Below is the gist of a letter I received from an old Brooklyn friend. The names and places have been changed.
“White. Privilege? I knew it exited. The really rich like the Kennedys, Roosveldts, Du Ponts and others like that were privileged sure. But 99.9% of folks in America like me never experienced it. But I think I know what these folks who are pushing Critical Race Theory are talking about. It’s crazy, but to them, if somehow you were able to grow up without serving jail time, and were successful enough to put a roof over your head and food on the table, you somehow did it as a result of white “privileged” and had a easy time of it. It sounds like “transference” to me. That is the word I use to describe the case of transferring blame for a bad outcome. Like the kid with the failing grade who wants to forget the fact that he /she did not study, but would rather blame the teacher for making the test too difficult.
According to the NY Times and Critical Race Theory me and my childhood best friend Jammy (Jamille) Terry, we would be classed as having lives of “white privilege”. Jamie and I attended public school 201 and high school together. We both came from working class families. And we were relatively good students who worked hard and as a result achieved reasonable success. But today, after the Black Lives Matter uprisings we should feel guilty about our “privileges“. (Oh yeah, we were both straight males too and I guess that’s not so good anymore either. It’s simply another source of guilt. )
Yeah, in our neighborhood, me and Jamey, we would have been classed as “white privileged“ by modern day standards. We had it pretty good even though we lived on the wrong side of 13th Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Even being poor, we had it better than a lot of the other kids in the “hood”. Both our dads came home from work each night. One from the LI Railroad the other from a small auto painting business. We both had a two-parent family, and both our moms worked. Mine, as a seamstress in a local coat factory and Jamey’s mom in a furniture store on 4th Avenue. We lived in similar apartment houses with our parents and siblings ( but neither of us had our own room! I wonder if that cuts into our “privilege” status? ) and were raised to respect the law and stay away from gangs, drugs, tobacco and alcohol, In time, we both graduated high school in 1957 and then went to Brooklyn College, which In those days was free —but only if you had very good grades. Jamille went on to become a lawyer. I did ok too. My life was a bit more privileged. Jamille,was In ROTC and went on to serve in the Army in Vietnam during that war. He died there when his MASH unit took a direct hit from Vietcong artillery.
So according to the modern day race theory ( Critical Race Theory) we both lived lives of “white privilege” that we should feel guilty about. Fact is Jamille was a black kid and I white. . I kinda feel that that theory isn’t really much about skin color or race. It’s a lot more about how you were brought up. If Jamie were around now I don’t think he would feel guilty about being a privileged Black “white” kid and I don’t feel that way either.
Some folks want us to feel guilty for our “privileges“ of having two loving parents, of being sons of hard working, caring-fathers who took responsibility for their familes, of having moms who directed us To do our best, made our lunch bags up. (Jamie’s brown paper lunch bag was always the neatens and best in our class), cooked our meals, helped us with our homework and made sure we brushed our teeth. And to live in a family whIch took us to church on Sunday, and made sure we respected our teachers, the pastor of our church and the cop on the beat.
These CRT folks really just want us to feel guilty about the great sacrifices our folks, both black and white, made for us. We had no special privileges only caring and loving parents. Somehow I don’t get it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment