11 Things I Have Learned on My Journey to Understand My White Male Privilege

For the past 25 years, I have been on a journey to understand what it means for me to be a White man in America. The tragic murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are just a few of the thousands of lives lost due to a legacy of racism in our country.  I know that this has impacted so many people deeply and, if there is a positive legacy from all of this, it is that many White Americans are looking inwardly and asking how they can understand their White Privilege and work to uproot the systemic bias and racism pervasive in our country and in our daily lives.  I write today to share some of what I have learned on my journey to understand my whiteness and privilege and live an anti-oppressive life.  I will assure you that I continually have missteps along the way, but I continue to strive to do my part to live an anti-oppressive life and support others to do the same. 

In 1995 when I started my career as a public school teacher in Atlanta, I saw first-hand the injustices inflicted upon our youth by a vastly inequitable racist and classist system.  I taught Black and LatinX children attending school each day in decrepit, unsanitary buildings with broken sewage lines and no heat in the dead of winter, and worked alongside the underfunded and heroic teachers trying to do the best they could, spending their own income for resources for their students.  I have also experience suburban schools 30 minutes away serving White and Asian children with all the resources and technology they needed in gleaming new buildings designed and built just for them.  At age 21, this stark inequity was the first time I recognized the systemic racism of our country.  I had been benefiting from this system for 21 years without even realizing it.  Ever since then, I have dedicated my life to righting this injustice, by working in racially and economically diverse schools and educating and empowering young men and women to break the system of power and privilege.

As I began my journey as a high school Math teacher, I was socially conditioned to see my Black and LatinX students as lacking, as needing something I had to offer.  Eventually, and I will admit that it took far too long, I discovered that my students were not lacking anything as they were brilliant, creative, passionate, and powerful individuals that I had been conditioned to see through a deficit perspective.  The system was the problem, not them, and I was part of the system. It was me that needed “fixing”.  Through an examination of my own whiteness and privilege I was able to see the genius right in front of me where once I saw deficit and was able to start creating a culturally responsive classroom where my students could thrive.  25 years later, I have learned a lot on this journey and know I still have far to go.  I share some of that learning here. To many of you what I have shared may seem obvious, but as a white male living in a sea of white privilege, things were not always so clear to me, so I share them now.

• Do not wait for others to show you the way. I spent far too long waiting for others to teach me, rather than engaging in learning on my own.  I spent many years going to conferences and seminars trying to learn from others but not feeling like I was making much progress before I realized that I was spending all my time between these learning moments waiting for the next event.  It is not the job or the responsibility of anyone to teach me about how to live an anti-oppressive life.  Rather, as a White male, it is my responsibility to seek out this information and educate myself.  Once I started reading books, watching videos, and developing culturally responsive lessons for my classroom on my own, I grew far more in 6 months than I had in years.  I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but for every misstep I had I learned a ton and went ten steps forward.

• Jump In! Making errors and blundering in the name of social justice is better than doing nothing at all. Waiting to be 100% ready to engage in anti-racism will lead to a lot of planning and no action.Overcoming the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and taking action has opened up conversations, led to learning, and made progress in many arenas in my life where “playing it safe” would have accomplished nothing.  The key for me has been to maintain the conversation and keep the focus on transformation alive knowing that I will make mistakes and consequently learn from them.  Inaction only serves to maintain the status quo and even bolsters the systemic racism and oppression that I wish to eradicate.  Self-doubt and fear are obstacles I must constantly strive to overcome.  To write and post this paper is a prime example – I have been wanting to share my thoughts but have resisted for so long due to worrying that what I have to share is not good enough or that I would be criticized for something I wrote.  To overcome these fears, I am simply living in the knowledge that this paper or anything I do will not be perfect and that any criticism that I receive will help me to learn and grow. 

