Current Events and White Privilege

Normally I am not a political person. I stay out of it with my opinions and sit on the sidelines. I want to be a neutral party where both sides can speak their mind and not worry about which side I am on. But, at this point in our history I don't feel I can be neutral any longer. This hatred in our world needs to stop. I know that I have gotten away with so much because of my skin color and frankly it's 100% bullshit. 

Let me give you some backstory on why I say this. I am a 34 year old white lady, about to be 35 years old. I have been pulled over a fair amount of times in my life and there have been things I have said and done that if I was not white, and not a lady, I would have been arrested, beaten or even shot. I know that I am privileged, and it is infuriating and not right. It's never been something I have abused, but it is not something I really thought a lot about until recently. I started to go through my life experiences and wondered how the outcomes would have been different if I was born different. Growing up activism wasn't something I had been taught. I grew up with a racist and domestically violent father, so for me to be vocal about my beliefs in my house, was really not an option. Even now, speaking up is scary for me because of the backlash I may face with the family, but I am at a point that speaking up needs to happen.

Everyone should be treated the same. If I am being a snarky little shit to a cop who pulls me over, I shouldn't be getting away with it because I am a white female. Period. End of Story. I will continue to push boundries because that is who I am, and until the police treat us the same, I will continue to be a snarky brat.

Let us go back years where this crap was still going on. I was 18 years old, got pulled over and was able to talk my way out of a ticket in about 2 minutes. Long hair, blah blah blah, all that jazz. That very day, I went out and SHAVED MY HEAD. Yup, shaved it. All Gone. A week after that I got pulled over again. You see, I loved to speed and obviously I didn't learn my lesson the week before. However, this time I was treated completely different. I was still nice and did my best to talk myself out of the ticket, but apparently not being visually appealing doesn't help the situation. This is when I realized that there is a certain type of bias that takes over with the police force when giving tickets or pulling people over in general.  Still I am white, so I was still treated better than I could have been. Either way, this is when I realized that there is injustice in the world and that not everyone is treated equal like my mother tried to teach me.  You see, though my household is a hellhold, she did her very best to raise me to see the best in people. To reach out and help anyone I can, no matter what they look like or what they have gone through. She did her best to make sure that my sister and I didn't turn in to our father.  So for you mom, though you live in fear every single day, I am fighting back against the hatred in our Country right now. 

Back to now. In every single situation, it could have been different. I could have been dragged out of my car for telling an officer that he was "bored" and that was the reason he pulled me over. I could have been beaten up for accusing the officer of picking my car because it was red if I had a different skin color. My mom could have been arrested the one times she snapped the latex glove and told the cop to bend over. (long party story for another time). All of these things show that White privilege is real and that every single day we get away with so much more shit because of our skin color.

END THIS NOW. Place us all behind a wall that just shows our skeleton and we are all the same. We are all skin and bones, that is it. You white person who feels that a cop has wronged you because you got arrested for a possible DUI and popped off your mouth, guess what, they let you go when they realized you didn't have any alcohol in your system. If you had been a different color, they would have kept you. They wouldn't have been nice and put you in the handcuffs without roughing you up first. Stop pretending that you understand what it feels like, because you don't. We can support and help, but we will never know as a white person, how it feels. 

Stand up and start fighting.  Know that calling people "thugs" is tweets of agression. Know that letting white people get away with "peaceful protests" while holding guns, and then tossing tear gas at black people without guns is RACISM.  Stop the hate.