On Friday, July 19th, President Obama gave a remarkable press conference in which he appeared to speak somewhat extemporaneously on the subject of Trayvon Martin and race. It is hard to think of any other president who has given a similar speech in such an open, self-disclosing fashion. What was particularly elegant was how President Obama integrated the personal with the societal — he tried to explain how prevalent the experience of racial profiling is among African American men, and how it affects one’s sense of self and identity. Beginning with his personal experiences, he said:

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me — at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.

Here he personalizes the experiences of many African Americans that remains out of view of many European Americans because it conflicts with the world view that the U.S. is a “good” country, and that “bad things” don’t happen to “good people.” The logic extends: if something bad happens to you it is because you did something to deserve it, or perhaps a bit more distally, others of your group did something for you to deserve it.

These experiences are invisible to people from the majority world because of the concept of privilege. Groups that have power and privilege have difficulty seeing and understanding that their world experiences are not universally shared.

A recent CNN panel hosted by Don Lemon made this point so beautifully, I am sharing it here. Note how starkly the example given by the anti-racism activist, Tim Wise, contrasts with the story told by the actor LeVar Burton.