Donovan discusses white privilege, racism, and a story of him seeing it first hand in his own family towards a friend of us when he was still a teenager.

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Podcast Transcript
I’m a white man in the deep South, the southern part of Georgia. Around here we have the stereotypical 4×4 trucks driven by over confident white boys and men, colloquially called “red necks”, that spend their spare time hunting, fishing, or bitching at the TV about their favorite sports team. I was never one of them, but I grew up AROUND them, unfortunately immersed in the culture whether I wanted it to not. I never played sports, I never drove a 4×4 truck, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve hunted anything and that was with my Dad (getting up at 4AM and sitting in the cold dark air in the woods is not my idea of fun).
Most of my friends were white. Now that I think on it, I had one black friend. One. And we really only became friends AFTER high school. I’ve told the story multiple times before, but you’re going to hear it again before this is done.
It wasn’t up until a few years ago that I had even heard of “white privilege”. When I did, I was incensed! What the hell do you mean, “white privilege”? Sure, I was white, but in my mind the privileged were those rich assholes that never had to work for anything or want for anything, those assholes that made your life miserable in high school. I even went so far as to justify how white privilege couldn’t even be a thing as I had some white friends that were anything but privileged, living almost in poverty, and coming from the wrong side of the tracks as the saying goes. How the hell was that privilege?
Once I got off my high horse, however, and really dug into it, saw what was being said, I started to finally understand the term. I was educated, so to speak, and that’s not saying I’m fully educated on the matter by any means. But I finally saw it.
I should have seen it earlier. In 1989, I was working at a Walmart Garden Center. There, I met a fellow high school graduate, someone I never really knew that well when we were in school as he was on the football team, a jock, and I was the nerd, always in the computer lab doing something. I had no interest in sports. His name was Anthony.
Anthony was the typical build for a football player, at least 6’ tall if not taller, stocky but not fat – his muscles had muscles. Me, I was 5’8” and weighed in at 120lbs soaking wet. If you didn’t know Anthony, and you met him in a dark ally, you might be scared. But he was a gentle soul, a nice guy, and someone who became a pretty good friend. Anthony was also black. That shouldn’t matter, but for this short story, it does.
Anthony helped me a lot while we worked together. Those large extension ladders that were required to change out signage in the store – I couldn’t pick those bastards up. I could barely move one, let alone toss it up in the air. Anthony always helped me with that. It was nothing for him; I didn’t even see him struggle.
He and I would go to lunch together sometimes, going to one of the local fast food joints, or occasionally to a nicer restaurant. One day, we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do, so I suggested he come to my house and we fix something there. He was game. Now, keep in mind I was still living with my parents. Hell, I was only 19 still trying to figure out the next phase of my young adult life.
Off we went to my parent’s house. When we got there, my mom was home, and my grandma was over. As soon as we walked in, my mom and grandma welcomed Anthony, and they started whipping up something for us to eat. They treated Anthony like they would treat any of my friends, or anyone else for that matter. Which, side note, might have been hard for my grandma because she was definitely old school and we’d had incidents where she openly would say the n-word in a damn...