How A White Privileged Male Experiences Racism
The windows shattered around me. My heart beat as if I sprinted a marathon, adrenaline coursing through my veins, like a drug taking over an addict.
We were a bunch of dopey, high schoolers, who finished their Friday night football game.
My three friends and I were on a mission — get to the party.
It had just rained. I could feel the Florida humidity cling to my nostrils.
The “boys” and I hopped into Brandon’s maroon Ford F150. It’s unlikely I jumped but instead pulled myself in.
I was much bigger back then. I was a 250-pound offensive guard, who played next to the more slender, Brandon, our offensive tackle.
We all managed to herd into the party vessel, as Brandon blasted AC/DC, heading to our first stop — beer.
We pulled into a raggedy convenience store. The one where you know shady shit goes down.
It was Brandon’s “guy.”
“Whatever dude, go get the beer.”
We waited. I was likely nervous since we were at the scene of a crime.
I wonder if the place ever got busted. Likely.
We all piled back into the truck and began our last mile to the party, but something felt strange.
You know how it feels—the emptiness in the pit of your stomach.
We were being followed.
The car behind us was close. It felt like they were going to gently touch our ass. These pricks would have liked that.
The car changed lanes without a blinker.
They slowly pulled up next to us and rolled down their windows. I was in the passenger seat.
All I saw was them yelling, and bats waived in the air.
“Holy fuck, bats?” I remember thinking to myself.
Brandon, who was driving, attempted to lose them. The goal? Avoid getting our head beat in.
He decided to enter a public library parking lot. I’m unsure why he chose the place, but it’s likely because it was well lit.
As I looked back, they pulled in behind us. We failed to lose them. Brandon circled the parking lot.
As we came back around the parking lot, they pulled in front of us, which blocked our exit.
The lights pointed directly into our eyes. It felt like a cop car, to blind and subdue a suspect.
In those moments, I thought they wanted to fight a rival school. Maybe they were the older failure of life punks, who wanted to harass Juniors.
All I could muster up in my tiny little you don’t know shit about the world brain was something immature like “a rival school.”
In the mere ten-seconds, I processed the fight in my head, we lost. They had bats!
Then reality began to sink in. Shit got real. The guys got out of the car and started to yell at us.
“Get the n#@$!@ out of the car!”
“Get that N#@$!@ out of the CAR!”
I was confused. With my human-produced chemicals pumping through my veins, and my vague knowledge of racism, I thought, “are they talking to me?”
My whole life, I didn’t see race as a reason to be violent. I didn’t see race as a reason to be cruel or rude to another human.
In these moments, what they were saying didn’t register in my head. It was a failure on my part to process racism because I’d never known racism until that point.
I’ve never been a victim, nor had I ever thought racist thoughts. Racism wasn’t even in my vocabulary.
Once I processed what was happening, “they’re after Gabe,” I yelled. Gabe was and still is my best friend.
During football season, in the ninety-degree Florida sun, Gabe’s skin became black as night from the daily football practices.
They yelled, one more time, “get the n#@$!@ out of the car.”
Panic set in, as this was no bro fight, but a racial attack on our friend.
Brandon threw his F150 in reverse and accelerated.
He hit the curb with force. A loud thump overtook the cabin of the truck. We jiggled like Jelly Beans and rolled down the ditch to escape.
The truck came to an immediate stop.
I could hear the tires spinning in reverse, mud being flung up from the recent rain.
We were stuck — sitting ducks in a racial attack.
The racists ran up to the truck screaming, as they waived their bats.
Once they got to our windows, they began to beat on them. “Get out of the car,” they continued to yell.
A friend who was sitting next to Gabe yelled, “let’s get out and beat their ass.” I looked at him, “they have bats, you dumbass.”
They became impatient as their demands weren’t being met.
One by one, they took turns smashing the truck. Thwap, thwap, the bats struck the truck with force.
If this were our body, our bones would turn to dust.
Then the front windshield cracked as if I was on a thin layer of ice.
The headlights began to burst, one by one, as they beat them like a piñata.
