As a white male I am blamed for all the ills of society

[SheilaT]

154. ahh, jeez.

No, you are not blamed for all the ills of society.

We're just trying to get you to understand that you have a degree of privilege, invisible and unacknowledged, that has made a huge difference in your life.

I've posted more than once about the older white female privilege that I've benefitted from, especially in a traffic stop. Many years ago, at the beginning of the Women's Movement, I discovered that the man who most understood what we women were complaining about was a black man. He was kind and gracious to me, and explained things about the racial divide that I otherwise would have never understood.

We all occupy a particular niche. Some of those niches involve more privilege than others. My now ex is Jewish, although even other Jews couldn't tell unless he clued them in. He found it especially interesting in one job he had to not let on for the first five or six years that he was Jewish. He was a fly on the wall and watched the occasional anti-Semitism and found it quite interesting.

I've experienced discrimination against women, especially in male-only jobs. It was an eye opener. But it's not the only thing that shapes my life. I am also heterosexual. I've had two children. Someone who is gay, or who never had children has experienced a different reality than I have. Likewise someone (like a recent friend) who has a handicapped child, lives a different reality than I do.;

We need to not only acknowledge the power of those who are in charge (in our culture it's largely straight white men) but to understand that we all have different lives.