We know that black drivers are stopped more often in some places, that black youth are more likely than white youth to be stopped and searched by police. Just this week the NYPD began an initiative to force taxi drivers to pick up black customers, a problem that's been around for a long time. History is still taught from a white bias, religious images still tend to suggest that God and other biblical figures were white. And black people are more likely to be asked to speak for their race, something that's never happened to me. The painful realization for me in all of this is that while I'm not a bigot, I'm caught in a system that perpetuates racism through me.
White privilege is the result of institutional and cultural attitudes based in prejudice.
So changing myself does very little to dismantle racism. This requires us to see how we participate in keeping the web in place, a painful but necessary process that can open our eyes to an ugly reality that has been hidden from us because it is the norm. I hope that some of you men in the congregation might have a similar story to share that would help me become aware of their experiences of oppression in the face of my privilege as a woman. White privilege and oppression are concerns for Thandeka, the author of Learning to be White Money, Race, and God in America . In her model, it is this personal shame that is at the root of racist attitudes and behavior.