Understanding Racism. Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl
address the way that privilege can set up those who have it for a fall … we’ll be creating more addicts, more people who turn to self-injury, suicide, eating disorders, or other forms of self-negation, all because they failed to live up to some idealized type that they’d been told was theirs to achieve.30
In this vein, White privilege is hurting Whites because they are given unreal and corrupted expectations of achievement and status. Thus, challenging White privilege is good not only for addressing racism but also for cultivating healthier environments for Whites.
By the Numbers
Fifty-six percent of Whites—compared to 73% of Asians, 69% of Blacks, and 61% of Hispanics—say that being White helps a little to a lot in a person's ability to get ahead in the United States.
White workers are more likely than Blacks and Latinos to have a good job, even when educational attainment is the same; 75% of Whites with a bachelor's degree or higher are likely to have a good job, compared to 68% of Blacks and 65% of Latinos with the same educational credentials.*
Between 2009 and 2015, 27% of White students admitted to Harvard were legacies, the children of faculty or staff or children of parents who have donated or plan to donate money to Harvard. The acceptance rate for all legacies was 34%, compared to Harvard's acceptance rate of 4.89%.
Sources: Arcidiacono, Kinsler, and Ransom (2019); Carnevale et al. (2019); Horowitz, Brown, and Cox (2019).
Evaluation
Methodological Benefits
White privilege is an analysis of racism that uses the perspective of Whites, which is a particularly powerful methodological approach. Whites have long been analyzing racism via studies on communities of color, so for Whites to look inward has provided novel insights. The overall method of these scholars is to be brutally honest about their personal lives and to invite people to see how transparency about White privilege can be liberating. This approach is engaging and can be particularly successful in getting Whites to think about White privilege in a manner that does not immediately put them on the defensive.
These scholars also tend to take a life-course perspective, thereby showing how White privilege operates from childhood through adulthood, from minor daily interactions to major life chances, and from personal family matters to professional lives. If the analysis had centered on only a certain part of life, there would have been many more opportunities to deny the all-encompassing nature of White privilege. Taking this holistic approach to analyzing White privilege from the perspective of a White person who has experienced it gives unique and powerful insights into the “other side of racism.”
Methodological Limitations
Amico, McIntosh, Rothenberg, and Wise all note that it is time for White people to take a look at themselves and how their lives have benefited from racism. Rothenberg says that her book Invisible Privilege “grows out of a deeply felt need to reflect in a more personal way on what it means to be a privileged white woman coming to terms with that privilege.”31 Wise realizes that, on some level, he had not been honest with himself concerning his relationship to race/racism: “My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn’t just race that was a social construct. So was I.”32 McIntosh notes that her self-reflection came about after her frustration “with men who would not recognize male privilege.” She continues, “I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life.”33 And throughout his book Exploring White Privilege, Amico uses personal vignettes that provide real-life examples that effectively expose White privilege in a personal manner. Although on some level this approach is effective by connecting with people through real-life personal examples, there’s no systematic analysis of data or clear way to analyze whether these reflections are honest, reliable, or generalizable. This method of analysis makes it difficult to replicate to evaluate its applicability. In addition, because most of the information is personal, it is just that—information relative to the individual who experienced it; however, this can be mitigated by providing contextualizing information. For example, sometimes the reflections are complemented by information on racist laws, racial statistics, or information from other sources that confirms these personal reflections. Amico in particular offers important macro-level data on White privilege, which is complemented by personal anecdotes, rather than the other way around.
Theoretical Benefits
White privilege fills a significant gap in the analysis of racism. Prior to this concept, the majority of theories on racism focused on the discrimination people of color received. White privilege successfully moves the focus of the problem to the perpetuation of Whiteness and how Whites, knowingly or unknowingly, participate in and benefit from racism. Moreover, White privilege does not reduce racism to a problem of individuals or a “few bad apples” but pushes Whites to see that racism is a society-wide problem. This theoretical approach of White privilege puts the responsibility squarely on all Whites to recognize that meritocracy is a myth and that ending racism requires White participation. Amico calls upon Whites to confront their “internalized sense of racial superiority,” because if Whites are not a part of the solution, they are a part of the problem.34
Another theoretical benefit is that these scholars analyze how White privilege varies in relation to other intersecting identities, such as class, gender, and religion, but is not negated by them. Wise comes from a relatively poor Jewish background but clearly argues that these other marginalized identities did not make him immune to receiving White privilege. For example, as a child, Wise angrily stood up to a teacher who told him to listen to a Christian group, and as he reflects on his audacity in confronting the teacher, he notes:
It was white privilege that made the difference, far more so than some inherent courage on my part … it was predicated on the privilege that allowed even a lower-income white kid like myself to feel certain enough about my rights so as to challenge those who would abuse them … it was equally about the way that even Jews, with our historically inconsistent and situationally contingent whiteness, can still access the powers of our skin in ways that make a difference.35
Wise recognizes that he was oppressed in relation to his class and religious status, but his Whiteness still prevailed in providing the confidence of knowing he could stand up to a teacher without the threat of significant consequences. Rothenberg addresses how being a woman and an Orthodox Jew created barriers for her, while simultaneously White privilege mitigated some of those barriers and provided unique opportunities in other ways.36 The intersectional approach that details oppression received in one area (class, gender, etc.) along with the simultaneous experience of White privilege counters the potential criticism that Whites who have other intersecting oppressed identities do not receive any White privilege.
Theoretical Limitations
The White privilege theory centers Whiteness in the discussions of how racism is perpetuated by Whites; this explanation is of theoretical import but can also run the risk of, ironically, putting Whites at the center of the conversation. Academia is largely a White enterprise, and knowledge that is validated historically has and continues to come largely through White producers. White privilege scholarship has been largely produced by White scholars, and therefore these White scholars become more validated to speak on racism because of the White privilege they have. Certainly, White privilege scholars recognize this conundrum; Tim Wise is known for addressing this issue during his talks when he notes that he gets large speaking engagements partially due to his White privilege. But White privilege theory needs to be careful not to reify the very problem that it aims to analyze and deconstruct.
Another drawback of White privilege theory is the conflation of macro-level systemic issues and micro-level individual experiences of privilege. For example, White privilege examples include the micro-level, individual experience of a White person who is not followed