The Privilege of Amnesia

I've been thinking about race lately.  And ethnicity, heritage, origin.  But mostly, I've been thinking about privilege.  I think of these things as I teach an Emerging Leaders course to college freshmen.  I think of them when I hear a student's story as a Chicana immigrant.  I think of them when I spend time with people who aren't fair skinned or blue-eyed, who aren't from a safe suburban neighborhood or suffering from horrible amnesia, as so many of us seem to be.

I didn't always remember my race, because I didn't have to.  For the majority of my life, I guess I believed that being white meant being without much ethnicity, without much culture, even without race.  It's true that, to this day, I don't know the names of my ancestors, even my great-grandparents.  I always forget that I'm about 50% Irish, even on St. Patrick's Day.  I have been a woman without history - but living without a history is a dangerous thing.  Yet this is the privilege of white privilege: the ability to live without memory.  We don't want to remember white people's various historical roles as oppressors.  Somehow, the oppressed don't have the luxury of forgetfulness that comes so easily to people like me.

I never owned slaves.  I never turned in an undocumented immigrant, and never would.  I never was a segregationist.  I never use racist language.  I vote for political candidates who I believe will include all people at the table.  Yet I am, nonetheless, the recipient of countless advantages in every aspect of my life.  I am the recipient of a life that I have not fully earned that comes from the pigment of my skin.  My whiteness is not neutral.  It's not the non-factor I used to believe it to be.  Being white means much more than I wish it did.  Here's a great video version of a recent article I've read, "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh, that speaks much more to this than I can.  It's well worth the 5 minutes.  

So I've come to believe that white privilege is the ability to forget, deny, or ignore my privilege.  Therefore, I believe the beginning of racial equality (or one possible beginning) is remembering, admitting, and paying attention to my own skin.  Until we live in a post-racial America (and we are damnably far from it), my whiteness should not, cannot, will not be forgotten.  It's not metaphor to say that privilege is written on my very skin.