Racial Divide Today

 In a recent position paper, I wrote about how people accept injustices by seeing something that is unfair and accepting it by not saying anything. Not everyone accepts injustices throughout their day. In this video a woman explains how her sister in law, Kathleen, is commonly mistaken for a white woman, with her blue eyes and light skin tone even though she is black. Meanwhile, the other woman  telling the story has a darker skin tone and is identified as black.

While at Safeway they are both checking out next to one another but they experience two completely different scenarios at the cash register. The cashier, a strawberry blonde white woman, was warm and kind to Kathleen while checking her out. Kathleen hands her a check and gets her groceries and waits for her sister in law. Although, when the darker skin toned woman checks her bags out next, she experiences a totally different reaction than Kathleen did. There is a difference immediately when the cashier doesn't even look her in the eyes and is very cold and rude. She then writes a check for her groceries but the cashier demands from her that she will need two identification cards. The cashier then pulls out the bad check book. She begins looking for her license in the bad checks, based only because she is black and her appearance.

Later, the sister in law walks over, who is identified as white, and says "excuse me, why are you doing this?" The cashier explains, "this our policy".

This is a situation where Kathleen, used her white privilege, even though she is half- white and half- black, to stick up for the underdog and point out the injustice. Kathleen walks in the world much differently because of her light skin tone than someone of her same race with a darker skin tone.  Although, she uses this to her advantage to point out what is right and wrong.