Kevin's white privilege

Inspired by Mr. Mitchell's post at the beginning of reading of Kindred that involved a segment from Louis C.K. on the freedom that white people would have when time traveling to the past I began thinking about what that added to trying to describe the sometimes elusive idea of white privilege. I don't think I have to explain to anyone what it means, but the idea of white privilege is an idea that goes against the official idea that racism and race inequality was done away with during the Civil Rights movement. Apart from obvious socioeconomic examples of race disparities there are more subtle examples of the ways in which white people can remain comfortably out of touch, a capacity granted to them solely by the color of their skin. White males are the obvious pinnacle of this phenomenon, suffering from neither racial nor sexual discrimination. In Kindred we get the taste of both worlds from Dana as our narrator, but also get a taste of what their absence is like through Kevin.

On the whole Kevin is an extremely sympathetic character, if every white guy in the U.S. was like Kevin I think everyone would be quite a bit happier. Regardless of this we still get a crucial cringe-worthy scene where we see the crucial difference between Dana's experience in the slave holding South and Kevin's. He says on page 100, "Weylin doesn't seem to pay attention to what his people do, but the work gets done" to which Dana responds, "You think he doesn't [ay attention. Nobody calls you out to see the whippings". He later claims, Wait a minute, I'm not minimizing the wrong that's being done here" And Dana says, "Yes you are. You don't mean to be, but you are [...] You can go through this whole experience as an observer". This sense that Kevin doesn't quite get the situation the same way that Dana does, that somehow it's dulled down for him, is a pretty good representation of how his physical appearance protects him from these issues. If we view acting as an ability to maintain a comfortable ignorance from the realities of slavery it proves an acting job Dana is unable to maintain indefinitely. Kevin on the other hand has much more luxury to stay removed. Not to say that he comes away unscathed, but where he comes back with a scar on his forehead Dana endures hundreds of scars and loses an arm. In general I think that Kevin provides a good metaphor for what white privilege means: an ability to stay comfortably far removed from racial conflict if so desired, and even an inability to appreciate it in its fullness.