White Privilege Chronicles: I Know Your Reality Better Than You Do

In my early 20’s, I had moved into an apartment complex that was predominantly African-American. Every evening when I got home from work, the children in my neighborhood would come over and hang out. Just by welcoming the kids in, I had created a make-shift After-School program in my apartment.

I was working for a ministry at the time and a reporter caught wind of what I was doing. She thought it would be a good story. Fresh out of college and new to the big city, my ego swelled. The Dallas Morning News wants to do a story on me??? Of course I wasn’t going to turn that down!

The lady writing the article came to my apartment to visit a couple of times. Per usual, about twenty kids were gathered. She talked to them and had a photographer take pictures for the article.

When the article came out that Saturday, I eagerly went to the closest gas station to get a copy. It was on the FRONT PAGE of the religion section! Not only that, there was a small picture at the top of the VERY FRONT PAGE of the newspaper that beckoned people to look inside and read the article! I had made it big!

My neighbors weren't near as happy and told me so. I was crushed. I didn't understand why they were so upset. Looking back, here's what I learned:

1. I hadn't bothered to ask permission from any of the parents to see if they wanted their children pictured in this article. Neither had the reporter or photographer. (What made any of us think it was ok to take pictures of children and splash them across the Dallas Morning News without talking to their parents?? Would we have done that in any other neighborhood? I'm pretty sure we would not have.)
2. I wasn't the only person who was working to entertain and improve the quality of life for the children in that apartment complex. The apartment manager, who also lived in the apartments (and had for years), was often having little parties to keep the kids entertained and off the streets. She often threw the parties with her own money, yet no one had offered to do a story on her efforts...but, she was Black and was from that community so, for some reason, I guess her efforts didn't count.
3. The article focused on how run-down the apartments were, as if the apartments being run down were the fault of the people who lived there instead of the fault of the owner who refused to take care of his/her property...as if the people in the apartments created the rodent problem in the apartments instead of the owners refusing to provide enough pest control to get it under control...as if I were the great one for subjecting myself to those conditions.

(Truthfully, and from re-reading the article, though I loved living in my apartments, I also felt the way the newspaper article presented me. I was doing good...and I hadn't thought to acknowledge the injustice of people living in those conditions and the gall of an owner who would perpetuate it.)

As I left my apartment that evening, one of my neighbors said, "That article was written by a white lady!" I shot back, "You don't know that!" We argued for a bit and I kept trying to convince them that they didn't know what they were talking about. But, of course, they did.

It wasn't that the reporter got the facts wrong. The facts were correct, but the slant was there. There's a way that white people write and talk about communities of color that I didn't understand then. We focus on the negative. We present the bad parts as if they're the fault of the people in the community instead of recognizing and acknowledging the systemic injustice that has occurred: the fact that people of color were forced to live in slipshod housing because they were redlined out of other neighborhoods...the fact that people of color were not allowed to even enroll in colleges until not that long ago...the fact that having less education has often meant lower-paying jobs, which means that being able to afford better housing isn't even an option.

We laud other white people as saviors and completely overlook the efforts of the people who live in those neighborhoods. Perhaps their efforts aren't to the level of what a white person can do. Again, that also has to do with systemic injustice...because the people in the community trying to do something typically aren't granted access to as many resources or gifted with a friend of a friend who offers grants and funding to pass that money along to them to improve their own community.

That evening, instead of listening to my Black neighbors and trying to understand what they saw and heard in the article, I, a White woman, worked hard to convince them that their reality was wrong.

Who was I?? ... Who am I?? ...to convince another person that I know their reality better than they do?

But that is white privilege.