A Letter to White People on Privilege.

Dear Fellow White People,

The first time I heard the term “white privilege” I rolled my eyes at it. I immediately felt defensive and said something along the lines of, “Excuse you? I’m not privileged. I was fucking homeless for three years of my life. I know what it means to not have food to eat or clothes to wear. Do not tell me I’m privileged when I’ve lived anything but a privileged life.”

This is how a lot of white people react too. The term itself feels divisive and judgmental. It makes you feel defensive when you’re called out and often times you’ll respond with a laundry list of “top that tragedy.”

For reference, top that tragedy is a “joke” my family and I have with each other. Whenever one of us vents about something horrible going on in our life and the response is a sad thing another person in the family is going through- we say “top that tragedy!” Then we laugh because we’ve had a lot of tragedies. Sometimes you gotta laugh when you can’t cry anymore.

Regardless of the tragedy that I may have faced or the tragedy that you, white person reading this, may have faced- we are white. Your skin is white. So just by that fact: you are privileged. If you look down at your complexion and it appears black but you were born white and were always white until you made yourself look another race with the intent of “styling” yourself in a different way, then that’s another issue entirely and I won’t be explaining that to you here but I recommend a quick google search on how problematic that is.

White privilege is so much more simple on the surface than we white people lead it to be. When someone claims you have white privilege- it means, you are a white person living in a society that was built by white people so you’ve been given an automatic advantage, regardless of the traumas you have faced or the financial stresses you have. White privilege is not the same as financial privilege so please, fellow white person, drop your guard down and know I am coming from a place of, “I’ve been where you’re standing and I know it’s not fun but it’s necessary.”

The sub-context of “white privilege” feels like, “you should be ashamed and feel guilt for the fact your skin has given you more opportunities.” You may even feel defensive because you “have a black friend” and so you can’t be considered guilty of racism or the systems that are in place because your one Black friend at work likes you and wouldn’t like you if you were a racist person.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but it somehow still needs to be said even after years of people clarifying it: having a Black friend does not make you less racist or less privileged. It just means you have a friend who happens to be Black and should not be used as your token example for not being either of those things.

You may also say, “It’s not my fault I was born white.” You are correct. Just as, it’s not a Black or Brown persons fault for being born their skin color. The difference is that their skin color has a history of oppression at the hands of white people. Our skin color looks more like the oppressor. By acknowledging this first and foremost, is the very start of acknowledging that someone else has had an experience different than yours and therefore deserve the validation that their experience is real.

Okay, back to basics…

This country was stolen from indigenous people. It was built on the backs of slaves owned by white people. The very start of our country was immediately founded on inequality and racism. You may say to yourself, “But slavery was so long ago. Why bring this up now?” Because there are people in this country that have ancestors who were enslaved. Just because it’s not part of your immediate history does not mean it’s not still a painful part of another persons history. You may be white and only the second generation in America. You may say to yourself, “Well, my family wasn’t even here to own slaves so why am I in this lesson?” Because the color of your skin still provides you a privilege that the great grandchildren of slaves never had. Your skin should not be a defining factor of whether or not you will be treated well but it has been and we need to pay attention so that we can change this going forward. Those with our skin color created this problem and those with our skin color need to actively fix that problem. It’s our responsibility.

I may not remember all of my education but I can tell you that when I learned about Christopher Columbus we sang a fun little song about how he sailed the ocean blue to come to America. We were taught that he befriended the Native Americans and set up shop to create the America we know today.

Survey says: wrong!

I asked around. In the last few weeks I have texted about a dozen people from different walks of life and asked them what they were taught in school about Columbus. Each one explained a similar story. The friends of mine who went to college said they did not learn the truth of how Christopher Columbus was a savage murderer until they furthered their education.

Why do the textbooks we read in elementary, junior high, and high school lack the brutal truth of this murderer? Because a fun little song is easier to package for children? No, I’d argue it’s because knowledge is power and if white children are taught at a young age that the history of our country was golden then they will more easily believe the inaccuracies and other racist lies as they get older. Therefore continuing systemic racism that benefits white people while also feeling that anyone going against that systemic racism is somehow unpatriotic.

I don’t remember my class taking very long to learn about slavery but I know now it definitely deserved more time. I also remember the other white kids in class asking “why do we have a Black history month if we don’t have a white history month?” I admit, I remember questioning it too until I was older and realized - because our history books are written by white men and printed by primarily white publishing companies. People in power have the ability to rewrite history and you shouldn’t have to have a college degree to know the truth. You also shouldn’t have to have a Black history month but the truth is that White people have long ignored Black history. It’s an enormous part of American history! Black history is American. Black Americans built this country, they served for this country, and I think it’s important you ask yourself the big question here: “Why do we only pay attention to this huge part of history during the shortest month of the year?”

