Editors Note: This is the fifth in a series of columns exploring the issues of privilege and, conversely, adversity as encountered by various segments of society. The series will run every Thursday.

To provide contrast in this series about “privilege,” I have been asked as a person of color to write from the perspective of a person on “the other side of the fence.” I am an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation and grew up on and near the Oneida reservation near Green Bay. I make no claim to speak for anyone else since each person of color has experiences unique to them. Just as it is inappropriate to stereotype American Indians by such government practices as race-based school ‘Indian’ nicknames, it is inappropriate to extrapolate from my experiences to all other members of my tribe, to all American Indians or to all people of color.

I first remember witnessing the effect of “white privilege” as a child whenever we would look for a different place in or near Green Bay to rent. My father was full-blood Oneida. My mother was part
Stockbridge-Munsee and Brotherton and part Scotch-Irish.

Because my mother looked like she was totally white, she always went to look at houses because many landlords refused to rent to American Indians. If my father went to the door, somehow the place was “just rented” or “no longer available.” My mother wouldn’t bring us children because our presence would endanger the “white privilege” she was able to utilize because she could pass for white.

That “privilege” of being considered fairly for housing was an option my mother could take advantage of because she looked white, even though she was on tribal rolls. That option did not exist for my father or siblings because we looked “too Indian.”

Subtle forms of racism still are often practiced by people who make statements preceded by “I am not a racist, but .” Have you noticed that people who use the phrase “I am not a racist, but .” are often people whose behaviors betray the protestation as empty rhetoric? People shouldn’t need to say such a phrase because their behaviors and other words speak more loudly than an empty claim that “I am not a racist, but .”

Similar observations apply to “I am not sexist, but .”. Whenever I hear someone say “I am not a racist, but .,” or “I am not sexist, but .,” my radar as an American Indian woman goes on high alert because the speaker is likely someone around whom I should be careful.

Is that being too suspicious and paranoid?

Sure, there are people who use those phrases who are above reproach. But having grown up with the experience of being a woman of color, I and others have learned that constant vigilance is appropriate. The old saying that “You aren’t paranoid if they really are out to get you!” applies here, and there is little doubt that there are some whites or men who are indeed “out to get us” because of our race or gender.

My European-American husband and I married in August 1967. Only two months before we married, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the Racial Integrity Act, a longstanding Virginia law under which it would have been a felony punishable by one to five years in the penitentiary if we had married while living in Virginia.

Just think about that! Only 40 years ago, almost a third of the states in this nation had laws stating that I and/or other people of color were not “good enough” to marry a white person. If a third of the state legislatures in America said that “people like you” weren’t “good enough” to marry a white person, don’t you think that would affect you? It affected me! While I tried to act as though it didn’t hurt or affect how I thought about myself, the reality is that it affected most people in some way.

In my case, I became untrusting of white people. Any white person had to prove their trustworthiness before I would have much faith in what they said or did. Our native caution comes from experience. We have learned that we need to use the Reagan doctrine of “trust but verify” when it comes
to promises made by members of the dominant society.

About 30 years ago, my husband and I entered a restaurant in a small central Wisconsin town to get coffee. Being an interracial couple in the early 1970s, the stares and nonverbal communication from townspeople and the policeman in the restaurant caused us to fear for our safety. We paid and left without drinking our coffee, zigzagging through streets in case we were followed as we exited town. At other times, people in Wisconsin have made comments of disgust directed at our interracial marriage.

Perhaps another reason we don’t trust is because we are not trusted. As many people who appear to be a person of color have experienced, I have been followed around stores (including in Eau Claire) by watchful clerks with no reason to follow me but to see if I was going to steal something.

Meanwhile, all white customers routinely walked around the same store without any “clerk escort.” Police are not the only ones who use racial profiling – store clerks do it too.

Gunderson is a retired lecturer of sociology at UW-Stout and alumna of UW-Eau Claire. She is a resident of Osseo.