Robert Huber's front page Philadelphia Magazine article entitled 'Being White In Philly' says a lot about the values and sensibilities of the bourgeois press in this city. We wonder how such a spiteful and ugly article made its way not only through the editing process but onto the front page of a "prestigious" Philadelphia magazine.

Huber claims that “white people never talk about it” - the “it” being race. In actuality, white people are in fact engaging in tough and necessary conversations about race, not only with each each other but with people of color as well. Thoughtful conversations on this topic are taking place all the time, but because they do not seem to be occurring in Huber's social circles we're meant to believe that these conversations are not happening at all.

One cannot talk about race without addressing the realities of class, privilege and white supremacy, things Huber barely mentions in his article. This is unfortunately not very surprising. Money and easy access to opportunities allow the privileged to create their own realities, and those with privilege often resist having their carefully constructed world views threatened by pesky little things like facts. Huber essentially does what many people of his class do all the time: he enables a process of selective blindness by choosing to downplay history and the enduring historical structures of white supremacy. He eschews historical context and essentially tells his readers that white people need to muster the gumption to “tell it like it is”, i.e., tell poor black people that the problems they face are all their own fault. This is one of the main reasons why his article is at its core quite troubling and why it needs to be addressed and strongly denounced.

In a city with so many social issues that need resolving, one wonders why the feelings and emotions of white people warrant a front page spread on the cover of Philadelphia Magazine. Or, too be more clear, the thoughts and feelings of specifically middle to upper middle class white people. From the article it appears that white people in Philadelphia are overall doing quite well, though this could be misleading since Huber did not bother to interview people living in predominantly white poor and working class neighborhoods.

The dynamics between whites and non-black ethnic groups were not even important enough to merit a passing mention. An article about race where only middle class white people and police officers are interviewed leaves much to be desired. The truly frightening thing is that perhaps Philadelphia Magazine knows its audience; perhaps they are telling their privileged, bourgeois readers exactly what they want to hear.