“Stupid, black monkey.”  When he said this, he pinched his face and dragged his thumb across the bit of flesh that he had pulled up. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” It looked like he was trying to rub the melanin off of his face. “France, smart. Indian, stupid. America, smart. India, stupid.” He corrected himself. “No… George Bush. America stupid. France smart.”

I was on a bus on a very small road on the Konkan coast, two hundred miles south of Bombay. I was going from a medium sized village to a small town, and I was going far too fast for safety. The bus was full, and so I – along with my French roommate – had been seated in the driver’s compartment, crammed in along with the driver, the conductor, and… someone. It was unclear what role the fifth person served aside from making it more crowded and eating my cashews. Indian long distance buses are terrifying enough when you are sitting in the back. But we were sitting right in front of the windshield and shuddering at each near miss while the driver payed more attention to my cashews than he did to the road.

So when you’re terrified by death and speak only very broken Hindi, how do you respond to a dusky Indian bus conductor telling you that he’s a stupid black monkey and that, but for the fact that you elected George W. Bush, you’re a smart white man? The answer is that you try, and you stumble, and you blurt out some kind of simplistic refutation, and you wish that you had some way to put all these thoughts directly from your head into his. But you can’t. And for the duration of the two hour journey, you watch a man sit in front of you and abase himself because he has skin of a darker color. And it’s heartbreaking.

I’m a White man who grew up in a state with a black population of less than two percent. I went to college at a tiny elite liberal arts institution in small-town New England. Without usually being aware of it, I have been the beneficiary of white privilege my entire life. I always will be. No matter how much I read about it, no matter how much theory I cram into my head, I still go through my day to day life without noticing when I get accepted on every rent application, when nobody hassles me for sitting in the coffee shop for hours after buying only one drink, or when I talk back to a cop as a matter of principle without fearing arrest or violence. But I’ve found a path for any White person from a majority White place who wants to be slapped across the face by his privilege on a daily basis. Come to India. Stay here. Don’t live in one of the expat neighborhoods.

Knowing me is a privilege. I don’t say this out of any hubris; I don’t think nearly that highly of myself. But being seen with me in the part of Bombay I live in provides an immediate status boost. When I leave my apartment, my building manager asks how I am, where I’m going, and if I’ve eaten. I walk twenty feet and pass Rattan and Raju. They ask the same questions, then they try to buy me tea – which I like – and cigarettes, which I don’t. If I don’t have time for the tea, Rattan sometimes tries to physically drag me there – he wants to be seen buying me tea. He is probably in his mid forties, he has nearly shaved grey hair, and no front teeth. He is very, very thin. Rattan sleeps on the floor of the local police station, where he is an office boy. Raju sleeps on the street. But they won’t let me pay for a thing.

Once I make it past the pair, I reach Pappu, the corner drunk. Regardless of the time of day, he’s usually full of moonshine. We chat in broken Hindi as I walk. I reach the intersection. If I take a right, Babu the autorickshaw driver will come have a conversation with me – he likes to show off that he’s the only autorickshaw driver at the stand who speaks English, and seems to revel in the stares he draws while we talk. If I take a left, I’m drawn into conversation of the group of men who hang around the shoe repair stall of Ravi. They ask to listen to whatever is on my headphones, and get thrilled on the rare occasion that they hear Bollywood. They use a stack of paving stones as a stool, and whoever is sitting immediately pops up and demands that I take his place. At this point, I have walked perhaps two-hundred feet. Unless I have been rude and refused to engage with anybody, it has taken me fifteen or twenty minutes.

If I told all the stories, it would be boring. When I take a long distance train at the last minute in the unreserved compartment, there are never enough seats. But White people never take this class, and my shocked neighbors vehemently demand that I take their seats. They stand for hours. When I walk along the local train tracks – slums on either side – I am taken by absolute strangers and introduced to every acquaintance that they can find to show off their new White friend. When I go hiking in the desert near the Pakistani border, the soldier that I pass laughs and asks why I’m out of breath. After all, he says, I’m strong and English. I am called “Sir” every day. I often get into clubs even though an Indian would never pass through the doors if he were dressed like me. And although my race turns off the majority of women, it is a definite plus with those women who share, shall we say, some of my more liberal social values.

I face barriers because of my race as well, of course. But the benefits far exceed the cost.

But this is only what happens. A description of the facts, and only a very small number of them. What is more important, what is truly scary and much harder to see, is the way that this effects the beneficiaries. The way that it effects me. I’ve wanted to write about coming to terms with White privilege in India for some time. The ideas were jumbled about in my head, but they weren’t ready to come out.

Three days ago, I went to a club with a friend. His mother is White, his father is Indian. We approached the door, and the bouncer said “I’m sorry Sir, no single men allowed after 11:00.” And, to my great shame, my first thought was this:

“But I’m White.”

We all like to think that we would be resistants in Nazi Germany. That we would fight Apartheid in South Africa. That we would have been at the heart of the Prague Spring. And when I try to convince a man who is calling himself a stupid black monkey that he’s wrong, I get to reinforce that feeling of benevolence. Only when my privilege is revoked do I discover how much I have internalized it. Only when the basic presupposition that I’m more valuable and more important than those around me is challenged do I even realize how much I’ve come to believe what I’m told. It’s easy enough to rationalize away this response, and when I brought it up with my friend, that is exactly what he did. And I’m not ready to condemn myself as a hopeless racist because of this incident. But it is a potent reminder. I thought I was careful enough, aware enough. I thought that somehow I was immune. But I am not. And I’m glad I experienced this. I am humbled. If it weren’t for these small shames, we might find ourselves confronted with greater ones.

-Kerry