I don't think that it makes sense to make much of the "white privilege" of the Joneses, loving and grieving parents by all counts, as Wise does, since it is not at all clear that anything that they could have told Dixon would have helped him in this particular case.
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Well yes, I do see what you're saying.
But there is this to consider...
It seems to me that Wise only discusses *White privilege* within a specific context: the parents' lack of understanding of the sorts of dangers their child might face due to an assumption of safety and fairness being the full shape of reality. This is Wise' analysis of the parents so I don't know if it's wholly accurate though he does build a case for it using their quoted words.
There's no doubt of their love that I can detect in the article, only a doubt of their fitness, given the harsh necessities arising from racism and their unfamiliarity with these matters, to advise their son with sharp, faith-in-the-system free eyes during this personal crisis.
And regarding what advice they might have given him had they been the sorts of racial minefield savants Wise wishes they'd been, there is this passage, which I believe provides a decent outline...
<begin excerpt>
Had the Joneses understood the ways of the white folks in charge of the justice system, even on a local level, there is no way Peri [the mother] would have advised Marcus to be cooperative with police and "tell them anything they wanted to know," even without an attorney in the room. Few black parents would have told their black male child, suspected of raping a white girl, to do such a thing, and precisely because they would understand the intrinsic danger of the lamb trying to make nice with the wolves who have encircled it.
Indeed, it was in those early discussions that Dixon, fully aware of the racism of his sex partner's father, initially denied even knowing the girl, let alone having sex with her. When he later told the truth he was, in effect, snaring himself in a lie, thereby making his story seem less credible to a DA already likely predisposed to thinking the worst. It's a mistake he wouldn't have had the chance to make had he been taught a bit of self-defensive cynicism - the kind rarely practiced by those who can afford the luxury of thinking the system is fair and just, but which comes as second nature to those who can't.
Had the Joneses truly appreciated the ways of white folks, and especially the ways in which sexual predator stereotypes push so many buttons for so many whites still today, then they could have given Marcus the kind of lessons at home that he was not likely to receive in school.
<end excerpt>
It's this *self-defensive cynicism* Wise describes that was missing, according to him, from the family's dealings with law enforcement and the judicial system.
I know exactly what he means, have used this cynicism myself on countless occasions to avoid getting snookered and am, therefore, inclined to take this analysis rather seriously.
I admit this may be an experiential bias (for lack of a more elegant phrase).
DRM