There’s a video currently going around my Facebook newsfeed that brings up the question of privilege. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. In this video, a white man recalls a conversation he had with an African American man who cursed him out and told him off about his white privilege. The white man proceeded to tell his life story to this African American man, explaining the struggles of his past and his own lack of privilege in regards to his parents’ divorce, an abusive stepfather, an incarcerated sibling, etc., and that he worked his way out of these disadvantages to get to the point where he could afford a nice car. In the end, after a long discussion where the white man gives (in my opinion) somewhat patronizing advice to the African American man, the two end up hugging it out and they part ways.

I suppose the video is meant to be heartwarming and inspiring – that no matter where you come from, you can achieve anything – and the white man in this video did get out of a rough home situation to achieve great things. I cannot take that away from him.

However, this man is really missing a few key points about privilege – specifically, his white privilege.

Before I dive into this fully, I will say this: This is a very complex topic. I certainly can’t cover everything in one blog post – hell, I don’t think I’d be able to cover this topic in even five blog posts – but I’ll do the best I can to make this as concise as possible, and perhaps I’ll do a follow-up in the future.

Furthermore, for some, this might be an uncomfortable topic to confront. I can understand that. Some of you may get defensive and react with anger. I am ready and willing to accept that some people will be upset with me over this.

Let’s start with a few basic definitions.

Privilege, in the sociological sense, is the theory that society provides more rights and/or advantages to a specific group of people – this can be related to race, sex, age, gender identity, social class, or religion, just to name a few. This is the most basic definition of privilege that I can come up with. Privilege becomes a lot more complex when one considers these different inequalities together, and how certain people have more privileges than others. I’ll use myself and a close friend of mine as an example. I am a non-white, university-educated, heterosexual female. This close friend of mine is a white, university-educated gay male. I am disadvantaged due to my sex and my race, but I benefit from my sexuality since I am heterosexual, which fits society’s norms / is the dominant group. My friend is disadvantaged because of his sexuality, but benefits from his race and his sex, which are both dominant groups. We both further benefit from our education levels.

That explains privilege overall. Now, as I outlined above, this piece is only going to focus on white privilege. So…let’s back up a little bit.

Why did I bring up this video?

This video tries to make it seem that everyone starts out on equal footing, and that regardless of life circumstances, anyone and everyone can succeed if they just work hard.

That…is not the case.

Peggy McIntosh, in her highly influential work “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies,” documents a detailed list of privileges that she, as a white person, has over her African-American colleagues. I won’t list all of the reasons here (I’ll include a citation to this article below), but some of the key ones include:

“7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.”

“10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.”

“16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.”

“18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.”

“35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.”

“50. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.” (McIntosh 3-4).

The “invisible knapsack” metaphor is important – McIntosh explains that the “invisible package of unearned assets” that is white privilege is something that she can “cash in” on each day which, as she explains, is “meant to remain oblivious.” (McIntosh 1). Essentially, white privilege within itself has special provisions that allow for white people to have an advantage of over non-white people in society. In her work “White Privilege and Male Privilege,” McIntosh takes this another step further, stating that these privileges allow white people to feel more “at home,” because they control society’s “cultural turf.” (McIntosh 6). In other words, McIntosh, as a white person, could consider herself “belonging” in major ways to society, and could “[make] social systems work for [her]” because she was a part of the main (read: white) culture. (McIntosh 6). McIntosh explains that as white members of society are made “confident, comfortable, and oblivious” due to their “invisible” privilege of being white, other members of society (read: those who are not white), are left “unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated.” (McIntosh, 8). This “obliviousness about white advantage,” McIntosh rights, is “…strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.” (McIntosh 8).

Let me outline an example of the invisibility of white privilege – the school system. Below is a (slightly edited) excerpt of a final paper I wrote for my Race and Ethnic Minorities class at Case Western that outlines institutional racism and educational disparities among various racial/ethnic groups in the United States.

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            Institutional racism is the most prominent type of racism, yet it is the hardest to see because it is not found in individual actions. Rather, it is found in everyday business practices and policies that disadvantage minorities and provide advantages to members of the dominant racial group, and it is often written off as “just the way things are” (Fitzgerald 11). Education as a societal institution is inherently raced, and most schools are racialized spaces, where cultural biases influence perceptions of spaces as belonging to whites or belonging to everyone else (Fitzgerald 223). Institutional racism is interlocking, historical, and cyclical. Institutional racism is interlocking because it overlaps with other types of oppression such as class oppression, is historical because it is rooted in historical practices and actions, and is cyclical because institutional racism is recurrent.

