That's a mouthful, I know, and as you might expect the term hasn't exactly gone over well with a majority of white Americans. Gee, I wonder why? I'm not sure which word bugs them the most: the word "white" or the word "privilege." If I had to guess, I'd say both. Some of their resistance, I suppose, has to do with the implication that the success they've enjoyed was not due entirely to the sweat of their own brow. That maybe, just maybe, it was owed to a system that was rigged in their favor.
There is precedent in our history for this sentiment. We all remember the stories of pioneers who left the relative safety and comfort of the eastern United States for the vast and untamed frontier to stake out a new life for themselves. That era was captured in a plethora of TV westerns that ran from the 1950s through the 1960s. Shows like Gunsmoke, the Rifleman, Wagon Train and Rawhide were viewed by millions of Americans who just took it as gospel that what they were seeing on their screens was an historical account of what times were actually like back then.
It didn't matter that Marshall Dillion and Lucas McCain were fictional characters, or that the concept of self-reliance - that is the art of pulling oneself up by his own bootstraps - bore little resemblance to reality. [The Homestead Act of 1862 gave away millions of acres of public land west of the Mississippi to settlers who were at least 21 years old, had not taken up arms against the United States and were willing to work the land.] In the end, though, all that mattered was that a majority of people bought into the myth.
And it has been that myth that has prevented an open and honest debate about income inequality in this country. That 50 percent of Americans don't have the money to pay for a simple medical procedure or a thousand dollar car repair without going into hock is a disgrace and anathema to everything we say we stand for. And yet the people who propose to do something about such inequities are considered too radical for our tastes. The mind boggles.
But getting back to white privilege, I do believe there is a more effective way to at least broach the subject with white America that might actually lead to a serious discussion, and that way involves our national pastime.
Baseball, as it turns out, is almost as old as the West itself, and there's hardly anyone who doesn't have at least some appreciation for the game. The Babe, Hammerin' Hank, Say Hey Willie, Yaz, Joe D and the Mick are as apple pie as John Wayne. And if I've learned anything from my years as a salesman - there's that profession again - it's that the best way to start a conversation with someone is to find something you can both relate to. You always meet a person where they are, not where you'd like them to be. And using baseball as a metaphor is as good a place as any to meet.
When I was in college the only math course that I passed was statistics. Throughout my life, I've been obsessed with player stats. Seriously, while most people watch the game, I'm googling things like batting average, earned run average, home runs, walks, etc... And I don't stop with the raw statistics. For instance, did you know that a batter who gets ahead of the pitcher 2 and 0 - that's two balls and no strikes - has a much better chance of getting a hit or a walk? Conversely, a batter who falls behind 0 and 1 - that's no balls and one strike - is much more likely to make an out.
That's why you always hear pitching coaches implore their pitchers to get ahead in the count. Because pitching from behind, as it turns out, is not a very good way to win ballgames. A pitcher with a lack of control will almost always have a higher ERA (earned run average) than a pitcher who hits the strike zone.
For our purposes, we're going to focus on two hitters. The first we'll call Player A and the second we'll call Player B. Now every time Player A steps up to the plate, the count is 2 and 0. And every time Player B steps up to the plate, the count is 0 and 1. Each player plays a full 162-game season and each gets an equal number of at bats - that's plate appearances. At the end of the year, Player A finishes with a higher batting average, more home runs and more walks than Player B. If we extrapolate those numbers over a period of, say, ten years, what we'll find is that Player A is going to earn a lot more money than Player B. It's inevitable because players who have better stats get more lucrative contracts from their teams.
By this point, you know where I'm going with this. Player A represents the white population and Player B represents the black population, or people of color, since Hispanics also fall into this category. Only in this case, when we talk about earnings, we're not talking about the difference between a $30 million hitter and a $15 million hitter; we're talking about the difference between someone who can afford to buy a house and maybe retire someday and someone who rents and will likely have to work until the day he drops.
Now, yes, I'm fully aware that there are exceptions to this. Some hitters can still strike out even with a 3 and 0 count - face it, we all know people who could screw up a sunset - and some hitters down 0 and 2 who wind up hitting a game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. You never know. To be fair, that happens a lot more than we think. In the end, we have to play the hand we're dealt, I get it. The truth is there are those in life who have learned to turn the proverbial bowl of lemons into a glass of lemonade. God bless them.
But we should never lose sight of the fact that there are millions of African Americans and Hispanics who, through no fault of their own, step up to the plate of life with an additional burden their white counterparts do not have to bear. That's just a fact. To not acknowledge that is to ignore the evidence in front of our very eyes.
Look, this isn't about giving some people a free ride; it's about admitting that some people are stuck in cars that don't have as much horsepower as the rest of us. And it's also not about making people who've been given a leg up feel guilty about what they've earned. Remember, the hitter who has a 2 and 0 count still has to do something with his at bat. No team awards a $30 million contract to a player just because he can get ahead of a pitcher.
One way to ensure that we as a society never deal with systemic racism is to point a finger at 54 percent of the population and make spurious accusations that equally have no merit. If African Americans seriously think that the cure to a rigged system that has beset them for four centuries is to suddenly turn the tables on the white majority, good luck with that strategy. Send me a post card from Neverland. The world does not work like that; it never has and it never will. Revolutions are the exception in human history, not the rule.
Reform, I understand, has become something of a punch line for many in the black community; an excuse for inaction. I certainly can't deny that. Martin Luther King, Jr. excoriated the "lukewarm acceptance" of what he called white moderates from a Birmingham jail cell in 1963. I'd be lying to you if I said much has changed since then. I know many whites who were appalled at what happened to George Floyd, yet are perfectly content with their station in life and resist even the notion that something has to change. Clearly, there's a disconnect going on in white America.
The fact that this country saw fit to elect someone like Donald Trump to the presidency, and might very well reelect him to it this fall, is proof that we still have a lot of work ahead of us if we are ever to cross that bridge together.
And cross it together we must.
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