My White Male Privilege

 I dove into the deep end of the pool.

My ten year old body imitating an arrow taking off into the air, then falling back down into the water, arms extended, legs kicked back in a solid line, fingertips pointed, entering head and arms first, making a minimal splash.

The cool water becomes my solitude and vehicle that takes me to the bottom of the pool. 

My hands touch the rough cement like surface that feels like the moon. I have reached my destination. There is nowhere else to go. I am at the very bottom of the earth. 

I bend my legs to make contact with the bottom of the pool just as I pull back my arms. I kick off the hard surfaced bottom of the pool to propel me all the way back up like a torpedo. My head shoots out of the water into the daylight. 

I inhale the warm summer air into my lungs. 

For that moment I am full of joy. My body dove into the depths of a place where I haven't been before. And then I arise. This is freedom.

As I got older the water got deeper.

It was scarier to take that plunge. How far down is it, to the very bottom and could I make it? The pool turned into a lake and then the ocean. I couldn't see the bottom. The water wasn't friendly. It was dark, uninviting, and at times turbulent.

It feels like today we are at a crossroads with touching the bottom of our collective pools. The more we dive into the deep end of our history, of our lives, the more we scrutinize those that came before us, the murkier the waters get. 

There are those who would rather not get wet. They'd prefer to keep wearing their expensive suits, drive their exorbitant steel machines, and control their universe with superficial power they've acquired from their gender and skin color in this culture. Exposing the truth, diving to the bottom from where they got their power, would reveal how shallow and degrading power is. It would expose what a cowardly process clinging to power is all about. 

I see a photograph of myself as that ten year old boy. 

My eyes are young and innocent.

My hair is dark, cut short, close to the scalp. 

Eyebrows are pronounced forming symmetry for the face.

Mouth is breaking into a soft thin smile.

I'm where I'm supposed to be.

Free and easy.

I didn't know what was at the bottom. Nobody told me. I didn't learn about the raping, the killing, the pillaging, the lynching, the degrading injustice towards Black people and people of Color in this country. Nobody told me there is a deeply unspoken belief that would linger in my brain, that as a White male I am superior to those with darker skin. I have an advantage over the other boys my age in school and society with darker skin. I deserve more out of life than they do. My house is cleaner and more organized than theirs. Teachers like me better. Nobody told me that this belief is demeaning, condescending and racist. Nobody told me how I will need to dive into the the deepest pool ever to free myself from this albatross around my neck. 

Nobody told me how this country is entrenched in White supremacy. 

This ten year old boy who doesn't mean any harm to anybody has been indoctrinated with White privilege. And he doesn't know it yet.