• As a White male, living in privilege is easy. Rejecting privilege takes effort.  The economic, political, and social power of the United States of America was, from the start, created to benefit White men and exclude women and people of color from having any access to power. The more I have been able to recognized this system of power and privilege in my everyday life, the more I see how my privilege is unearned and my acceptance of it is rewarded. Acting in ways that exercise privilege and do not question its existence is most often met with deference, whereas I have been met with strong resistance and push back when I act in ways that seek to alter the status quo or change systems of oppression or privilege.  The result is I have often not noticed when I accept or act within my White or male privilege. To adapt Beverly Tatum’s analogy, In Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, it is as if when I act in accordance with White privilege I am paddling in a canoe downstream, not recognizing that my efforts are bolstered by a swift unseen current beneath me, and conversely, I only notice the current when I turn around and feel the challenge of paddling against the current.  That being said, the more I have worked to live in a way that strives to mitigate my privilege, the stronger I become, the easier it is to keep going in the face of adversity, and the easier it has become to recognize the White privilege in my life.  Ultimately, I have found that keeping an eye on my privilege allows me to recognize when I need to step back, step up, or step down in order to create space and opportunities for others. This has resulted in deeper relationships with those in my life personally and professionally and has overall added a richness to my life that I would not have otherwise.
• Disengagement is a privilege.  A significant form of privilege is to be able to turn my interest in matters of equity and social justice on and off as I please.  The injustice, suffering, and blatant disregard for human life that has led to so many protests around the world right now has existed daily for more than 400 years and it is deeply painful to witness, let alone experience personally. It is uncomfortable to share this, but there are times when I retreat into my bubble in suburbia and am able separate myself emotionally, intellectually, and physically from that pain and suffering.  I think that many people do this or attempt to do this to some extent to maintain their emotional health, but being a White male means that I can live my life, at home or in public, in this self-made bubble as long as I wish without someone bursting it. This is a privilege few people who are not White can exercise without someone verbally or physically reminding them that we live in an unjust world. The resulting emotional and physical toll of never being able to escape the negative impacts of systemic racism and oppression is immeasurable, as are the benefits of being able to reap the rewards of this system. I do not claim to have a solution here or a way to make this right, but hope that we can work to end the police brutality and systemic racism that divides us and wounds the bodies and souls of our nation.
• My voice is not always needed; mansplaining is real.  Just shutting my mouth is probably one of the simplest ways I have found to decrease my White male privilege. I was raised in school to believe that everyone always wanted to hear my opinion and that my opinion was always valid, two great lies that I bought completely.  After all of this conditioning, I continue to be surprised at how much of a challenge it is for me to speak less and listen more, but the benefits are clear.  As a White male, I have found that using my voice (or not using it!) to make sure that women and people of color have ample space to share their voice has led to deeper personal connections, richer discussions, and better decisions.
• Justifying my actions by highlighting my intent and minimizing my impact is an exertion of privilege.  I regret that, in my need to be understood, agreed with, and be right, I have hijacked many conversations and silenced many voices. Prior to this understanding, it was always my first reaction to defend myself when challenged, to believe that if someone disagrees with me or sees fault in something I did, they must just not have understood what I meant, and therefore I must continue to explain myself until they agree with me (or give up).  This behavior was pointed out to me as a hallmark of White male privilege, as it seeks to assert my “authority” and silences the voices of others.  I am forever grateful to my friend for caring for me enough to share this fact, and embarrassed that I could not see it on my own.  Now, when someone challenges or disagrees with me, my response is to acknowledge disagreement and ask them to explain further about their belief, which tends to open conversation and dialogue in a positive way. In group settings, it can be the best course of action to make no comment at all and allow others to share their thoughts, agree, disagree, or just comment. I now see my need to defend my words as an exertion of privilege. Instead of me feeling “right”, I am now allowing others to be heard. It has been remarkable how profound the impact this “simple” change of behavior has had on my life as I can honestly say it has resulted in deeper relationships with the people in my life, both personally and professionally.

