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What is White Privilege?
What is White Privilege?
You know when you're walking in a store and an employee from the store is always a few feet from you, not offering you any help, but watching you closely to make sure you don't steal?
You know how when you are planning a trip to another country, you always look up how White folks are treated there?
You know that feeling when you're excited about a new friendship, but still a little worried that they're only friends with you so they have a White friend?
You know the talk your parents had with you about how to avoid being killed when confronted by police?
Chances are, you don't know. And this is White privilege.
Sometimes the word "privilege" is confusing because people assume it is about having special rights or advantages handed to you. This is one part of privilege. In the United States, as in much of the world, White people have systemic power over folks of the global majority. This systemic power is called White supremacy and it is what empowers racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, poverty, and many of the other structures that oppress and harm folks of the global majority, especially Black and Indigenous people.
The other part of privilege, though, is all the unfair things you get to avoid. These things are things we might expect to be normal for everyone because they simply seem like the decent, humane way to treat others. We expect them to be normal because we live in a culture where we, as White folks, are considered "normal." White privilege does not mean you haven't had hardship in your life, it just means your skin color has not been the cause of your hardship.
So let's break down the definition of White privilege.
Do the Work! Reflect on Your Privileged and Unprivileged Identity
Do the Work! Reflect on Your Privileged and Unprivileged Identity
In a journal or in conversation with another White person doing this work:
List all your identities. This might include: race, gender, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, language, ability, age, education level, job.
Which of your identities give you privilege? In other words, which of these identities are part of the dominant group/culture.
Can you think of a time when this privilege has helped you?
Have you been aware of this privilege?
Which of your identities are marginalized (do not benefit from privilege)?
Can you think of a time when this identity has held you back or put you in an uncomfortable position?
How did that feel?
Unpacking White Privilege
Unpacking White Privilege
In her 1988 article, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," Peggy McIntosh lists a number of different privileges afforded to her as a White person, despite being a woman (and therefore oppressed by the dominant male culture). This is how the concept of "unpacking your privilege" was coined. Unpacking your privilege means understanding the way you move in the world because your identity affords you a largely positive treatment in the world. It also means coming to understand the way, what you consider "normal" and "right" may not be reflected in the experiences of marginalized people (people with less privilege) than you. While this must be done with all of our privileged identities, our focus will be on unpacking your White privilege.
Illustrations by Alex Petrowsky
Unpacking your privilege has a few different steps, but is a constant process:
Acknowledge your positionality.
Recognize and name the privileges you experience in your life that many others do not.
Differentiate between common decency and unearned power.
Leverage your privilege to redistribute resources, opportunities, decency, and justice, and to dismantle White supremacy.
Throughout all of these steps, you must constantly be processing your feelings of grief and loss, which may appear as many different emotions. Cheryl E. Matias has termed this "White emotionality" and Robin DiAngelo refers to it as "White Fragility."
This post will focus on the first three steps: acknowledging positionality, recognizing privileges, and differentiating common decency from unearned power. The activities below will help you break down the work of these three steps.
Step 1: Acknowledging Positionality
Step 1: Acknowledging Positionality
Positionality is the social and political context that creates your identity. In other words, because we live in a society built on racism and White supremacy, White people possess privilege as part of their racial identity. Your positionality in a privileged identity colors your overall perspective on how the world works and creates biases about marginalized people. Therefore, it is incredibly important to own this position in order to be able to reflect on it.
Do the Work! Acknowledge Your Positionality
Do the Work! Acknowledge Your Positionality
You can complete this work in a journal, in your mind, or with another White person doing this work:
Say it to yourself:
I benefit from White privilege. Write it down: I benefit from White privilege. Tell it to a White friend or family member: I benefit from White privilege.
Remind yourself:
Does it mean you didn't earn everything in your life? Not necessarily, but it is possible that you had an easier time getting those things than others. It doesn't negate your hard work, but it might have mitigated the challenge a bit. Let yourself be disappointed, and write about this disappointment or discuss it with a White companion.
