jobs, basic healthcare, extracurricular opportunities, and so much more give us the basis for this argument. The more powerful attestations to the claim of white privilege lie within the unlearned, unsung stories of daily life as a minority in America. The words exchanged between a father and son role-playing how to interact with a police officer. The twice as likely suspension of a black girl for the same offense a white girl committed last week. The mischarging of hundreds of black men and women for crimes they did not commit, simply because they “fit the description”. White privilege is so deeply woven into our societal quilt that it has normalized this corruption. 

The United States Criminal Justice System perfectly encapsulates the hidden, dirty customs influenced by white privilege. Being a white woman coming from an upper-class family, I can confidently say I have never had a negative interaction with the police force. My exposure, or lack thereof, to the racially charged discrepancies within the justice system, has been entirely a product of the environment in which I was raised. Our school systems sanitize history, giving students a whitewashed, unrealistic understanding of what racism on any account looks like. Confronting white privilege means leaning into conversations long avoided by those who reap the benefits of its systematic gains. Black men are two and a half times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a white man is, simply because of the color of their skin. In any context, this statistic energizes the idea that a black man suffers greater consequences for the same exact crime a white man were to commit. A black man’s simple existence endangers himself to a two and a half times as likely death by police force. It is time to teach this truth, to ingrain it in the minds of the white elite, to expose people to the deeply concealed blemishes the United States Government backs. 

In addition to the incongruence in sentencing policies between races, the United States prison population is the highest in the world, consisting of mostly minorities. Furthermore, our prison population is made up of the most uneducated populations in our country, directly tying into the idea that the favoring of white neighborhoods and the school system comes at the expense of minority potential. Our country’s systems are built to make life as a non-white person more difficult than a white person of equal standing. Growing up in a redlined area leads to attending underfunded schools, funneling into lower graduation rates, and walking hand in hand with a higher risk of incarceration, ultimately landing you back in a dangerous neighborhood. Our country runs on this cycle, rinse and repeat. Its inevitability is caused by the continuation of systematic ignorance to the favoring of white people, and moreover, the handicapping of minorities due to their identity.

Opposers of the belief in white privilege argue that minorities reap the benefits of their identities through affirmative action in many different ways. Dismissing affirmative action would be irresponsible as its presence grows increasingly meaningful in college admissions and job application processes. Despite this, one must analyze why these fair treatment systems exist: to undermine the existence of discriminatory norms that run through our Country’s infrastructure. The mere presence of minority “privilege” is built on the fact that an anti-discrimination program must be used because there is discrimination to begin with. These systems must be in place in order to even scarcely even the “playing field” of livelihood in the United States. 

To deny white privilege is to amplify the voices of our ancestors who gave birth to the idea that skin color defines power and worthiness. To deny white privilege is to empower the systems built on the principle that access to education, safety, and therefore life, does not apply to all humankind. To deny white privilege is to agree with the idea that “I can’t breathe” are adequate last words as a police officer rests his cold, racist bones on your body. To deny white privilege is to silence Ma'Khia Bryant’s family, to censor Breonna Taylor’s story, to whitewash Elijah McClain’s narrative.  

Say their names. Annunciate every single syllable that is charged with hate crimes, bigotry, segregation. Each letter represents the fight against a society who favors a predetermined, unchangeable physical characteristic. Look up. Look around. Breathe in your safe, prerogative air. Exhale. Exhale the supremacy, the ignorance, the avoidance. Breathe life into the truths and the stories of white privilege in America. Breathe life into reforming our systems, abandoning the deeply seeded roots whose presence has been strategically protected by nicely manicured policies, uncovering the prejudicial norms that pump through America’s veins.