The great difficulty with white privilege is its sheer ubiquity and its sheer seductiveness. Imagine that you are a beautiful woman or man and people just open doors for you, offer their arms, offer you the best seating, you do not ask for it, but it just happens. After a while, you believe that you must deserve it, that it is yours by right. But it does not, it simply is a result of your youthful beauty. Also, the simple fact that your culture values your particular kind of beauty. You look around and see other beautiful people being treated the same way. Maybe you see that this is a system. Maybe you realize that the system may harm you. You are given the best seats because your presence advertises for and improves the brand of the restaurant you are in. They may put your picture up on the wall, to say beauty was here. You may not realize that there are entire groups of people who are excluded from this life through no fault of their own. Then someone throws water on you and says you are hurting people because of this system, a system you may or may not have realized was even there, a system you know that you did not set up. But by genetics or luck, your parents and grandparents were also beautiful people. They earned more money, were able to own more property because beauty can attract money. All of their earnings passed down to you, allowing you to go to better schools and to earn more yourself. Now you are asked to turn it down, to say this is not fair, that the system is wrong. Will you? or will you fight to maintain the system for your own beautiful children?

© words by Daniel DeMarle 2/15/21