Microagression: My Experience

Am I a racist and not conscious of my white privilege? I was quite taken aback while enjoying a nice dinner and conversation with a dear friend I have know since childhood. We don't get to spend a lot of time together but we were enjoying our dinner here in West Philly.
I am eating at an Ethiopian Restaurant with a friend. We ask the waitress for more water. I sensing that the waitress does not fully understand our request, raise my left arm and make a motion of pouring a pitcher. Soon after this, an African-American woman asks about my interaction with the waitress. She states she is conducting research on microagression. I was stunned since my dinner was interrupted by someone accusing me of being a racist.I thought it was rude for her to say this then just leave. We talked to the waitress who was NOT offended and frankly was confused by our question. This occurred just this evening in West Philadelphia on Feb 4th 2014

I shared my story of being a "victim" of microagression on this web page called the "Microagressions Project"
Maybe this woman is part of this project. If so you did not do your cause much good. I will be following up on this project and see if they are observing majority white males like that did to me. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and expressing an opinion. When my Gmail works, I will email the nice folks at the Microagressions Project at editors@microaggressions.com
I learn something new everyday, sometimes by mistake.

White Privilege and Me

Safe Anyplace

In discussion in counseling,  I was complaining about work and folks who tend to have an attitude towards me.
I get it but I am just burnt out being exposed to it for 25 years. I too want respect and I tend to want folks to LIKE me. I tend to react to situations that I can not "win" with a passive-aggressive remark. I am good at it since I too tend to be hyper-vigilant about being embarrassed and humiliated.

North Philly

to be touchy and at times show an appalling lack of respect to me. I being sensitive and touchy myself tend to react and I get myself stressed out looking like the problem. Yes, I know that if I used my tools from AA I would step back and think BEFORE reacting to them. During the session, the topic of "white privilege" came up. I acknowledged that I am aware of the social phenomenon of white privilege. I gave him an example. The Tea Party can have a large gathering of gun-toting white folk in Washington caring guns. They can call themselves "patriots"  and the media and public on the most part do not find them a yeh, the Million Man March!) and they had guns?? NOW that would be a threat and the media and public would think they are criminals. Can you see why blacks carry around this resentment and hyper-vigilance about NOT being "disrespected".

Eeek!! A bunch a white freaks. Oh Just Penn Students!

threat. Now, what if a large group of black men and women came to Washington (Oh yeh, the Milion Man March!) and they were carrying guns, NOW that would be threatening!! This goup would not be called red-blooded Americans and patriots! Come on, you KNOW this is true. I think this commentary by Tim Wise concerning the Tea Party and white privilege sums it up:

"And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis."

 How about when as a kid you were busted with beer in the car, would you lose your chance for college getting caught as a white guy in Lower Merion?? How bout Overbrook??
Face it whites and African-Americans live in 2 America's as was articulated Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders or Kerner Report  as released on February 29th 1968. It came up with the basic finding that

"Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."

This report with amazing prescience saw what was happening and what caused the present state of race relations in the United States. We continue to live with many of the socio-economic problems in 2013.
Of course, there is the blow back from those who dismiss that past and present racism and discrimination is the cause of the economic condition of African-Americans. The basis of most of their objections is to focus on the "black family". In 1965 The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (the 1965 Moynihan Report)
This report gave those (mostly Conservative Republicans) the intellectual  heft to argue their Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This is the basis of "Welfare Reform" that was passed in 1996 and signed by DEMOCRATIC President Bill Clinton. This law made folks think that the "welfare problem" was solved. Well, after 25 years, it just ain't so. (That is another blog report for another Friday morning.) Here is a citation from Wikipedia

contention that it is the fault of the black family or lack thereof for the bad behavior and economic misery that many African-Americans live today. This is because this report was written by an intellectual Democrat

Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. Though black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had already introduced the idea in the 1930s, Moynihan’s argument defied conventional social-science wisdom. As he wrote later, “The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what ‘everyone knew’: that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so.”

This was controversial back in 1965 and still resonates today June 28th 2013. Here is a random blog page I dug up this morning. Here is another web page I found that sums up some white attitudes about "ghetto culture". This gives white racism and white privilege room to play and excuse us for dismissing African-Americans as somehow innately inferior. Y'all know what I am sayin YO!
I have wanted to write out my thoughts and I thank you for your indulgence!!

My Office Where I do  My Thinking.....???

I sometimes feel like I am just tied up in a large mental know or pretzel but who said life was easy even for this spaztic white male?? Oh right folks have....

Yes, the LATEST Meme. Yup! White Prividlege??

Gee, time to go to work at the Welfare Office!!!