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I& #39;ve got such a pit in my stomach about that Central Park encounter. The awful thing is that the woman might be telling the truth saying she is not a "racist" as she views the term. I.e., she doesn& #39;t believe darker skinned people are inferior. That may make it even worse.
Say she doesn& #39;t dislike or distrust black people. So she& #39;s got no problem with this guy because of his race. Rather, she has a mundane frustrating interaction with this guy, and something clicks in her mind: "Oh, wait, he& #39;s black. I can use this to my advantage."
This is where the worst kind of privilege kicks in. "If I call the police, I can count on them to trust me over him. I can count on him to be afraid. I can count on that interaction to go far better for me than for him. Because of our races, I have every advantage over him."
And in that moment of dismal weakness, she decided to use the advantage. She may not have & #39;racist& #39; beliefs. She just lives in a world structured to give her advantages over black people, and is happy to lean in, under the right kind of stress.
Ahmaud Arbery& #39;s killers counted on the same advantage. Maybe they didn& #39;t want to kill him. But knowing their local police and community would have their back changed their risk calculation, making them bolder than they would have been without that backup.
This is how interactions like this indict us all. It& #39;s no longer about one person& #39;s reprehensible, retrograde beliefs. It& #39;s about a structure and a society that allow some kinds of people to press an advantage over other kinds of people.
I know people who don& #39;t believe & #39;privilege& #39; is a thing. I& #39;m not the wokest guy out there, but I don& #39;t think we& #39;ll ever get anywhere without every single person examining how this works, and taking some hard looks at the ways we use our leverage to disadvantage others.
We will never eliminate hateful people. We need to eliminate structures that let them exploit the marginalized. A black man can& #39;t be at an automatic disadvantage with the cops, with the courts, with prosecutors, with employers. In a competitive world, someone will exploit that.
Our structure promises fairness and impartiality. When those promises fail, the worst of us can exploit others. We& #39;ll always have terrible people. But we can take away their structural weapons. The system is ours. It belongs to us. We can fix it. We have to fix it.
