White Privilege

Completing its year-long mission, President Clinton's advisory board on race recently issued its report on race relations in the U.S. titled, "Changing America." The report concluded that the nation must confront "this country's history of White privilege" before there can be reconciliation.

The seven-member panel, headed by renowned Black historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, noted in the report: "Throughout America's history, White privilege allowed Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, Asians, certain European immigrants and religious groups to gain only limited acceptance, usually after painful, hate-generated conflict."

It said White privilege today manifests itself in small ways, among them being able to buy cars at lower prices, escaping scrutiny for possible criminal behavior, and getting prompt service "while minorities and people of color are often still refused service or made to wait.

"It is, we believe, essential to recall the facts of racial domination. We as a nation need to understand that Whites tend to benefit, either unknowingly or consciously, from this country's history of White privilege."

In a racial discrimination and harassment suit filed in the spring of 1998 against Boeing, a Boeing spokesman said, "I don't believe there is truly racism at the Boeing Company. Our hearts are in the right place. The system broke down." The executive doesn't believe there is racism because, being white and privileged, racism is invisible to him. The complaint shows the system, in fact, working the way it does throughout American society.

Daily Effects of White Privilege

One writer identified some of the daily effects of white privilege in her life. She chose those conditions that she thought in her case were attached more to skin color privileges than to class, religion, ethnic status or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intertwined. She stated that as far as she could tell all of her African American coworkers, friends and acquaintances with whom she came into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work could not count on most of these conditions. She enumerates some 26 of these white privileges:

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
   
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.
   
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
   
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
   
5. I can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
   
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
   
7. I can be pretty sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
   
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
   
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.
   
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
    
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
    
12. 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.
    
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
    
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
    
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
    
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color, who constitute the world's majority, without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
    
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior with being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge" I will be facing a person of my race.
    
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
    
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
    
21. I can go home from most meetings or organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
    
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
    
23. I can choose public accommodations without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
    
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.
    
25. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
    
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" colors that more or less match my skin.

—(From "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: White Privilege."
Peggy McIntosh, Jan./Feb. 1992 Creation Spirituality)

So Whiteness is more than an appearance; it is a system of privilege accorded to those with white skin. Is this not a form of affirmative action? As long as white Americans are implicitly deemed more deserving of the resources of the United States than other groups, affirmative action goals that seek to counter unnamed White privilege and achieve Public witness will be seen as preferential treatment. More difficult to overturn are the values and attitudes that persist as legacies of constructed whiteness.

Noel Ignatiev suggests that "Without the privileges attached to white skin, the white race would not exist and that white skin color would have no more significance than foot size or ear shape."

Can Whiteness and White Privilege be Given Up?

Kelly Ervin, a social psychologist and assistant professor in the Dept. of Comparative American Culture at Washington State University, describes herself as a very fair-skinned African American. While she agrees that race is a social construct and not a justifiable scientific classification system, Ervin doesn't think whites can shed their whiteness. "How can a white person disavow their whiteness, or the fact that in many cases they are treated as privileged?" she asks.

A more vociferous response is taken from a letter sent to the journal Race Traitor.

"With 28 years of being white under my belt, I have yet to reap any of the benefits that (apparently) are mine for the taking in our white society.' I grew up around Blacks and Mexicans almost exclusively, so I've never had the option of judging anyone by their ethnic origin, nor have I had the option of going to Harvard, or starting a group about racism.' If you hate yourself for being white, then kill yourself, but I'm in the process of dying right now just like everybody else on this planet is, and the ride might be a lot smoother for all of us if NO ONE was hung up on . . . tribal conflicts that are not applicable to the business of living in the 20th, let alone the 21st, century. That includes the KKK, Farrakhan, and YOU."

—A response from Race Traitor, Dave Houser, Las Vegas, Nev.

The following response to Dave, also was published in Race Traitor.

"Thanks for writing. From your letter I get the idea that if we ever had a chance to sit down and talk we could probably agree on a lot. We don't hate ourselves or anyone else for their color. We hate a system that grants privileges based on color. You say you have never received any of those privileges. If so, that would make you unique. Are you sure your color never did anything for you a better school, a safer neighborhood, the inside track on a job, a break from a cop? If not, then maybe you're not white, you just look white. For us, white is not something people are, it is something they do, and those who resist or have no part in the system of white-skin privileges aren't white. We oppose whiteness because we think it distracts people from getting their heads together and figuring out how to solve the problems that affect us all. You say you would like to forget about color. So would we but how can we when it is so important in the society? We figure the best way to overcome the divisive issue of race is to confront it head-on and since most of us who started this project are nominally "white," we started with the group we are assigned to which also happens to be, historically, the biggest, most powerful, and most troublesome group."

—Gerald Cunningham
Retired Senior Associate for Racial/Criminal Justice