Ferguson: Recognising the privilege of being white in America
It seems cruelly ironic that the week of Thanksgiving, the most widely celebrated American holiday, when more Americans travel to be with family than on any other day, we receive news from Ferguson that the grand jury will not indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting to death of Michael Brown. Brown will not be coming home for Thanksgiving this year. Or any other.
Over the last few months, since the initial news of the shooting, I have become increasingly aware of the “white privilege” in my own life. It was something I had acknowledged before, but this summer, with more people discussing the phenomenon, I became hyper aware. While the term has its own limitations, it also expresses the very simple truth that, in the United States, having a certain skin colour provides certain advantages, ones I now recognise even more clearly in my own life. Because I’m white, I feel no fear smoking weed on the steps of a New York City apartment building. Likewise, any time I hop off the sidewalk into a restaurant or hotel to ask if I can use their bathroom, they willingly oblige. I’m never turned down. This is privilege.
These are all examples of behaviour and possibilities afforded to me because I’m white. Yet, perhaps the harmful effect of white privilege – and its inverse, racial bias – is the fact that, in the United States, people of colour are not merely treated differently. They are also perceived differently. Studies show that, in America, individuals are more likely to ascribe supernatural abilities to black people, perceive blacks as more dangerous, and are less likely to perceive the youthful indiscretion of black children as innocent in comparison to white children. Why is this relevant? Because Darren Wilson’s testimony seems like a textbook example of this type of cognitive bias. Instead of seeing a teenage boy, Wilson compared Brown to Hulk Hogan, and he also said that once the confrontation escalated, Brown had had the face of a demon. Moreover, he claims that the shots only seemed to stir Brown’s anger and strength, so that even after being shot Brown continued to charge at him. It is hard not to read this and think of the cognitive bias surely involved that led the police officer to describe this teenager in supernatural terms.
Reading his testimony reminded me of the first time I was ever pulled over by a cop. It was February 25, 2000, the same day a jury acquitted the New York City police officers who killed Amadou Diallo, another shooting of an unarmed black male that also received widespread media attention, with many people claiming that it constituted a case of police abuse. I was driving not far from my college campus, when a policeman pulled me over for running a red light.
In Boston, you speed through the intersection when the light turns yellow, and I guess I got greedy. The policeman was right behind me, joking when he got to my window that I should at least check my rear-review mirror before doing that to make sure there is no cop. He took my license and registration, and I was sure I would receive my first ticket. I mean, his car was right behind mine. The blue-and-white lights flashed through the glass, and I sat glumly, more preoccupied with parental disapproval than concern over how to protect my bodily safety during this interaction with a cop.
Shockingly, he came back to the car and told me, “I’ll tell you what: you look like a gentleman, so I’m going to treat you like one. I’m only going to give you a warning.” I was happy with the decision. But the logic was odd. By almost any reckoning, I did not look like a gentleman. I had on a Deion Sanders Dallas Cowboys jersey and a baseball hat turned backwards. Honestly, I don’t think the officer actually thought I looked like a gentleman. I think he most likely saw himself. Or maybe his own kid. Just a 19-year-old with a dirty ball cap, a clean driving record, and his dad’s car. It’s that empathy that made him see my running a red light less a punishable offense and more a kid being dumb. I don’t doubt his sincerity or logic. I just doubt that generosity, that leap of empathetic imagination, would have been offered to a person a colour, especially one in a Deion jersey with a backwards baseball cap.
Racism is the precise opposite of empathy. It’s an inability to get past skin differences to the simple shared logic of humanity. And it manifests itself in the language Darren Wilson used in describing Michael Brown in his testimony. This form of racism, the kind that’s gut instinct and without forethought, is the least reprehensible. It is irrational and instinctual. Yet ironically, this kind of racism is also perhaps the most dangerous. Just a few days ago, Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old carrying a toy gun in a state where citizens can legally carry guns, was shot dead by a police officer in Cleveland. Someone called 911 telling of a person with a weapon but cautioning twice that it looked like a toy. The cop car pulled up, and within two seconds of the officer exiting the car, the child was shot dead. I don’t think the rookie officer responded to the call hoping to kill someone, and I don’t doubt that when he jumped out of the car he felt great danger. I also don’t think he would have instinctively felt such danger with a white person.
It is the sheer randomness of birth that when most police officers pass by me, they don’t perceive any risk. What a luxury chance has afforded me. While I can read and hold conversation with people who do not share this experience, I feel confident I’ll never truly understand the opposite: what it must be like to live in a country where the police officers who are given guns to keep the peace see danger when they see your skin colour.