White privilege is like an invisible, weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, codes, code books, passports, visas, clothes, compasses, emergency gear, and blank checks. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. It is based on my daily experiences within my particular circumstances. This paper is a partial record of my personal observations, and not a scholarly analysis. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. ![]() White person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon with a life of its own, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was similarly denied and protected, but alive and real in its effects. These denials protect male privilege from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended. Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which men gain from women’s disadvantages. Through work to bring materials and perspectives from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged in the curriculum, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. ![]() It is important to understand that the system of advantage is perpetuated when we do not acknowledge its existence. Notions of power or privilege do not have to be addressed when our understanding of racism is constructed that way. It is more comfortable simply to think of racism as a particular form of prejudice. For those who have internalized this myth, this definition generates considerable discomfort. Understanding racism as a system of advantage based on race is contrary to traditional notions of an American meritocracy. Social psychologists call this tendency a “belief in a just world.” Racism directly contradicts such notions of justice. We all like to think that we deserve the good things we have received, and that others, too, get what they deserve. These uncomfortable emotions can hinder further discussion of race and racism. The unsuspecting tenant is not to blame for the prior discrimination, but she benefits from it anyway.įor many Whites, this new awareness of the benefits of a racist system elicits considerable pain, often accompanied by feelings of anger and guilt. The White tenant is, knowingly or unknowingly, the beneficiary of racism, a system of advantage based on race. In very concrete terms, it means that if a person of color is the victim of housing discrimination, the apartment that would otherwise have been rented to that person of color is still available for a White person. But a new understanding of racism is more elusive. It’s one thing to have enough awareness of racism to describe the ways that people of color are disadvantaged by it. They included major and minor advantages. ![]() She did not ask for them, and it is important to note that she hadn’t always noticed that she was receiving them. Peggy McIntosh, a White feminist scholar, identified a long list of societal privileges that she received simply because she was White.
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