Misconceptions: White Privilege

The concept of white privilege and privilege in general is often misunderstood to mean that those of us who possess privilege never need to work hard or struggle against obstacles to achieve success in life. It’s often misunderstood to mean that we simply have everything we want. This is not what white privilege means. Possessing white privilege means that the quantity and quality of our struggles are different than other racial groups’.  The source of privilege is also misunderstood as being something that we explicitly choose in order to be racially dominant. This is not the source of white privilege. White privilege comes from the social reality that we’re considered the “default” group by an overwhelming majority of the systems we interact with, and our very lack of awareness of it is the reason it functions. 

In US society we whites are racial insiders rather than racial outsiders. The advantages we have over people of color in our system stem from our insider status. It is not a guarantee of success in life. 

I understand white privilege as being the product of white prevalence. Prevalent is defined as 1) being in ascendancy: dominant; and 2) generally or widely accepted, practiced, or favored: widespread. It’s also worth noting that the words prevalent and prevail come from the same root. White privilege has at its root the goal of whites prevailing over other groups.

Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 essay “White Privilege and Male Privilege” is a critical landmark in understanding the concept of white privilege. It introduces the metaphor of the “invisible knapsack,” a set of unearned advantages over people of color, that we have as white people in the U.S.

Ms. McIntosh lists examples of the benefits of white privilege in her everyday life, such as, “If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.” A common argument against the notion of wealth and race being connected is that this is an example of economic class advantage rather than racial advantage. The argument goes that Ms. McIntosh’s socioeconomic class afforded her more choices, choices that poorer whites don’t have. This is a misconception that is, at least in part, not based in the facts. Yes, class plays a role in everyone’s life, but statistically speaking, race profoundly impacts housing choices and outcomes.

Research by HUD and other institutions, report what people of color have known for the entire history of the country: class and financial means being equal, a number of systems will act to channel people of color seeking housing to different neighborhoods than whites. The economic class of those neighborhoods is lower on average than the neighborhoods where white people are channeled. To use Ms. McIntosh’s language: people of color often cannot find housing in areas that they can otherwise financially afford. And though there are certainly people who espouse explicit white nationalist philosophies in all spheres of U.S. society, most of this happens without conscious awareness or intention. Certainly, many whites who are real estate agents, property managers, owners, etc., hold earnest beliefs in equality but don’t see the ways they are contributing to the process.

Another misconception about white privilege is that it is something extra that we receive above and beyond our regular citizenship and membership in society. We whites know that this is not the case. We move through the world and most of us don’t feel particularly special because we’re white. But that is not how privilege functions. As whites, our race is functionally invisible to the systems through which we move. Our privilege exists because we don’t stand our racially.  Our typical experience is fundamentally what all people should expect in a race-neutral society. White privilege’s advantages come from NOT being excluded from mainstream society in the ways that people of color are. White privilege is not having to prove that extra validity in social and economic situations. It’s those who don’t possess white privilege that receive something extra. As whites we get the racial benefit of the doubt, while people of color often get the doubt of the benefit.

Another misconception is that we see it happening for us and just don’t care. Being called privileged is an accusation of explicit white supremacist attitudes. But this is not the case. The McIntosh article calls white privilege invisible and it is to those of us who benefit from it because we only inhabit our own lives. We don’t see the differences between the house a real estate agent shows us and the house the same agent shows a family of a different race. It’s like being on the inside of a house trying to see the outside. We can’t do it unless we actively get up and look around outside.

Differential treatment plays out in many more ways, including the ways listed in Ms. Macintosh’s article. We don’t see the difference in focus and attitude a potential employer has toward us versus a member of a different race with the same abilities. We don’t notice that we are seldom, if ever, the only member of our race in a group. We don’t notice that we are never called upon to represent our race in a discussion. We simply do not experience those differences because they are not happening to us. Because we don’t see these different treatments, we think they don’t exist. We think society treats everyone like it treats us, so we see attempts to address differential treatments as unnecessary or unfairly advantaging people of color. We’re more concerned with “reverse racism” than actual racism, while not seeing that our society continues to vastly favor whiteness. This makes it possible for us whites to live in a country where the unemployment rate for African Americans averages twice that of whites and still feel like we are disadvantaged.

White privilege does not mean that we whites don’t face hardships or have to work to succeed. While white privilege does give us advantages over people of color, it does not confer advantages in relation to other whites. The advantages of birth, wealth, connections, luck, skill, hard work, all continue to apply to us. We still have to compete with others. We don’t, however, have to compete on equal footing with non-whites. That’s why a white person can be poor and still have white privilege. A child of a rich white family certainly has advantages over the child of a poor white family. There are also times when the child of a rich black family may have advantages over the child of a poor white family. White privilege means that there are times when race will give the white child an advantage.

In reality, if we’re to compare poor whites to wealthy blacks, we should acknowledge that the average wealth of black families in the U.S. is 1/16th the average wealth of white families. A rich black family is less likely to exist at all. But we often use examples of non-whites’ success as an argument that the system is race neutral. And of course, none of this means that poor whites should be forgotten in favor of poor members of other races. It actually means that poor whites are often better served by more generous approaches to different forms of public assistance, programs that they often perceive as existing to serve other races.

Some people take white privilege as a moral accusation against them personally. This is not the case. The existence of white privilege doesn’t make any one of us a bad person. No single one of us invented it and we were all born into a world in which it already existed. In a way, it even co-opts us whites. The existence of white privilege does not reflect on the morality of any one of us. Our individual responses to racial inequity, however, do.

If we want to understand privilege, we can start to look for other perspectives. We can listen to people of color with respect rather than disbelief. In a very real sense, they are likely to have more expertise in seeing its workings because of their experience. 

As a white man, I know what it’s like to feel defensive about race. I’ve used arguments like, “My family wasn’t even here during slavery, and went through all kinds of hardships to overcome them,” to diminish white privilege’s impact on people of color. I’ve experienced my own strong emotional reactions against the examination of how our current system is a legacy of the past and how it acts outside of our immediate awareness to sustain itself. I’ve felt my own desire to diminish what’s said by people speaking out or protesting against racism.

Defensiveness can make us want to attack people who make us feel uncomfortable. We can confuse that feeling with feelings of moral outrage toward those people for what they’re saying or doing, especially when their experience contradicts our worldview. Having misconceptions about white privilege contributes to that confusion. Much of my basic obligation to fairness relies on the choices I make about those feelings.