I am ashamed to say that I was 30 years old when I learned that White Privilege was a real thing.   Before this point I tried to treat everyone with kindness, compassion and love.  I realized that my life experience was different than the experiences of my friends who were people of color.  I was in tune enough to know there was a different lens we were looking through, but I had no idea the lens had a name.

Every summer the ministry I worked with would take a large group of students to spend a week living in the city of Detroit.  We would help with a day camp and do whatever other projects the organization wanted us to do.  We would have training before the trip and the organization would send a representative to help prepare our students for the experience they were going to have.  I had been to many of these trainings before.  Sometimes there was role playing or a game to help our students understand how broken the system is and how once you are in the system it can be incredibly difficult to get out of the system.

The summer of 2010, however, was the first time I had heard the term White Privilege, ever.  I had known the concepts.  I knew things were broken.  I knew things weren’t fair.  It just didn’t have a name and honestly (ugh I hate that I have to say this) I didn’t know what the economic and societal discrepancies had to do do with me. (Gross.  So gross.)

Growing up we did not have a lot of money.  I remember one week my family did not have enough money for a loaf of bread.  We pulled together and searched our house for change.  Change.  The stuff that had fallen out of our pockets or found it’s way under the couch.  We literally had money hidden all over our house that we didn’t know was there until we needed to find it.  Neither of my parents graduated from college and they made it really clear to us that education was the key to having a life that didn’t involve looking for change under the couch.  The message was if you work really hard at school then you will be financially stable.  Hard work will change your life circumstances is what I got from the lesson.

I have met single mothers with three jobs that are still not able to provide fully for their families.  They work hard.  Really hard and they love their kids.  They envision a better life for their kids, just like my parents did, but they feel like it’s an up hill battle every day.  My parents could tell me to work hard and life will be different because the system is made for me to succeed.  It was actually made for my brothers to succeed, but gender inequality will have to be another story for another time.

That day in May of 2010 changed my entire life.  I remember the room being really uncomfortable.  It was mainly white teenagers and adults who were present.  Kids from affluent neighborhoods.  The conversation was powerful.  Kevin and I knew we couldn’t be the same.  We couldn’t see the world the same.  We don’t have all the answers, nor do we have influence to fix systemic problems at macro levels.  We want to learn.  We want to be humble students.  We want to help make changes in our sphere of influence.  We do not want to be white people who keep on keeping on simply because the system is working for us.  Our life is not about us.

I was really nervous to write about this today.  It was a really big revelation for me and deserved to be one of my 40 days of writing, but I don’t have all the answers.  For all I know there could be 85 offensive things that were said in this post.  My prayer is, however, that, despite my lack of answers, I will not stop trying to figure this out.  That I will not be afraid to ask questions or to look at the parts of my life I have taken for granted.  I am so thankful for the diverse community that I live in.  I’m thankful that I have people that are willing to help me learn.  It’s never too late to learn something new and it’s never to late to make a change.