GLR November-December 2023

would be a straight man, then they generally preferred a white lesbian, followed by a gay man or a straight woman—but defi nitely always white. I suppose it was naïve of me to be sur prised, but I was. I asked Phil, the soft-spoken young father who lived one bunk over from me, to elaborate: “It’s not an anti Black thing, I’m a proud Black man.” The other Black guys nodded. “But being white sounds like a vacation to me.” More nods, then a thoughtful pause. “Just to walk down the street and not be noticed.” A NONYMOUS P RIVILEGE J UST TO WALK DOWN the street and not be noticed. Ten words that pretty much explained the pernicious effects of racism in Amer ica. Ten words that would come back to me about a decade later, when suddenly “white privilege” was a phrase on everyone’s lips, causing an extraordinary amount of defensiveness among whites, above all those born and raised working-class, who could never be convinced that they had benefited from any in nate advantage just by virtue of their skin color. It occurred to me that Phil had unwittingly hit upon what might be the most potent, but least acknowledged, manifestation of white privi lege: anonymity. Later on, one-on-one, I asked him to give me an example. “Like shopping,” he said. “The grocery stores are better in white neighborhoods, but as Black man, I can’t relax. There’s always some white lady who pulls her purse a little closer when she passes me. Or an old man in a wheelchair who asks a white dude right behind me to reach for something on the top shelf, and I’m right there, and I’m taller! What does he think I’m gonna do, grab the can of tuna and knock him on the head?” When I first started writing about anonymous privilege , I contrasted my shopping experience with that of Phil. First off, even in my hardly upscale Hollywood neighborhood, I don’t have to go far to find a decent grocery store. And when I do, no one pays me any particular attention. I can mull over whatever is on my mind to my heart’s content. Most white people do this so routinely that it’s hard to see how it can be claimed as a “priv ilege.” I mean, don’t we all get lost in our thoughts all the time? Yes, but Black people operating in white-majority spaces don’t stay lost in them. Their consciousness is invariably impinged upon by the awareness that somewhere around them, a white person is reacting to their Blackness. Anonymous privilege, in this case, means the ability to experience privacy in a public place. H ETEROSEXUAL P RIVILEGE T HIS PUBLIC / PRIVATE DICHOTOMY is the defining aspect of the third kind of privilege I discovered in prison: the one that at taches to heterosexuality, specifically, public displays of affec tion. Two Latino inmates had turned the tables on me, and were asking me all kinds of questions about being gay, an interroga tion most of us are fairly familiar with. How do you decide who’s the top and who’s the bottom? Have you ever done it with a woman? If you could take a pill to be straight, would you? (They had a lot of trouble believing that I wouldn’t.) Then one asked me if I ever held hands with a guy or kissed a man in public. Despite my urge to proudly respond that of course I did, the truth was that I only felt comfortable doing so in a gay bar or on a dance floor. “Why not?” asked the second

guy. There was challenge in his tone, as if my reluctance to show affection in public disproved my earlier contention that I was not ashamed to be gay. “Because,” I explained, “let’s say you go to a restaurant with a girlfriend, and you hold her hand across the table while waiting for the food. And then at the end of the meal, you give her a kiss, not making out or anything, but a little more than a peck on the cheek.” I leaned forward, emphasizing my next words. “Absolutely no one in the restau rant notices—not the hand-holding, not the kiss. The moment of intimacy stays intimate between the two of you. But when I do exactly the same thing, even in the hippest restaurant in town, it’s noticed. No one may say anything, no one even really looks in any obvious way, but I can feel them, and that intimate mo ment is gone.” Heterosexual privilege , then, is the ability of straight people never to have to worry for a moment about other people’s per ception of their sexual orientation. If they cross a line of vul garity, any comment or sanction is about the behavior, not the urges behind it. Heterosexual privilege extends to the simple act of putting a photo of your spouse on your desk at work, or answering the question “What did you do this weekend?” with a casual mention of your in-laws visiting. Straight privilege means never having to introduce your life partner as your “friend,” for fear of being accused of talking about your sex life because you used a designation that means you sleep to gether. (It’s amazing how many heterosexuals will argue that “husband” and “wife” do not precisely convey that very infor mation, declared publicly to the world, no less, in elaborate cel ebratory ceremonies called “weddings.”) This is not new information, obviously, to anyone reading this. But it is eye-opening to most heterosexuals, to whom it never occurred to see these as privileges. My favorite question is to ask them to share about the time they had to sit their par ents down and say, “I’ve made a decision to be straight.” Only then do they realize that this is exactly what we have to do, why a response like “You can’t possibly know that about yourself yet” is so offensive. (I heard that one myself when I came out, but, in my parents’ defense, it was in 1976. Back then, any re sponse that wasn’t “pack your bags and get out” was consid ered enlightened.) So what’s the point of expanding our vocabulary about the categories of privilege? The point is people like Sylvia, a Guatemalan trans woman with whom I shared a court date once. We spent an entire day together in the bowels of the Beverly Hills Courthouse, traveling back and forth to the Twin Towers on those buses with the caged windows that Angelenos see on Melrose Avenue during rush hour. Her biography was as gritty as they come, especially as she seemed to be taking the fall on a gun charge for the same man who had financed her breast im plants, and doing this for him seemed to be her sole hope of get ting the rest of her transition paid for. It’s hard to think of a demographic group with less privilege than undocumented trans women of color, and it is no coinci dence that they experience one of the highest murder rates in America. It seems to me that when every single group with more power and status in society than Sylvia can be made to recognize it, the more likely they will be to unlock their empa thy and understanding, so that, one day, perhaps the only priv ilege we all share is that of being human.

TheG & LR

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