Apparently the notion of “white privilege” is no longer limited to white people. Racial justice, social justice, and LGBTQ+ websites are publishing articles pondering the question “Are straight black men the white people of black people?” They speak of the privilege that black males have and how they unconsciously assert dominance over black females and gay black males.
This stems from an essay that a Damon Young published last year, but is gaining traction now. “Highlights” of his initial article include:
It feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege—particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness. In America, we are near or at the bottom in every relevant metric determining quality of life. Our arrest and incarceration rates, our likelihood of dying a violent death, our likelihood of graduating high school and attending college, our employment rates, our average net worth, our likelihood of surviving past 70—I could continue, but the point is clear.
But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness’s relationship to us. In fact, it’s eerily similar.
We’re the ones for whom the first black president created an entire initiative to assist and uplift. We’re the ones whose beatings and deaths at the hands of the police galvanize the community in a way that the beatings and sexual assaults and deaths that those same police inflict upon black women do not. We’re the ones whose mistreatment inspired a boycott of the NFL despite the NFL’s long history of mishandling and outright ignoring far worse crimes against black women. We are the ones who get the biggest seat at the table and the biggest piece of chicken at the table despite making the smallest contribution to the meal.
Although we recognize that not all white people are actively racist, we want them to accept that all benefit from racism, and we become annoyed when individual whites take personal exception and center themselves in any conversation about race, claiming to be one of the “good ones” and wishing for us to stop and acknowledge their goodness.
But when black women share that we pose the same existential and literal danger to them that whiteness does to us; and when black women ask us to give them the benefit of the doubt about street harassment and sexual assault and other forms of harassment and violence we might not personally witness; and when black women tell us that allowing our cousins and brothers and co-workers and niggas to use misogynistic language propagates that culture of danger; and when black women admit how scary it can be to get followed and approached by a man while waiting for a bus or walking home from work; and when black women articulate how hurtful it is for our reactions to domestic abuse and their rapes and murders to be “what women need to do differently to prevent this from happening to them” instead of “what we (men) need to do differently to prevent us from doing this to them,” their words are met with resistance and outright pushback. After demanding from white people that we’re listened to and believed and that our livelihoods are considered, our ears shut off and hearts shut down when black women are pleading with us.
Young’s beatnick poetry slam-like essay is now being echoed by other sources, including LGBTQnation.com, who attempts to link Kanye West to all of this by posting a picture of him in their article:
In a video posted on Facebook and YouTube, Charity Croft addresses both the male privilege and heterosexual privilege of straight black men ⏤ with a focus on how it impacts black women and queer black men, among others.
Croft asks and answers the question: Are straight black men the white people of black people? In other words, among black people, do they enjoy greater privilege than those who aren’t straight and male?
There’s a lot to unpack here, but Croft starts out by drawing a parallel between white privilege and male privilege, before delving into how black men enjoy the latter among other black people, even as they encounter the former in the larger world.
Both Croft and Young point out that while it might seem counterintuitive to consider that black men possess any privilege at all, it’s essential to not just their relationship to whiteness in America, but their relationship to gender and sexuality both in America at large and in black communities.
“We black men are not nervous walking past a group of black women, while on the other hand, they are petrified walking past a group of us, because 1 in 5 black women will be brutally raped at some point in their lives.”
Croft goes on to draw connections between sexism or misogyny and homophobia or heterosexism.
“And then gay black men, they are ridiculed on a daily basis by straight black men. And, ironically, it’s not even because of the fact that they like to have sex with men,” Croft says.
“We as a society don’t tend to hate gay men because they are gay,” Croft continues. Society hates gay men because they, “act like women,” or often assume roles and positions traditionally seen as female.
The closer you are to the female end of the spectrum in identity, the more hatred you become the target of, both in the larger world and in your identity-based communities.
If we don’t acknowledge our positions of privilege in our identity communities, Croft points out; we become no different than, say, white people who refuse to recognize their privilege in relation to us.
In his video, posted below, Charity Croft includes a part where he makes fun of how working class white males explain that they are struggling just the same as a lot of folks and don’t benefit from any privilege.
In the Oppression Olympics, straight black males can now have a seat on the elimination bench along with straight white males, straight white women, and gay white males.
(Sarcastic SJW rant) Strangely, there’s no mention of the impacts of this “straight black male white privilege” thing on the transgender community, so it’s obvious that these writers talking about this aren’t be inclusive of all oppressed communities, perhaps in some attempt to ignore the struggles of trans-identified people. I suppose that by pretending there is no trans community and getting away with it without criticism by SJW’s is just one of the privileges that straight black males have.(/end sarcastic SJW rant)
