I'm a white dude. I was just talking to someone last night about how the "White Savior" as a criticism of aid or intervention is overstated. It's valid to point out that relief or service work should be about the work itself, especially when it's done in a sustainable and efficient manner, and that the last thing it's for is the Facebook pictures. But I think a lot about the color of skin when I'm coaching a 95% black high school lacrosse team, and seeing how well my black coach can speak to these kids. Or when I'm working in Detroit mucking and gutting basements after the city-wide sewage system backs up, and it doesn't seem to faze the occupants that this is breakdown of health and civil systems on the order of a third-world country. Or when I drive home through Baltimore and see houses and stores falling apart, people sitting on their stoops with nothing to do, and think about the more than half of all African-American wealth that was destroyed as a result of the 2008-09 financial crisis. And everything I am, and everything I want to be, takes a back seat to the realization that I'm a lucky ass white dude.
Don't you think that part of the luxury of whiteness is in not having to define yourself by race? I think it's unenviable that so many people are essentially painted into a corner whereby they need identity politics to represent their interests. I have great love and affection for the Scots and Fins, but I wouldn't ever consider voting for a person based on their Fin-ness or Scottish-ness. That's a position that only WASPs can enjoy fully.
That's very true. A lot of white people do enjoy that luxury. I think about race more because of my environment. Though for me it's a soujourn. For a lot of others it's a daily obligation. And unenviable is a good way to describe it.