I once went for a job interview at a recruitment office. The recruiter was a Black woman who was kind and informative about how best to improve my resume. After our meeting, she called me to say, “Megan, when you go to the interviews I set up- please make sure to either wear your hair straightened or up in a bun. I know you have lovely curls but it looks a bit messy and companies won’t like that.” I was outraged. How dare a stranger tell me I won’t get a job because my curls are not tamed enough! I told her I would wear my hair as I please and hung up the phone, cried to my family about how my curly hair will stop me from getting a job and continued to tell this anecdote to anyone who would tell me they liked my hair straight. I’d say, “Most people tell me I look better with straight hair but that’s exactly why I keep it curly. This is how God made me and I refuse to change just because people think it looks messier.”

That is such an enormous sign of my white privilege. Regardless of how I wore my hair: I would likely get the job if I was qualified to do so. My hair never stood in my way.

The last time I shared this story was to a Black woman at my last job. I said, “I just don’t understand why that woman told me to straighten my hair!” She responded, “Because she has firsthand experience as a Black woman knowing that companies won’t hire her if she does not conform to the way they feel she should look, regardless of her qualifications.”

I was flabbergasted but she was right. Google, “Professional Hairstyles for Women” - scroll through the images. What do you see? Two, maybe 3, photos of Black women after scrolling several times down the page. Every single woman - white. Straight hair for the most part. When you google something as basic as “professional hairstyles” and only images of women with your skin tone come up - that is privilege.

There are many Black professionals out there- why are those photos not visible? Is it because the magazines that we look through typically have white models? Is it because the haircare items we see on the television or on social media ads typically cater to a white audience? It’s because there are so many different forms of systemic racism.

Think about these seemingly small points of your every day life that are blindingly white. I use that word intentionally. Blindingly. These seemingly insignificant things throughout our day that we take for granted because it’s catered to us white people, blinding us to how little other races are given the same opportunities.

As I mentioned at the start of this, I was homeless for three years. I was homeless my senior year of high school. I was homeless my first two years of college. My sister was in college when we became homeless. The shelter forced her to drop out and begin working at a job that the city provided her. That job was cleaning up the streets in the South Bronx. She wore a bright vest and was warned, “If you see a dead body, don’t touch it. Just let us know and we’ll call 9-11. Just keep cleaning.” That education that she was forced to leave would have given her a better chance earlier in life. The systems that were designed around homelessness insisted she’d have more value cleaning up needles and garbage on the ground than furthering her education.

When the system demanded I quit college- I told them no. I remember specifically the social worker chuckled and said, “You expect the tax payers to pay for your housing while you go to college?” I said, “I don’t have money whether I go to college or not. But if I go to college- then at least I have a fighting chance to not end up back in a shelter again.” Somehow, I was allowed to stay in the shelter. I was removed from food stamps and got a job on my campus serving my classmates food. That job paid me enough to feed myself but would not be enough to afford rent.

I’ve said for the last ten years, “The system is put in place to keep the homeless down. To make it so they can’t get out.” But it was only recently, while educating myself on Black experience that I remembered - my neighbors in the homeless shelter were Black and Hispanic. We were the only white people in the entire neighborhood. The system was not put in place to just keep the homeless down. The system I had to live through was not designed for me. My experience was the perfect example of my privilege. It’s because I was never truly faced with the structures of “you can’t have this” “you don’t deserve this” “this is not yours” because of the color of my skin- I felt strong enough to say, “No, I will not drop out of school. I am going to further my education.”

If all of my neighbors in the shelter were Black and Brown families filled with children who, if given the opportunity, would have to choose between shelter and education: they’d obviously have to choose shelter. But it’s only through my college education that I learned the horrific truths of this country. It’s only through my higher education that I was able to learn more about the systems in place that are specifically designed to make the divide between white people and other races even wider. Not to mention the inequalities between men and women. Again, you shouldn’t have to go to college to know these truths but if you are forced between college and shelter - you likely won’t ever get to learn them unless you experience them firsthand. Sadly, Black and Brown people have been experiencing the inequalities and traumatic history of our country since birth but it wasn’t until my college education that I was given a slice of understanding. It shouldn’t be that way. We have the world in the palm of our hands. We have the ability to educate ourselves now through our phones. You don’t need a degree to see the real issues our country faces.

When the Me Too Movement first took place, women were shell shocked. We all read the thousands of stories that came to light. The stories in the news were just the tip of the iceberg but the stories on our social media feeds were firsthand accounts of pain and trauma. This did two things to me. On the one hand, I felt vindicated. Just a year earlier I had a traumatic experience at my jobs holiday party with a male colleague who forced himself on me. I wrote about it to give me peace and a former coworker I originally thought was a friend told me to just “get over it already.” It silenced me. It hurt me. It let this traumatic experience burrow into the dark corners of my body because somebody else was uncomfortable acknowledging my trauma. Do you see how damaging that can be?

