At a High School football game in North Carolina a group of cheerleaders held up a sign that said on White paper  “Privilege”.  Of course,  in North Carolina that would cause a big uproar and in all honesty maybe at a high school football game it should. I don’t know. I have mixed emotions about that. When I was in high school we had the Vietnam War going on and civil rights. There were protest everywhere but I don’t remember any protest at my school. It is not that we were too young to know what was going on because it was in the news every day. We also heard some of the same arguments that we here today about patriotism and the protesters being unpatriotic. Things were said like “America Love It Or Leave it”. In the case of the civil rights protests we always heard  “Go Back To Africa”. Those things were heard every day but just not at school. At least I didn’t. To hold up a privilege sign at a High School football game by the cheerleaders just may not be the most appropriate thing. It may be honest,  but that does not make it appropriate. What it actually tells me is we are not doing a good enough of a job teaching our children about race relations in America.

White people don’t  like to be reminded of their white privilege. Many will deny that there is even such a thing. They will tell you that they earned everything that they have and in most cases that would be right. That does not mean that the color of their skin did not help them along the way. I have worked hard all my life to be in the position that I am in now but that does not mean that my color didn’t help me. I don’t remember ever being in competition for a job with a minority were I got hired and the minority didn’t but that does not mean it didn’t happen. Most people when they apply for a job do not know the other applicants. I am sure that white privilege helped me when I didn’t even know it. Look at the NFL and the NBA. The NFL had to pass the Rooney Rule just to get teams to interview Black coaching candidates. Being White does help whether we are going to admit it or not.

Like White Supremacy, Racism and White Privilege are real things. It has been identified but now how do you solve it. I wish that I had the answer to that but I don’t. I do know that education can help. That is why so many school systems are basically outlawing Race Education. Something really can’t be solved if you suppress it and don’t study about it. That is part of the problem. Too many white people do not want to have it even exposed to their children. They want race to be eliminated from the schools completely. They want alternative facts to racism and alternative facts to the Holocausts. Are they going to bring in some member of the Iran Government to teach how the Holocaust never happened. Are they going bring in the KKK to teach that racism isn’t real that segregation is just people wanting to hang out with just their kind. Our educational system needs to teach the truth no matter how painful it is to some people. In today’s internet age where every library is open 24/7 it is very hard to hide the truth from these kids so you might as well teach it. Alternate  facts are something from the Trump administration. There really are no alternative facts to the Holocaust or an opposing opinion. It happened and we should never hide that fact. The same should be said about Slavery in this country. There are no alternative facts to Slavery or an opposing opinion.  

Where  I live the only minorities are the ones that I see working. There is only one minority couple that I see in our entire condo complex of 100 units. I don’t know what to think of that but I will honestly say that when we looked at the place we didn’t even inquire about that. We liked the unit, the location and the view. If there would have been a larger percentage of minorities I would like to think that I would still have bought here. My wife was a school teacher that worked at Chapter 1 schools pretty much her entire teach career and our old neighborhood in Wisconsin was pretty diverse so I really do not think it would have mattered. I don’t think that everyone can say that. Even after saying that I will not term myself as not being a racist. I will only term myself of being a recovering racist.

Is it proper to hold up a white sign that says Privilege at  football game? After all this writing I still have mixed emotions on it. ‘;