"Privilege, Power and Difference" + The Silenced Dialogue (Johnson + Delpit)

 Your Name: Kesley Exil


Name of Author(s): - Alan Johnson

- Lisa Delpit




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“White privilege comes at a huge cost to people of color and on some level white people must struggle with this knowledge" (Johnson 39) 
One of the difficult parts of the conversation around race and privilege is how intangible privilege is to those who have it. 
My best friend from my old school was this white guy named Josh. Josh was born lower class than me, growing up in a rough part of New Haven and going through rough situations his whole life. However, he is also white, able bodied, straight, and male, which, in spite of his lower class background, affords him a certain level of privilege. While he is aware of his white privilege and knows it effects his life, at the time he was somewhat of a mindset that his lower class background almost cancels out some of his white privilege. This, obviously is untrue.  Josh, both due to him being pretty charismatic and being a smart white dude (with glasses), has a tendency to make connections really fast and tends to get into spaces you would never expect. 

I recall the first time we met, as roommates at my old school, and he told me a story of how he got invited to a party with a bunch of rich white kids. Apparently wanting to troll the kids and see how much complete drivel he could sell them before they realized he was messing with them, he began spinning tales about his neighborhood, even telling them he was a Blood and a Crip and all the war stories he had lived through. And for some odd reason they just bought it. Because of their privilege, they had a preconceived notion about the area. Ironically, his privilege afforded him the ability to not see how his lying about the area to some rich white kids was not subverting any kind of expectation and was simply perpetuating stereotypes they already had about the area. 

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