of politics and white privilege

This is a great oped piece which provides solid examples of the oft-overlooked and illunderstood phenomenon of White Privilege: This is Your Nation on White Privilege. You should read it.

Here's a highlight:

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she’s disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you’re black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called “terrorist fist bumps”

And if you aren't familiar with White Privilege in the first place, you should read Peggy McIntosh's essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, in which she sets out to define the phenomenon:

As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.

As a white girl who has attended an HBCU for several years, and lived in one of the most racist states in the nation for almost a decade, I've become all too aware of the privileges bestowed upon me by virtue of my pale skin, so for me this is interesting stuff.