Ryder McEntyre

Berry College is predominately white. The administration is white, the student body is basically entirely white, and simply stating these simple facts will anger some. That’s okay. That’s the privilege of any reader. You get to be angry.  But you also get to be exempt from the systematic racism that we learn about in the classes we’re paying Berry College to offer.  

If I don’t appeal to your racial sensibilities, may I appeal to the students and administration here who are Christian? To have a heart for your brothers and sisters, and love our fellow humans as Jesus would? To authentically love them in ways that matter to them? It could benefit all of us by moving us to a more equal and just country. 

 We have to understand that white people can kinda suck sometimes if we’re going to achieve any degree of progress in this country. Race is still a thing in this country, as evidenced by the numerous cases of white-on-black police brutality cases we’ve been seeing in many states, and by the continued cultural appropriation of black culture without respect for that culture in the media. 

Why is this so hard to hear if you’re a white person? Maybe because it makes us feel complicit. When I first started my road to re-education as a white person, I was shocked. I almost wanted to say, “This is just reverse racism.” But that’s not constructive, and it’s incredibly false. 

It’s also difficult to identify with people you don’t know. According to a Public Religion Research Institute survey, in a network of 100 people, whites tend to have only one black friend.  

You may have heard me jokingly say, “Wow, I really hate white people,” or “Wow, white people are even worse than we thought.” Hyperbole. But I’m trying to point out a vital issue that almost brings me to tears: White people have no recognition of their privilege. Why is that?  

Death, disease and guns 

Christopher Columbus “discovered” North America, which already had millions of natives, and brought with him guns and, perhaps even more lethal, disease. And this white guy has a holiday named after him. If this doesn’t seem ironic, it’s because the “winners” write the history books, and there is a persistent myth about white heroism “civilizing” the savages. Perhaps whites created the myth to sleep at night.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a white male, recently published a five-part editorial series, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” in which he highlighted numerous inequities blacks experience in this country. I’ll paraphrase him to help illustrate why blacks have it so badly.  

Whites in America own 18 times more than blacks in this country, which is worse than apartheid-era South Africa. A black boy born in this country can expect to live five years less than a white boy. African American men without a high school degree are more likely to be imprisoned than employed. 

And this isn’t entirely black America’s problem. White people, particularly rich, white males, created the system that denigrates black Americans.  

Redlining, race and de facto apartheid 

A little known problem has caused segregation beyond Jim Crow, the effects of which we are still experiencing today: the Federal Housing Administration.  

The FHA institutionalized racism and segregation in housing in this country over the course of three decades, ending its practices only in the 1960s. These practices were publicized to ease the home ownership crisis following the Great Depression, but it in fact secured loans only for white people. Black families, even those living or attempting to live adjacent to other black people, were refused loans in increasingly sophisticated ways.  

Basically, the FHA comprised a bunch of white people telling black people where they could and couldn’t live. These policies, both formal and informal, served to segregate communities and cities throughout the country. As white suburbs boomed, fueled by FHA bank loans, inner city black communities crumbled.  

This concentrated problems that black people were already experiencing due to the long-fingered legacy of Jim Crow laws and of slavery. 

Now add the failed experiment in public housing during the 1960s, which came as a response to the ills created by the FHA’s racist policies. Public housing in black ghettos around the country further isolated black Americans. To quote Richard Rothstein, of the Economic Policy Institute and, of course, a white male:  

“With mortgage guarantees, the government subsidized whites to abandon urban areas for suburbs (contributing) heavily to the creation of the segregated neighborhoods and schools we know today, with truly disadvantaged minority students isolated in poverty-concentrated schools where teachers struggle unsuccessfully to overcome families’ multiple needs. Without these public policies, the racial achievement gap that has been so daunting to educators would be a very different, and lesser, challenge.” 

A giant sucking sound 

The fact of the matter is this: White people do kinda suck, sometimes. The white men I’ve quoted here don’t suck. I try not to suck. And there are numerous people on this campus and in this country that don’t suck.  

But we’ve got a bad reputation, and we’ve got a long way to go. White people have put black people in a pretty bad situation, and we blame them for it out of convenient amnesia.

The most frustrating part for me? Our privilege blinds us to the fact that we don’t live in the same country that black people live in. We say things like, “they just aren’t working hard enough,” or “slavery ended like 200 years ago, omg, get over it.”  

The American meritocracy is a lie, and the effects of slavery have been compounded by years of continued institutional racism. 

Why do I care so much about these issues? Well, I love black culture. I love hip hop, jazz, twerking, black films. The list goes on. I know I’m white, but I try to check my privilege by being active in issues that face black community, because they’ve given me things I respect. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. Think about someone like Iggy Azalea, or as Azealia Banks calls her, “Igloo Australia.” Iggy Azalea is a white rapper who co-ops the rap genre to enormous financial gain, and yet consistently demonstrates ignorance of the struggles of the black people whose culture she’s is exploiting. 

And I’m not even addressing the failed experiment in mass incarceration, the incredibly racist “War on Drugs” branded by President Reagan or the institutionally racist justice system, to name a few more systemic problems white people should care about.  

And I’m not exclusively blaming white people for being ignorant. We grow up in an America that doesn’t ask us to face these issues. That’s white privilege.  

It needs to end.  

You might be white if . . .  

1. You can arrange to be in the company of people of your race most of the time.  

2. You can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that you will not be followed or harassed.  

3. You can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of your race widely represented.  

4. When you are told about your national heritage or about “civilization,” you are shown that people of your color made it what it is.  

5. You can be sure that your children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.  

6. You can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of your race represented, into a supermarket and find the food you grew up with, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with your hair.  

8. You are not made acutely aware that your shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on your race.  

9. You can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.  

10. You can take a job or enroll in a college with an affirmative action policy without having your co-workers or peers assume you got it because of your race.  

11. You can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on your race.  

12. You can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of your race cannot get in or will be mistreated.  

13. You are never asked to speak for all of the people of your racial group.  

14. You can be pretty sure that if you ask to talk with the “person in charge,” you will be facing a person of your race.  

15. If a traffic cop pulls you over or if the IRS audits your tax return, you can be sure you haven’t been singled out because of your race.  

16. You can easily by posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of your race.  

17. You can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match your skin.  

18. You can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to your race.  

19. You can walk into a classroom and know you will not be the only member of your race.  

20. You can enroll in a class at college and be sure that the majority of your professors will be of your race.