When the Me Too movement began, I was working at a primarily female publishing company. Every day I’d see the women of the office come in, looking as though they also somehow felt vindicated but triggered as well. We all felt triggered. As though having this big discussion of sexual trauma woke up the things we all allowed to burrow into the dark. We were more irritable but sensitive to each other. Being in a public space alone made me scared. I felt more vulnerable than ever and didn’t trust being around strange men without at least one friend present. Hearing the stories of other women only heightened this fear. But in the long run it also made me feel stronger to speak out and I know for certain a lot of other women felt the same way.

The trauma was triggered because of firsthand experiences but also because of inherited experiences, like those from my sisters, mother, aunt, and ancestors I’ve never met. My DNA as a woman holds the DNA of the women who came before me and their traumas are with me too. As a Medium, I learn every day about how our souls carry the traumas from those who came before us and it’s part of our life path to grow from it, break the traumatic cycles and become more loving and compassionate people for ourselves and others.

The news keeps showing us the video of George Floyd. When you open social media you see Breonna Taylor. You can hear the words “I can’t breathe” pleaded through the air and you will automatically feel the pit in your stomach knowing that more than one man has said that as his final words.

Seeing those videos, hearing those stories, reading the articles and seeing the protests may elicit fear from you. You may feel scared of what’s to come. For white people, this isn’t something we may have realized was even happening. We may have responded “why did he resist arrest?” when hearing about someone who died during a struggle with police. That’s only because we didn’t previously have video to prove that aggressive force was being used against him. You may worry about your friends and family who are police officers. I understand it. I worry about my loved ones who are police officers too. I worry about my Black friends and family too. You can worry about the people you love individually but as a whole, I want you to remember that officers can remove their uniform. If white, they can receive the same privilege that they’ve always had once the uniform is off. If Black or Brown, they do not have that privilege.

The trauma stored in the bodies of Black and Brown people is something we, as white people, need to remember. The firsthand accounts of police brutality, inequality and racism have stored trauma into the souls of human beings. Not to mention, every single time the news replays the video of George Floyd being knelt on- it triggers the real fears of not just firsthand experiences but ancestral experiences. It triggers the reality that white people don’t have to face because our skin gives us this privilege.

So I ask you, how will you use this privilege? Perhaps you do not have anyone on your social media page that doesn’t share your complexion so you think posting about Black Lives Matter or declaring you’re against White Supremacy won’t do any good. Perhaps you think it will only “rock the boat” and you’d rather remain silent. How would speaking up rock the boat? Ask yourself if it’s because you don’t want to have people question your loyalty. By that, I mean - is your loyalty with human experience or is it with white people who acknowledge they have privilege and want to continue to use it to their benefit. Even if that means further oppressing human lives.

Silence is like a scarlet P across your chest marking your privilege for the world to see. It tells the world, “This does not impact my life and so I don’t care.” It tells the world that if you delete a comment by someone who’s trying to be vocal about the experience or block them because you don’t want to hear it - you have the ability to do so only because your life is not being threatened everyday. Only because your loved ones lives are not being threatened every day. It’s like my friend telling me to “just get over it.” It’s dangerous. Your silence hurts people and seemingly makes their reality seem insignificant.

Owning your privilege is not just declaring “yes, I have white privilege.” It’s educating yourself on all the ways you’ve potentially hindered someone else who did not have your skin color. I guarantee owning your privilege will feel uncomfortable. There may be times you feel ashamed of when you didn’t speak up or when you didn’t know what was happening. But I’ve learned one major thing through all the traumas and obstacles I’ve experienced in my life: hiding in your shame only allows it to grow more. Facing it and learning from it not only helps you heal and be a better human but it makes the world a better place.

When the pandemic first started I told all my followers this was the time that spirit insisted we release what no longer serves us. I told my followers that being “stuck” at home meant we had to address the old narratives we tell ourselves and we had to let them go. It’s the time of growth, healing and major spiritual changes.

We focused on our homes and “cleaned house” - spiritually but also physically in letting go of items we don’t need anymore. We focused on ourselves - reading, studying, and trying to heal from past issues. We focused on our health - eating at home and hopefully making food that provided nutrition for our body. Maybe we even meditated and exercised. We wore masks that made us focus on something as simple as our breath. We wore masks as actions to protect our neighbors. We celebrated with each other at 7pm and showed gratitude every.single.day : for the air in our lungs, for those on the front lines, for the family and friends who lived another day. We found moments of gratitude when many people neglected to do so pre-pandemic.

The world got quiet. We tuned everything out and had to focus within. It’s still happening. Now is the time to focus on our own programmed biases and how to correct them. Now is the time to be present and active for the betterment of the world. Are you with me?

-Megan Allegra