In his March 3 column, “My white privilege,” columnist Jay Fleitman spoke to his contention that there is no such thing as white privilege — and that whatever privilege he has, he earned.
I’d like to offer a story in response — no debate, just a simple question at the end. We lived in Southampton in the 1980s and an African-American family moved in next door. Jim, the husband and father, was treasurer at one of our five colleges. They had three children. Two were teenagers and attended Hotchkiss and Stoneleigh-Burnham schools. The youngest was in elementary school in Southampton.
One night at dinner at their house, Jim told a story that involved the fact that when they had moved in, he had taken his three children to meet the police captain and other officers, so they would know who these (black) children were.
That wasn’t the point of the story, merely incidental to it. I have forgotten the rest, having been struck dumb by the fact that a parent in Southampton would feel the need to do that to protect his children from possible trouble with the police. This had nothing to do with that particular police force — he felt the need to do the same thing wherever they lived.
My question to Dr. Fleitman: When your children were in school did you ever feel the need to introduce them to your local police to try to preemptively ward off any possible harm to them from the police? If your answer is no, as I suspect it is, that’s white privilege.
Ann Hallstein
Easthampton