Systemic Racism and White Privilege
January 9, 2020. I have told this story of systemic racism many times, to many people. This is the first I’ve written it*:
In the summer of 1960 between high school and college, I worked on a construction crew for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Co. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A paternalistic, non-union, company, Reynolds hired students in the summer to give families support and to replace factory workers taking vacation. Most student jobs were in the factory, but because I was to become an engineering student, I was given the opportunity to work on the construction of a new multilevel parking lot. My choice was working on either the steel or carpentry crew. I chose steel.
The work was hot, hard, and rather boring. In the bottom of a 20-foot excavation, we tied together mats of steel reinforcing rods being set in plywood forms for pouring concrete. Once at work, I discovered there were actually three crews working on the job. In addition to the steel and carpentry crews, there was a labor crew assigned to dig ditches, handle the jack-hammer, carry steel and plywood, and pour concrete. Workers on the labor crew were all black.
We had a 15-minute break morning and afternoon. For our steel crew break, we would climb out of the hole, walk half a block to a restaurant and have coffee or coke and pie. As we walked to the restaurant, I looked down to see the labor crew taking their break: They sat down where they were working, drank water, and pulled out whatever they had with them. Our steel crew breaks often stretched to twenty and sometimes more than thirty minutes. My impression was that after fifteen minutes, the labor crew went back to work.
My pay that summer was $1.72/hr, minimum wage was $1.50. Asking around, I learned that the top pay for the labor crew was minimum wage. The men were all ages, some were greying—my father’s age. On seeing one of the older laborers showing carpenters how to do something, I asked in innocence how the laborer knew more than the carpenters. I then learned that many of the “laborers” were skilled carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians—even contractors. The suggestion was that often they knew more than the leaders of the white crews. But, they could work at their skills only in the black community. They worked as laborers for Reynolds because, for them, the pay and benefit package was better than anything else available. Their skilled work was on the side.
Along with the baggage of growing up racist in systemic racist system, I carried my observation of this gross injustice to college where I grappled with many more issues of race and injustice. Yet, I didn’t think much about white privilege.
In recent years white privilege has become a commonly discussed topic, and I look back on my experiences at R. J. Reynolds through a different lens. My grandparents were poor, my father had only six years formal education, we worked hard. Yet, we had privileged choices. R. J. Reynolds hired me as a student; I knew of no black students who had that opportunity. I was given a choice of crews. And, I was given the opportunity to climb out of an uncomfortable work place for an air-conditioned break. Walking along a Winston-Salem sidewalk looking down at black laborers sitting at their break was the epitome of white privilege.
Like other white Americans, I have carried this advantage of white privilege throughout my life. I do not feel personal guilt over this systemic situation. However, I have felt and continue to feel the responsibility to do what I can to expose systemic racism and to promote equal opportunity for everyone.
Posted with love.
*I originally posted this story on FaceBook in late winter or spring of 2019.