Tag Archives: white privilege

Learning About The Green Book

The Green Book was a travel guide for black Americans who wanted to travel–or had to travel for personal or family reasons. It was a guide to lodging places where they could stay—“were allowed”—to stay.

I didn’t learn about The Green Book until a few years ago, but one day as a child, I learned why it was necessary. It was perhaps the beginning of my education about racism.

My family was white. We liked to take trips. At that time, a family could afford modest trips—for us a day’s journey into the Smoky Mountains, for example—at a cost that didn’t break the bank. We stayed in inexpensive cabins and ate picnic lunches to avoid a lot of eating out.

One day we stopped at a gas station. A black family had experienced car trouble. They stood to one side, out of the way, while their car was worked on. No nearby motels or restaurants for them if the car took a while to fix.

I began to notice signs. No Coloreds and Whites Only.

I realized people without white skin couldn’t stay where we stayed. They couldn’t eat where we ate.

Black cooks worked in kitchens of restaurants where only whites were allowed to eat. It seemed so unfair. And it was.

That was only a modest dent in my understanding of white privilege. It didn’t speak to larger issues of voting and jobs and schools. But that day was when I first realized the restrictions on a simple family outing if you weren’t the right color.

Begin with Thee and Me

We have different ideas about refugees and immigrants. Some welcome them with open arms. Some shun them as freeloaders and criminals. Some feel sympathy but worry about being overwhelmed by their numbers.

Recently I realized how I can’t get these people out of my mind.

From the little I know about my own ancestors, most came to this country before the American Revolution. I don’t know if they were refugees from wars in Ireland or England or France or if they were drawn simply by promises of a better life. Some of them appear to have been poor, a few more well off.

For all I know, my ancestral tree may include native Americans and black slaves as well as Europeans, but certainly the family benefitted from white privilege. We also benefitted from immigrating at the right time.

That’s why I can’t get those refugees, like the ones on our southern border, out of my mind. They’re my people several generations back.

Whatever choices we make in immigration reform—and we certainly need reform—perhaps we can act from the understanding that these immigrants and refugees are us. Wisdom we need, but hatred and disparagement we don’t.

The numbers may be large, but our policies, if we are not to be judged by a higher power, must come from compassion—toward them as well as the countries they come from.