What is White Privilege?
“White Privilege is the other side of racism. Unless we name it, we are in danger of wallowing in guilt or moral outrage with no idea of how to move beyond them. It is often easier to deplore racism and its effects than to take responsibility for the privileges some of us receive as a result of it… once we understand how white privilege operates, we can begin addressing it on an individual and institutional basis.” ~Paula Rothenberg
“Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them.” ~Peggy McIntosh
Examples of Privilege
Being able to…
- assume that most of the people you or your children study in history classes and textbooks will be of the same race, gender, or sexual orientation as you are
- assume that your failures will not be attributed to your race, or your gender
- assume that if you work hard and follow the rules, you will get what you deserve
- success without other people being surprised; and without being held to a higher standard
- go out in public without fear of being harassed or constantly worried about physical safety
- not have to think about your race, or your gender, or your sexual orientation, or disabilities, on a daily basis...
To learn more about privilege, we recommend:
- Privilege, Power and Difference, by Allan Johnson
- Privilege: A Reader, edited by Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber
- White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, by Paul Rothenberg
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Wikipedia: White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a conceptual framework, derived from critical race theory, that is commonly used to help explain certain inequalities associated with race or ethnicity. The term connotes both obvious and less obvious unspoken advantages that white individuals may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; greater presumed social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal. It can be compared and/or combined with the concept of male privilege.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. https://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diver...-privilege.pdf
White privilege checklist
This list is based on Peggy McIntosh’s article on white privilege. http://crc-global.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/white-privilege.pdf
This all started when Europeans started colonizing the world. They would conquer nations and where they could they would kill (genocide) majority of the Natives (Americas, Australia, many Islands, etc) and enslave the rest. Where they couldn't, they would colonize them and oppress them. When occupying such nations, they would boast about their ethno-superiority and give some of the natives better treatment for having more fair skin then those of darker skin. In the centuries they colonized and occupied most of the world, they left an impression on the majority of white superiority and non-white inferiority complex. So the majority of the non-whites, especially Asians suffer from inferiority complex while the whites suffer from the superiority complex, thinking they deserve all this and that. And then they have also set up a system where the white privilege exists, where whites get hired more, treated better, promoted more, harassed less and so forth. We live in a white privilege world thanks to Britain and European colonization.
The attached articles, two of which are available on the links above, shed more light on this.