Tag: white privilege
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Family Politics
In a recent phone conversation, I proudly told my dad about my first book contract, which followed three years of hard work. “That’s great!” he said. “What’s it about?” Sheepishly, I responded, “Well, it’s called Ten Risks Privileged People Should Take.” “Just so you know,” he said, “I would not buy that book with that title.”…
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Knowing
In her poem “Tablets IV”, Dunya Mikhail writes: The homeless are not afraid to miss something. What passes through their eyes is how the clouds pass over the rushing cars, the way pigeons miss some of the seeds on the road and move away. Yet only they know what it means to have a home…
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Tired of Talking about Privilege
Last Sunday, during a program at my college about how to create needed social change, I observed a few of the white students tuning out. One fell asleep. Another started texting a friend. Another tried to pay attention, but her eyes kept wandering to the floor, the window and the faces in the room other…
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Getting to Know my White Privileged Self
A new essay is rising up within me. This is what it feels like when I know I have something to write about but don’t know exactly where this “feeling of an idea” is leading. It’s an exciting journey of discovery—exciting because I know I will learn and grow a lot in the process. But…
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Dismantling my Privilege begins with Understanding
In his essay “The Harlem Ghetto” James Baldwin describes the 1950 American reality as a “bitterness—felt alike by the inarticulate, hungry population of Harlem, by the wealthy on Sugar Hill, and by the brilliant exceptions ensconced in universities—which has defeated and promises to continue to defeat all efforts at interracial understanding.”[1] Baldwin could just as…
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A Reason to Live, Even in February
It’s hard to love life in February. All I see on my drive to work is the grey sky mixing into the grey snow that melds with the grey cement of the cracked and salt-stained road beneath my wheels. Black branches poke and scratch the sunless sky as I begin to look for color—any sign…
Teri McDowell Ott 