My older brother Tony is black and my younger brothers are half-white. Just watching them live, I learned a lot about the privilege of skin, and privilege in general. I belong to a melting-pot family, so I have witnessed plenty of situations that show different privileges for different demographics.
When I think about role models, I picture a successful person whom someone strives to be like. In my case, my role models were either activists or entertainers. Looking at my older brother's idols, not one of them held an everyday job. Growing up, it seemed like the only options to become successful were to entertain, or if you wanted to oppose that, you had to become an activist and "fight the powers that be."
Think about it, most people want to become someone who has an effect on their society. I only saw my brother looking up to rappers and basketball players because those were the most prominent figures in our society. Our choices of people to look up to were very minimal. The number of ethnic doctors, lawyers, engineers, business-men, etc. was so minimal that even today, when I list those occupations I picture white males. Of course, we could still strive to reach that type of success, but as a young child, you create a checklist of what you think it takes to be that person. What we saw was unattainable simply because we did not have what it took to be a doctor: white skin.
Similar to learning shapes as a child, you learn to place the shapes where they fit. A square doesn't have the characteristics of a circle, so you wouldn't associate a square with something a circle does. Circles roll and squares don't. Circles are round, squares aren't. This simple association happens as a child when you see colored people fitting into one shape while white people fit into many other shapes. Not until recently, a colored president was just an idea that parents told their kids to try and inspire them. But who wants to be like the one colored president when it seems proven that people of color are most successful in entertainment? No one wants to be singled out in their respective groups, so it is easier to follow where the people most like you are headed.
Sports and music being the top interest was no surprise in school because it seemed like the only way to be a successful young ethnic boy. While I imagine young white boys have several categories of role models to choose from, our options were to entertain, or end up working at the lowest level in the workforce. Even if you strived to be something more, it took a great sense of faith in yourself to know that you could break the mold. To many of my childhood friends, attending college instantly made me better than them. I became someone who they thought had left them behind.
It is difficult to know that you can be successful in a career if you only know of a couple people in your demographic who have had success in that field. I do not want to convey the image that no black or hispanic people have been successful in these types of careers, but there is a marginalization of how successful minorities are portrayed. There are plenty of upstanding hispanic doctors and black lawyers, but as a young minority, you only see successful ball players or rappers. This is the privilege that my half white brothers hopefully will take advantage of.
Ask yourself the range of role models you have been exposed to. If you can list five different types of jobs, you are already ahead of where I was as an adolescent. Consider the sources of inspiration and motivation which you can draw from. These are thoughts that never occupied my friends' minds, because it seemed so much simpler to want to play ball or make music. This is no fault of our own, the same way your advantages are not yours. We all have privileges which we can't recognize, but this privilege of access to role models has a great impact on the outcome of our societies.
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