Some Thoughts on "White" Privilege

This is a personal essay based on seventy years of observing life and people around me. I've heard and read a lot about ”white guilt” or “white privilege” in the last year or two. Privilege is something a lot of us have without even thinking about it. When I thought about privilege, I usually related it to wealth or people who could open doors for a better position at work, acceptance into a country club or Ivy League school. It was about who you knew. I never thought about it related to my skin color.

I was born in Michigan when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was President. My dad was installing fixtures in a grocery store chain. Born in 1922, he had share cropped someone else’s land with his nine siblings and parents. He quit school in the 6th grade to work on the farm. Marrying my Mom, serving three years in World War Two shaped his world. By the time I came along, my parents had a brick home of their own (thanks to the GI bill) and I had an older brother.

My Mom came from a different kind of family than Dad. Grandpa was a small grocery store owner and Grandma didn’t work outside the home. She had one sister and two brothers. They all completed high school and one brother achieved medical school with working and grant money.

In Michigan, where I lived until I was five, I only remember white people. I am quite sure black Americans lived near us but they didn’t go to our church, school or grocery stores. It just never entered my personal universe. My memories at that age were my brother’s great attic room, our parakeet and dog, my parents being around, enjoying kindergarten and playing in the snow. My youngest brother came along when I was three.

If you are a southern and reading this, do not be offended. The following were my observations as a white child new to Georgia from a young age. I do remember moving in 1959, mainly because my Mom was very unhappy about the whole situation. I am sure I was influenced by her feelings.

On our way south, as we reached Appalachia, I actually saw extreme poverty for the first time. Homes were made of slats of wood with uneven front porches. The roofs looked like Mom's crinkled aluminum foil. White children were running around in dirt yards with dogs whose ribs were visible through thin skin. There were rusty washing machines and crippled chairs on porches. The children were dressed in clothes that looked dirty. In spite of their poverty, they played happily around broken down trucks and tire rope swings.

I remember Mom saying, “Carl, what were you thinking when you agreed to this job?”
Dad, “A paycheck, dear, we need one to live on.”

Now, I realize Dad probably recognized the poverty he was seeing since his childhood was one of similar conditions. My Dad was a man of a few words but when he spoke, we listened. He was a believer in hard work, family, fairness, honesty and God. My Mom was more vocal, opinionated and complicated.

The other thing I noticed after crossing the Mason/Dixon Line was small wooden stalls along the side of the road. They sold fresh vegetables and fruits. They also had beautiful quilts, Confederate flags, towels and chenille bedspreads hung on clotheslines. Signs on the roadside told us “The South will Rise Again!” We stopped at a gas station. This was my first time to see segregated bathrooms. Both colored women and men used an outdoor free standing toilet. It didn’t look clean or sturdy. This was also the first time I noticed a black person, a man was sweeping the garage area of the gas station. He kept his head down. The friendly white Texaco gas station man filled up our tank, checked the oil, and washed the windows. He was southern hospitality at its best, asking where we were from and going to, The difference in these two employees was very evident.

It didn't take long to find a brick one level home, not far from an elementary school and many white neighbors up and down the road. People were friendly, wanting to know where we came from and curious about the North. My parents lived in that house for twenty years and when they moved, it had undergone several major improvements by my parents.

My father was a talented carpenter. In between working out of town, doing fixture installation across the southern states, Mom always had a running list of "fixes" for dad to accomplish when he got home. Sunday was off limits, it meant church, eating out and Sunday night TV. Ed Sulllivan was a family favorite since there was something for everyone. I loved watching my Dad stretch out on our picnic table listening to WSB, playing the Atlanta Braves live. Dad said the table helped his aching back.

Since we moved in the summer, I climbed on the bus for first grade in September. I was terrified and didn’t know anyone. Of course, many kids were starting school for the first time but they lived close and played together. I soon found out there was a reason to be scared. Right after school, two boys pushed me down from behind. I landed In a Georgia red clay puddle. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. They informed me,“You ain’t nothing but a nigger loving yankee. Go on home!”

