Olive, your reply was so honest, and heart felt, your vulnerability surprised me. I think you are right. Stereotyping people is wrong, hurtful, and divisive. It’s wrong when it is done to me. It is wrong when it is done to you. No one should be doing it. We should be fighting it with all our might.

Since you were never stereotyped before, you don’t know how to cope with it now. Your first instinct was to lash out with accusations, anyone who feels the way I do is a racist — or so you say. Can your words erase the associations planted inside my brain? How can I stop my brain from thinking “privileged” when I see white skin? I can’t.

You are taking what I wrote personally, as though I was talking to you or about you. But that is not true. I was talking about what stereotyping has done to my brain. I see white skin and think “privileged”. Its automatic; too fast for me to stop it.

Stereotyping is a social dis-ease — it spreads from one mind to another. You are infected too.

While you see the stereotyping of white people as a problem, I see it as part of the solution. It’s like horse racing. If you put a 200-pound jockey on one horse and a 100-pound jockey on another horse, guess which horse will win? It’s the same with stereotyping. Black people have been burdened by the weight of stereotyping while white people were free to run with barely any weight on their backs. Today, white people are burdened by stereotyping and finding the weight is really hard to carry.

Burdening you with “privilege” seems unfair — because it is. No one should be forced to carry the weight of stereotyping on our backs.

In my mind, stereotyping white people has leveled the playing field. It’s not a one-way street anymore. The black stereotype is so well publicized and so pervasive even little children can recite it by heart. Thanks to the internet, today the white stereotype is equally well known. Even white people think “privileged” when they look at each other. Even you have thought “privileged” about some white person you know. It was so automatic you might have even said it — out loud. I’ve heard little white kids call other little white kids “privileged”.

Again, this is not personal. This is not about me (or you). Stereotyping is “our” enemy now. Today, both of us have good reason to fight it — anywhere and everywhere we find it. Stop the stereotyping and all of us will be free.