The outrage over the racist police violence in the US small town Ferguson is large, even for whites. In this case, no one can really sympathize with what America’s Black join from childhood.

We were on our way to Canada. A family reunion, eight hours drive from Brooklyn. My partner and I love road trips.

But this trip was what blacks to join a bitter lesson about in the United States every day.

Only days earlier, the 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown was in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot by a white cop. The suburb of St. Louis has since become a code word for racism and police violence. This also affects us: Malcolm, my significant other is black.

A silent rage seethed in Malcolm. Peaceful civil rights activism, he was the morning of our departure, had failed: “Perhaps it is time that we avenge ourselves African American.” My almost casual, lame response: Violence is not the answer.

What my partner certainly went off. He spoke of “White Privilege” of white ignorance and arrogance, called my reaction derogatory, uncomprehending, cheap. In vain I tried to defend myself, my horror at Ferguson louder – and embarrassing – to demonstrate. So we were talking past each other until we ran out of the air.

I was appalled by the label “White Privilege” that had never heard of, not related to me. Where the United States for decades but are my adopted home and I like to “color blind” to hold me – in my arrogance. The accusation of ignorance seemed dismissive.
After seven hours of driving I was disabused.

The speed limit was 65 miles per hour (105 km / h), the traffic flowed with 70 to go, we flowed with and passed three police cars without attracting attention. Then we took turns, Malcolm took the wheel.

Prompt appeared in the rearview mirror, the blue light of a State Troopers.

We stopped, rolled the windows down. The policeman, a meaty White, Malcolm barked at: driver’s license! Approval! Sitting and standing! Whether he did not know how to drive a car?

The result: $ 195 penalty – and an emotional collapse. For hours I was too fast, without a policeman was interested in it. My black partner not even sat five minutes at the wheel until he got a parking ticket, served with verbal attacks.

Coincidence? Meaningless? What was a banal traffic control for me was a personal injury, the ushers at the same time deep in the story for my partner. Similar to the case of Michael Brown: Ferguson, as he told me later, the mirror image of his own trauma. That “everyday fear” that keeps track of all African Americans before the indiscriminate “death by cop”.

Little has been going on. Despite Martin Luther King, in spite of civil rights, in spite of Barack Obama, the “post-racist” fantasies could never redeem.

This is meant by “White Privilege”: Our “white” lack of understanding of our thoughtlessness, failure to respect this deeply rooted injustice, as soon as it no longer appears on CNN. Admit it is hard and uncomfortable. Because it means that we share responsibility.

We need not worry that our children ourselves – or we – being shot by police. We can demonstrate with assault rifles in fast-food chains for our constitutional right to bear arms, without a swat team is used. We can run in hoodie through the rain, without a “neighborhood guard” reaches for the gun.

This is “White Privilege”.

This privilege is shown daily on American television, where white commentators pontificating about the rights of blacks. But how cheaply it is for whites to call for peace when blacks see after all these years no other option than “fire with fire” to answer?

Sometime tears every patience, even the most good-natured spirits. He felt betrayed, says Malcolm, he was furious. “And every time I anmache the TV, I’m going mad.”

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