The very title of Jay Fleitman’s March 3 column, “My white privilege,” is clearly meant ironically. He seems to claim that he has enjoyed virtually no privilege in his life.
Dr. Fleitman has clearly earned his success through hard work and, as he says, the good fortune of being born into a family that believed in education. As a Jew, he was confronted with anti-Semitism, family trauma and economic struggle.
But Dr. Fleitman seems to misunderstand the notion of white privilege. It is the privilege of not being hassled by police; it is the privilege of not being assumed to be a potential danger to others; it is the privilege of not having been defined by the main text of the Constitution of your own country as three-fifths of a human being.
As my social worker wife often points out, more than one thing can be true at the same time. It is possible to have overcome class disadvantage, family trauma and the long legacy of anti-Semitism to succeed in life. At the same time, as a white person in America, Dr. Fleitman enjoys immense privileges that people of color, particularly black and brown people, do not share.
Alex Kent
Amherst