I cried, my feelings hurt and I didn’t understand why they didn’t like me. Mom would be mad about my dress. Two girls came along and asked if I was ok? I was grateful.

One of the teachers was assisting us to climb on the right buses. She looked at my wert dirty dress, asked me what had happened and I said I fell. I instinctively knew it was better kept to myself. If I told Mom, she would have called the school so I told her the same. I desperately wanted friends and had learned from my older brother "omertà" is usually best for any kid.

Looking back, battle lines were drawn that day. I learned something, the Civil War was alive and well in Georgia and I was on the wrong side.

I remember my childhood as a happy life. Highlights of growing up in the1960’s; riding a bike to friends, catching lightening bugs, sleepovers, drive-in movies in my pjs and trips in the summer. Since my Dad traveled, we would go along. During the day, we left Dad at the drug store while we explored the town. Mom loved to window shop and asked people about local places to see. We stayed busy. We picked Dad up, found a restaurant and then came back to swim. That was my favorite time of day, Dad was a wonderful swimmer and tossed us around playfully.

I don’t remember seeing black people very often, certainly not where we ate, stayed or even at tourist attractions. If they worked in restaurants, it must have been in the kitchen. Even the ladies that cleaned motel rooms were as white as the sheets on their rolling carts.

Dad would tell Mom about picking up local black men to help him with fixture installation. Some pharmacists, who usually were the store managers, would give my Dad a hard time about paying equal wages to black men. Dad stood firm on hiring the help he chose.

We were probably considered middle class. Most of the women in our neighborhood didn’t work. Almost every one of them had a black maid though. It was like the movie “The Help”. These neighbors were friends with Mom, coming over for coffee, cigarettes and swapping gossip.

“Dot, I don’t understand why you don’t hire a maid. They’re wonderful with children, cooking, and cleaning. You don’t pay very much and as long as you keep an eye on them, most won’t steal.” Peggy took a drag off her ever present cigarette and continued in her soft southern drawl. “Our Bessie even takes the laundry home and irons it. They're the best cooks. I give her children nice hand me downs. We adore Bessie, couldn’t get along without her.”

Mom said she would rather do her own housework because she couldn’t afford to pay someone what they should make. These women would just shake their heads.
I loved the maids that I knew, they would hug you and made the best cookies. I didn’t understand Mom's position until l was much older. She was afraid to say very much.

I still remember riding through Buckhead, where the wealthy of Atlanta lived, and the maids were dressed in very formal starched black uniforms waiting for the buses. I suppose those women made more money. This was definitely a way of life that went back to post Civil War reconstruction.

One time I rode along to drive Bessie home. It was a tiny whitewashed house with a small yard. It was the size of the freestanding garage Dad had built by our home. When we pulled up, 4 kids poured out of the screen door. They stood close to the door rather than come to the car. They cried out “Mama” and pulled her into a giant hug. I don’t know who took care of them, some were too young to go to school. I wondered where they even went to school because our school was 100% white, both teachers and students.

I even asked Donna, our neighbor’s daughter and a close friend, and she didn’t seem to know much about this nice lady who did everything for her. I finally learned there was a place in society for them and us and we didn’t meet except under certain circumstances.

We went to the local public pools and it was solid white as was the library and public health center.The only times you saw the “colored” and “white” signs were at the mall on the bathrooms and water fountains. I don’t really remember even seeing black families at the big new mall, Lenox Square.

I do remember seeing black Americans when we would go to downtown Atlanta. Mom and I used to make a trip to the downtown Rich’s store right before school started. Wa ate at The Magnolia Room and then shopped in the girls or juniors department to get popular Bobbie Brooks or Laura Ashley clothes.

The black families lived in certain areas of the city and you would see them in the downtown drugstores and in the bargain basement of Rich’s. Of course, they also rode the bus and sat in the back. They would come in the front door, pay, get off and then enter the back door and sit behind a barrier that separated the races like they carried a plague. I thought it was strange but was always told that is “just the way it is”.

