Lee Geiger

It’s been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused.

Richard Pryor

I recently dialed up an acquaintance of mine, who happens to be black, to ask him what he thought about the civil unrest unleashed by the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. At one point our long, thoughtful, and candid conversation went something like this;

Me: “As a seasoned family man who is held in high esteem by his professional peers, who has been married since forever to a beautiful woman who deserves to be promoted to sainthood for putting up with you, and who has two well-adjusted sons ready to support you in the retirement lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to, and who also happens to be black, what do you think about all these protests?”

Him: “I’ll put it to you this way, Geiger. When your kids were young and growing up in the cozy comfort of Moraga, I bet you told them that whenever they or one of their friends were in trouble, or they saw a crime being committed, they should immediately dial 911 and call the police.”

Me: “Well, yeah. Of course, I did”

Him: “Now, pay attention old man, because this is what I told my boys while they were growing up—find a way to work it out!”

Me: “Wait a second…why would you tell them that? Why would you not want them to call the police?”

Him: “Because when you’re a black man and the police come into your life, there’s a chance you’ll experience one of two outcomes, both of which are bad.  One, they’re not going to believe you, or more likely, not give a damn.  Or two, you’re going to get your ass kicked, possibly even killed. That’s just the way it is, man. Trust me. That’s just the way it is.”

Me: (after a prolonged silence) “Hmmm…I never thought of it that way.”

And that, my friends, is white privilege.

But what exactly is white privilege?

Living in Moraga, white privilege is all around me. I can walk into CVS and find products catering to my hair type and skin tone. I can approach the Wells Fargo teller and not have her wonder what’s underneath my jacket. I can sit down for breakfast at Nation’s and assume that everyone in the place knows I’m a local.

In other words, I can move through life without being racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped. White privilege for me is an unseen, unconscious advantage that permeates my daily life. The fact I was born white, and the circumstances surrounding that undeniable, never even enters my mind.

But does having white privilege and not recognizing it make me a racist? I like to think not.

In college, I was lectured by my sociology professor that while systemic racism is based on structure, be it at the governmental, educational, or corporate level, personal racism is based on bias, i.e., a conscious or unconscious prejudice against an individual or group base on their identity. Racial bias is a belief, she said, and racism is what happens when that belief translates into action. I got it then, and I get it now.

I have to be honest here– the term “white privilege” makes me squirm, like a worm exposed to the harsh light of the sun. Let’s break it down.

“White” describes a color. That being said, I don’t normally hear it, or use it, to describe myself. Or my race. I’m just, you know, me.

“Privilege” donates special, or exclusive. But to say I’m privileged is to suggest that I’ve never struggled. That’s certainly not true. I’ve struggled plenty during my lifetime, and more today than I care to admit.

Though I’m still trying to come to grips with this, my defensiveness with understanding white privilege begins with defining what it is not. White privilege is not the suggestion that white people have never struggled. And white privilege is not the assumption that everything a white person has accomplished is unearned. Instead, white privilege should be viewed as a built-in advantage, separate from one’s level of talent or effort.

For context, allow me to go back to what I know best…me.

I live in Moraga. I raised my children here. Zillow says it now costs over a million bucks just to buy a fixer-upper in this affluent bedroom community. Meanwhile, Wikipedia claims 277 black souls, or 1.7% of the population, live here as well. That’s news to me; I would have definitely taken the under. But if I stroll past someone on a sidewalk who happens to be black, I wave, say hello, and ask them the same question I ask every other Moragan I run into— have you seen any new sinkholes, lately?

I’ve worked hard and accomplished a lot in my career, and I’m not ashamed of whatever success I enjoy. Wall Street made this happen, but in over thirty years in the business I can only recall directly working with maybe a couple dozen black Wall Street professionals and money managers. That’s out of hundreds, perhaps thousands. To be brutally honest, I was more concerned at the time about the treatment of women. They deserved much, much more for putting up with all the testosterone fueled BS leveled by packs of jerks, up to and including yours truly. Looking back, the whole freaking game was rigged.

Wall Street doesn’t happen without my MBA degree from Dartmouth. Of the 150 or so students in my class, perhaps a dozen were black. Maybe. I honestly don’t remember. Regardless, I didn’t think of them any differently than I did any other student. Everyone in my class was wicked smarter than me, and the last thing on my mind was what color somebody was.

Tuck doesn’t happen without my post-collegiate job at Lloyds Bank California. My training class was all white. So was the branch office in Pasadena I got assigned to. That’s just the way it was.

I don’t land a job at Lloyds without a degree from Claremont McKenna College. I seem to recall that my class of 200 had only a handful of black students. One was on the basketball team. A wizard at math, he later became a big-time Wall Street quantitative research guru. He is now a partner at an Oakland-based brokerage firm, and we run into each other from time to time. He’s still as cool as he is smart.

I never sniff a school like Claremont without attending Carmel High School. My class of 225 self-absorbed teenagers had only two or three black students. I saw them around campus, but never around town. In four years of trolling the mean streets of Carmel-by-the-Sea, I never gave it a second thought.

So, where does all this soul-searching lead me? While I consider myself a fiscal conservative, I’m also a social liberal. But my brand of liberalism stems from the concept of equal opportunity, not equal output. To that end, I watched a black protestor from Chicago get interviewed by CNN last week, and through tears of frustration she made an impassioned point of saying that white privilege exists today because of historic, enduring racism and biases. She’s right, of course. The sad part is that while I had convinced myself that I understood the roots and ramifications of the 400-year tragedy that is racism in America, and that I would never apologize for, nor be ashamed of, being white, I never spent much time thinking about how discrimination and bias affected me until the words spilled out of her mouth. And that shame is on me.

This post is my way of adding my voice to the choir. Those entrusted with power have used that power unwisely, and the destructive riots flaring up all over the country are a direct consequence of the misuse of that power. But if I had the opportunity to personally express myself to those millions of peaceful protestors taking to the streets to demonstrate against improper police procedures, racial bias, and institutional inequities, it would be this; I support you. But more importantly, I thank you. You have opened my eyes as well as my mind.

I am white privilege.