White Privilege

After reading this article about white privilege I can’t help but agree with all the contentions that point to the same conclusion. One specific aspect that I didn’t realize I lived on the privileged side of things was the law. After a few example of this in the article I realized from all my research from wanting to be a police officer that white people have less privilege today but still have the edge on all the other races. Some of the reasons for this are because the way the American public perceives white’s as being less of a threat than any other race. This was specifically emphasized in the article during the portion when Mr. Wise talked about how he would get pulled over all the time while he was driving in a beat up car. It talked about the time he talked to a police officer and tried to find this hidden bias toward whites in their answer to just a few basic profiling questions. The question that really threw me off was the one that talked about how whenever police officer see an expensive car with a white driver they think, spoiled white kid. But when they see a nice car with a minority driving it they automatically assume drug dealer. This really caught me off guard because I was always trained to think that cops were held to one of the highest standards for any professions, but still have racially driven actions. In reality it has been statistically proven that white people are more likely to be dealing drugs, which makes the racial stereotype completely false. The other thing I found incredibly surprising about the article was the situation when a black mother has to tell her black son to keep his hands on the wheel when he gets pulled over or else he could be shot. This is crazy to think that even though you have a less likely chance of doing something wrong, police officer treat you as if you are a felony suspect without any prior information for them to jump to that conclusion. The last thing that I found to be crazy to finally think about was the notion that police in white suburban town’s like Deerfield take it easier on their suspects because they are white. This kind of mistake can be extremely deadly in any police encounter. As the article illustrates when a white person does something illegal like, drink underage, they are “looked at with a wink and a nod.”