I have been agonising over the perfect experience that has opened my eyes to my white privilege to begin my essay with. However my bubble is so complete, that other than what I have heard I have no real first hand experience that shows me the extent of my privilege. I, like most of my classmates feel guilty for the ignorant state that we live our lives in. We can’t fully understand what it is to be a person of colour because we have never been put in that position, however, we can empathise and educate ourselves.

‘The bubble’ is perhaps an essential component that makes up ‘what it is to be white’, as ignorance to our head start in life seems to be a defining factor of white privilege. Without being a person of colour I can’t compare the difference. I try. I do.. I think “it must be hard, people looking at you differently, not believing you can achieve as highly, picking the white girl over you for a job” But I know that the reality is harder, more bitter, and perhaps more subtle, and my white girl sympathy – no matter how well meaning – doesn’t change that fact.

I do, however understand starting points and the difference your genetics makes. I remember running cross country each year at primary, my teeth would be gritted and my body screaming… and boys who had never trained a day in their life would be gliding past me. I would have been running for months, always pushing myself, striving to win.. but that didn’t seem to matter. Because they were better. Because, through no effort of their own, they were genetically gifted, designed to beat me. As I struggled to stay upright at the finish line and they boasted I would try to choke back the unfairness. I suspect that that is like what it is to be white. Through a broken society, we are the boys, born with a genetic ‘advantage’. We have done nothing to earn it, and it is perfectly and fully unfair.
I can imagine, in a minor way, what it is to be a person of colour, because I have been the one trying twice as hard, but getting half as much… just in a different context.

I am protected in the bubble, I am protected in my white skin. I was born with an advantage. I am so wrapped up in privilege that I hardly even know what to say on the topic ‘what it is to be white’. From my limited experience, whiteness has hidden me from the subtle or outright ugliness that society has to offer. Now, in 2019 people have quietened racist voices. But that has not stopped the judgement, only made it more subtle, hidden, but no less sharp and able to draw blood.
To be white is to be sheltered from the tools other whites weld, but ‘white’ does not have to mean cruel, and I think that is the most important thing.