Clinton Asked How She Has Benefited from White Privilege

ANGUIANO: “White privilege is a term that more people are talking openly about these days. Certainly, people like me have long understood what it means. Secretary Clinton, can you tell us what the term white privilege means to you and can you give me an example from your life or career when you think you had benefited from it?”
CLINTON: “Well —(Applause) — look, where do I start? I think it is hard when you’re swimming in the ocean to know exactly what’s happening around you, so much as it is when you’re standing on the shore perhaps watching. For me, look, I was born white, middle class, in the middle of America. I went to good public schools, I had a very strong supportive family, I had a lot of great experiences growing up. I went to a wonderful college, I went to law school. I never really knew what was or wasn’t part of the privilege, I just knew that I was a lucky person. And that being lucky in part related to who I am, where I’m from, and the opportunities I had. But I will tell you that when I first realized that I was privileged, both because I was white and because I was economically stable. I had two experiences and they both came through the church. The first was when I was eleven years old and my church asked if some of us could volunteer to  babysit for children of migrant workers on Saturdays because the families had to go into the fields and the older kids had to go with them, and there was nobody left to watch the little kids. And I and couple of my friends volunteered and I remember in those days Chicago was surrounded by fields. It doesn't look like it anymore but it was, and it was on the migrant journey from Mexico, up through Texas, up to the mid West, ended up in Michigan. But at certain point in the summer harvest folks were in Chicago area. So I remember going out there taking care of this adorable little kids and I kind of thought, ‘Well, they are very different from me, and they’ve got different experiences.' But they’re just little kids. And then, at the end of the day, at the end of this long road, because there were all these sort of housing units, at the end of this long road, the bus stop, and the parents and older brothers and sisters all got out. And when the little kids saw them, they just dropped everything and begin running for their mothers and their fathers, holding their arms out. And I remember like it was yesterday watching that and I was thinking, I used to do that with my father. And I am watching these kids and their families; they have to work so hard. And the place they live in is not so nice, and I just felt, you know, I have a different kind of life. I didn't call it a particular name, but it was a different life."