The wonderful FOX theater's ceiling was the night sky with stars and Egyptian furniture. It was a wonderful combination of Arabian nights, Egyptology and Disney movies. It was a magical place for everyone. We saw plays like “The King and I” there and on Saturdays, there were cartoons and then a Disney movie. First run movies also ran there. As a child, we parked in back and walked along the side of the building. There was a colored entrance that opened into the top balcony section so the races didn’t mix. I guess they couldn’t buy popcorn or drinks either. I don’t remember a colored bathroom. It was two separate unequal worlds.

The FOX is where I first saw “Gone with the Wind”. That movie starts:
"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..."

I don’t think many black people watched that movie or read the book. Black people are very much like the furniture in the film, they are there but not a part of the story. They are caricatures of what white people think of them; silly Prissy, Mammy who takes care of everyone but appears to have no life of her own and needs her white folks etc. Good black people that know their place and stay there. “Bad black folks” have been influenced by Yankees. If they had thoughts of their own, you don’t know it from this hugely popular movie..

I remember watching TV and seeing the sit-ins at drugstores, the Freedom Rides and the firehoses aimed at black children in Alabama and Mississippi. It was horrifying.

I was fifteen when Rev. Martin L. King Jr. ,was shot down at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis (April 4, 1968) I cried for him as much as I did for President Kennedy in 1963. By then my parents had shown me the area of Sweet Auburn in Atlanta where many thriving black businesses where and people were just like me just a different skin tone. I had also seen Cabbage Town where poor blacks lived in substandard public housing. I was beginning to understand. It was engineered this way by mostly white powerful men.

My parents knew people that belonged to the John Birch Society, The White Citizen’s Council but also a couple that worked with the NAACP. I noticed how they walked the line and tried to get along with everyone. It was a trap for both worlds in many ways. White people always had the advantage though.

When we went back to Michigan to visit, everything was integrated but there were still two separate communities that didn’t mix or trust each other. People were racist there also. I noticed my own Grandfather’s verbal distaste for “coloreds”. He spoke of the stereotype of “gangs, drugs, public assistance, abortions for birth control, dirty homes, taking plenty and not giving back”.

Most of these racial stereotypes aren’t true or are related to poverty and inequality. At home my parents spoke about the problems as they watched the news and I knew how they voted. They believed in equality for everyone but didn't actively participate in civil rights marches or protests.

I have seen changes over the years but I find it very sad that we still tend to live mostly separate lives. It is still a charade in many ways just not as blatant. George Floyd’s murder showed that the root of racism still exists. We need to dig very deep into our own souls and own our prejudice. It is never too late to change. The older I get, the more clearly I can see. I am a white woman that has never experienced any of the following situations.

Privilege is not being followed by security when I walk into a store.

Privilege is walking outside without having to wonder if I might appear threatening to others around me, even though I’m just walking. Sadly, that depends on another person's feelings about minorities.

Privilege is being able to carry an AR-15 into a state capitol building and have a friendly chat with the guards while doing so.

Privilege is being able to call the police in an emergency and not be afraid.

And privilege is not having my throat tighten and my chest feel like someone is squeezing my heart every time my child leaves the house, wondering if today is the day they become a death statistic because of their color.


By Kathie Stehr


I wanted to share the following song because I remember when Medgar Evers was killed and his three children and wife heard the shooting and then found his riddled body. Bob Dylan wrote a vivid and heart wrenching ballad about it.


"Only A Pawn In Their Game"

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain
Only a pawn in their game





Writer(s): Bob Dylan

This song was written as an answer to the assassination of US civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was killed in the driveway of his Mississippi home. But Bob Dylan's song speaks about the bigger problem of racism and injustice in America, pointing out that Evers' murder was just a link in a chain that leads to those which manipulate people.

This track tells about how the poor white people in the USA are driven by the white elite to hate the black in order to put their mind off their low-level life conditions, described as living in "the caboose of the train".
Bob Dylan performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game" at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, for the first time. Medgar Evers, whom the song is dedicated to, was the Mississippi leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).