I come across many people almost every day who all show skepticism of what is known as “white privilege.” There are certain ideas that escape most white people. On the most basic line, most white people are not “individually” responsible for the actions of their parents, or forefathers. But we can’t ignore what our forefathers did. That is not to say that we must be punished for what we did not do. But we do owe those whose ancestors our ancestors ripped off. We do need to make sure that we do not continue the mistakes of our ancestors. We did not institute slavery. But we don’t want to be responsible for the mistakes our ancestors have made. We are not those people and we are not the ass holes who came up with those rotten ideas.
So we can take responsibility for what our white ancestors did to those black ancestors. Not because we are guilty of anything, but we have benefited from the position society gave us. We did not ask for it, but we have it and we benefited from it. So here is an article explaining white privilege:
-SJ Otto
From Our Human Family:
I had a conversation with a person the other day who told me the term white privilege made him think about sin. “It’s kind of a Calvinist idea,” he said. “It’s something you’re born with, and you can’t really get rid of, and you’re supposed to spend all this time repenting for it.”
A few days later, I saw a column by David Brooks that made almost the same point. Lamenting the five “epic crises” upon our current culture: the other four of which were quite vast—COVID-19, racism against African Americans, the public’s rejection of Republicans, and an economic depression — Brooks also included “Social Justice,” (his capitalization) in the list, which he called a “quasi-religion.” There it was again. This characterization of what is largely a social movement against violence, and particularly violence targeted at Black people, as instead a fundamentalist religion, bent on creating zealots who fervently root out illusory “sins” among the flock.
I thought back to some of the less skillful diversity trainings I’ve attended over the years, in which participants are asked to verbally “acknowledge” or “admit” to “having” white privilege. They couldn’t see it; they didn’t ask for it; they didn’t want it; and yet, somehow, they were supposed to own it.
And if white privilege is something you “have” — well, then, it’s part of you. It indicates something about your character. When white privilege is framed this way, it sounds like an aspect of the self, like sexuality. It’s not a thing we can see, or objectify, but it’s something that permeates us and is expressed in our behavior. It can be lauded or labeled or judged or celebrated.
There’s something in the grammar of how the concept of white privilege is introduced and discussed, that is, that virtually guarantees the actual meaning of the term will be misunderstood and its purpose as an idea obscured.
Often, white privilege is introduced in relation to the history of white racism and violence against Black communities. When white people who may never have heard the term before, and who are trying at the same time to metabolize horrifying historical data about racial violence, the enslavement of Black people, and oppression — information that is largely suppressed from school curriculums, media representation, and everyday conversation — and then are asked to “admit” their “privilege,” they’re likely to protest, or emotionally freeze up, or respond with shame and rage.
And if that shame and rage is then received as more evidence the person does, indeed, “have it,” then they’re trapped in what feels like circular reasoning, with punishment and humiliation as the end goal. It’s this perception of social justice practitioners as intent on shaming and exhorting white people to change that I think has fed this false narrative that white privilege is akin to a modern-day sin.
In actuality, there is virtually nothing about the concept of white privilege that pertains to individuals — their morals, their characters, their personalities, their feelings.
The reason white privilege is nothing like sin, is because sin is based on behavior. It’s something you can acknowledge, repent of, and change. The point of sin is to inspire the sinner to emulate the Divine, and in doing so, to treat others with the mercy, compassion, love, and generosity of the Divine. The presence of sin is to inspire the individual to change the way they act in the world.
There is no atonement for white privilege, because white privilege isn’t an aspect of the individual self. And that’s part of why — at first — it’s so difficult to understand. The dominant culture addresses all of us as individuals. We view advertisements, telling us how to be better people by buying certain products. We read self-help books, telling us how to be better people by changing our behavior. We get report cards in school, telling us how to be better students. Then we get evaluations at our jobs, telling us how to be better workers by learning new skills and working late. The dominant culture reinforces the idea that if we work hard, we will succeed, and if we fail — well, then, we need to work harder, smarter, to keep up.
Americans are not taught to “see” structures. We are taught to see everyone as individuals, and that the best way to address others is as if we are all equals. In fact, we are taught that it is borderline rude to talk about people as members of groups, because it flattens and obscures what is special and unique about each person.
The term white privilege flies in the face of all this training in individualism. It’s a kind of shorthand. Like its cousin, class privilege, it indicates something about the way groups of people are placed in relation to one another in the social order. The “white” in white privilege is not meant to refer to individual people, each who happens to be white. Instead, the “white” in white privilege refers to the ways race, as a category, is a carrier of social codes, and is saturated with meaning and power.
The racial phenotype — that is, the series of physical characteristics, such as skeletal structure, height, hair texture, eye color, and skin tone — that is coded as “white” in a social order that is white supremacist is granted certain structural privileges, such as access to resources, economic capital, freedom of movement, and protection by the law, regardless of their individual merit or hard work. This is not to say that white people, per se, cannot have experiences of economic hardship, personal suffering at the hands of other people, such as interpersonal violence, trauma, and abuse, mental health conditions, or other experiences that make it difficult to survive. White privilege is about social location in a hierarchy, not individual history. It is based upon a broad, historical narrative about what “whiteness” means, as a way of being and a system of organizing culture.
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