• Engagement is Required.  “Everyone is entitled to their opinion” and “We can agree to disagree” are stances that I have often heard when issues of race, gender, class, and LGBTQ are raised, and conversations get heated.  But those statements maintain the status quo and silence voices precisely when conversations have just entered something meaningful and real.  We need these conversations to be had and we need all voices to be heard.  In any conversation, I believe that I always need to be open to the possibility that I am just wrong, and it is important for me to be willing to listen and to change my point of view.  The reality is, when those with power and privilege “agree to disagree” with those without power and privilege, the powerful win and the potential for social progress is lost.  I have found the greatest personal growth when I am willing to change and to acknowledge errors in my thinking or actions. 
• Language is powerful.  Racism, sexism, misogyny, and homophobia are pervasive in the American lexicon.  For this reason, I make a concerted effort to align my thinking with my language so that I do not betray my beliefs and values with thoughtless speech.  The obvious example is not using words that speak about women or people of color in derogatory ways, but less obvious are using words like “normal” or terms that have violent roots such as “target” that can send messages about people and speak volumes in unintended ways. I have also seen many people get frustrated and shut down by trying to “get the language right” and I confess that I have been there too, but, in these instances, I have found that just asking what language people prefer can often solve the issue.  Trying to understand and speak about injustice and equality in less than perfect syntax is better than remaining silent.

• Expressing my feelings can be either productive or destructive. Sometimes my emotional processing can derail the process of learning for an entire group.  When learning about systemic racism or oppression in any form, there is no right or wrong way to feel when learning about how I benefit from systemic racism in my life, but there are constructive and destructive ways to express my feelings.  It is understandable to respond emotionally, but if I respond defensively, I derail the conversation and make the experience about me rather than about the systemic oppression and the actual people being oppressed.  For me, it never made sense to spend time expressing guilt or hurt over the realization of my privilege as this seems to bring attention to me and away from the real victims of systemic oppression.  I continue to challenge myself to live my life as an anti-racist and anti-oppressor, but I do so in such a way that does not require those who are being oppressed to take care of me or try to ease my feelings.  Feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, and fear are real and okay when working through such challenging issues. I choose to see these emotions as an indication that I am on the right path, which has helped me to be more open to hearing what others are sharing.
• Alongside the wage of whiteness comes the price of privilege. Living with White and Male privilege is not without negative consequence.  From my very early childhood, I can see how I was socialized to behave as a white male. My perspective is that this socialization idealizes individuality, self-sufficiency, independence, emotional detachment, and competition.  Despite a very loving, nurturing and hardship-free childhood, by the time I had grown into a young man, these ways of being had led to feelings of isolation, detachment, lack of belonging/community, and resulted in social conflict, resentment, and detachment.  Despite having many friends and a full social life, I had the feeling of being very alone in the world. How I had been implicitly and explicitly taught to be a man by society had led me down a path that sought to make me tough, insensitive, and a in many ways a bully; this naturally could not lead to rich, deep, and caring relationships. By coming to an understanding that this was not who I really was but how I was socialized to be as a White male, I was able to recognize the ways of being that caused this pain and work to remove them from my life. The great joy I have found in working to live an anti-racist and anti-oppressive life has been that I now experience greater connection, community, and belonging. These challenges that I have faced do not make me a victim, for I certainly know that the benefits I have been afforded as a White Male far outweigh these negatives, but I share this to propose that systemically elevating White male ways of being has had an effect on the world that is neither positive or healthy. We will all heal, White men included, if we give up the systems of power and privilege that dominate our society.
• Oppression in any form harms everyone.  To paraphrase Paulo Friere, in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in a systemically unjust society, neither the oppressor nor the oppressed gets out unscathed.  One of the hallmarks of White Male privilege is the ability to offend, make mistakes, harm, and bully others, and rarely be called out for doing so.  As a result, I have emotionally hurt, offended, and lost the trust of coworkers, friends, and even family members unwittingly.  This has harmed my relationships and thus made my life less connected, rich, and full of love.  My commitment to being anti-oppressive has given people the confidence to be honest with me when I act in these ways, allowing me to learn from my mistakes and attempt to make amends, for which I will be forever grateful.  I recognize that there have certainly been other instances where I will never know the harm I caused, but I continue to strive to eliminate my oppressive behavior and heal from being socialized to act in oppressive ways.

Ultimately, I see the privilege I have been given (through no act of my own) as a responsibility.  I have spent a career working in public high schools supporting students, families, and teachers, and recently had the opportunity to work as a college professor preparing our next generation of teachers.  I am also a husband, a son and a father to two wonderful children.  In each of these roles, it is my responsibility to listen when silenced voices are shared, speak up when voices are silenced, and work each day to create the world I want my children to inhabit.  I hope that in some small way sharing my thoughts here have been one step in this direction.