White Like Me Chs. 3-5

It was interesting when Tim Wise was talking about the idea of overindulgence and privilege going hand in hand. It reminded me of  Ursinus, particularly the way in which my fellow students trash Reimert on the weekends, as well as damage the residence halls when they are drunk. The sense of entitlement that  comes with this behavior is absurd. To think that we are allowed to act in this way simply because we are college students and this how we let off steam, knowing that we will probably not have to clean it up or will have to pay shared fines, is disgusting. What's more, we know that the consequences of drinking and drugs are far less severe for us in this mostly white bubble, as well as outside of it, by virtue of our skin and status as college students. The idea of belonging, of not questioning our right to be here, to essentially destroy school property is extremely prevalent. In fact, Reimert has been at its cleanest this year simply because we have the new pilot program which allows us to have open containers in the courtyard. If it weren't for this new privilege, the courtyard would remain just as trashed as it has in years past.  On the contrary, the mostly Hispanic cleaning staff is left to clean up the mess, while students complain about them "intruding" in their suites and bathrooms and "blasting music," but without them we'd be living in filth generated by our overblown privilege. The lack of respect some students show towards them definitely seems racialized to me.
Another important thing Wise point out was that "privilege sometimes costs us clarity of vision" (124). Rather than working on the apartheid and racism in New Orleans, his group was far more focused on South Africa and never made the connection between where he lived and the issue he chose to advocate about, which is yet another benefit of white privilege: selecting what issues we want to get active about, rather than becoming  active out of necessity. This reminded me of high school, where we had groups like "Save Darfur," but failed to connect these issues to or acknowledge the poor, mostly black community 15 minutes down the road and the very real violence and food insecurity there. The fact that we were able to raise all this money for those in Darfur without once questioning how this could possibly connect to the nearby city of Chester shows just how strong white privilege is. We never talked about the racial separation in our school either. I never thought about it, because I never had to, since I never felt like the "other" in the classroom.