The graphs Kathleen Fitzgerald references that educational attainment is related to race. The graph of Lifetime Educational Attainment by Race from 2010 shows that non-Hispanic whites are more likely than any other group (Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics) to have a high school diploma (only about 7 percent do not), while Hispanics are the most likely to not have graduated high school (31 percent) (Fitzgerald 217). Asian Americans are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to have earned an associate, bachelors, or graduate degree (Fitzgerald 217). Dropout rates for most racial and ethnic minorities are also incredibly high compared to white and Asian-American dropout rates. Although the dropout rate overall has decreased to about 7.4% compared to 15% in 1972, dropout rates are still much higher for minority youth. For example, 15.1% of Hispanics and 12.4% of Native Americans are high school dropouts (Fitzgerald 218).

The history of education for people of color is one that is filled with years of segregation and other blocks to receiving a quality education. Back in the 1800s, white parents who could afford to send their children to school did so without the risk of discrimination. Minority children of color, however, faced a lot of segregation and barriers to education. Slaves were denied education, and it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write. Even after the war was over and the slaves were emancipated, educational success achieved post-Civil War was short lived: after Reconstruction ended, state governments in the South began to retake control of schools, and these governments were led by Southern Democrats who believed the education of blacks was dangerous (Fitzgerald 230). Since these black children were of a lower economic class and also lived in poorer segregated neighborhoods, black schools in these segregated neighborhoods also received significantly less funding. Black children were prevented from attending schools with white children up until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (Fitzgerald 230). Class and socioeconomic status are factors that determine where one lives and what level of educational attainment a person achieves. Class and socioeconomic status have definitely played a role in the education of children of color. This is why education is institutionally racist – because race and class have simultaneously played a role in the segregation of schools.

In the late 1880s, the children of Chinese-American immigrants had a separate “Oriental school” created because they were not allowed to attend schools with white children (Fitzgerald 234). Schools for Mexican-American children also were defunded and received substantially fewer resources than schools for white children. The segregated schools of Mexican-American children were also specifically designed to train them for subordinate roles in society, so that these children would end up with cheap labor jobs (Fitzgerald 235). Native American children were also segregated, but beyond that, the education of Native American children was created in such a way to deliberately erase the cultures of Native American tribes and promote white European culture (Chen et al 2-3). These factors are all other reasons for why education is institutionally racist – because education has deep historic ties in regards to the segregation of minority students from white schools.

Despite the fact that schools today are legally desegregated, some amount of school segregation is still around. A study done at the Brookings Institution showed that two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly comprised of minority students. Most of these schools receive substantially less funding and fewer resources compared to those schools in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods (Darling-Hammond n.p.). The inner-city schools that are predominantly minority students also tend to be much larger population wise, have larger class sizes, teach less difficult curricula, and have less qualified teachers, and studies have shown that these four factors can greatly hinder the success rates of students. According to Linda Darling-Hammond, a researcher at Brookings, “Inequitable systems of school finance inflict disproportionate harm on minority and economically disadvantaged students” (Darling-Hammond n.p.). A study done at UCLA shows that all of these factors together (less funding, fewer resources, less difficult classes, etc) “…tend to produce lower educational achievement and attainment— which in turn limits lifetime opportunities—for students who attend high poverty, high minority school settings” (Orfield et al. 38-39). This is the reason why institutional racism is cyclical and why education as an institution is an example of institutional racism. The historical limitations of students of color in the past have in turn affected students of color today, creating a cycle of fewer educational opportunities and further oppression.

Okay…This was a long one. I’ll end this one here and maybe I’ll do an update on this one later. Thanks for reading!

Love,

Tasha

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Works Cited:

Chen, Kitty, James Kigamwa, Erin Macey, Juhanna N. Rogers, Marsha Simon, Seena Skelton, and Kathleen King Thorius. “The State of American Indian Education: Equity Considerations.” Great Lakes Equity Center (2013): 1-10. Nov. 2013. Web.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education.” The Brookings Institution. N.p., 01 Mar. 1998. Web.

Fitzgerald, Kathleen J. Recognizing Race and Ethnicity: Power, Privilege, and Inequality. Boulder: Westview, 2014. Print.

McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women, 1988.

Orfield, Gary, Erica Frankenberg, Jongyeon Ee, and John Kuscera. “Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat, and an Uncertain Future.” (2014): 1-42. The Civil Rights Project. The University of California, Los Angeles, 15 May 2014. Web.