What Is White Privilege, Really?
Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself.
Today, white privilege is often described through the lens of Peggy McIntosh’s groundbreaking
essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Originally published in 1988, the essay helps readers recognize white privilege by making its effects personal and tangible. For many, white privilege was an invisible force that white people needed to recognize. It was being able to walk into a store and find that the main displays of shampoo and panty hose were catered toward your hair type and skin tone. It was being able to turn on the television and see people of your race widely represented. It was being able to move through life without being racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped. All true.
Those interpretations overshadow the origins of white privilege, as well as its present-day ability to influence systemic decisions. They overshadow the fact that white privilege is both a legacy and a cause of racism. And they overshadow the words of many people of color, who for decades recognized white privilege as the result of conscious acts and refused to separate it from historic inequities.
Racism vs. White Privilege
Having white privilege and recognizing it is not racist. But white privilege exists because of historic, enduring racism and biases. Therefore, defining white privilege also requires finding working definitions of racism and bias.
So, what is racism? One helpful definition comes from Matthew Clair and Jeffrey S. Denis’s “
Sociology on Racism.”
They define racism as “individual- and group-level processes and structures that are implicated in the reproduction of racial inequality.” Systemic racism happens when these structures or processes are carried out by groups with power, such as governments, businesses or schools. Racism differs from bias, which is a conscious or unconscious prejudice against an individual or group based on their identity.
Basically, racial bias is a belief.
Racism is what happens when that belief translates into action.
White privilege is—perhaps most notably in this era of uncivil discourse—a concept that has fallen victim to its own connotations. The two-word term packs a double whammy that inspires pushback. 1) The word
white creates discomfort among those who are
not used to being defined or described by their race. And 2) the word
privilege, especially for poor and rural white people, sounds like a word that doesn’t belong to them—like a word that suggests they have never struggled.
Francis E. Kendall, author of
Diversity in the Classroom and Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race,
comes close to giving us an encompassing definition: “having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do.”
What Is White Privilege, Really?