If You're Privileged and You Know It...    

   Clap your hands! Or, take two steps forward.

   The president was Bill Clinton. His secretary of energy was Hazel O'Leary. I owe it to her to have learned what Mom and Dad never taught me: I am privileged.

   At the time of my awakening, I was employed at a massive DOE facility in South Carolina. 

   One fine day our small department of about 30 had a routine, all-day training session in a building outside of town. This day, we went into the back yard, to stand shoulder to shoulder in one line (and we would discover who should feel guilty and who should feel victimized). 

   "If you had two parents," the script went, "take two steps forward." "If a parent graduated from college...earned $_____...owned their home," etc. Get the gist? 

   Or, if your parent(s) fought, drank, went to prison, abandoned you, etc., step backward. Family life can make or break, yes, but...

   I never saw myself as more privileged than my co-workers; in fact, I grew up the youngest, lightweight, socially backward kid. I failed Latin. I struggled through college with determination, not intellect. Then I entered the Army with no stripes on my sleeves, like all other draftees. 
   
   I was hired once, solely for my work ethic. Then again, and again, and once more. 

   So there I was at the end of the exercise, in my final, full-time job, standing "more privileged" than all but two or three of my co-workers. Shocking! 

   People are still doing this stuff. The instructor tells white students, "Every statement I made has nothing to do with anything any of you have done." 

   "If (life) was a fair race, some of the black students would 'smoke all of you.'" 

   I'm so ashamed. 

         Jimmy