Some Thoughts on White Privilege and the Trayvon Martin Case.
I grew up in a small town in rural Nova Scotia. It’s an idyllic place if you’re passing through. If you take the time to dig a little deeper, it’s history is much like a lot of other small-towns on the east coast; sordid, unfair, and a little shocking.
Digby, Nova Scotia was incorporated in 1783, by a Sir Robert Digby. I don’t know anything about Robert Digby, besides the fact that his name stuck on the town he, and a group of United Empire Loyalists founded, and that there’s some sort of dedication well to him on the west side of town that I never paid much attention to.
I know more about the United Empire Loyalists because I made a point of knowing. My mother is distantly related to one of the families that settled in Weymouth, about a half-hour drive from where my parents live, and other members of my family settled in Ontario after the American Revolution. I know they were handsomely rewarded for their efforts during the American Revolution and given the best farmland in lots of places all over Canada for their efforts. They settled and thrived in lots of communities just like Digby, and bam, 130 years later, here I am.
Three kilometers outside Digby, Brindley Town, or Jordan Town, as it’s now called, was the land given to Black Loyalists for their loyalty to the British during the American Revolution, along with their freedom from slavery. It was to be one of the largest Black Loyalist communities in Nova Scotia, but the British government dragged their heels and by the time plots of land were actually issued, half the Black Loyalists had opted to go back to Africa when the opportunity arose. As was the norm, for the black people of the time who were promised great things, they were given the poorest land while the United Empire Loyalists were given the prime farmland around the area, and access to the rich seas, which eventually turned Digby into a prosperous fishing port.
White privilege is something so well-engrained in those that possess it that we’re oblivious to it until someone points it out to us, or we’re shocked into remembering by some unusual turn of events. I was oblivious to it until I moved to Japan for a year and people of a certain generation wouldn’t sit beside me on the train, even when the only empty seat was beside me. I was oblivious to it until the first time someone thought I was a hostess and solicited me for some seedy one-on-one time while I was waiting for the train one afternoon, because chances were, if you were a white woman in a non-tourist area in Japan, you were either an English teacher or a hostess.
A year without transparent white privilege is something everyone should be forced to experience. It’s nothing compared to a lifetime of it, but it does provide the tiniest bit of perspective when it comes to what it’s like to be on the outside without a chance of hell of ever changing it.
In the years since the American Revolution, I’d like to say things have improved for the descendents of the Black Loyalists in my hometown, but the systemic racism that was born well before I was has incredibly strong roots in the community. I remember getting looks in high school when I’d happen to be in close proximity to a friend that was not the same colour that I was, mostly from people a couple of generations older than me. I remember hearing about cops questioning kids for no reason, more often than not. I remember white kids fighting black kids in the parking lot outside the high school. I remember hearing stories about how it was much worse in the seventies.
This happened the year I went to university.
I know both of the people victimized the the two stories above. I went to high school with the man who recently received the settlement, and although I haven’t been home for a while, I know exactly what the reactions would have been on both sides to the settlement, because there is a line, and there will probably always be a line of some sort in Digby. I think as millennials, we have this rather lofty idea that we’ve moved above all this, and that we’re all sunshine and rainbows, and holding hands looking to a greatly equal future full of more Cheerio commercials with adorable biracial children.
The thing about white privilege is that it’s good for those it benefits, and because of that, it’s a hard thing to really and truly give up. I’m not sure the system, as it stands, in both Canada and the world are capable of change. It’s hard to say that, but in my thirty years, I haven’t seen a single move forward to change it, and with the Zimmerman verdict yesterday, I’d say my grandmother, were she still alive, could probably say something similar. We’ve seen this story with different players many times since slavery was abolished. I wish Trayvon Martin was the last, but he won’t be.
Paula Deen is just the tip of the iceberg.
I balked at the lack of justice for Trayvon Martin yesterday, much the same as I’m sure most of the people in my life did. I felt disgust that justice (even though I’m not an American) seemed to be so blatantly ignored, when there was so much evidence there.
Then I remembered what happened to Brendan Clarke. Watch the video in the first link I posted. It took eleven years for him to get an apology. I have no idea what the circumstances were surrounding the attack pictured because I wasn’t there, but as far as I can see, he certainly wasn’t fighting back, or physically aggressive in any way.
It took 43 years for the Nova Scotia Government to apologize for moving the community of Africville.
We can all sit here and look down at Southern Americans for their racist attitudes and systemic faults. We can sit here with false pride about our wonderful cultural mosaic, but the examples I’ve listed are not even a drop in the bucket. We preach affirmative action, but at the end of the day, even though no one’s donning a white pointy cap anymore (at least not that I know), biases exist. Some are more blatant about it, like some of the kids I went to high school who made no secret about not liking black kids for any reason beyond skin colour (probably because that was how their parents felt), or like George Zimmerman, who carefully ticked off a list of biases and took a life, but at the end of the day, what’s worse? Zimmerman, or the smug prosecutor’s grin and statement about justice being served? Is it the racism so painfully obvious that it seems worth rioting over, like the verdict yesterday, or is it the hiring manager that doesn’t call back, and never gives a reason why they hired a white person?
Is it the entire layered system, so impossible to navigate for a person of color that they have no choice but to embrace the way they’re viewed and live their life by the standards and judgements others have presumptively made for them?
I don’t know.
