Obliviousness is a white privilege
Being open is not always easy. It breaks the silence. It reveals truth and the truth is often hard to hear.
For Everyday Plastic, being open is a fundamental principle. Through my own plastic waste, I literally laid out my individual consumption and habits on the floor. I exposed what I eat and drink, my personal choices in how I live my life.
When you see something presented in this way – so obvious and shocking – you can identify the problem and make the necessary changes.
By being open, I believed I could help others to relate and connect to the plastic problem from a personal perspective. By laying out a year’s worth of my plastic waste, I hoped people could see their own.
In this spirit, instead of my plastic waste, I want to lay out something else of mine.
White privilege.
To white followers, friends, colleagues: acknowledge your white privilege. Understand it. It is real. It has determined every aspect of our life and filtrated every fibre of our society. It may not be conscious, but it is inherent.
I am a middle-class white man. I am the holy trinity of white privilege.
Being white enables a life of safety, aspiration, comfort, protection, prosperity, assurance. A life of advantage.
An advantage gained not by working harder, studying harder or training harder. Nor from being kinder or brighter, or more humble, more friendly, more creative. But by having white skin.
To put it even more broadly, white skin gives me political, economical, social, cultural, legal and environmental advantage over people of colour.
Being white is easier than being black. And for many white people, that is very uncomfortable to come to terms with.
This is no time for white guilt or white fragility.
As a white person, this is the time to be a proactive anti-racist and a more effective ally.
It’s time to read, listen, discuss, learn, reflect, join protests – be accountable. I will take my cue from and be led by the community I’m supporting.
I’ve felt outraged and angered by acts of racism, but in almost every case, I’ve allowed myself to slip back into comfortable obliviousness.
This obliviousness is my white privilege.
Well, no more hitting the snooze button. It’s time to get out of bed.
I’ve been meaning to start a blog for 18 months. This seemed like a good place to start.
If you wonder what this has got to to do with tackling the plastic problem, well, it has EVERYTHING to do with tackling the plastic problem. The poorest and most marginalised are those that suffer the greatest from the deadly effects of plastic pollution, climate change, air pollution.
Environmental issues are social issues. Social issues are economic issues. Economic issues are political issues. See where I’m going with this?
There are so many resources out there about systemic racism, white privilege, empire. If you can find a recipe for banana bread, then you can find out about Britain’s role in slave trade. Anti-Racism For Beginners is a good place to start. As I build my knowledge, I’ll share resources in future posts.