Jim Goad writes:
When I met my friend for dinner and told him what happened, he speculated that I was being set up for a “soft mugging,” which is a term for when homeless people attach themselves to you and won’t leave until you give them some money.
Sure, I could have simply hauled off and walloped that guy with a left hook while hoping he didn’t have five accomplices waiting in the shadows. But that’s easier said than done when you’re a white felon with a shaved head and a long history of issuing politically insensitive public statements. So there I was, acutely aware that I could lose my life within the next sixty seconds, fretting about how it would look to the world at large if I got into a street scrap with a black male despite the fact that he’d been actively harassing me.
White male privilege in 2015 means that if I get into any altercation with someone who isn’t white or male, I am presumed guilty.
