United States of Race
United States of Race
Episode 2: In a World of Black & White, Privilege is Not Binary
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In Rick’s community growing up, he was considered mixed. He explains why years of seeing other people disadvantaged doesn't mean he is privileged.
I have thought a lot about this, I do my best to be open minded. And one of the things I've tried to listen to is, is that a white person doesn't understand what it's like to be a non-white person. That's actually 100% correct.? If it is correct, does a non-white person know what it's like to be white?
DB Crema:This is united states of race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. I'm your host, DB Crema. What is your first memory of becoming aware of race or dealing with race?
Rick:Race didn't exist when I was a kid. P peoples did. I grew up in a very ethnic part of the world, Southwestern Pennsylvania, and a very common question, which would be hyper offensive today. But a common question would be, what are you? And so you would identify that answer proudly, with I'm Slovak, I'm Italian, I'm Polish. I'm, you know, whatever, right? And you would probably get those answers. It was a part of the world that didn't have, frankly, anything but what we would think of as white people. But back then - I was born in the 70s - the differentiation between one being Italian and another person being French, was the equivalent of being from Central Africa and China. That was how people identified - you where you were from.
DB Crema:Hmm. And did you get asked the question, What did you say?
Rick:Other. Growing up in where I grew up, which is the home of the Heinz ketchup company, you were called a Heinz, if you weren't purely of a certain European descent. If you were German-French, that was normal. If you were Irish and English, that was normal. Right? And if you became too much other, you were a Heinz. You were a mutt. So we were called the Heinz's.
DB Crema:The Heinz thing.
Rick:There was something to the fact that there were 57 varieties, all of the spices and all these different things that went into make the ketchup. And so it was very natural to say, okay, so you're the others. You're the mixed. You're the Heinz's. So you can keep finding these monolithic groups. And then there's these other folks that don't fit that narrow corridor. Right? I'll be honest with you, there was a lot of value in community that was monolithic. I grew up in a very white America, okay. Just my part of the world. Today, I live in a place that is much more ethnically diverse. And I've seen so many things that are unique, and original and different. I've also seen the exact same things that I saw when I was 10 years old, exactly the same with completely different races than what I grew up with. Right.
DB Crema:So when did you encounter people who were different skin color?
Rick:The largest minorities that I grew up with were Indian Americans from India, their parents were engineers. That was normal to me, right. So to answer your question, it was more about like, once I got into the workforce, and my cube-mate was a woman who sat across from me. And Heather was the greatest. And she was really the first, without a question, the first black person I'd ever become friends with. I hadn't known enough of them to even become friends, right. But when you sit eight and a half hours a day facing somebody, you become friends... or enemies. We became friends. Heather would come to work and on Tuesday, she looked different than she did on Monday. And on Friday, she looked different than she did on Tuesday. And this just goes right over my head. And then finally, I'm like, Heather, how is it that you change your hairstyle overnight? Like do you curl it, like how does that work? Because, everybody I know that doesn't work like that, like you got to get a perm, you got to get dye got a color. I mean, you got blonde hair, you got black hair, you got blue hair. I don't understand how this works. This goes on for two and a half years. Two and a half years.
DB Crema:Before you ask her.
Rick:I asked her, how do you change it? And she laughs at being giggles. And she's like, I just do my thing. And I'm like, okay, whatever. I mean, I just accept it. Two and a half years or so go by, and she leaves and she comes in with a different shade of blue hair that day. And it's her last day at work. And I'm a little heartbroken, be honest with you, because we've been sitting together - I mean it's been two and a half years. Every day you go to work. It's a crappy ass job in a cubicle. At least I got my friend. My friend's leaving me. So it's like, I'm kind of sad. And she looks at me and she pulls her wig off. And she just laughs at me. Laughs hysterically at me, that I was that flippin dumb. Two and a half years, but I'd never known anyone like that. Okay, so fast forward the tape - it's 25 years later. Not surprisingly, statistically, a lot of women that I know are, you know, black, and I gotta be honest with you. The first thing I do when I look at these women is, is that your hair or not?
DB Crema:Do you ask them?
Rick:No, I never ask. Hey, no, heck, no! No way! But, I look. By the same token, wigs is a great metaphor for like, wow, the things right in front of you tangibly. visually. The wig is fake, the person is real. And the value of one's hair versus wig, not relevant. Not relevant. The broader point is, maybe we oughta a look past one's wig, right, and look...or look past one's non-wig. It doesn't matter. Just look past it, just kind of see the person, right. I fell in love with Heather Brown. I loved that woman.
DB Crema:Yeah. You know, it's okay to be curious.
Rick:Yes. I think that asking questions sometimes are - they're not accepted or, worse, people think they're not accepted. And so they don't get asked. One of the really interesting things about these race conversations is white people are not comfortable, nowadays talking about this. They're terrified to talk about this stuff. But I'm a massive, free speech person. It's one of my central tenants. I'm a huge, huge free speech person. I don't like - I don't care if it's like ugly speech or not. I want it in the public sphere, because I would rather have the ugly people identifying themselves than sequestered. And I also want the poets and the creatives- I want them. And so anything that kind of disrupts conversation, and the free exchange of ideas and free thinking people. I think it's a detriment to society.
