This Is What It Looks Like

An excerpt from Salon - 

Dear white allies after Charleston: Please understand this about your privilege

The Charleston shooting is a textbook example of White Privilege. Let’s start with the manner in which the cops apprehended Dylann Storm Roof, the murderer and domestic terrorist.

Note that at the time of his arrest, Roof was an armed and dangerous fugitive, who heartlessly gunned down nine church members — and still received the utmost care when he was taken into police custody. The cops gave him a nice bulletproof vest to assure that he wouldn’t receive any damage on his way to the station and genteelly guided him out to the squad car. When the cameras flashed, he was clean and spotless, with every hair of his Lloyd from “Dumb and Dumber” cut in place.

If he were black, he probably would have ended up like the innocent, unarmed Cleveland couple, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, who fled in a similar manner as Roof, but received no love or restraint — just 137 shots for being on the wrong side of privilege. And this is the norm; there’s a collection of contemporary cases that display similar results.

Walter Scott was black and unarmed. He died at the hands of law enforcement while Craig Stephen Hicks, a white male who shot three unarmed Muslims over a parking space in North Carolina, is alive and well.

Michael Brown was an unarmed black teenager who was on his way to college before he was murdered by a white police officer. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the white guy who bombed runners in the Boston Marathon, is alive and received his day in court.

James Holmes, another white domestic terrorist, shot up a movie theater during a Batman movie; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old kid. was murdered for having a toy gun.

Freddie Gray, black and innocent with a pocket knife equals dead. White killers like Roof get award-winning restraint. The list goes on and on: White privilege allows you to survive and being black could get you killed.

Always remember that talking about white privilege makes white people uneasy — probably because no one wants to feel like they have an unfair advantage over another person solely based on skin color. However, if you are white in America, you have an unfair advantage solely based on skin color.

You’ll probably go to a better school, never be profiled by police officers, get lower interest rates, and always have the luxury of walking around convenience stores in peace. It is that way, it has been that way, and chances are it will remain that way.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/22/dear_white_allies_after_charleston_please_understand_this_about_your_privilege/