What is white privilege? The immediate answer is deceptively simple: the privileges white people have over nonwhite people here in the United States of America. However, this only spawns more questions.
What is whiteness? Are Asians white? What about Jews? Irish? People who are half Hispanic and half White? What about someone who is half Black? A quarter Black? One sixteenth? America is filling with more and more multiracial people, and many racial lines are being blurred. For the purpose of this essay (and most pieces on white privilege) the "white" of white privilege is simply having pale skin and European features.
What is privilege? Except in actively racist situations, whites don't skip to the front of the checkout line, or sit in the front of the bus, or automatically and openly get first pick of any job or educational program. While actively racist situations do exist, for the majority of time white privilege is invisible--at least to white people. The privileges white people have are things like being able to ask for the person in charge at a store or business and expect to see someone of their race. Nonwhites do not have the privilege of seeing in history books that their race made this country what it is, or even that their race existed at all. Whites can buy makeup in "flesh color" and have it more or less match their actual skin tone.
White privilege is the privilege of not having to see racial differences. White privilege is the privilege of living securely in only one culture, the privilege of being "normal", of setting the norm. For example, news reports and subsequent opinion pieces about the Columbine shooting in 1999 talked about violence being a problem for children, students, or teenagers, all very general descriptions. Yet when a Black teenager shoots another, it is always referred to specifically as a Black problem. White privilege is the privilege of being able to criticize our society without being seen as an outsider. White privilege is the privilege of representing humanity. However, white privilege is not just about being treated well. It is also the privilege of being able to get away with treating others poorly, which is not a privilege at all; being able to remain oblivious to other cultures without penalty is an insidiously wounding part of the package.
White privilege is a social construction. It does not exist all over the world, nor did it exist in every historical period. There is no inherent greatness in white skin, just in our societal perception and reaction to it. In American society today, we have tried to create social and legal constructions to deal with subtle forms of racism like white privilege. One of the most controversial of these is affirmative action. Many whites feel that giving nonwhites preference is reverse racism, and as equally insupportable as active racism such as purposefully keeping nonwhites out of jobs or colleges. However, it is undeniable that nonwhites -- who must encounter subtle forms of racism throughout their lives -- must struggle harder than almost any white to realize the American Dream" of succeeding by merit alone. Affirmative action as a solution to white privilege is at best too little too late, and at worst it is reverse racism.
Another proposal reach to correct the problems of racism, this one more social than legislative, is the idea of racial colorblindness. Many people want to live in a world where race doesn't influence or affect anyone's actions. They try to ignore race in their relationships, whether they're hiring, firing, applying, or walking down the street. This is perhaps an overly idealistic attitude. While it might be nice to live in a world where race didn't matter, that is not the world we live in. Trying to live as if there is no race only ignores racial troubles; it doesn't help fix them. Color blindness also invites the problem of monoculture. Treating everyone as if they had the same privilege may end up as treating everyone as if they were from the same culture. This would invalidate some cultures, if not wipe them out entirely. In addition, the phrase "color blind" conjures up in my mind being able to see not one color, but two: black and white. In that way, we may already have a "color blind" society, formed only of whites and nonwhites.
I have a friend who lives in a small town in Colorado. When I showed this friend articles about white privilege, they said, and I quote, "That's so '70s." They said the whole thought process was dated, and wasn't applicable in the modern world. When I asked why they thought that, they said that at least half the business owners in their small town were female, and the only reason that Hispanics were underrepresented was because they had recently immigrated and the white monoculture in the small town had been entrenched for decades, if not centuries. This friend happens to be white and male. He said, "There's a small class of privileged whites. But you know what? It's not being white nor male that put them there. And I'm not a part of that group any more than you are." This is an extremely common viewpoint. Especially in America, we like to think we live in a meritocracy. Even the more cynical of us tend to believe that it is only those who were born wealthy who are especially privileged. The rest of us are simply the workers, the proletariat. However, white privilege is not about who is a CEO or a multibillionaire. It is about taxi cabs picking you up and job interviewers taking you seriously. It's about being able to start a business, as my friend did, and being able to get a $50,000 loan. It's about being able to live in a small white town in the mountains of Colorado. It's about growing up believing that you could start a business one day, if you wanted to.
I can pinpoint a single event that drove home the full extent of my privilege in being raised as an upper-middle class white female. I used to work in the concession stands at the Rose Garden arena. About half of my coworkers were black, and almost all came from lower class families. On my first day at work, I was mildly shocked when a coworker told me about how her three-year-old's father had died a couple months ago, and how she'd gone on a drinking binge and now couldn't stand the taste of either whiskey or coke. I wasn't shocked that this had happened to her, but I was quite surprised that she'd told me about it, although I was a complete stranger. However, this pattern of conversations I'd previously thought of as intimate continued. I listened to a lot of conversations in the break room, mostly of girls my age talking about their babies and toddlers. There was one particular conversation that struck me the most, though. Two girls were eating together, one white, one black, both probably under twenty years old. The black girl asked the white girl what the results of her pregnancy test had been, and the white girl said that the test was positive and she was going to get a checkup the next day. It was her attitude that struck me. She wasn't at all happy about this news, but she was resigned. Both girls, and another woman who later joined in the conversation with news about her own pregnancy, treated it as something unfortunate, but inevitable. They seemed to have no hope that they would break the cycle of having illegitimate children young and working for minimum wage their whole lives.
That attitude is something I was never encouraged in as a child, or even saw in others. I have always believed that I could achieve anything I tried hard enough to achieve, whether it was making lots of money or traveling or simply getting in to college. I have always believed, and been encouraged to believe, that anything I attained I did so because I had worked for it or had a special talent, or otherwise merited it. This is what white privilege means to me: giving up that idea. I may work hard, or have a special talent, but my biggest advantage in this society is that I believe I can succeed. That is an advantage I have simply and exclusively because I am an upper-middle class white. The privilege that affects me most has a lot to do with classism; being raised in an upper-middle class family certainly influences how unconcernedly I can deal with a lack of immediate money. As I grew up, there were certainly many instances where money was tight. But there was always enough, even if just barely, and I was always certain that there were opportunities for making more. But I believe racial privilege has an even greater effect, because it surrounds and runs through our entire culture. I can work a minimum wage job and live on the bad side of town, but I cannot change my skin tone or the reactions of people around me to my skin. No matter what life choices I make, whether they're based on hard work or talent or absolute stupidity, I will always be privileged.
This leaves us with perhaps the largest question: what to do about it? If you accept that white privilege exists and affects your life, how do you mitigate or change that effect? Do you even need to? Robert Jensen, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, says, "[A]s a member of a society—and especially as a privileged member of society—I have an obligation not simply to enjoy that privilege that comes with being white but to study and understand it, and work toward a more just world in which such unearned privilege is eliminated."
Discrimination, Opposing Viewpoints series, edited by Mary E. Williams
Race Traitor website.
White Privilege website.
White Privilege Shapes the U.S. by Robert Jensen.
More Thoughts On Why The System of White Privilege Is Wrong by Robert Jensen.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.