DB Crema:What are your thoughts about where we're at right now in terms of these competing and conflicting messages of working at making progress, particularly for racial equality, and that juxtaposed against the the safeguarding free speech?
Rick:So I think people get frustrated on certain things, and they get kind of caught up on like, where are we on progress and blah, blah, and I'm like, sometimes you just kind of like, Whoa, stop. Timeout. Like, we are really a heck of a lot farther than we were when I was a child or when my father's or my mother were a child there. We are so far, farther on.
DB Crema:There's been a lot of progress made in terms of addressing racial inequality, specifically in this country, which I absolutely agree with. At the same time, without the continual effort and continual fight, if you will, progress doesn't happen. And there's still much to be done in that area. And the valuing free speech, when it's detrimental or when it incites detrimental action... They're two very important things, but at the same time, challenging to sometimes have them coexist.
Rick:It's a big question. More information, in my opinion, is better for humans. Just simplistically, you know, eight words or less. Okay. If, if Mein Kampf was readily available in the public schools, I think the question would be, should we allow that? It would clearly appeal to a certain segment of population who would take that and probably carry it to deleterious mean. By the same token, the motivations for one person to carry things to a negative - they're not book. Not necessarily. And, to the degree to which those people exist, I think the first thing we probably should acknowledge is they will always exist, right or wrong. If I was the father of a young Jewish son or daughter, I would want them to read that book. Because I would want to know what my enemies want to do to me, so that I could defend myself and do my best to either, worst case scenario, protect myself, best case scenario, disarm the other side, hopefully, with logic and reason, right. And one of the things that I've tried my best to communicate to my kids - this never changes, this never goes away. These conflicts are a part of human nature.
DB Crema:What do you talk to your kids about race? You know, they're a bit older now, but what did you talk to them about it?
Rick:So, I would say to a large degree, we never talked about race. We just talked about - so we're a Christian Catholic family, and we're all God's children. These are central tenants to my and my wife's faith and our principal and our, you know, who we are. And so, I don't know that we ever really had to talk about it - we never talked about race,
DB Crema:If parents of black kids do at some point, have to grapple with what they say to their children, or what they need to say to their children to prepare them, shouldn't we be also talking to our white children about what to expect that's happening around them, and what their role should be in it? Why not have to have that conversation with white children, as a part of teaching them to be prepared to stand up for what's right and to stand up for those principles?
Rick:Yes. I would say what we've done, I think, to the best of our abilities, not perfect, but to the best we can, is just these basic principles of like, look, you know, we're all God's children, right? We are who we are, right? And some people have more than us, many others have fewer than us. But there are certain structural historical things that will have created certain conditions that put you in a position that is different than others. And you need to, you need to really kind of appreciate that, and understand that stuff. And I think that we'd be better served to understand this is the human condition, this conflict is the human condition.
DB Crema:But this human condition, this need to maintain power over each other or always be right. That's not very Christian.
Rick:No, not at all. Not at all. No, I think the easier path is to be who you are. And the harder path is to be who you say you want to be. Much harder path. I think the hardest thing in the world is to deny your very nature. Is to deny a snack before bedtime. Right?
DB Crema:You know, there's been a lot of talk about privilege. It's just so all encompassing, it does not even has anything to do with the choices you make on a day to day basis of like, I will eat a cookie or I won't eat a cookie. It's not as simple as that. And it's that very point. Why do people have such a negative reaction to the idea of having white privilege?
Rick:I have a negative reaction to it.
DB Crema:Haha.
Rick:I don't think it exists. And I do know the premise. And I do think I understand the premise and I understand the folks that say it exists, and I'm not disavowing the concept and where they come from. What I think the premises is, is that it's an inherited benefit based on class, wealth and color. And I don't think it's real. I really don't. I have listened to the stories of black mothers talk about how they cannot put on the Disney Channel, they cannot go to the toy store and find anything but white kids. Never struck me. Never. Is that white privilege? Or is that just a bubble? I don't think it's privilege.
DB Crema:What do you mean by bubble?
Rick:Bubble is my world is this big. It doesn't actually include a sphere that totally understands the perspectives of other people. It's limited based on my own experiences. That was the bubble that I was in. What's simultaneously I think true is that's not a place of priviege that I grew up and there was a bunch of white Barbies and white kids on Disney Channel. That's not privilege. I didn't get a benefit from that, per se. You can argue that maybe others are disadvantaged by that. But I sure as shit didn't get a benefit from that. No question. And this is the thing that really frustrates me. I grew up squarely in the middle class 50th percentile. By no means wealthy. By no means poor. All of the people that are absolutely closest to me grew up in what I can best describe as abject poverty. And they're White. This is what offends me about white privilege - the very nature that you have white skin, you're better off, you have a privilege. Tell that to the folks in Fairmont, West Virginia, along Appalachia, where I worked for five years. Tell that to those people, how benefited they are by the color of their skin. That's not privilege. And I understand where the concept comes from. I really do. And I'm sympathetic to it. And I'm open minded. But the notion that you're privileged, because of the color of your skin? I mean Jesus, what have we accomplished? If that's the conversation? Well, I'll never accept that. I'm sorry.
