White Privledge - Jason

EDGE

How do I write about an platform I was given, a dais I never had to step up on, an EDGE I was born into and on top of. An EDGE. Do I give a mock complaint about the responsibility of this position? Do I call it a great white albatross, that the EDGE is a plank? A great board on which I stand, with humbled legs. I don’t feel the waves licking at my feet, taste the salty water, look long into the horizon or into the deep. I see no line, no EDGE, demarking some great drop off.

How could I write about the standing in the shadow of this EDGE, my EDGE. I have never felt the hug of the creeping dark. I have never had the color of my skin keep me from being lifted up. No! I don’t have any experience with that.

I can’t imagine the EDGE of a of a Klansman's rope binding me to a gnarled tree. The EDGE of a racist’s knife cutting me in fear and hate. That is not my life, not my blood. I can’t pretend to understand. I can’t pretend I have heard the stories from my mother and grandmother. That is an EDGE I can not cross.

Yet that EDGE I have been given is the the flip side of that EDGE that hungrily bites. I would love to tell you my story and my success was gained by the virtue of my hard work. Yes, there were sweat and tears in the process, but if I claim the prize as completely mine, I would be ignoring the historical and societal EDGE I have been given.

You might be tempted to think, hasn’t that EDGE been erased. It is 2017 and that EDGE in history, that divide between slaves and emancipation happened more than 150 years ago. Erosion should have worn in down to nearly nothing. But that pretends it was laws alone that propagated such a thing, but I still remember that first flight after the 9/11 attack. The coils of nerves, responding when the EDGE of the seat belt engaged, the EDGE of the wings moved, when the EDGE of the Hijab which rounded the corner. A Muslim who we all warily watched. No, that EDGE was alive and well, baked into some biological urge to see the other and prepare for war. Stand on the EDGE, the wall of our hearts that separated us.

You too might feel that EDGE when you turn down the music you are blasting in your car, when you see the shade of the drive beside you. You might feel that EDGE when you hope the sound of the doors locking is not that loud, when a group of black youths walk by. The invisible border springing up.

See I can’t control that privilege, that EDGE, I have been given. I can’t walk to the EDGE of this elevation and step over the EDGE to become what I am not, to look like what I am not, to live what I have not. No, while I may recognize the injustice, I can not control the EDGE given to me by the color of my skin, by the fact that most of those around me look like me and so have a bias to to trust me.

What I can control, though, is this other thing, the impact of my EDGE on other people, the snake inside me, which wants to strike or recoil from those different than me. I can acknowledge that I am in a situation where usually the favor is mine, the EDGE is mine, and try to not to put that on the back of those who are different than me.