Item staff writers, Cheryl Charles and Steve Krause, won awards for commentary in the New England Newspaper & Press Association’s Better Newspaper Competition.
Charles and Krause received their awards Saturday night at the NENPA dinner at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel.
Charles took first place with a column, which ran last Feb. 27, called “That Dialogue about Race? First, Talk Among Yourselves,” which, NENPA said, contained “no-pulled punches, no sweet talk” and came “straight from the heart.”
Krause took second in the same category with “I Am The Proverbial Grey-Haired White Guy You Keep Hearing About,” which ran in September 2018 in the wake of the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh. NENPA called it a “refreshing take on white privilege.”
Published Sept 28, 2018
I wasn’t born into wealth by any means, and I haven’t found it. But if I wasn’t born into privilege in monetary terms, I was born into the privilege of expectations.
My destination was fait accompli from the time I started elementary school right on up to today.
Here’s why.
I had no built-in impediments to my success in life. I understand that we often create our own obstacles, but none of the ones I’ve encountered along the way were put there systematically or institutionally. I encountered no prejudice that couldn’t be easily overcome, unless you see the natural antipathy of old-time Red Sox beat reporters and the young Watergate-inspired wiseguys who flooded into the profession in the early-to-mid 1970s as impossible to conquer. And take my word for it, it wasn’t. They all eventually retired and it was our turn to step to the front of the line.
But I never had to file suit to get access to a lockerroom the way Melissa Ludtke of Sports Illustrated did in 1977 after being barred from the New York Yankees clubhouse during the World Series. I was allowed to walk into the Bruins locker room in 1973 at the age of 19 without even a media badge!
It was a given, in my family, that I would graduate from high school and go to college. There was no debate. No unseen or seen forces pulling me in directions I shouldn’t be going.
As a white male coming of age, the world was my oyster. All I had to do was show up and participate.
If I drove down the street, I didn’t have to worry about being stopped — even if I might have been speeding. And if I got stopped, half the time I was let off with warnings. I’m pretty sure that guarantee was not afforded to some others my age.
I’ve never been pulled over merely for driving a car. And the one time police came to my door (someone had mistakenly identified my car as being involved in a robbery) the detective left 15 minutes later, satisfied there had been a mistake. Nobody dragged me into a squad car and brought me to the station.
I think you all get my point by now. I never had to scale any walls I didn’t set out to scale. There were no glass ceilings to shatter.
Sure, I had to work my you-know-what off when I was in my 20s and 30s to get into a position to succeed in the field I chose, but I knew that going in, expected it, and accepted it. But there was never a situation where I encountered unexpected barriers created by those out to preserve their “way of life” at my expense.
My physical desirability had no bearing on my success. I was never forced to do anything that repulsed me to advance, nor was anything ever suggested.
Since I am such a product of my times and circumstances, the realization of just how privileged I was, and am, dawned on me slowly.
But I get it now. And while I’m grateful that I grew up with minimal interference when it came to achieving my goals, I am more and more cognizant that there’s an increasingly large population of Americans who haven’t had that tacit assurance. I took these things for granted. Others haven’t been as fortunate.
I look around, with a wider lens these days, and see so many people whose life experiences have included these barriers I never had to deal with. And it also dawns on me that I’ll never be able to truly understand the myriad of ways my whiteness and maleness have given me advantages in life, and I’m aware I could never presume to judge anyone from my rather narrow perspective.
President Obama’s election held out hope that the door would swing wide open and give all Americans an equal opportunity to achieve their goals, but it didn’t turn out that way. People in power don’t just cede it willingly for the greater good. History has resoundingly proven that.
Remember all the talk after the 2012 presidential election that the national demographic had changed permanently? Well, not so fast. It may be changing, but there’s still enough of the old one left.
So here we are. Glued to the television as a woman, who, in the 1980s, was far, far removed from the most powerful American demographic, gave riveting testimony that exposed the very essence of it.
Brett Kavanaugh will probably be confirmed by the full Senate. But like JFK and Bill Clinton before him, Kavanaugh’s story is one of privilege and false entitlement. And instead of keeping it at arm’s length, the still-predominant American demographic seems to be intent on embracing it yet again.
