I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

Although we have been discussing racism and privilege since just about day one in this education program, I am surprised, in a way, at my own continued discomfort at having to put any of my thoughts on it or feelings about it down on paper (or screen). Not that a month is a long time to be daily thinking about or writing about these issues, it’s only a blink of an eye really, but I somehow thought it would get easier. It’s not.
My opening thoughts are yet another indication of my white privilege, because although this past month is not by any means the first or only time I have thought about inequality, I really don’t think about it all that much, I just don’t have to. Even in Zaher’s class when we were focusing on schools and the vast differences between rich white schools and poor black ones, I was still thinking about privilege in a “them” sort of way. I don’t mean to say that I don’t recognize that I went to a majority white, middle class private school followed by the same type of undergraduate and now graduate program followed by a primarily white interning experience in West Lynn (good grief!), I do recognize that, but I didn’t really feel it as close to home and as personally as when I picture myself now guiltily picking out “flesh” colored Band-Aids in the first aid isle at Fred Meyer or perhaps drawing with a “flesh” colored Crayola with my niece, who despite having flesh is not the same color as me. So like McIntosh, but not as brilliantly or succinctly of course, I am trying to unpack my invisible knapsack a little more.
Since pretty much my birth, I have been broke. I babysat for money as a junior high, high school, undergraduate, alumni, and actually even now as a graduate student either as a full time job or part time to boost my take home cash. I have always worked hard, but I have never once even made enough money to cover all my bills. I have, since probably again my birth, been working myself further and further into debt, which of course, sucks. However, what I have come to realize through our discussions and readings, is that although I have been broke since my birth I have never been poor. I have always had friends and family to go to when I needed money, and more recently credit cards (terrible I know) as well as loans and then graduate loans. I have never had to work exceptionally hard at trying to convince anyone that I was worth or am worth investing thousands upon thousands of dollars in (little do they know, right?). I realize that this is not everyone’s experience and I know that I can crack it up to white privilege. I also know that this is just one small addition to the fifty other things that McIntosh listed, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.