DB Crema:In that I hear you pinpointing the issues that that are driving the disconnect on the conversation about white privilege and the differing views on does it exist? Does it not exist? Do people have it? Do they not? Is the concept racist or not? So there's a lot of conflict around white privilege as a concept. When we talk about white privilege, it's being spoken about on a systems level. I often hear the reaction to the concept of white privilege being about the individual experience, when white privilege is talking about a systemic experience. So thinking about it on a systems level, or addressing it on a systems level means that the two points that you're referencing are not mutually exclusive. So to talk about an individual's experience, what it means to be a poor person in this country - poor people are discriminated against, white poor people are discriminated against. Talking about white privilege does not necessarily negate that individual experience.
Rick:I agree with your premise, strongly, and in general. I disagree that it is fundamentally a color thing. I do not agree with that. I don't misattribute the disaffective nature of certain policies and in laws that have disproportionately affected people of color. But if we're gonna have an honest conversation about where we are today, it's about class and wealth. It's not about color. Poor blacks and poor whites and poor Hispanics have so much in common. It is not about color. And wealthy whites and wealthy blacks and wealthy Hispanics have so much in common. They went to the same Ivy League schools, they work at the same companies, they have the same LinkedIn friends.
DB Crema:Yeah, so they're not having the same experience. There's so many similarities between, as you're referencing these two different classes, there are so many commonalities, but then there are a lot of differences, right? So you have two, you have two uber-wealthy people, and the uber-wealthy black person is still going to experience increased suspicion. It's hard to home in on very specific examples, because it is the systemic issue that people are raising.
Rick:I think that's a fair point. And absolutely, I think it's a fair point. I just, the concept in the common vernacular today, around white privilege, I think is detrimental to a constructive conversation, because it's binary. And life is far more complicated than that. Society is far more complicated than that. If you said class privilege, or wealthy parents privilege, I'm all ears. White privilege? Nope, not at all. And I don't want to hear any examples about how black people get pulled over more than white people. I don't disagree. But that does not equate to white people having privilege. The notion that a black dude gets pulled over on the side of the road, when a white guy doesn't - that is a negative to the black guy. It's not a positive to the white guy, it's a neutral to the white guy. You know, it's just one of those things. If you want to call it like, you know, black non-privilege, I'd be down with that. Not white privilege. I'll go with black non-privilege. How about that?
DB Crema:But that's not so catchy.
Rick:Right.
DB Crema:So how do we address it or tackle it in a way that is constructive and fosters a constructive conversation?
Rick:So a couple of things. One, more conversation better. And not in a Twitter storm. You do not improve society by getting fewer thinking people with more thoughts to have. Second, the degree to which any of this stuff is changeable requires, I think, a set of open minds. And when I think what my challenge is today with media in general, is it's a binary Pay-Per-Click model to consume news. That's a problem. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, blah, blah, blah, or whether it's CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. It's so binary, there are no conversations available for shades of grey. It's so frustrating that life has become this true and false test.
DB Crema:Sound bites.
Rick:Yeah, it's not real. So, this is why, to the question of white privilege. I reject it out of hand. It's not that I think that there's not something substantive behind it. But as soon as you say that, there are two answers to the question, it's true or its false. Neither of those things are true. It is neither true nor false. Let's not talk about this stuff in binary sense, understand and appreciate these shades of grey. And listen to the people who are disagreeing with you. Right? Listen to the people who are not like you. You don't have to agree with them to listen to them. Right? You miss out on a whole frickin part of the world if you don't listen, right? We get x amount of years in this time of ours, in our lives. Take advantage of it, soak it in, listen to a bunch of new and exciting ideas. It's a great opportunity, you probably shouldn't pass it up. And if you start to carve off whole sections of society that you can interpersonally relate with at a human level. You're just going to miss out on happiness. I don't know better way to say it, you're just gonna miss out. You may never know it, but probably in your soul, you will know it. You know you're gonna miss out on something.
DB Crema:Thanks for listening to United States of race. This podcast was written and produced by me, DB Crema. Thank you to Aly Creative for designing our artwork, and to Nick D and Nick S for technical support. If you love great storytelling, please subscribe to United States of Race on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also show us some love by rating and writing review on Apple podcasts or Podchaser. And go ahead and share this podcast with your friends and anyone who believes in the power of building connection through sharing personal stories. You can also follow us on Instagram at unitedstatesofrace. And as always, if you - Yes, you, have a compelling story to share, and would like to be featured in an upcoming episode, send us a message at unitedstatesofrace@gmail.com. Until next time,