Talking with the Other: Final

Okay, I lied. The retorts kept circulating in my head and ruining my day and I just couldn’t quite let it go. But then I went the satirical route and that helped a lot. So at the risk of losing any readers who really tired of this back and forth, hang in there for one more and hopefully enjoy my attempt to say serious things with humor. And then I’ll talk about the fun singing I had with the kids! So my reply to: 

 

“White privilege is not a thing. It has been disproved by greater minds than both you and I.”

 

“Sasha, thanks SO MUCH for enlightening me!  I’m so happy to hear that some GREAT MINDS (white, I presume?) have PROVEN beyond a shadow of a doubt, that WHITE PRIVILEGE isn’t a thing!! I’m sure they are using incontrovertible evidence, meticulous historical research and their deep compassionate concern for the betterment of humanity to come to such a HAPPY CONCLUSION! Such a relief! I think of all those many hours I wasted reading hundreds of articles and book, watching select movies and documentaries, talking to black folks about their experience. Now I can tell them to relax—it was all FAKE! The experts SAY SO! 

 

Abduction from their homelands, 400 years of slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, voter suppression, redlined housing, fight for freedom, but no G.I Bill benefits when you get back, denied loans, mass incarceration, firehoses turned on children, bombs blown up in church basements, police murders without accountability, Emmett Till, Breonna Taylor, Nat King Cole attacked on stage, Miles Davis beat up by police taking a break outside the jazz club and on and on and on— none of it happened because of a spoken and unspoken white supremacist narrative. The EXPERTS say so and we are OBLIGATED to believe them. Oh, and should we throw in apartheid in your home country of South Africa? Never happened. Have you called Trevor Noah with the news? That he made up being “born a crime?”  Or maybe it all did happen, but according to Lindsey Graham, NOW there is no racism in the U.S. I’m sure there’s not in South Africa either. 

 

And the best part of all? We two white men like us can agree with those great minds and decide all by ourselves that—well, you know. White Privilege isn’t a thing.

 

So thanks again, Sasha, now I can go back to the important work of teaching kids the difference between quarter notes and eighth notes and not ever have to use my voice again to invite people to actually think about all those things I thought happened, but apparently didn’t. So I think I’ll just kick back, enjoy my fake white privilege and listen to early Sonny Bono songs."