From the Tribune: My Unearned White Privilege Kept Me Standing

This article originally appeared in the Opinion section of the Sunday, February 13, 2022 edition of the La Crosse Tribune

JOHN UDELL: MY UNEARNNED WHITE PRIVILEGE KEPT ME STANDING

By John Udell

On Saturday, Feb. 5, my wife and I attended the La Crosse Community Theatre’s production of “The Mountaintop,” a
poignant fictional reenactment of the last night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s life, set in his room at the Memphis, Tenn.,
Lorraine Motel where he was assassinated in 1968.

Following the production, the director and actors led a discussion for those who chose to participate. It was during this
discussion where, for me, the most lasting lesson of the evening occurred.

It was when one of the participants, of similar age to myself and who, like me, is a native of the Midwest, walked us
through a brief exercise built on his life experiences as an American citizen, though, in his case, a Black American citizen.

He asked all of us who marked “white” on the US Census Form, to stand. He then listed several of his personal life
experiences, beginning as a kindergartener up until just one month ago, instructing us to sit down if we too lived such
an event. Not surprisingly, I never sat. For it has been a privilege for me, a “White privilege,” to have never experienced:

1) As a 5-year-old, surrounded by a sea of white-faced authority figures, being told by my teacher that I and my blackfaced
schoolmates were “little monkeys” and “not worthy of my time.”

2) As a grade-schooler, seeing my well-educated, accomplished, professional mother repeatedly being told at parentteacher
conferences that her academic expectations for me were too high.

3) As a high-schooler, seeing my soft-spoken father seethe with anger when, also at a parent-teacher conference, being
told by a male, white-faced teacher that because my sister was beautiful, she could expect a bright future but that I, an
intelligent teen whose learning style, simply did not mesh well with this teacher’s expectations, and he should consider
moving me to a “school for the retarded.”

4) As a 14-year-old, traveling home alone mid-afternoon by city bus, and while walking with my packages between bus
stops, being verbally and physically assaulted by a group of white-faced men whose assault included urinating and
defecating on me, a dehumanizing assault observed, with laughter, by two white-faced police officers who did not
intervene in a timely manner. The officers finally sauntered across the street to advise the attackers retreat, “they’d had
enough fun”, and chastised me for provoking the attack simply by walking down the wrong street.

5) As a child, learning that my mother urgently fled her home town on the day of her graduation from high school,
never to return, because she was attacked by a group of white-faced men, all of whom had families and children of their
own. Tragically, the friend with whom she was walking was not so lucky, suffering rape prior to being murdered by her
assailants.

6) As a college student, sitting, with two white-faced companions in a warm car, awaiting a train on a cold winter day,
being singly and forcibly removed from the car by two white-faced undercover police officers, stripped to my undershirt
and rudely searched and questioned, simply because my skin was the same color as a suspect who was many years
different in age, tens of pounds different in weight, and many inches different in height. Even after those questioning
me recognized that I was not whom they sought, they left me exposed to the cold and rudely scattered the contents of
my wallet in the snow, purposely kicking items under the car.

7) And just in recent weeks, while parked in front of my house, walking from my car to my front door, being confronted
by a local authority who demanded to know why I was there and where I was going — not accepting my response that I
was simply walking to my home, therefore requiring me to show identification to prove that my response was truthful
and indeed this was my home.

I never sat down because I have never experienced such indignities. My life has been untarnished in these ways because
my face is white in a world where, because of the festering poison of bigotry and racism, being Black is all too often a
yoke to bear, tragically making it a privilege to not be Black.

If my life included any of these experiences, my perception of living in America would be vastly different, and it would
take fortitude to maintain my current sense of self-respect and dignity, not to mention to live a life free of fear. Sadly,
these lived experiences prove to me that it is a privilege to live free of fear.

The La Crosse Community Theatre’s powerful talkback on Feb. 5 movingly clarified that for me this privilege is indeed a
“White privilege.”