This is What White Privilege Looks Like

By now, it is likely that you have already heard about a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury's failure to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager named Mike Brown. Wilson shot Brown a total of six times (including a shot to the head) as he attempted to apprehend Brown for allegedly stealing a pack of cigarillos from a local convenience store.

In contrast, in 2011, after killing six people and attempting to murder former representative Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Loughner was apprehended peacefully and alive. In 2012, after killing twelve people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes was also apprehended peacefully and alive and was given the right to a fair trial.

This is what White privilege looks like.

We often talk about race privilege in terms of economic, social, or political inequality, realizing that the institutional nature of racism allows White people a series of advantages that people of color are barred from obtaining. However, the deaths of African Americans such as Mike Brown at the hands of the police are indicative of an additional unexpected consequence of this system of privilege and inequality-- specifically, who receives the privilege of being treated civilly by the police and, by extension, the right to continue living.

Because of widely disseminated stereotypes of Black criminality, police and wider social perceptions of the Black body is that it is a dangerous entity that must be subdued with immediate force, whereas a White body, in its privilege, is left carefully blank of any stereotypes of aggression, criminality, or danger. If this train of thought is followed, Mike Brown, as a large, dark-skinned male whose personal physical aesthetic was as far as possible from the idea of the "safe" (meaning White) physical aesthetic, deserved to be shot six times and left in the street for 4.5 hours because he (and anyone who looks like him) are inherently a danger to society. Yet, we know this theory to be remarkably untrue and racially biased.

It is easy for people of color (particularly African Americans) to work through or ignore the gross underrepresentation of accurate and nuanced images of minorities in the media, films, and on television. The uplift of White people as the aesthetic, cultural, and social ideal within American society is problematic and unfair, but those who are accustomed to not benefiting from a system of racial privilege may simply view this as another benign (though irritating) consequence of White privilege. However, every depiction of an African American thug or a Latino illegal immigrant or criminal (particularly when these are the only available representations of people of color) only reinforces the false idea that people of color are more aggressive, angry, and dangerous than their White counterparts, including White criminals.

It is a widely known fact that the media has the ability to shape the way a society perceives itself and its participants. Thus, when an unarmed Black teenager is shot by an individual who is trained to protect and serve, the immediate socially conditioned response is an unsettling combination of respectability politics and racially-charged language:

"He was probably a thug anyway."
"If he had just pulled up his pants and taken off that damn hoodie, he would still be alive."
"You know, it's not surprising that one of those people acted like that anyway. Officer Wilson is the true hero here."
"Why are we focusing on this Mike Brown kid? We need to talk about Black-on-Black crime!" (while Black-on-Black crime is a hushed-up evil in the Black community, it is imperative that we don't take away from the very real issues of racial profiling and institutional racism that situations like Mike Brown's death reveal)

Statements like these, combined with the $300,000 in donations that Officer Wilson received from supporters and the shockingly violent response (which included tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear) from police officers to peaceful protesters in Ferguson, is indicative of the toxic consequences of the immense political, social, and economic power that is associated with privilege. Privilege does not merely consist of a group of people believing that they are superior to others. Privilege also means having the ability to manipulate existing social and historical institutions in their favor to wield that superiority over others. It does not matter whether or not Officer Darren Wilson intended to murder Michael Brown.

The existing system of White privilege already ensures that he is inherently exonerated of all guilt, and that is something worth protesting.