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.
