Recognizing that You’re in the Club

Discussions of race and white privilege have been proliferating across the country this year. Dr. Rob Sheehan, Academic Director of Executive MBA Programs at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, brought characteristic humility and insight in his reflections. He writes:

The difficulty for many of us white people is that we don’t see it playing out through our lives. It’s just the life we have. It’s like water to the fish. You really don’t realize that you have it unless you don’t. It’s almost like a secret to us.

Made worse, we know white people who are REALLY privileged. My family did not belong to the country club. We worked there. I was a lifeguard there. My brother parked cars for tips there. We saw privileged people and they were not us. Little did we know. -

No, my family did not belong to the country club. But these are just a few of my privileges. It turns out that being white is a pretty good club on its own.

Read the rest of Dr. Sheehan’s article here.