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Lately, I’ve witnessed a great deal of hand-wringing among white liberals over the issue of privilege. Of course, the most obvious point of contention among the folks on the left is how to convince their non-liberal white friends that straight white people possess any number of privileges in virtue of their “straightness” and their “whiteness.” Such a rhetorical exercise too often proves futile, however.
“What do you mean I’m privileged? I know a lot of minorities who have a lot more than I do.”
“Privilege? My parents worked four jobs each, just so we could have an orange in our Christmas stocking. Don’t talk to me about privilege.”
“I don’t accept the premise of privilege. We live in a democracy, where everyone has the same opportunities I do.”
“Talking about privilege only divides the country. We need to move on.”
A few thoughts occur to me:
• Although we’re used to talking about it in this way, “privilege,” in this sense, doesn’t necessarily equal “rich.”
• Saying that privilege doesn’t exist because everyone has the same opportunities is like running in a 100-meter dash where everyone else but you is wearing a lead vest; you may be running the same distance, but it’s obviously not the same race for everyone else.
• Talking about “moving on” from conversations about privilege is itself a privilege. It’s like being in a car accident where everybody but you is severely injured, and then trying to get your fellow passengers to quit whining and get over it because you did.
Progressives should bear in mind that any change in perspective on the part of those who don’t feel privileged will not come easily, that if we could just find the perfect argument …
Saying that privilege doesn’t exist because everyone has the same opportunities is like running in a 100-meter dash where everyone else but you is wearing a lead vest.
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But another, perhaps more personal issue white liberals deal with is guilt over their own privilege. They know that the engines of their socio-economic futures came with turbochargers as standard equipment; for everyone else, it’s a costly upgrade. Consequently, white liberals wonder what to do about the fact that they come specially equipped to win the road rally our culture stages.
In order to begin to think about it, however, it’s important to point out that privilege is a set of benefits conferred on you without your consent. Nobody gets to ask to be born white or male. There’s no pre-natal menu where you get to choose your sexual orientation or gender identity. You don’t pick your parents, your eye color, your eventual height, or whether or not you have a cleft chin or fetching eyelashes. All these things are accidents of birth.
Consequently, feeling guilty for facets of your identity you were born with, though a fairly common response, is pointless. You can’t apologize your way out of being white, or male, or straight, or cisgender. If you are some or all those things, you’re stuck with them. So, quit feeling guilty about things over which you have no control.
Having said that, however, there are things you can control. You have the chance every morning to decide how you’re going to trade on those advantages you’ve been given. You can try to forget about them, try to fool yourself into thinking that they don’t grant you any benefits. But the thing is, if you can forget the constitutive aspects of your identity, you’re taking advantage of a privilege other people don’t possess. You can’t forget if you’re black or woman or Latinx or gay or transgender or disabled because of the simple fact that the world won’t let you. You are reminded regularly that your status is a negative impression of “normal.”
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Let me see if I can be clearer. Aristotle infamously believed that women were deformed men. Women cannot produce semen, which Aristotle believed carried a whole human being, a homunculus. A woman’s femaleness, therefore, was negatively defined against a man’s maleness by what she lacked. In other words, a man was the perfect expression of nature, the standard of full humanness by which all of humanity was measured. The hierarchy was established with the Western male at the top of the food chain.
Almost nobody would say that about women now, but we often act as though it were true. Women are the “weaker sex,” who need a protector and provider, so that they may be made “whole.” Where men are “rational,” women are “emotional,” lacking the executive function that sets men apart.
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A better question is, “Having concluded that I have these advantages, how will I use them to try to create a world in which everyone shares them with me?”
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We do the same thing with race, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability: We negatively define them against the standard of able white, heterosexual, cis-gender males, from which any deviation is unwittingly viewed as a defect. In other words, everyone else always has to be aware of that which they “lack,” having to exert extraordinary amounts of energy proving they can compensate for the deficit, make it a non-factor. They get no benefit of the doubt.
Black men, for example, have to “prove” that they’re not a threat on the street or in the store.
Women have to work “twice as hard” as any man to prove their competence on the job.
LGBTQ people have to “prove” that they’re not deviants, whose very presence is threatening to children or women in bathrooms.
Straight white guys get the benefit of the doubt. The assumptions always favor them. Generally, they have to “prove” that they are threatening and incompetent before they’re treated that way. They can walk through the day, for instance, without worrying whether people suspect they’re about to do harm or that they’re unable to do the job they’ve trained for. Most of the time, it never occurs to them to think anyone is suspicious of them for anything . . . unless they’re actually doing something suspicious.
That is privilege. It’s not a moral failure of the recipient to have been given these benefits. At present, it’s just the way our culture works.
So, the right question isn’t, “Should I feel guilty for being born this way?” A better question is, “Having concluded that I have these advantages, how will I use them to try to create a world in which everyone shares them with me?”
People of privilege need to begin to pursue a just world, challenging the assumptions about who’s benign and who’s competent. They need to leverage those advantages, both to provide access to those who don’t yet enjoy it, as well as to help confront the prejudices of race, gender identity and expression, ability, and sexual orientation that our culture takes for granted.
