White privilege
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.
In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States, academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh described the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.
Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a substitute for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a substitute but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose alternative definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups.
Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the recent opposition from right-wing critics since approximately 2014.
Definition
White privilege is a collection of social advantages that are afforded to white people regardless of their socioeconomic class in societies marked by racial disparities.According to the American Anthropological Association, the general public has been conditioned to view different human 'races' as true separate divisions of the human species; contrary to genetic evidence which clearly shows that all human 'races' are closely genetically related. The mistaken belief that race is real has led to the assignment of some groups as inferior, while permitting unfair access to privilege, power, and wealth for others.
White privilege studies seek to explain how racism gives advantages to white people. As such, most definitions and discussions of the concept use as a starting point McIntosh's metaphor of the "invisible backpack" that white people unconsciously "wear" in a society where racism is prevalent.
History
European colonialism
European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial in the foundation and development of white privilege. Academics, such as Charles V. Hamilton, have explored how European colonialism and slavery in the early modern period, including the transatlantic slave trade and Europe's colonization of the Americas, began a centuries-long progression of white privilege and non-white subjugation. Sociologist Bob Blauner has proposed that this era of European colonialism and slavery was the height, or most extreme version, of white privilege in recorded history.William Miller Macmillan suggests that the Great Trek was an attempt to preserve the racial privilege of White South Africans. Anti-slavery policies were seen as a threat by the Dutch-speaking settlers, who were afraid of losing their African and Asian slaves and their superior status as people of European descent. Contemporary news reports made similar observations.
Early 20th-century
An address on Social Equities, from a 1910 National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States publication, demonstrates some of the earliest terminology developing in the concept of white skin privilege:What infinite cruelties and injustices have been practiced by men who believed that to have a white skin constituted special privilege and who reckoned along with the divine rights of kings the divine rights of the white! We are all glad to take up the white man's burden if that burden carries with it the privilege of asserting the white man's superiority, of exploiting the man of lesser breed, and making him know and keep his place.
In his 1935 Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of a "psychological wage" for white laborers. He wrote that this special status divided the labor movement by leading low-wage white workers to feel superior to low-wage black workers. Du Bois identified white supremacy as a global phenomenon affecting the social conditions across the world through colonialism. For instance, Du Bois wrote:
It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.
In a 1942 edition of Modern Review magazine, Ramananda Chatterjee accused Winston Churchill of hypocritical policy positions, in his support, as Chatterjee viewed it, of racial equality in the UK and US but not in British India; "Mr Churchill can support white privilege and monopoly in India whilst opposing privilege and monopoly on both sides of the Atlantic." In 1943, during World War II, sociologist Alfred McClung Lee's Race Riot, Detroit 1943 addressed the "Nazi-like guarantee of white privilege" in American society:
White Americans might well ask themselves: Why do whites need so many special advantages in their competition with Negroes? Similar tactics for the elimination of Jewish competition in Nazi Germany brought the shocked condemnation of the civilized world.
Late 20th-century
The concept of white privilege came to be used within radical circles for self-criticism by anti-racist whites.In the 1960s, Theodore W. Allen urged White Americans to renounce their "white skin privileges". In the same era, the Students for a Democratic Society called "for an all-out fight against 'white skin privileges'".
Allen extended his analysis of white privilege to the colonial period. Allen maintained several points: namely that the concept of a "white race" was invented as an element of social control. Central to this process was the conferring of privileges to White working people that were against the interests of Black people and other minorities. Allen also argues that this privilege is the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the US.
In the 1980s, Peggy McIntosh developed one of the earliest theoretical concepts of white privilege. Her early work is still routinely cited as a key influence by later generations of academics and journalists.
In the same time period, the American feminist movement was criticized for exhibiting "class privilege" and "white privilege". In later years, the theory of intersectionality also gained prominence.
By 2003, most scholars of race relations had embraced the concept white privilege. The same year, sociologists in the American Mosaic Project at the University of Minnesota reported that in the United States there was a widespread belief that white privilege was real. According to their poll, white privilege was affirmed by 59% of white respondents, 83% of Blacks, and 84% of Hispanics.
Application in the education system
White privilege as a concept has been influential in multicultural education, teacher training, ethnic and gender studies, sociology, psychology, political science, American studies, and social work education.White defensiveness
White students are sometimes resistant to the idea of white privilege, a phenomenon known as white defensiveness.One report noted that white students often react to in-class discussions about white privilege with a continuum of behaviors ranging from outright hostility to a "wall of silence". A pair of studies on a broader population by Branscombe et al. found that framing racial issues in terms of white privilege as opposed to non-white disadvantages can produce a greater degree of racially biased responses from whites who have higher levels of racial identification. Branscombe et al. demonstrate that framing racial inequality in terms of the privileges of whites increased levels of white guilt among white respondents. Those with high racial identification were more likely to give responses which concurred with modern racist attitudes than those with low racial identification. According to the studies' authors, these findings suggest that representing inequality in terms of outgroup disadvantage allows privileged group members to avoid the negative implications of inequality.
A 2019 experiment found that white privilege studies did not increase empathy for minorities, and that White students even lost empathy for minorities. One of the study's authors said that this demonstrates the importance of recognizing individual differences, when teaching about white privilege.
According to Robin DiAngelo, when white privilege is challenged, the resulting racial stress can trigger a range of defensive responses. For example, some white people, when confronted with racial issues concerning white privilege, may respond with dismissal, distress, or other defensive responses because they may feel personally implicated in white supremacy. DiAngelo also writes that white privilege is very rarely discussed, and often defines race as something that only concerns blacks, excluding other minorities. DiAngelo argues that white defensiveness is not irrational, but rather is often driven by subconscious, sometimes even well-meaning, attitudes toward racism.
DiAngelo's book has been criticized for being "self-fulfilling" and "oversimplified".
White backlash has been described as a possible response to the societal examination of white privilege, or to the perceived actual or hypothetical loss of that racial privilege. One study suggests that backlash results from threats to white privilege. George Yancy likewise suggests that the backlash is an extreme response to loss of privilege.