You Should Have Heard What the Kids Called Me

The San Francisco Bay Area

"There is no such thing as white privilege," he insists. "Life was hard for me, too." 

I tread lightly. "I think what the term white privilege conveys is that while it might have been hard for you, it would have been even harder if given the exact same circumstances, you were also black." 

He tells me about his life, in reverse. The work he put in to buy his house. The decade-plus of graduate work. The ninety minutes each way train ride to and from undergrad classes. The stubborn, working-class, middle-American parents who provided him with shelter, who he clearly loved, but who I wasn't sure showed him much in the way of compassion. 

"Nobody gave me anything," he continues. "You should have heard what the kids called me on the playground." 

"What did they call you?" I ask. 

"Nigger lips." He's a white man, probably born in the 1930s. "How much privilege do you think I had hearing that?" 

I want very much to argue with him. Words are burning inside my throat, begging to flame out and eviscerate his thought process. But that's not why I'm having this conversation. This can't be why I'm having this conversation. 

His wife jumps in. "I just think if you can do something, if you have talent and interest, someone will take an interest in you. It doesn't matter about the color of your skin. I don't see color." 

"It sounds like you think the term white privilege somehow diminishes your experiences," I say. 

"You're god damn right it does." He's so angry, I can almost feel the pain of his childhood oozing off of him. "They make it sound like I didn't have to work for what I have."

"But do you think it would have been even harder if you were black?" I can't help myself.  

"No," he says. 

"No," his wife says.

There's so much pain in there, and I wish I knew how to get it out of him.