My Privileges

This is an incomplete and imperfect accounting of my white (and male) privilege. I will add to this list as I make myself aware of new privileges.

I have the privilege of deciding when or if I think about my race.

I have the privilege to contemplate my race from a safe vantage.

I have the privilege to contemplate my race with other like minded individuals that look like me.

I have the privilege of growing up with two white parents who were never targets of racism themselves and so were available to me and able to raise me.

I have the privilege of growing up with two white parents who benefited from economic, social, and judicial privileges that gave them many legs up and provided them a financial grounding with which to raise me.

I have the privilege of being born to parents who could afford in-utero fertilization.

I have the privilege of my first kiss being a black girl in my pre-K class and never being told that I should be careful about that, because I was a cute little white boy who had no worries in the world.

I have the privilege of growing up in the heart of Richmond, attending a quality elementary school, then moving out to the suburbs in order to avoid the underfunded Richmond Public School system.

I have the privilege of growing up in a suburb named Kings Charter that was full of individuals that looked like me.

I have the privilege of growing up watching action movie heroes, comedy stars, comic book superheroes, and regular workaday heroes depicted in the media that looked like me.

I have the privilege of looking like a member of a boy band in the mid-nineties.

I have the privilege of being named after good fortune and good harvests. William Berkley Luck. Berkeley is the name of a famous plantation near where I live, and I grew up with all the accompanying mental associations of inevitable wealth.

I have the privilege of never being told I look menacing or suspicious just because I’m wearing a hoodie or any other particular item of clothing or any particular look on my face.

I have the privilege of being on polite terms with police whenever I’m stopped.

I have the privilege of stopping a police officer during a protest to ask if I may pass the road he is blocking. 

I have the privilege of living in a neighborhood where rent won’t suddenly be destabilized because another demographic moves into the neighborhood and rich people don’t really want to live nearby because they already do, and the majority of them would rather live elsewhere.

I have the privilege of a white male name and the look and sound of my name, William Berkley Luck, has never disqualified me from a position.

I have the privilege of being out of my home at whatever time I choose and never being suspected of foul play.

I have the privilege of living near monuments of the Confederacy and not feeling their painful daily reminders of hate as acutely as some of my neighbors, though I do feel shame. Shame is not the same as outright oppression.

I have the privilege of shopping where I want, eating where I want, and attending shows where I want because no one thinks I don’t belong in those spaces because of the way I look.

I have the privilege of never wondering if someone chose to treat me a certain way because of my skin color, though I’ve been told on one occasion that I would not be receiving assistance because of the way I look. The individual who told me that was a POC and wanted to reserve his aid for those who were less privileged. And I understood and still understand that.

I have the privilege of enjoying public parks, nature reserves, and other such public lands without being suspected of wrongdoing and having the police called on me.

I have the privilege of dating white women without their parents being uncomfortable.

I have the privilege of dating black women, and though their parents have expressed some measure of understandable discomfort, they’ve never outright forbidden their daughter from dating me.

I have the privilege of walking around my neighborhood and never being stopped by a police officer or an ignorant neighbor.