I think I just had an ‘accident’.

Bingo. Just (embarrassingly) recently it finally dawned on me that that the greatest thing about white privilege is you never have to think about race. Unless of course you want to.

The entire segregated business model disadvantaged them economically often due to higher prices. After anti-discrimination laws were passed, many businesses in several categories eventually closed because their larger peers were now forced to serve everyone.

The core of every privilege is not having to think about it. Glad we all get to break that.

James Loewen’s Sundown Towns has a ton of great examples of this. I don’t necessarily recommend the book (it’s overly long, extremely repetitive, and written in a tone of “Oh My God! You guys will never believe this!!!” that I don’t care for), but it’s worth skimming, if only for example after example of towns…

Some white people think that racism was limited to the South; so it is telling that the first edition of The Green Book covered the New York area.

The existence of this book is unreal. What a goddamn shame. I want a copy just to remind people. If some people think a police state is scary and need a basement full of guns and aggressive posturing, this is what a REAL police state looked like for these poor people.

When my in-laws visit my mother-in-law shows up with a collapsable cooler of food. This isn’t food she made for us. This is food she brought for her. For years I thought this was just so she had what she liked (Doritos, Cokes, popcorn, etc) and I always told my wife we can pick up the stuff she wants. She doesn’t need…

Just treat others as you would like to be treated. That is truly the most effective, simple, and direct way to make a meaningful change in cultural behavior.

Thanks for this article. I have just started reading Lovecraft Country: A Novel, by Matt Ruff. In the opening chapters, the main character, Atticus Turner relies on The Safe Negro Travel Guide, a fictional version of the Green Book, as he drives from Florida to Chicago in 1954. It’s a buck right now on Amazon for…

Fuck. I wish I could like pay my share of reparations and do some other penance to not to feel the sting of guilt when I read about shit like this.

Matt Ruff’s book, Lovecraft Country, is based on such a guidebook. It conflates Jim Crow experiences with horror tropes in a series of interwoven short stories. Jordan Peele, director of Get Out, is producing this book as a TV show for HBO.

Thank you so much for posting this. This is the exact kind of thing that white privilege lets you live your entire life and not even think about.

* GMC vehicles weren’t designed to fire small projectiles at high speed in order to maim or kill - this is on the NRA for decades of extremist lobbying against sensible measures controlling gun ownership.

Naah, they’re black. NRA is for white people’s gun rights.

NRAs Response will be BUY MORE GUNS

Sadly, they just might be.

The sick part is that the NRA will probably hand them an award for standing up for gun owners rights.