Why white people can’t see there is ‘White Reality’ and ‘Everyone Else’s Reality’

[MrScorpio]

By Jamie Varon

When I turned 16 and started driving, I was afraid of speeding tickets. I hated the police in an abstract way because I hated having to follow the law of the road. I wanted my rebellion and my 80 mph on the freeway.

Since getting my license, I’ve been let go with a warning more times than I’ve been issued a ticket. For someone who spent her twenties consistently speeding, driving recklessly, and generally not caring much about whether I was breaking the law or not, I’ve been pulled over a negligible number of times. And on the off-chance I saw police car lights flashing in my rearview mirror, I never feared for my life. Not once. I was never scared of the police—I was just concerned about the repercussions of a traffic ticket.

So, when I started to see video proof of police brutality towards people of color—particularly black people—I was horrified at first, but then I was skeptical. What had they done to incite this behavior? What was missing from this video? How could officers actually treat people like this?

To me, it felt like there were two kinds of police: the ones I saw on video and the ones I met in my life. I realized, then, that part of my white privilege was being able to trust police to have my best interests in mind; to trust that they assumed my innocence; to trust they’d be rational when dealing with me. Once I recognized that my experience with the police wasn’t universal, I started to listen, to recognize my privilege, and to believe people of color. I wish I’d realized this earlier, but that’s the insidiousness of privilege: It’s so entrenched that you don’t even realize it’s an advantage.

Systemic racism, police brutality, the very real disadvantages that people of color face—all of this can be hard to make sense of, especially if your experience with authorities has been vastly different. As someone who’s been championing social justice causes for more than a decade, I thought to myself: If I was this ignorant, this blinded by my own experiences, other white people must be, too—probably even more so.

http://fusion.net/story/352140/white-people-reality-people-of-color-reality/

[Funtatlaguy]

1. I think many white people, like me, do know a lot of

this exists....now, getting them to make changes to fix it, especially if that means giving up power or money in taxes, is something different entirely.

[YoungDemCA]

8. "I understand that white people are privileged, but *I* worked hard for what I have!"

I hear that sentiment a lot these days. As if those two statements were mutually exclusive.

We still have a long way to go...

[Coolest Ranger]

2. I am glad

that more and more people are seeing what we been seeing

[MrScorpio]

4. Are you getting enough oxygen?

Been sucking up too much smoke from burning crosses?

[fleabiscuit]

6. It's probably the hood.

[Judi Lynn]

5. You may not have that many supporters here, I'd like to think.

Really pathetic attempt at a post, as you SHOULD know.

[MADem]

7. Yep-it ain't always Andy or Barney pulling you over....

In fact, it's usually someone closer to Mike Chiklas in The Shield or Sheriff Arpaio!

[aikoaiko]

9. More than anything else, the videos of police brutality are changing white people

At least they are impacting me.

The barrier to believing was giving police the benefit of the doubt that a wallet really looked liked a gun, a movement really was furtive, or brutalized person resisted forcefully. Not knowing what happened, it was impossible for me to declare any particular case a use of unjustified force even as I recognized the numbers didn't make sense. Recent police camera and witness mobile phone videos are breaking through the denial.

The Walter Scott murder in Charleston, SC was a perspective changing experience for me. Watching the police escalate situations with Sandra Bland and Eric Garner taught me that police are pushing people to react a certain way that provides superficial justification for their brutality.The recent case of (now former) Officer Travis Cole's treatment of Dejaun Yourse for sitting on his mother's porch is just one of many.

I see white people posting more anti-police brutality videos on Facebook now than ever before. Police brutality of Black Americans is even beginning to resonate with the anti-gov white crowd.

[ismnotwasm]

10. There is yet another thread in GD

On the blindness of white liberals with any number of replies that completely validate the article.

I'm not special. I was raised by uneducated racists, so I know the overt racism personally. And have no delusions but it impacts my responses. I've lived in the streets, I've lived in dire poverty. For the last couple of decades though, my life is at the lower edge of middle class and I'm a comfortable white person. I have a collage degree. Yet knowing I have had racism ingrained in me from birth makes me want to root it all out. It's repulsive to think I have the patterned responses of an entire culture of whiteness. Fucking gross. I want it out of me. In order to do that, I can't afford to be fragile, I can't afford to engage in toxic whiteness, I can't afford not to listen and I have to actively search each rootlet of cultural racism I have.

I shouldn't get, or expect praise for this. I don't deserve a cookie. It's simply the part of me that wants to be a decent human being.