Privilege : Why The Majority Turns A Blind Eye To Racism

As much as we would like to say America is a post-racism society, the sad and deathly reality is we are not. How can we be past anything that is fundamentally embedded in America? Our society thrives off the divisiveness of racism and has built a capitalistic system from it. It’s easier for the majority to stick their head in the sand than to confront the issue. Their privilege blinds them.

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Of course when I speak of privilege , I’m not speaking of a socio-economic standing nor am I playing the “I had a rough life ” game. I’m speaking on the continual degradation in media, the criminalization of victims, the “All Lives Matter,” the privilege that allows a Caucasian terrorist to be seen as “a gunman that gambled and enjoyed life,” but a black child as a young criminal or a Muslim as an automatic terrorist.

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It’s privilege that allows others to feel they have a right to tell grown people, let alone grown men, who and what they can protest for, how to protest and what’s acceptable. Privilege allows the majority to feel that anytime police brutality is brought to the forefront it is acceptable to diminish that concern with intra-community spills about African- Americans.

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Privilege allows the majority to focus on test results for impoverished schools in urban neighborhoods versus funding and finding good teachers. Privilege allows for our kids to be passed along a pipeline that leads straight to prison as long as there are policies in place to “help.” It tells us not to discipline our kids , but use the “out of control” narrative to justify their demise.

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Good ole privilege allows for the majority to remain willfully ignorant because no matter how irate, criminal or grossly negligent they are, they will be seen as human and in need of sympathy.

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Rape a young girl? Let’s lessen the crime and be released early (Stanford Swimmer). Massacre humans (Tucson, Aurora, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook) and its mental illness. Murder someone in cold blood? No indictment or no conviction (Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice… the list goes on).

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The majority can turn a blind to racism because privilege allows them to have a blind eye. It allows them to live peacefully amongst chaos without ever becoming apart of it.