A white woman in Mossville

For the past year, since entering Sarah Lawrence, I have been wrestling with the concept of white privilege, and how it applies to me. It is a difficult thing to hear, when you are not a person of color, that you live in a system that was set up to oppress others, specifically people of color. Just by being white, you benefit from it in some way. So many things began to make sense to me, and fall into place, particularly after attending an undoing racism training last month. Still, it is such an eye opener to experience it first hand, when your eyes have been opened. What was probably the most distressing to me is to witness people of color bend over backwards to apologize to me as they expressed their unhappiness, outrage, and feelings of helplessness as victims of environmental racism. I heard repeatedly comments such as "I'm not a racist" or "please don't take this the wrong way." That they felt the need to apologize angers me. The residents of Mossville are being systematically erased by the refinery industry, a sneaky form of genocide. Its appreciated that they wished me no discomfort, but angering that this world of privilege we live in necessitates the need to do it at all. Screw my discomfort. To heck with power structures. They owe me nothing. Not only should they be able to express their emotions freely, but comfortably, but because I am white, they could not. They are slowly dying, and they felt the need to make me feel comfortable. This has to stop. It is not enough that those of us who are white do not engage in racist acts personally. Simply by benefiting from a system we do not challenge is participation. We need to lend our voices to this injustice, to this inhumanity, and fight for true equality. An equality where people of color can drink the water flowing through their pipes, and breathe the air around them. Where they can talk about what has happened to them since being dragged here to make money off their sweat. Until we can do that, we are no better than those who burn crosses, or scream white power. Silence does not excuse us...Liz