White Privilege: White Supremacy’s Favorite Euphemism
If you’re reasonably “woke” and have committed to exploring our society’s important racial issues, it’s probably safe to assume you’re familiar with the concept of “white privilege.”
White privilege is the idea that white people enjoy a particular set of benefits, simply by virtue of their whiteness (despite the harmful costs). The concept of true white privilege is perhaps one of the most difficult notions to explain to white people, particularly those who have never before been confronted with it.
Breaking the news to a white person that they are inherently favored by society isn’t easy. Informing a white person that they experience fewer obstacles in life and, importantly, that they have achieved their accomplishments not solely due to their own hard work and determination, but also, to a degree, because of their whiteness, is not for the faint of heart.
More often than not, someone who has never been faced with the idea of white privilege becomes upset and defensive when the concept is presented to them.
Indeed, consideration of the immediate prioritization of white feelings and fragility is an important aspect of any such discussion.
A holistic and accurate understanding of so-called white privilege and the white supremacy that under-girds it, however, must include an explanation of why “privilege” isn’t the proper term for the phenomenon. White supremacy is.
If we’re actually honest and take a close examination of what it means, realistically, to be white in America, then couple that examination of with examples of other privileges, we must come to the conclusion that so-called white privilege is not a privilege at all—it’s a manifestation of white supremacy, a flawed theoretical framework that proffers and enforces propositions of value, fact, and policy that are foundationally exploitative, narcissistic, and inherently unsustainable.
To the extent that I use the term white privilege in common parlance, I do so mostly for ease of communication. But it is important that we maintain a number of qualifications to the term.
The term privilege denotes a sense of legitimacy. After all, we can agree that a privilege is usually something we all strive to achieve and maintain. Privilege is good.
White privilege, on the other hand, is evil.
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, site of the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally.
To speak of white privilege as a thing is to, in fact, affirm a white supremacist construction of society. What people refer to as white privilege is the idea that white people are deemed superiorly human and that they order society in such a way as to protect that sanctity of that superiority at any expense. Does this sound like any other “privilege” you’ve ever heard of?
Ignorance, toxic patronizing liberalism, bigotry, entitlement, and cultural hegemony are not privileges—they are sociopathic. To characterize social benefits paid for by the exploitation of black and brown bodies, particularly those indigenous to this land and those captured and brought here as slaves, as privilege is disgusting and, at best, grossly negligent.
White people do not benefit from some privilege. They suffer from the numbing and anesthetizing effects of white supremacy. The short-term benefits of white supremacy might seem positive, but I assure you, the long-term repercussions will prove quite serious. But perhaps that’s a topic for another piece.
Understandably, the term “white supremacy” usually conjures images of Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and cross burnings.
Try to resist that automatic association.
Allowing the term to instantly bring up those images makes it easy to disassociate from it. The term, white supremacy, like “racist” or “racism,” is a fairly simple concept, despite how difficult it can be to acknowledge, accept, and take accountability for.
I need to make something abundantly clear: white supremacy, like most harmful social constructs, exists on a spectrum. The Beverly Hills middle school English teacher who, intentionally or otherwise, does not include literature by black authors in her curriculum, is operating within the same fundamental system of beliefs, the same structure, as the Mississippi Klansman: whiteness as supreme, which by definition does not acknowledge blackness, which necessarily degrades it.
White supremacy does not require overt or malice or ill-will to operate successfully.
The white liberal yuppie gentrifying an “up-and-coming” Philadelphia neighborhood; who regularly patronizes black businesses; who engages with black kids as they walk home from school; but who doesn’t understand and acknowledge that his relocation to that neighborhood is contributing to the inevitable displacement of those same black people with and by people who look like him, is operating upon the same basic foundation of white supremacy.
He’s a good person. The black people who encounter him really like him. But he is a white man living in and being supported by a world where white people are supreme, at the expense of everyone else. His interactions with black people are 100% by choice and will ultimately benefit him and people who look like him, at black people’s expense.
White supremacy is the force that insulates and supports the white liberal yuppie, not some would-be privilege.
White allies and antiracists must fully acknowledge and appreciate that the “benefits” they’re receiving by virtue of their whiteness are necessarily accompanied by some degree of harm (e.g., economic, physical, emotional, or otherwise) against black and brown people.
Antiracist efforts that overlook the seriousness of these harms will invariably produce tepid, ineffective results, as white supremacy cannot be dismantled unless its wide breadth and deep entrenchment are completely acknowledged.
