White privilege

Definition and Discussion

White privilege is a term denoting purported rights, advantages, exemptions or immunities enjoyed by white persons in Western countries beyond what is commonly experienced by nonwhites in those same nations. It has been described as "an invisible package of unearned assets which I [as a white person] can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious" (McIntosh, 1989).

White privilege may be subtle or "invisible" to those who benefit from it. McIntosh (1989) and Jensen (1998) suggest some less obvious privileges that attach to being white in America:

• Whites can turn on the television or read the newspaper and expect to see members of their own race widely represented;
• Whites can expect their children to read books and materials in school that affirm and discuss the history of their race;
• Whites can swear, dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having others attribute these behaviors to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of their race;
• Whites can speak their opinions without being asked to speak for their race;
• Whites can do well without being called credits to their race;
• Whites easily locate books, greeting cards, toys, and magazines prominently featuring members of their race;
• Whites do not have to wonder whether they are being singled out because of their race when being approached by the police;
• Whites can take jobs without accusations that they were hired as part of racial quotas;
• Whites are most often evaluated by members of their own race;
• Whites do not appear threatening to those of the dominant culture.

In addition to these more subtle advantages, many see a continuing, although not legalized or acknowledged, system of advantage to white people in areas such as housing, salaries, access to employment (especially to positions of power), access to education, even life expectancy (Tatum, 1997, p. 9; Farley, 1993). Manglitz (2003) argues the educational system in America has deeply entrenched biases in favor of the White majority in evaluation, curricula, and power relations. Some historians discuss the historical trajectory from exclusion to acceptance of Irish and Jewish émigrés in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in terms of White Privilege. Others refer to such phenomena as white boxer Gerry Cooney receiving a very large amount of money for his 1982 fight with African American Larry Holmes despite the fact that he was an untested contender.

Parallels are often drawn between white privilege, male privilege and heterosexual privilege.

Background

White privilege in America may be seen as having its roots in the system of legalized discrimination that existed for much of American history (Williams, 2003). From legalized slavery and the legalized taking of land and life from Native Americans, to Jim Crow laws, to legalized housing and job discrimination, a hierarchy of social benefits was legally and institutionally enforced for many decades in the United States. Although such active discrimination is now unconstitutional and illegal, the cultural, economic, social, and psychological effects of decades of such systematic, institutionalized racism continues to have an effect currently, according to many who have examined these issues.

It is argued that the effects of White Privilege are currently kept in place by those who benefit from systemic advantage passively accepting this advantage, often without recognizing that it exists. It is said that White people are often willing to grant that people of color are disadvantaged, but not they they (White people) are advantaged. Whites are taught to see their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average. Most White people do not think to describe themselves as “White” when listing descriptive terms about themselves, whereas people of color usually use racial or ethnic identity descriptors. According to Tatum (1997), this is because the elements of one’s identity that are congruent with the dominant culture are so normalized and reflected back at one that one is apt to take such traits for granted. This is not the case for identity aspects of those who are defined as “other” by the dominant culture, whether it be on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other microcultural aspects.

Tatum (1997) contends dominant microcultures (in this case, white people), set the parameters in which “subordinate” microcultures operate. This is reflected in who gets the best jobs, whose history will be taught in school, whose relationships will be validated by society, etc. Further, subordinate groups are often labeled as substandard in significant ways: e.g., Blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than Whites. Subordinates are also defined as being innately incapable of being able to perform the preferred roles in society. Some members of the subordinate microculture internalize these negative messages, thus being further disadvantaged by the entrenched belief that they cannot succeed to the same extent as White people. Such processes, it is contended, operate to maintain a generalized system of White advantage.

Criticism

Many White people do not experience themselves as being privileged or powerful. White people who are poor, who have come from families affected by abuse or alcoholism, who have not benefitted from advanced education, wonder how they have benefitted from being White. White people wonder whether the concept of White privilege is asking them to admit they have not earned what they possess (Jensen, 1998). Critics point out that Whites make up a substantial proportion of those living in poverty in the United States, and contend this is evidence against the existence of any system of advantage for Whites.

Conservative commentator Steve Sailer argues that white privilege may be real, and that "[i]t's not 'unearned.' It was earned for you by the hard work and self-discipline of your ancestors and relatives." Advocates of the existence of White privilege would retort that this statement is itself an example of the type of ethno-centric belief system that keeps White privilege in place, in that it implies the ancestors of non-whites failed to "earn" privilege due to their lack of “hard work and self-discipline.”

See also

• Identity politics
• Media and ethnicity
• Whiteness studies

References

• Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control (Verso, 1994) ISBN 0-86091-660-X.
• Berger, Maurice. "White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) ISBN 0-374-52715-6
• Farley, R (1993). The common destiny of Blacks and Whites: Observations about the social and economic status of the races. In Hill, H. & Jones, J.E., Jr. (eds.) Race in America: The Struggle for equality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White (Routledge, 1996). ISBN 0-415-91825-1.
• Jackson, C. (2006). White Anti-Racism: Living the Legacy. Retrieved October 31, 2006 from http://www.tolerance.org/teach/activities/activity.jsp?ar=718.
• Jensen, R. (1998). White people need to acknowledge benefits of unearned privilege. Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1998.
• Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Temple University Press, 2006). ISBN 1-56639-635-2.
• Manglitz, E. (2003). Challenging white privilege in adult education: a critical review of the literature. Adult Education Quarterly, 53(2), 119-134.
• McIntosh, P. (1989). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace and Freedom, July/August, 10-12.
• Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Verso, 1999) ISBN 0-86091-550-6.
• Rothenberg, Paula S., ed. White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (Worth, 2004) ISBN 0-7167-8733-4.
• Tatum, B. (1997). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And other conversations about race. New York: Basic Books.
• Updegrave, W.L. (1989). Race and money. Money, December 1989,152-72.
• Williams, Linda Faye. Constraint Of Race: Legacies Of White Skin Privilege In America (Penn State, 2004) ISBN 0-271-02535-2.

Further Reading

• Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon
• White Like Me by Tim Wise
• White by Richard Dyer
• Brown, C.S. (2002). Refusing Racism: White allies and the struggle of civil right. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Levine-Rasky, C. (2000). Framing whiteness: working through the tensions in introducing whiteness to educators. Race Ethnicity and Education, 3(3), 271-292.
• Roediger, D.R. (2005). Working toward whiteness: How America’s immigrants became white. The strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs. New York: Basic Books.
• Solomona, R.P., Portelli, J.P., Daniel, B-J. & Campbell, A. (2005). The discourse of denial: how white teacher candidates construct race, racism and ‘white privilege’. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(2), 147-169.

External links

• WhitePrivilege.com, an anti-racism resource
• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
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