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Its nature, we identify with those that look like us, that is the beginning and the end of it. In China one would call the Chinese racist – in Japan you would call the Japanese racist – In Turkey you would call the Turkish racist as they are the majority, so in majority white populations you call the white people racist. I am sick of seeing how white people are portrayed, they are a majority, hence you don’t tip a society upside down for the minority. I wonder if we had a discussion on how Black people or Asian people… Read more »
Don’t feel guilty about your privilege…use that privilege to help make a difference, to change the world for the better.
Nobody wants white people to feel guilty about being white! It’s not about guilt at all, it’s about activism and helping people if other races who face discrimination get the equal treatment that they are entitled to. It’s not about making white people feel bad because we don’t care about that. What we care about is people recognizing that there aren’t unfair practices in our society and judicial system that we need to address and change, and it is the refusal to do so that we are calling out we when say white privilege.
Is it a privilege to be born innocent and not have a shroud of guilt hanging over your every second? A privilege to not have your achievements undermined by someone telling you that you had it easier than everyone else. To have a sense of identity? To extolling the virtues of the culture you are from. To be able to blame all of your failings on the system and not be accountable. To voice conservative opinions and not be a facist. Non white people have privileges too. Your notion of privilege only exists in the simplified American discourse of economic… Read more »
If you think that you have a “shroud of guilt” or that you have it worse off because people say you have it easier then you are blind to the very real problems and inequalities that people of other races are facing and that is the entire point of the conversation that you can’t see those inequalities! If you have a shroud of guilt then people of color have been given a shroud of SHAME, of suspicion, of discrimination. Do you know how many times people of color are dismissed for their achievements because white people cant believe that they… Read more »
How about voicing liberal, socialist, progressive opinions and not being called a libtard, or being laugh at, or being dismissed because conservatives believe that you have nothing to offer, or being mock by conservatives, or being told to move out of the country, or being mentally harassed and/or being physical threaten by conservatives?
I don’t know! Should you? There are different opinions on this subject. your opinion matters!
[Straight white guys get the benefit of the doubt. The assumptions always favor them. ] Sorry, but this is not correct. Not always. Especially not in any family court. In general, straight white men are often treated as second class citizens. Sometimes I get the feeling I should be ashamed to be born as a male, white and straight, despite I do not feel I did something wrong in my life. In many cases you are better of as a non-white person, playing with the race-card. As a woman you can argue to be oppressed by men, true or not.… Read more »
“Saying that privilege doesn’t exist because everyone has the same opportunities is like running in a 100 meter dash where everyone else but you is wearing a lead vest; you may be running the same distance, but it’s obviously not the same race for everyone else.” What the hell do you say to a poor white man? The entire concept of “privilege” basically tells them they are complete losers who cannot achieve anything despite the fact they are “gifted” with this enormous benefit. Do you realize that this entire premise throws 9 MILLION american men under the bus? There are… Read more »
“This is just as bad as your “some damn man” article. You make too many assumptions and rely on hueristics rather than any thoughtful analysis.” You never hear a homeless white man talk about his white, male, privilege do you? It makes me wonder if all those men eating a bullet ever considered how good they had it and wouldn’t actually shouldn’t it be telling that they majority of suicides are men. Probably because men have it easier, right? I remember a conversation within the black community maybe 20 years ago. Someone poled black people and found that the more… Read more »
Wonder why Derek isn’t replying …
What’s never brought into this is that MOST white men are not white collar executives. Drive down any road and look at the men who are working on those roads, drive into a factory parking lot at quitting time and you’ll see the average “white” guy.
Is this white guy privileged?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvoWBbYxdwc
I’ve always wondered if people in Shanghai talk about Asian privilege the way we talk about white privilege in our Western environment. The history of hegemony and domination among the respective societies are similar in many ways, at least when referencing privilege.
If a ginger goes to Shanghai……
“Almost nobody would say that about women now, but we often act as though it were true. Women are the “weaker sex,” who need a protector and provider, so that they may be made “whole.” Where men are “rational,” women are “emotional,” lacking the executive function that sets men apart.” Or we might say that women are disadvantaged so they need a strong man to take care of them. They have to be protected from the results of their choices becasue they’re only as capable as children in their decision making process. How would they know that a job in… Read more »
Yes! We are not ‘guilty’ of anything, just by the circumstances of our birth (I am a white, British male). But we can CHOSE to feel responsible, including an understanding and a sense of responsibility for the past. I am not guilty of the British Empire’s sins. But it’s foolish for me to be unaware of the fact that many people in the world may have feelings against my colour and my race because of a history that is not my ‘fault’. There’s an Irish saying that the problem of the Irish is that they never forget, but that the… Read more »
No!
You’re first going to have to prove your thesis on privilege before anyone buys it. You need to convert me to your religion. Thus far, I have seen no compelling reason to indulge minority entitlement.
Amen! When I got to the part about how “black men have to ‘prove’ they’re not a threat,” all I could think (after giving myself the stage direction to read it in the whiniest, most butthurt mental voice possible) was “bullshit; black men simply have to NOT LOOK AND ACT LIKE CRIMINALS”; you show me a black man in a polo shirt and khakis walking down the street, and a white man wearing 4X shorts held around his knees by a belt, a 3XT shirt with a stoned Kool-Aid man or other children’s mascot, and half a dozen gold chains… Read more »
Good article!