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Revision as of 19:50, 6 August 2005 by Kendallgclark (talk | contribs) (adding balance to the Sailer argument)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)White privilege, or White Skin Privilege, is used as a term of analysis -- employed by, among others, historians, legal scholars, philosophers, opponents of the Eugenics Movement and sociologists of racism -- to denote a particular kind of alleged social relation, one which typically involves a right, advantage, exemption or immunity granted to or enjoyed by white persons beyond the common advantage of nonwhites. In the view of those using the term, it is the primary benefit of racism expressed as preferential treatment within a society. As racism is usually understood to be punitive towards people of color, white privilege is claimed to be the pattern of social benefits accruing to members of the socially privileged and oppressing group, at the expense of members of the socially disprivileged and oppressed group.
It explains such phenomena as white boxer, Gerry Cooney, receiving an very large amount of money for his 1982 fight with African American Larry Holmes, even though he was an untested contender. Examples from popular music include Elvis Presley, credited with popularizing "black music" with white audiences, as well as Eminem's popularity as a rap singer. It is also put forward by scholars as an explanation for why social groups have used racism as a form of social control and oppression: namely, to benefit themselves at the expense of others. It is also used by some historians to explain the historical trajectory from exclusion to acceptance of Irish and Jewish Americans.
Parallels are often drawn between white privilege, male privilege and heterosexual privilege. Advocates of white privilege theory may be supportive of black nationalism, reparations and other forms of ethnic nationalism and identity politics. However, some advocates of the white privilege theory make the claim that white privilege is the only significant form of oppression in society and, in fact, homophobia, sexism, labor, homelessness, and other issues are all but irrelevant because white gays and lesbians, white women, the white working class, white homeless people etc. all allegedly have a built-in advantage of "whiteness" and thus cannot truly be considered members of any oppressed group. At the most extreme, this view manifests itself in calls to "abolish the white race."
Critics of the concept of white privilege from the political left sometimes point out that focusing white privilege undermines or ignores the class and economic nature of racism (i.e., that racism ultimately hurts every person, including whites), and that it runs the risk of branding all white people regardless of economic stature (including, presumably, working-class whites) or social or cultural history as "beneficiaries" of racism. Other critics claim not only that there is no such social relation as described by white privilege, but the very idea itself is nonsensical or absurd. The existence of a white under class is often cited as proof that there are no benefits necessarily accruing to white people as such.
Proponents of this concept maintain that white people are unaware of how their racial privilege operates on a daily basis. Thus they may consider themselves anti-racist but are not pro-actively conscious of what proponents of the concept claim are their own unfair advantages. Because it has a tendency to be invisible to the very people that profit from it, many argue that white privilege is a particularly insidious (and, to those who benefit from it, effective) form of social control to dismantle.
Conservative commentator Steve Sailer argues that, while white privilege may be real, "t's not 'unearned.' It was earned for you by the hard work and self-discipline of your ancestors and relatives." A common retort, from the liberal and left parts of the political spectrum, is to point out, first, that more relevant than this "hard work and self-discipline" is the 300 year history of slavery, oppression, exclusion, prejudice, and apartheid in North America. And, second, the critical question white privilege analysis seeks to ask isn't whether it is earned or unearned, but rather it's just or unjust. The benefits of colonialism for European powers during the 19th and first half of the 20th centures were certainly earned by the determination and effort of the British, French, German, Belgian and other peoples. But those benefits were just as clearly earned *unjustly*.
Whiteness studies is an emerging field of academic inquiry that emerges from the desire to address white privilege and to understand and dismantle it.
References
- WhitePrivilege.com, an anti-racism resource
- Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control (Verso, 1994)
- Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White (Routledge, 1996)
- Lipsitz, George The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Temple University Press, 1998)
- Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Verso, 1999)
- Rothenberg, Paula S., ed. White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (Worth, 2004)
- Williams, Linda Faye. Constraint Of Race: Legacies Of White Skin Privilege In America (Penn State, 2004)
- Wise, Tim. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull, 2005)