White Like Me: Privilege

I agree with the statement on Amazon mostly because Tim Wise does an excellent job at convincing the reader that a lot of situations do have to do with race, most of the situations he mentions do, but in others I fail to see a direct connection to privilege.  While it is true that white people in general have the privilege to not be too worried about being pulled off to the side for a “Random” security check, and I use “random” because we do use racial and appearance based stereotypes to screen almost anyone we see as a natural instinct to get a first impression of whether or not a person is threat, I do not believe that being white is as much of a privilege in some of the scenarios that he describes. He mentions a time at Tulane when he lived next to a drug dealer who was so successful that if he dropped a few bags of weed in the halls he wouldn’t miss them.  He uses the situation to explain that white people, “Privileged people like to overindulge”(40).  The one black guy in his group of friends who would sit in the dorm room and smoke was worried about getting caught, therefore he was not willing to overindulge in the substance; the white people in the group were not afraid of getting caught and did a lot more drugs than the black guy in the same sitting.  I don’t agree with this notion of the black guy being afraid of being caught because I call the act of doing the amount of weed that he was talking about stupidity not privilege. 

He says that privilege of being white got him the roles he wanted in drama class although he was considered only a mediocre actor.  He says that some parts of the play where white spaces only given to white people.  I do not know the ratio of black to white students in the school that he attended, but I can assume that the ratio shrinks when it gets into the drama club at the school.  Back to the white only spots in the production; being in theater as a member of the stage crew I can say that our school makes every effort to get as many people involved in the production as possible. For example “Spelling Bee” the upcoming musical has an original Broadway cast on nine, which turned into roughly 65 students when it will be performed in our school.  I know that DHS is not the most racially diverse school out there, but from his description of the director his school did the same thing, make small productions larger so that anyone who auditioned has the opportunity to make it.  While being white does give greater opportunity to you in the theater environment it is only due to the fact that many plays only have white leads, color is mentioned in the character description of some plays, and other plays allow more freedom, but based off of the character of the character some roles will just fit in a certain racial group.  To make the play more authentic theaters, high schools included, want to cast the role as close as they can to what the script calls for.  Therefore white characters are cast as white people, black characters as black people, Asian as Asian and so on.  An example of why this situation of theater does not apply to privilege of race can use DHS perfectly.  There have been times in this school (Deerfield High School) that many people in the theater program wanted to do a show like “Hairspray” or “Rent” or other shows that involve a clash or race or culture, but we just don’t have enough racial diversity in our school for it to work.  I said that DHS is a perfect example of how his theory of privilege in theater is due to being white because Deerfield needs more of a black presence to do shows that have a massive racially diverse cast the show requires. We cannot do “Hairspray” with white people because things will get way to confusing. 

            He talks about privilege of white people during Woodstock.  200,000 people, majority of them white, were burning lighting scaffolds, rioting, and raping; and the police did nothing.  He says this is because of privilege I say it is because 30 police officers cannot control a crowed of 200000. He then states that when a fight broke out at a local hip hop concert between two or three people the police from all over the county were called in to keep the peace.  He failed to mention in the chapter the color of the fighter's skin and also failed to mention that white people listen to hip hop as well. Thirty cops wrestling three people is a lot easier than 30 cops controlling 200000. 
           I agreed with some of his other statments about driving a beat up car was the only reason why he got pulled over and that is something that "rich" white people do not have to deal with; however there exsits poor white people who also have beat up cars and may also sell drugs to get money.  While there are tensions between the races, some of Tim's examples of how whites are privileged don't work.