The Subtle Influence of White Privilege in My Life

I started my life in a wealthy family. I went to private prep schools in the south in a city that. My dad was a lawyer and when I was really young everything looked secure. It didn’t last. My family encountered financial problems and I left the private school life for a more real experience in the public school system by 5^th grade. Before going to public school, people of any color were always tokens. I didn’t know how to interact with them. They really didn’t have many friends and were always treated like an outsider if they weren’t extroverts (but even then). My point is, from a white rich perspective, everything looks comfortable. They spend money to make sure they don’t see or interact with poverty, color, or anything that throws into question their view of the world.

There was a moment in my very young life (around 5 or 6) when I watched a commercial where an attractive black woman was selling a product of some sort and I said out loud to myself (I tend to hold conversations aloud with myself) that “I would never marry one.”

After I said that, I realized something had been done to me. I realized that there was no reason why I would not marry a black woman other than her skin color. I realized I was racist. It’s one of my earliest memories that seared into my mind and I’m certain it was programmed into me having experienced that white privileged life. People of color in white private institutions are often treated as “the other” and that manipulates the minds of their classmates to treat them as such. I wanted to change this and it wasn’t until I left private school for public, did I realize how deeply entrenched the white privileged life was inside of my mind.

6^th grade was when I experienced culture shock. I moved from a public school on the north side of the city (still largely white, but certainly more children of color) to an inner city school that was transitioning to a creative arts school. It was the first year of the new realized creative arts school. The teachers and the administrators treated the children who remained when it was still an inner city school as problematic and they aimed to eventually even/weed out the population with more children interested in the arts. The school was divided racially by 95% black, 4% white, and 1% Asian/Hispanic. I found myself as the other. My first day was an eye opener. I introduced myself to my homeroom and made friends enough with some of the black students. So when lunch time came around I said to myself that I would find where those students were in the lunchroom and sit with them. I had an almost impossible time trying to remember faces, and to me at the time the black students looked way too similar. However, I found my homeroom friends and saved myself from embarrassment. As the year progressed, I moved away from the black students and made friends with the few white kids that were there. It just seemed to have naturally happened that all the white kids ended up being friends and separate from the black students (later in the year this would fracture. I’ll admit that the only non-white face I can remember was a Vietnamese kid who I played chess with in homeroom. I ended up getting into one fight that school year, my one and only black eye. The assistant principle asked me if I had a problem with there being mostly black students in the school (he was black) and this shocked me, because it wasn’t the case, but I realized it had to be the case for other white students there otherwise he probably would not have asked me. The fight was with a kid who had it out for me for whatever reason (the kid was later expelled for breaking into teacher’s cars), but I have a reputation for being a quiet, yet opinionated, introvert. My favorite band at the time (and still is) was KMFDM. Their motto of “Rip The System” fueled my anarchist tendencies and my deeper rejection of the white privileged mindset that was still deeply ingrained in me.

My point is, within white institutions the idea of race is an alien one. The institutions fail considerably at any attempt to raise consciousness of the society. They want the status quo. They want their children to be white, Christian, preppy, rich, and non-introspective. This was the late 80s going into the 90s and it still persists today. I wouldn't be who I am today if I had not experienced that culture shock in the 6^th grade, seeing that the system had intentionally programmed me into a white privilege mindset. This only scratches the surface about my experiences growing up, but I will admit I was at one time a racist child, programmed by the system my parents put me into. This system is not limited to private schools (as you can see it even existed in my experience in public school). This system runs the government, runs the banks, runs the churches, and just about every institution on the planet that does not make it a point to become aware of the societal brainwash. The system views minorities as the other and as the problem. If there is something wrong with society, the white privilege will blame blacks and the poor (often one and the same to them). This can change and it has, but we are far from getting rid of the white privileged mindset. The first step is to be aware that it has brainwashed you and a realize that its ok as long as you seek to change it. 

Atheism and Historical Revisionism

Atheism and Historical Revisionism

by: ViolentPeace

If you are a follower of Atheist blogs, Facebook groups, or the religious who attempt to combat them, or perhaps you have friends that are and you end up reading the internet activity overflow, you may be familiar with this meme. It started a few months ago (to the best of my knowledge) and when I first saw it, it hurt my brain by its oversimplification of history. Yes, I realize that the point of the meme is to be witty, sometimes funny, sometimes revealing, but this one is just a good example of historic revisionism by the Atheist community.

Full disclosure: I am an Atheist.

I first saw this graphic on @AtheistWord on Twitter and my first response to it was along the lines of: This is such a western view of civilization. What about the scientific advancement of the Arabs? If you study history, you will have come to realize that it was middle eastern scientific advances that spurned the Renaissance. It was in the Middle East that they maintained ancient Greek texts. King Richard the Lionheart waged his crusade and after that the Middle East opened up to the west and not only did trade explode, but ideas began to seep back into the minds of the west, many which we lost to Christian Fundamentalism (the burning of the Great Library is a perfect example of the destructive forces of Christian Fundamentalism). So the Lionheart’s crusade brought into Europe what the Arabs had been doing for the past 500 years. Scientific advancement was not so stagnant during this time if we take into consideration what was occurring around the world.

Not only did this glaring error of western blindness, but also the promotion that Rome was some sort of intellectual powerhouse before 1 CE. It wasn't. Rome copied everything from the Greeks. There was no great intellectual of Rome, all the intellectuals were Greek or closely related to Greece. During Rome’s long reign they never produced a mind that could compare to Archimedes or even a playwright that could match Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. In terms of scientific or cultural advancement, Rome was practically defunct. What Rome did invent was bureaucracy, they knew how to run an Empire and it was because of this (plus roads, which were invented long before, and aqueducts, also not invented by Romans) efficient way of ruling were they able to achieve the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace and stability. Most of that took place during the labeled “Dark Ages” above.
Let’s now talk about something perhaps a bit more important than scientific advancement, women’s rights. When the Roman Empire was created and their form of Athenian democracy ceased, Women started to reacquire the rights they had lost during the time of the Republic. You can read about women in Ancient Rome on this website for children, they lay it out quite nicely and it is very easy to read: http://rome.mrdonn.org/women.html.

     The same thing happened when Rome fell. The tendrils of Othrodox Christianity were swimming in Rome and made women controversial again, but under the rule of the “barbarian” kingdoms, did they regain their status and autonomy.

      There perhaps is much more to show that this meme is a gross simplification of history to that I have not yet addressed. Atheists who might not know their history exactly may fall victim to this very gross simplification. The reason I bring up women’s rights is that generally we credit more proper uses of scientific advancement as to why civil rights are returning to women and people of color, but as demonstrated above that has not always been the case. 
     Whenever literacy spreads in ancient (and even today) women’s rights have always suffered. God is a god of a book, so is Allah, and Yahweh. Even when Buddha’s teachings were put into writing, his female followers suffered. God is perhaps a reason for the lack of scientific advancement, but it’s not the fault of the religious exactly, it’s the fault of the words and their writing. If we took a chart like it is above and decided to use it to express when literacy was promoted in comparison to human rights, you would see a more accurate advancement of the oppression and lack of original thought in the world. Radio, TV, and the internet have freed us from written word and thus we begin to see the advancement of human rights across the world.

     If I had to sum this up in a sentence; nice try fellow atheists, but next time please look deeper because your oversimplification is hurting our credibility.