Let yourself feel uncomfortable. Write or talk about that discomfort. Then remind yourself that those feelings are the very demonstration that you possess privilege: if you didn't benefit from privilege, this wouldn't be such an upsetting realization.
Step 2: Recognizing Privileges
Step 2: Recognizing Privileges
As Tiffany Jewell writes in her book This Book Is Anti-Racist, "Your privilege is something you don't often think about. It's often invisible to you until you take a moment to gain some insight and awareness into your whole self." This may sound like a lot, but the visual of writing a list of privileges makes this concept real. You can start with Peggy McIntosh's list below. Then, since she created this list in 1988, add your own items to the list. Where do you see that you benefit from systems and attitudes of White supremacy and racism?
Peggy McIntosh's List of White Privileges
Peggy McIntosh's List of White Privileges
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
Do the Work! Recognize and Name Your Privileges
Do the Work! Recognize and Name Your Privileges
In a journal or in conversation with another White person doing this work:
Go through the list above and count how many of these apply to you.
For those that don’t apply to you, why don’t they apply?
Is it about something personal to you?
Is it because another identity you possess is systemically oppressed by this same construct?
What is your initial reaction to this list?
Is there anything that surprises you, raises questions for you, or that you find problematic?
Which privileges are impacted by other identities we possess?
What privileges are not named here that we should add to this list? (take a few moments to write down)
In your specific workplace
In discussions about race
On social media
In your family/friend groups
In politics and civic participation
Step 3: Differentiating Common Decency and Unearned Power
Step 3: Differentiating Common Decency and Unearned Power
In her article about White privilege, Peggy McIntosh writes, “I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power[. C]onferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.” This is why I want to differentiate between two kinds of privileges: common decency and unearned power.
Common decency is the opportunities, access, kindness, justice, and trust offered to the privileged group that should apply to all humans.
Unearned power is the imbalances of power and dominance in favor of the privileged group that allow and cause the privileged group to dehumanize and oppress the marginalized group.
Do the Work! Differentiating Common Decency and Unearned Power
Do the Work! Differentiating Common Decency and Unearned Power
In a journal or in conversation with another White person doing this work, look back at your list of privileges and ask yourself:
Which privileges in my list equate to common decency that should be afforded to others?
Which privileges represent unearned power, damaging both the powerful and the oppressed that should be dismantled or destroyed?
Unpacking Your Privilege is Cyclical
Unpacking Your Privilege is Cyclical
Unpacking privilege is important work, but it is not just work that can be done once and then you are ready to dismantle it. In order to dismantle privilege and maintain an anti-racist lifestyle, you must make a practice of unpacking your privilege. Make it a habit to notice when privilege reveals itself in your daily life. Pay attention to your privilege to notice whether it is common decency or unearned power. Make a note to yourself of which privileges you want to redistribute and which you want to dismantle.
In upcoming posts, I will cover how to continue this cycle by processing emotions while unpacking privilege and making a plan of action for redistribution and disruption.
Do the Work! Develop a Practice of Unpacking Privilege
Do the Work! Develop a Practice of Unpacking Privilege
After you have begun to unpack your privilege using the activities above, try making it a practice over the next week to begin to develop lifelong habits.
Pay attention to where you see your privilege in the next week. Keep a log of moments when you benefit from privilege. As you log them:
Track which privileges qualify as common decency and which fall under unearned power.
You might start a list of privileges to redistribute and privileges to dismantle/disrupt.
Note feelings, thoughts, and responses that accompany these experiences.
Which feelings seem helpful and which seem to stifle your progress?
Additional Resources for the Week
Additional Resources for the Week
The following are good supplements to the work you did above, if you are looking to dig deeper into this topic.
"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," by Peggy McIntosh
This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell (It's a YA book, but also a powerful, straightforward breakdown of identity and privilege)
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Interested in Doing More of This Work?
Interested in Doing More of This Work?
The activities and materials on this page were created for the Anti-Racism Every Day White Allyship Discussion Group and were completed together in a virtual discussion. All are welcome to join us to continue this work and benefit from the power of collective reflection and discussion.
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