Big White Guy

As a middle-class, middle-aged, White American guy these are my very important thoughts*:

I frequently object to the use of the word "privilege" because 1. I can't spell it and 2. it's usually used in a way I'd consider wrong. For instance, I'm not privileged that I can walk down the street late at night and feel relative safety. That is a right. Everyone should be able to do that. Just because some people can't doesn't make it a privilege, it makes it a basic human right that is not granted to everyone.
That said, what certainly is a privilege is me being able to walk down the street not having a single clue how a six-foot tall man ignorantly stomping down the road might intimidate other people.

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I actually have a fairly early memory of having intimidated someone. I'm going to guess I was in 7th grade at a roller-rink. Going to a roller-rink was not really a part of my childhood experience, I'm sure I'd only gone twice in my life. But I remember requesting a song from the DJ and him ignoring me and in a sort of 12-year-old overdrama I stuck my arm out to lean against the DJ booth. And there was some girl there. Probably about my age. And she violently shrank away from me like I was putting a move on her or something in a super aggressive creepozoidal way. I hadn't even really noticed her before that. And her reaction surprised me.
Surprise.
Note that I'd never seen this girl before, she wasn't from my school so she hadn't known me since kindergarten. She just saw a rando creepy boy being all awkwardly rando** creepy and ran away.
So that happened.
And that's stayed with me because of how much that surprised me.

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Now I'm perfectly aware that the fact of my ethnicity has inured me from generally being the scary man walking down the street. And my blithe ignorance of this on a day-to-day basis is certainly a privilege.
I think the psychology is that gee whiz, I know I'm not some violent guy whose coming to hurt people, why don't you know that? Well, because you just don't know. And honestly, I have no idea how to tell you. If I get on an elevator behind you, what am I supposed to do? Just get off? Stare at the floor? Make a pretend telephone call to my mom?
I don't actually have any answers here.

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So yeah. Privilege. I'm getting better at spelling it with practice.

*Yes, this is joke, because you see all my thoughts are extremely important.
**Both "rando" and "creep" weren't really words used by kids back then.