White Privilege Paper
Keiara West
White Privilege
Zane State College
Over the past few weeks I have been observing how people with different race, ethnicity, religion, etc. are looked at differently and treated. Some stories I am going to share are of past experiences that I sought in the past few years. Most of these recordings have been in the workplace and one of a friend that kindly shared her experience with me. While doing these recordings on a notebook piece of paper, it hit me that life is not fair sometimes. People are cruel and don’t care what they say or do; hurt people. I myself never realized how I looked at people differently until this assignment. First, my friend Michele which is Lebanese worked at Longaberger right around the time of September 11, 2001. She told me that most of the employees that worked there were White Americans and would make comments to her, such as; “Did you ride your camel to work today” and they would also call her a “camel jockey” or “sand nigger”. After I heard this I was shocked because Michele is such a nice person and I couldn’t even imagine that they would treat her like this because of her heritage. The terrorist’s attacks had targeted her because of her skin color but in all reality she wasn’t even part of 9/11. Second, when I worked at Time Warner Cable there was a promotion that was going to someone in our area and there was two people going for it; a black lady (Janette) and a white lady (Jill). They both had the same time employment, work history, and work ethics but Janette was awarded the promotion because she told the manager that there wasn’t any black assistants. I felt that it shouldn’t be given to someone that pulled the race card or because of his/her race it should solely depend of the persons qualifications. Next, I happen to notice when I’m in Walmart (or any store at that matter) when black guys walk around in a group; store assistants, bystanders, etc. seem to
White Privilege
Zane State College
Over the past few weeks I have been observing how people with different race, ethnicity, religion, etc. are looked at differently and treated. Some stories I am going to share are of past experiences that I sought in the past few years. Most of these recordings have been in the workplace and one of a friend that kindly shared her experience with me. While doing these recordings on a notebook piece of paper, it hit me that life is not fair sometimes. People are cruel and don’t care what they say or do; hurt people. I myself never realized how I looked at people differently until this assignment. First, my friend Michele which is Lebanese worked at Longaberger right around the time of September 11, 2001. She told me that most of the employees that worked there were White Americans and would make comments to her, such as; “Did you ride your camel to work today” and they would also call her a “camel jockey” or “sand nigger”. After I heard this I was shocked because Michele is such a nice person and I couldn’t even imagine that they would treat her like this because of her heritage. The terrorist’s attacks had targeted her because of her skin color but in all reality she wasn’t even part of 9/11. Second, when I worked at Time Warner Cable there was a promotion that was going to someone in our area and there was two people going for it; a black lady (Janette) and a white lady (Jill). They both had the same time employment, work history, and work ethics but Janette was awarded the promotion because she told the manager that there wasn’t any black assistants. I felt that it shouldn’t be given to someone that pulled the race card or because of his/her race it should solely depend of the persons qualifications. Next, I happen to notice when I’m in Walmart (or any store at that matter) when black guys walk around in a group; store assistants, bystanders, etc. seem to