There are many, many things I don’t understand.
If you look at the results of my freshman year Gen Chem exams, it is abundantly clear that I don’t understand chemistry. I don’t understand Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Christopher Nolan’s new film Interstellar or why people like pumpkin spice lattes.
This list could go on. I am flawed, I am human, and there is only so much I can comprehend. The past few weeks however, have helped me point out another thing I do not understand: the lack of recognition of social privilege.
Because what truly, truly baffles me is that, despite Ferguson, despite the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and countless men and women, we consistently fail to recognize the existence of white privilege.
Social privilege entails that certain people are favored over others in society whether by their race, socioeconomic class, gender, or sexual orientation. It means is that social structures created over the span of several centuries have favored a certain class of individuals, whether it is due to their race, their socioeconomic class, their gender, or their sexual orientation. It means that you may not have had to think about whether the color of your skin would change the ways in which people would see you, or never have felt the need to consider whether or not you will face rejection because of your sexual orientation. Andrea Gibson’s spoken word poem “Privilege is Never Having to Think About It” illustrates how social structures create problems and attitudes that socially privileged individuals have never had to encounter.
Privilege does not mean you are a bad person. It does not mean that your life has been easy or that your achievements have simply been handed to you on a silver platter. It means that you have benefited from a system because of traits you have little to no control over.
This is a reality. And I am utterly frustrated that so many people, particularly students on campus, fail to even consider the existence of this reality.
I don’t understand how students can continue to justify the legal proceedings against Eric Garner and Michael Brown. How students can justify the use of a chokehold against an unarmed man merely for selling untaxed cigarettes, or justify the deaths of unarmed African American men at the hands of the very officials entrusted to protect them.
I don’t understand why students at Notre Dame, students who were purportedly chosen for their intellectual rigor and character, could post such ignorant, disgusting, and reprehensible remarks on Yik Yak in response to the protest for Eric Garner and other victims of police brutality at DeBart.
I don’t understand how people can continue to brush off these issues and insist that this doesn’t, at the very least, present a striking pattern of violence against racial minorities at the hands of authority figures.
I don’t understand why we continue to turn a blind eye to the unique struggles and attitudes against racial minorities. Whether in education, the job market, or the criminal justice system, clear disadvantages and attitudes against minorities continue to persist, whether we choose to believe this or not.
I don’t understand how people could be naïve enough to believe that centuries of racial oppression could ever be eradicated in less than a century.
I don’t understand why those who are skeptical of the existence of “white privilege” don’t even take the time or effort to even learn what it implies, and the countless studies and accounts that prove its existence.
I don’t understand why it is so difficult for us to admit that we do not live in a post racial society, we have never lived in a post racial society, and (if we continue to reject evidence of racist behavior) we never will live in a post racial society.
In short, I don’t understand why we continue to ignore this problem. Why we continue to remain silent, and refuse to engage and provoke discussion on these issues in our communities.
However, I do understand, that we as students of the University of Notre Dame, are called to call out injustice. Our campus mission and value system require us to recognize these issues and, as members of the Notre Dame family, we are called to inclusion in its fullest sense. We are required to not only extend a hand of friendship, but also listen to the struggles and social injustice our fellow brothers and sisters have endured. We are required to recognize our privileges, and work fiercely and fearlessly, for a world in which can finally call (in all sincerity) equal and just for all.
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