Nothing on the outside of the truck was beyond their carnage. They hit everything.
All we could hear is them yell, the glass break, and the sound you hear when metal is being hit with brut force.
Their demands never seized. They continued to scream.
I looked at my friend Brandon, and asked,
“What’s the number for 911?”
I couldn’t think straight. We were terrified—our adrenaline at its peak.
My brain was overwhelmed by a chemical explosion from my body trying to adapt to the current situation.
It’s a natural fight or flight response. My body was allocating resources to the right parts of my body. Thinking straight wasn’t on the priority list.
“Dial 9-1-1!”
I began to dial. Once the guys realized I was on the phone with the cops, they ran to their car.
They sped off, like the little racist cowards they are. They ended up leaving, just as my friends and I began this journey, trying to get the fuck out of there.
The cops found these pieces of shit. We identified the suspect, which led them to jail. It’s crazy to think, these guys are likely still alive, with the same beliefs as they once had.
That’s how I, a privileged white male, experiences racism, through the life of my best friend.
They weren’t after me; they were after my best friend.
I can’t stand back and say I understand because fundamentally, I don’t.
I haven’t been victimized to leave a moral indent on my conscious.
I don’t understand what it’s like to be profiled. I don’t understand what it’s like to have four white males run up to me screaming, “get out of the car n#@$!@,” and wonder if I’m going to see my family again.
I don’t understand what it’s like to have a cop, there to protect civility, pressing his knee on my neck, as it becomes fractured while I scream, “I can’t breathe.”
Although I don’t understand, I firmly believe that racism needs to be extinct.
It’s no longer okay not to be racist; we all must be antiracist.
Bill Bryson tells a story in his book, The Body, about an incredible event when he was in the dissection room at the University of Nottingham in England.
He was talking with a professor and surgeon Ben Ollivere, and as he was, Mr. Ollivere “gently incised and peeled back a sliver of skin about a millimeter thick from the arm of a cadaver.”
Bill recounted what he saw, “It was so thin as to be translucent.” Professor Ollivere, remarked “that…is where all your skin color is. That’s all that race is—a sliver of epidermis.”
When Bill spoke to Nina Jablonski at State College, Pennsylvania, she commented, “It is extraordinary how such a small facet of our composition is given so much importance.”
When people say, “I hate black people,” I hate brown people, “you can’t marry someone of the opposite race,” it’s about a sliver of color within our epidermis.
Do we hate because of the natural adaption of our human bodies?
That’s insane. Intolerable.
When I was in elementary school, I told my mom I wanted a black brother named Willy.
Willy was my best friend on the playground. My mother failed me, thanks to my father, as I got a blonde sister named Kati.
Thanks to Willy, he helped me get my first real girlfriend in the third grade. A tall black girl who’s name has escaped me.
I don’t see someone as the color of their skin, rather, the quality of their heart and soul.
To me, color is a characteristic, one of which, I would love to get more of since I’m riddled with skin cancer.
And that’s likely part of the problem, says Ibram X. Kendi, that “the common of claiming “color blindness” is akin to the notion of being “not racist”—as with the “not racist,” the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity.”
We can no longer accept racism, or to not be a racist. We have to fundamentally, as a community, be antiracism in every form.
It’s not okay to tell people you understand, or post some bullshit social media post acting as if you do, with no action.
It’s not okay to donate to a cause, without action. Action speaks louder than words. By action, I don’t mean mass diplomatic protests.
We have to act antiracist in our day-to-day lives.
I have a real-world account of what this feels like, but I can never truly understand. They weren’t after me!
We must put racism on the extinction map. It takes an approach we must LIVE in our day-to-day lives.
These are not just “other” communities. They are our brothers and sisters of this planet.
It will take dedication at every level. I do not have an answer. There are many smarter minds on this topic that should guide us.
As a white male, born in America, I’m the last one to answer.
What I do know, we ALL must do better in our day-to-day lives. That’s where you can have an immense impact. It’s no longer okay not to be racist; we must be antiracist.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Nina Jablonski,
“People act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is a reaction to sunlight. Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples. And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the color of their skin.”
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