Privilege

White-Privilege: In the past several years, my school district (Mont- gomery County Public Schools of Maryland) has embarked on a system-wide exploration of our (the teachers, support staff, administrators) views on race. One of the avenues of exploration has been around the concept of white-privilege. It's not something I ever gave any thought to--which would be the very definition of white privilege! As a gay man who can easy pass for straight, I understand discrimination from a rather self-selected point of very. Because I choose NOT to hide, I have experienced homophobia, but I certainly don't have to. I because I don't always where a T-shirt announcing my sexual orientation, 90% of the time my interactions are untainted by the possible bigotry of others.

In learning about what white privilege is, and how I as a white man am privileged by it, this example resonated most clearly with me. One day while sharing a commute to work with an African American friend, he spoke of how when he finds himself in, say, a grocery store where he is the only black man he feel scrutinized in a way other non-African American customers are not. Where I live, I routinely shop at stores where I am the only white man (or there are two or three whites in a store with 40 other customers), and not ONLY do I NOT feel scrutinized by others, but I would not even THINK to THINK that I would--so that if, in fact, I am being scrutinized...it's just wasted on me! THAT is white privilege.

I bring this up, because in trying to make sense of why so many good people ignore or make choices that bring harm to the rights of GLBT people, the only conscionable option I can think of is a version of white-privilege, that I will call straight-privilege. When you belong to the majority--and you are not mentally unhinged--it's just 1) easy to ignore the needs of the minority, 2) discount the power of the unhinged members of the majority who see eminent destruction at the hands of that minority in every opportunity to be equitable and even an unreasonable threat, and 3) just substitute their good-wishes for action in regards to supporting the rights of the minority. It's a milk toast, doesn't hurt me, can't really be "that" bad attitude. After all, "I" would never act like that...

The problem with it--or the chief problem with that way of thinking--in this present climate is that the unhinged fringe is slowly becoming the majority. Step by step they are transforming our nation from a haven of diversity where all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, to a ideologically "gated-community" of the "privileged".