White Privilege

Let me tell you a story.

When we lived in Durham, I visit taught a woman named Alice (not her real name).

(Visiting and home teaching, for anyone not familiar out there, is something Mormons do to help people individually. Everyone is assigned someone else to take care of, visit, and help when necessary. It's to make sure nobody slips through the cracks if they need help.)

Alice lived in the part of Durham that the sister missionaries weren't allowed to go to. Alice was black, in her mid-thirties, and pregnant with her fifth child when I first met her, with two teenage daughters and two young kids. Alice wasn't married but had a boyfriend who lived with her and fathered her youngest three kids. Her cell phone number changed every few months as her minutes would run out and she'd get a different phone for it. Her apartment was pretty nice but very dirty and cluttered, and she mentioned that the landowners were trying to evict her because of a fire they had in the kitchen. It was pretty likely that there were drugs involved for her and her boyfriend.

The first time I went over there, I told her we were visiting from her church and she didn't have any idea which church I was talking about--and still didn't remember being in the LDS church after I explained it to her. She didn't remember anything about LDS doctrines or care, really. She would always invite us in but didn't ever have much to say or ask us to do anything. I would ask if we could help with anything, and I brought dinner to her after her baby was born. I didn't know what else to do for her. But she never really connected with us.

A few months later, Alice was arrested (and only held overnight) for having tampered with her water meter and racking up over $11,000 in charges without paying her bills over the last seven or eight years. The one and only time Alice ever called me was when she called to ask if I would give her thousands of dollars to pay her water bill. I told her to talk to the bishop for help, but I don't know if anything ever came of that. Soon after that, she was kicked out of her apartment and moved into an extra bedroom in someone's house, with all five of her kids, and soon after that, her phone number changed again and I had no way to contact her.

Alice had a hard life. I don't know if she worked or what she did with her days, and I don't know what her boyfriend did. I don't know what her background was or where and how she grew up. I honestly don't know anything about how she came to where she was. But it was obvious that their lives were not filled with joy and that they were not given the same opportunities that I enjoyed. And the thing that killed me--and still does when I think about it--was Alice's young kids growing up in that environment. They were so sweet and filled with chatter and excitement when we would come by. And how, how will they not grow up to follow in their mother's footsteps, when that is all they know? How do you break the cycle of negativity and bad choices for those little kids, who are growing up being shifted around from some spare room to another because their parents can't afford a place and keep getting kicked out of the ones they live in? Why are babies born into families and situations like that? Why does our society allow for such a huge disparity between the lives of Alice and myself?

I still don't know. It still makes me want to cry. I was (and am) incredibly naive and sheltered in so many ways, but Alice--and her sweet kids, who don't know any better than what they are given--opened my eyes to the suckiness of the world and the ridiculous privilege that I have been granted being born where, who, and when I was.

And that is how I feel about what is happening in Ferguson.