So
someone has been talking about Black Privilege in some other threads. I felt like I wanted to play with this idea of "black privilege" and apply it to something in the news where there was some kind of application to African Americans.
So, first, here is a news story:
Home for Mother's Day: St. Louis activists bail out African-American moms who can’t afford the fees
Whitney Gipson was one of three women bailed out of jail before Mother’s Day thanks to the efforts of St. Louis activists. Expect Us raised nearly $3,000 through an online fundraiser.
Members of Expect Us met with other advocates at the St. Louis Justice Center on Saturday. The event included food, children’s activities and short speeches by local demonstrators and leaders, including Democratic Missouri Rep. Bruce Franks.
Gipson, 26, told a small crowd about her experiences while staying at the city’s two jails.
“All I can say is, they really treat us like we trash in there,” she said.
She said she was accused of property damage and assault after women started an altercation in a sandwich shop. Gipson said she was in jail for 10 days on a $1,000 cash bond, but couldn’t afford to pay. It was her first time in jail. First, she was at the Justice Center.
“We were sleeping on the floors. We were sleeping on top of each other,” Gipson told the group of a few dozen. “There were probably about 12 girls.”
She said the women were brought to the Medium Security Institution, otherwise known as the workhouse, because of overcrowding. There, she said conditions were worse.
“It just stank so bad,” she said. “I didn’t have a bed. I didn't have a mat. I was sleeping on a bed pan for like six days before a trainee woke me up outta my sleep and told me, ‘Oh, you need a mat.’”
She said “mildewed” water and roaches in the living quarters were other things she experienced. A lawsuit was brought against the workhouse last year for inhumane conditions.
Gipson said she was thankful for the financial help to be released from jail and to be with her child.
“I feel like I got a friend. I feel like somebody really care,” she said. “I was telling the girls in jail,.I can’t afford to get out. I mean a $1,000 we all talk about having money, but I don’t have $1,000 cash at all. I don’t have no savings.”
Gipson’s experience is one that resonated with many other black mothers who were in the crowd on Saturday. Before Gipson arrived, event organizers asked women to form a row in front of the jail.
Leaders asked participants to step forward each time they could answer yes to a question about incarceration, including had they or a loved one been in jail. At the end of the exercise a handful of women were left, all of whom were black.
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post...t-african-american-moms-who-can-t-afford-fees
Second--and here's I think the crux of the issue--does it make sense to call trying to remove harm that inordinately applies to a group, a "privilege?" One may think, well, in this case what about if they had paid money for 2 black ladies and 1 white lady to be bailed out? Maybe? But we don't actually know the criteria used to select the three women or for that matter, look at the exercise in the article--that there appears to be something more than just class, i.e. also race that is going on here.
In any case, some of the examples are about justice, restitution, and fixing consequences to harm, not about privilege which is more unconditional than about suffering. Agree or disagree? All of the examples are about suffering and harm that has come to African Americans. Like at the Starbucks and now this example. These are specific examples of specific examples and not about policies. Please do not bring up polices but instead specific concrete actions.
So, for example, the old white lady at McDonald's who burned her leg with the hot coffee. She suffered and received damages and then McDonald's was hit with extra punitive damages because they did it a lot. No one was calling that White privilege or Senior Citizen privilege.
