White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people in some societies, relative to non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.
In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States, academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh described the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. 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.
Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a substitute for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality.Hartigan, Odd Tribes (2005), pp. 1–2. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a substitute but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose alternative definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups.
Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the recent opposition from right-wing critics since approximately 2014. The academic concept has been described as essentialist.
Definition White privilege is a collection of social advantages that are afforded to white people regardless of their socioeconomic class
in societies marked by racial disparities.
According to the American Anthropological Association, the general public has been conditioned to view different human 'races' as true separate divisions of the human species, contrary to genetic evidence which clearly shows that all human 'races' are closely genetically related. The mistaken belief that race is real has led to the assignment of some groups (such as Black people) as inferior, while permitting unfair access to privilege, power, and wealth for others (such as White people).
White privilege studies seek to explain how racism gives advantages to white people. As such, most definitions and discussions of the concept use as a starting point McIntosh's metaphor of the "invisible backpack" that white people unconsciously "wear" in a society where racism is prevalent.Neville, H., Worthington, R., Spanierman, L. (2001). Race, Power, and Multicultural Counseling Psychology: Understanding White Privilege and Color Blind Racial Attitudes. In Ponterotto, J., Casas, M, Suzuki, L, and Alexander, C. (Eds) Handbook of Multicultural Counseling, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
History European colonialism
European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial in the foundation and development of white privilege. Academics, such as Charles V. Hamilton, have explored how European colonialism and slavery in the early modern period, including the transatlantic slave trade and Europe's colonization of the Americas, began a centuries-long progression of white privilege and non-white subjugation. Sociologist Bob Blauner has proposed that this era of European colonialism and slavery was the height, or most extreme version, of white privilege in recorded history.
William Miller Macmillan suggests that the Great Trek was an attempt to preserve the racial privilege of White South Africans. Anti-slavery policies were seen as a threat by the Dutch-speaking settlers, who were afraid of losing their African and Asian slaves and their superior status as people of European descent. Contemporary news reports made similar observations.
Early 20th-century
An address on Social Equities, from a 1910 National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States publication, demonstrates some of the earliest terminology developing in the concept of white skin privilege: What infinite cruelties and injustices have been practiced by men who believed that to have a white skin constituted special privilege and who reckoned along with the divine rights of kings the divine rights of the white! We are all glad to take up the white man's burden if that burden carries with it the privilege of asserting the white man's superiority, of exploiting the man of lesser breed, and making him know and keep his place.
In his 1935 Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of a "psychological wage" for white laborers. He wrote that this special status divided the labor movement by leading low-wage white workers to feel superior to low-wage black workers. Du Bois identified white supremacy as a global phenomenon affecting the social conditions across the world through colonialism. For instance, Du Bois wrote: It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.Du Bois, W. E. B., Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1995 reissue of 1935 original), pp. 700–701. .
In a 1942 edition of Modern Review magazine, Ramananda Chatterjee accused Winston Churchill of hypocritical policy positions, in his support, as Chatterjee viewed it, of racial equality in the UK and US but not in British India; "Mr Churchill can support white privilege and monopoly in India whilst opposing privilege and monopoly on both sides of the Atlantic." In 1943, during World War II, sociologist Alfred McClung Lee's Race Riot, Detroit 1943 addressed the "Nazi-like guarantee of white privilege" in American society: White Americans might well ask themselves: Why do whites need so many special advantages in their competition with Negroes? Similar tactics for the elimination of Jewish competition in Nazi Germany brought the shocked condemnation of the civilized world.
Late 20th-century
The concept of white privilege came to be used within radical circles for self-criticism by anti-racist whites. Independent School, Winter90, Vol. 49 Issue 2, p31, 5pMcIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies. Wellesley: Center for Research on Women, 1988. Print.
In the 1960s, Theodore W. Allen urged White Americans to renounce their "white skin privileges".Allen, Theodore W., "A Call . . . John Brown Memorial Pilgrimage . . . December 4, 1965," John Brown Commemoration Committee, 1965 and Jeffrey B. Perry, "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy," "Cultural Logic" 2010. In the same era, the Students for a Democratic Society called "for an all-out fight against 'white skin privileges'".See Ignatin (Ignatiev), Noel, and Ted (Theodore W.) Allen, "'White Blindspot' and 'Can White Workers Radicals Be Radicalized?'" (Detroit: The Radical Education Project and New York: NYC Revolutionary Youth Movement, 1969); Thomas R. Brooks, "The New Left is Showing Its Age", The New York Times, June 15, 1969, p. 20; and Perry, "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen. . . "
Allen extended his analysis of white privilege to the colonial period.Allen, Theodore W., Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race (Hoboken: Hoboken Education Project, 1975), republished in 2006 with an "Introduction" by Jeffrey B. Perry at Center for the Study of Working Class Life, SUNY, Stony Brook.Allen, Theodore W., The Invention of the White Race, Vol. I: Racial Oppression and Social Control (New York: Verso, 1994, 2012, ) and Vol. II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (New York: Verso, 1997, 2012, ).Allen, Theodore W., "Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race", Part 1 , #8, Cultural Logic, I, No. 2 (Spring 1998), and Jeffrey B. Perry, "The Developing Conjuncture and Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy" . Cultural Logic. July 2010, pp. 8, 80–89. Allen maintained several points: namely that the concept of a "white race" was invented as an element of social control. Central to this process was the conferring of privileges to White working people that were against the interests of Black people and other minorities. Allen also argues that this privilege is the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the US.Perry, Jeffrey B., "The Developing Conjuncture and Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy," "Cultural Logic,'" July 2010, pp. 10–11, 34.
In the 1980s, Peggy McIntosh developed one of the earliest theoretical concepts of white privilege. Her early work is still routinely cited as a key influence by later generations of academics and journalists.
In the same time period, the American feminist movement was criticized for exhibiting "class privilege" and "white privilege".Bennett, Jacob (May 2012), "White Privilege: A History of the Concept", Master's Thesis at Georgia State University. In later years, the theory of intersectionality also gained prominence.