Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand delivered an impassioned explanation of white privilege at the Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia.
“But this conversation about white privilege is so important,” the New York Democrat told the liberal gathering on Saturday. The 2020 presidential hopeful talked about the son of a woman she met in Youngstown, Ohio. “There’s going to be moments in his life that his whiteness protects him. His whiteness changes how he’s treated. When he walks down a street in a hoodie with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, he won’t be shot.”
Gillibrand, 52, fought back tears as she explained various situations in which she said young men’s whiteness would protect them and touched on how she herself has experienced white privilege.
“Now as a white woman, who has certainly experienced enormous amounts of white privilege. I travel with a staff member who is black, and I see how she is being treated differently when we walk into a hotel. I see it, and it infuriates me,” Gillibrand said as she raised her voice.
She finished by saying it was her responsibility to lift up black voices like one of the members of her team.
Gillibrand’s explanation of white privilege came after she gave a similar pitch Thursday at an Ohio campaign stop after being asked about the economic depression in the region that had affected both white and black people.
Gillibrand is tied for 19th place in the 2020 Democratic presidential race, polling at 0.2% according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.
