Excerpt:
RT: What does White privilege mean to you? How do you define it?
White privilege is largely hidden from our eyes if we are white. Why? Because it is structural instead of psychological, and we tend to interpret most things in personal, individual, and psychological ways. Since we do not consciously have racist attitudes or overt racist behavior, we kindly judge ourselves to be open minded, egalitarian, "liberal", and therefore surely not racist. Because we have never been on the other side, we largely do not recognize the structural access, the trust we think we deserve, the assumption that we always belong and do not have to earn our belonging, the "we set the tone" mood that we white folks live inside of--and take totally for granted and even naturally deserved. Only the outsider can spot all these attitudes in us. It is especially hidden in countries and all groupings where white people are the majority.
RT: Do you think you have benefited from white privilege? If so, how?
I would have never seen it if I had not been forced outside of my dominant white culture by travel, by working in the jail, by hearing stories from counselees, and frankly by making a complete fool of myself in so many social settings--most of which I had the freedom to avoid! And so recognition was slow in coming. I am not only white, but I am male, overeducated, clergy, a Catholic celibate, healthy, and American! I profited from white privilege on so many fronts that I had to misread the situation many, many times before I began to feel what others feel and see what others could clearly see. Many must have just rolled their eyes and hopefully forgiven me!
Read it all here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/romal-tune/richard-rohr-on-white-pri_b_8985742.html
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