Understanding My White Privilege

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It’s time to take a look at ourselves and understand our white privilege. Until we do this, there won’t be room for change, and I want to be a part of the change.

I am a white woman married to a Black man and luckily, we haven’t had many moments where people have acted racist towarrds us, but, my amazing husband has experienced racism his entire life. He picks up on racist behavior very quickly after 33 years of living on this Earth and being conditioned to do so. I, on the other hand, do not. This is obviously the first, huge, red flag when it comes to understanding my white privilege.

Like I said, there have been very few moments where we experienced discrimination as a couple, however, there was one very pivotal moment in our marriage and the way that I dealt with it at the time has been a root of issues for us. So before we move any further and I take you on a trip down memory lane, I’m going to go ahead and call BS on myself for not understanding this until now.

And I also know that if you have followed along from the beginning that this might not be something you would consider to be a “typical” blog post from me, but I do believe that we all need to get a little uncomfortable here and change the narrative of what has been discussed until this point. Change will not happen unless we step outside of our comfort zones and have these big conversations that need to be had right now. I want to be part of that change.

Understanding My White Privilege

The year between leaving NYC and moving to Ohio, we stayed with my parents in Pittsburgh. The first 3 months I was there alone as Chris finished out some army training back in New York and one night whenever he finally arrived in Pittsburgh with the kids and I, we went out to a bar – just the two of us. All my parents out there know how amazing it is to have a date night and that specific date night was the first one we had had in an entire year.

We didn’t do anything big, but went to a local bar that my family frequents. We were so giddy to be out without the kids. We sat down, ordered drinks and an appetizer. I’m going to go ahead and point out that Chris was the only Black person there. As soon as the waitress came with our drink order, Chris went ahead and ordered a couple rounds of shots for us. I laughed and was surprised since we don’t typically take shots, but I thought “what the heck, we were celebrating!” The surprise I had by his order must have set the waitress off because she refused to serve us the drinks and even brought a manager over with her to explain that they won’t serve more than one round of shots at a time.

We understood what they were saying, except my Uncle who hangs at the bar a lot has ordered plenty of rounds of shots right before my eyes without question. My uncle is a white man.

Things got so awkward, and it was very apparent that the waitresses were refusing to serve us because my husband, a Black man, ordered “too many drinks” and was most likely trying to take advantage of me (you know…his wife of almost 12 years).

The bar was pretty empty that night, so the whispers of the waitresses behind the bar did not go unnoticed by my husband, and I wasn’t so quick to catch on. We ended up cancelling our order, leaving, fighting in the car, and ended up going somewhere else.

It never occurred to me in that moment that my husband was being treated unfairly. I know. My white privilege completely made everything awful happening in that moments just glaze right over me. The whispers behind the bar. The awkwardness of the waitresses when they were figuring out what to say to us. These were all red flags that he was accustum to.

I feel awful looking back because my husband did and to be honest, still does, feel like I didn’t have his back in that momemt. I can’t go back and erase time, all I can do is move forward with a new perspective.

That is white privilege.

The ability to not have to ever give a second thought to anything that I do in this world is the true definition of white privilege.

And I will be honest with you all: the fight that Chris and I had that night was a major blow out and this is something that still comes up from time to time today.

I copied and pasted this from a friend on Facebook and it’s pretty eye opening. And as silly as it sounds, typing and reading these words had an impact on me (social media is good for something, right?). It opened my eyes and made me realize that owning my white privilege means that I’m aware of the level of advantage I have in life, just because of the color of my skin. Just because of being born a white woman. Understanding that deepens the connection that I have with my husband.

Because of my white privilege, I don’t have to question doing the most basic things. Like running. Being in my home. Going to a bar. I am always treated fairly, just because of the color of my skin.

Looking for more mom truths? You’ll love these:

I’m curious to learn about what is on all of your minds lately. To all of my white followers: are you speaking up? Realizing things you never thought about yourself before? What are you doing to advocate for change?

XOXO,

Allison