Last year I was finally able to name one of the types of privileges I live with. I call it living under the radar (utr) and being safe invisible.
I am tall, well over 6 feet and big, over 250 lbs. I am white. I am upper middle-aged. I am cis male. Those characteristics alone make me the picture boy of white male privilege and the patriarchy of America. I first really noticed this 8 years ago walking in Manhattan.
I was walking down the sidewalk through one of the infamous sea of humanity scenes we associate with New York. Ahead of me by forty feet was a woman about 5 feet tall wearing a red coat you could not miss. I watched her walk through the crowd. She had to bob, weave, stop, and dash ahead to get around people and avoid collisions. All this while wearing a red coat, you could see three blocks away.
I was wearing a dark grey wool coat and brown pants. As I walked, I rarely had to move out of the straight line I walked. The people coming toward me would flow around me like a stream around a rock. I could walk freely and not have to alter my course for all others. I didn’t really sense they were paying extreme attention to who I was. They just flowed around me. That was a big wake-up for me on a few types of privilege I hold. What would a person of color my size experience and how would they be treated in that situation?
Another learning experience that connects me with the sidewalk moment occurs when I go into a store. The sales associates will greet me, ask if I need help, and after I decline leave me alone as I look about. They rarely look at me, watch me, or care what I am looking at. I disappear to them. I only reappear when I ask for help or get my wallet out to spend money. I then become real again.
When I go driving, especially in my very common dark grey hybrid sedan, I am seen as an object to avoid hitting, to allow to merge, to note for right of way. As soon as traffic is flowing, I become invisible to everyone as only being worthy of notice beyond another moving vehicle. I attribute this mostly to being white and in a very boring, common car.
For all of these I became “safe invisible”. Being white, middle-aged, people racially profile me as “safe” and not needing any more attention. I think about and keep learning of the unjust treatment of people of color, whom in similar circumstances are unwarrantably profiled as “dangerous” and needing surveillance.
Last year I came up with the concept of living under the radar (utr). I want to shed as much of my privilege that intrudes, steps on, and talks over people of color and people who are not cis-white male. I, and all men benefitting from the patriarchy, have done these actions for eternity and we need to shut the fuck up, sit down, and listen to those we talk over and can’t fathom sharing equity and justice with.
By embracing my safe invisible status, I want to fade out to the point where I can flow anywhere and only be noticed as something not to run into. I want to use this privilege to help others and to cease being the center of any attention.
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