From a Facebook posting of a California driver:
<<<Studies in white privilege, vol. 3,987,654,992: After a car accident today (no injuries; everyone’s fine) I stood on the side of the road. The person who hit me had been late for work and was in a rush, just didn’t see where she was going. While I, a white man, looked at my car, at least ten people stopped to ask me if I was OK. That’s such a nice thing to do, and I felt safe, as if I had support if I needed it: people wanted to help, which is a far-too-rare thing to experience in this world. But nobody stopped for the other driver, a woman of color who was twenty feet away, also looking at her car. Not one person. The safety and care that I felt from the social world in that moment was entirely absent from her experience of the crash.
This was a micro-example of the daily life of white privilege; there is no other explanation for what was happening on the side of that road. We exchanged information. She could not drive her car, and there it was again: if I had needed a ride, there were at least ten people ready and willing to help. She would have had to call someone and wait on the side of the road. So I helped make sure her car was out of the way, and then drove her to work. (I deserve no praise for this; it was not “generous,” as an insurance person later said. It was just the right thing to do.)
White people: if you, or anyone you know, is having issues understanding what students of color are describing as racism in daily life on their campuses, you won’t need to try very hard to think of an example like this from your own life. Connect the dots. The safety and security that you most likely feel when you need it most, without having to ask for it, is not similarly or equally felt by most people in this world. Listen closely to the students at Missouri, and Yale, and even (this morning) Harvard Law. Listen closely to Towson and Claremont and Illinois. They indict the system; they do not indict you individually. They indict a daily life lived without the safety nets and protections that you most likely can take for granted; they indict both the discrete and the systemic threats of violence that follow them, that stalk them, through their daily lives. Listen closely, and learn how to be an ally rather than a knee-jerk naysayer. Trying to prove that someone’s expressed suffering isn’t real is hateful and pathetic. Listen closely.>>>