On White Privilege

I’ve been thinking a lot about white privilege lately, and I’ve noticed something I was unable to articulate before. White privilege depends on an assumption of equality. 

See, white people, like everyone else, tend to be good-hearted, well-meaning people. White people do not want to be racially prejudiced, and perhaps even more so do not want to be seen or labeled as racially prejudiced. These days in the US, “racist” seems to be as bad a thing as you can call a white person. Most white people, just like most all people, want to accept people who are different. Nobody (with a few not-worth-mentioning exceptions) wants to be a bigot. 

I can’t talk about white privilege without pointing out some examples of the white privilege that benefits me in my own daily life. One obvious example is that my wife and I are considering buying a house. We have very little money saved up for a down payment, making it difficult to buy a house. We have discussed the possibility that one or another set of our parents may be able to give us the thousands of dollars necessary so we could buy a house. This is an example of white privilege, because centuries of discriminatory housing policy are the reason our white parents might have money to give us. Wealth is not simply income, and white people have a tremendous advantage in accumulating wealth compared to African-Americans. This is white privilege, and usually we don’t even notice it at all. 

My expectations around how I communicate are another important example of my white privilege. When I speak, I expect people to listen to me. I expect people to treat me with respect, to carefully consider my words, and to be by a sympathetic audience. I expect, in short, to be speaking to people similar enough to myself that they will understand what I am saying, or even what I am trying to say if I am being unclear. This entire essay depends on this kind of privilege, in fact. 

I expect to state my points clearly and forcefully, and if anyone disagrees with me they will be able to speak up and challenge my views with equal force and sincerity. I expect to have a credible voice in public discussion, and I expect everyone else’s voice to be just as credible as mine is. White people, in short, expect others to listen to us. On top of that, I am a man (men expect others to listen to us) and a pastor – pastors talk at others for a living. Of course I expect people to listen to me! It is a very short step from here to blaming others for their silence if they fail to speak up with the same assumption of credibility that I have. 

White people want people of color to be equal to them. The most direct and simple way to achieve this, white people’s logic goes, is to treat everyone equally. This is a reasonable, and even necessary, step along the way toward dismantling racism. However, it is far from sufficient, and in many cases is actively harmful. Here’s how: treating people equally often leads to the assumption that people are equal, that they receive equal treatment from institutions as well as individuals, that they receive equal opportunities and have equal resources, and that they have equal experiences. In short, the easiest way for white people to seek equality with people of color is to assume that equality already exists. 

This logic of equality naturally assumes that everyone starts out equal. The problem, of course, is that if every person starts out equal, then it’s your own fault if you fall behind your equals.  Whites and African-Americans are equal, so why are African-Americans incarcerated at such higher rates? And why can they receive preference in college admissions, compared to a similar white student? Whites and American Indians are equal, so why do native people have such trouble with alcoholism, and why are so many of their reservations run down? And why do they deserve to get money from casinos? This is the logic of equality, assuming that people started out equal and that they should continue to receive equal treatment. 

In an online forum for religious leaders last week, an African-American man asked why the church was being complacent in response to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. He called for action, not just words. A white man responded, saying something about the nature of truth, and closed his comments with words like these, “Now keep politics off this page.” 

I found that last line to be a crystal-clear example of white privilege. Here a white man sees fit to instruct – or even to command – an African-American man to be quiet about the potential loss of voting rights for millions of Americans, many of them African-American. In as conciliatory a manner as I could, I pointed out my observation that it looks like white privilege (or worse, but like I said, I was trying to be conciliatory) when a white man talks that way to an African-American man in this public context. The white man immediately responded to the effect of, “No one is more equal than anyone else!!!!!!” (number of exclamation points approximate; the original conversation thread seems to have been deleted). 

At that point I chose no longer to respond to the conversation, but when I checked back in I saw an argument continue, leading to another white man talking about the tremendous problem of voter fraud.  The Voting Rights Act has almost nothing to do with voter fraud. It has everything to do with voter suppression, and with the fact that for decades – centuries, really – the states of this country used discriminatory laws and practices to deny African-Americans the right or ability to vote. The chart below demonstrates the tremendous gains in black voting rates since the VRA was passed. 

Voter suppression has a long, clear history in this country, and as the above link to The Brennan Center for Justice demonstrates, the injustice of voter suppression is alive and well in 21^st century America, while voter fraud has simply not been an electorally significant issue.

See, white privilege depends on the assumption of equality. It assumes that we are all equal, that we started out equal, and that to treat us differently is unjust, or even “reverse-racist.” White privilege assumes that a white person’s concern about voter fraud is equal to an African-American’s fear of voter suppression, because we’re equal, so our problems are probably equal as well. White privilege believes that it is unfair to punish some states for decades-old voter suppression, because that means they are not being treated equally now. Chief Justice John Roberts even used the chart above as evidence that we have already achieved racial equality in voting, and thus part of Voting Rights act is no longer necessary. We are equal, and we should treat people equally, his thinking goes. 

White privilege does not want to be racially prejudiced. It even works against obvious racial prejudice. The white men on the online forum described above each claimed to not be racially prejudiced, and I believe them. They were not seeking to discriminate against people of color. They were trying to treat them equally, and were indignant that they were receiving unequal treatment in return. Why do others dismiss their concerns while highlighting the concerns of an African-American man? Sure, he started the conversation, but this is a public forum so why can’t I air my concerns and objections in this place just as appropriately has he has shared his in asking the original question about the Voting Rights Act? 

White privilege wants to believe in a “post-racial America” where race no longer matters, where people of color receive the same opportunities as white people. White people, like everyone else, do not want to give up their own rights or privileges or power. They want people of color to catch up, and they want others to treat them with the fairness and dignity they deserve. So often we white people are blind to the fact that treating people equally can ignore the long and complicated history of inequality that has grown up inextricably with our nation itself. 

Activist and educator Tim Wise defines white privilege this way,

“White privilege refers to any advantage, opportunity, benefit, head start, or general protection from negative societal mistreatment, which persons deemed white will typically enjoy, but which others will generally not enjoy…. Operationally, white privilege is simply the flipside of discrimination against people of color. The concept is rooted in the common-sense observation that there can be no down without an up, so that if people of color are the targets of discrimination, in housing, employment, the justice system, or elsewhere, then whites, by definition, are being elevated above those persons of color.” 

Most of the time, we white people ignore our white privilege. We don’t recognize it. We look at our lives as normal, and expect that others, equal to us, also have equally “normal” lives. When we do recognize inequality, we do not want to give up our normalcy. How would that help anyway? We just want others to catch up. We dream of the day, not far off, when we can all be equal, just like me.