White Privilege

By Jon Greenbereg
This article was originally published by Everyday Feminism. It has been edited for YES! Magazine. If you checked out the Jose Antonio Vargas documentary about White people, aptly titled White People, you’ll know that many White people struggle to discuss race (not that some of you needed a documentary to confirm this fact). Throw “White Privilege” into the discussion, and the awkwardness—and defensiveness—can multiply astronomically. What is White Privilege? The reality that a White person’s whiteness has come—and continues to come—with an array of benefits and advantages not shared by many people of color. It doesn’t mean that I, as a White person, don’t work hard (I do) or that I haven’t suffered (well, I have known struggle), but simply that I receive help, often unacknowledged assistance, because I am White.

Or, as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, I “believe [I am] White.” I’ve yet to get a DNA test, which led to a surprising result for a White supremacist who thought himself 100% White. Perhaps most indicative of the power and prevalence of White Privilege is that, though people of color have been fighting racism since its invention, those who are most associated with White Privilege education tend to be White people: Tim Wise, Robin DiAngelo, Paul Gorski, and, of course, Peggy McIntosh, author of the 1989 article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” And I understand why Peggy McIntosh’s “Knapsack” article continues to fill anti-racist syllabuses 26 years later. 

Her list of privileges makes the concept readable and digestible—heck, the success of Everyday Feminism is largely because of this listing format. For example: “I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group” or “If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.” Taken together, McIntosh’s list reveals a privilege she never explicitly states: the privilege to feel normal. But how odd is it that White people are the ones who so often disproportionately get the credit for educating about White privilege? 

Think of it this way: Because I have always had full use of my legs, I’d be the last person you’d turn to to learn about life in a wheelchair. In fact, navigating a tour of the state capital with a student in a wheelchair for 30 minutes taught me more about life in a wheelchair than my previous 30+ years had taught me. Yet, when it comes to White Privilege, White people somehow become the authority. While I have indeed learned important lessons from prominent White anti-racist educators (like the above ability-privilege analogy that I pulled from Tim Wise), here are lessons people of color have taught me that have changed my life—and they could change yours as well.

1. I Have The Privilege Of Having A Positive Relationship With The Police, Generally
Sure, the police who patrolled the affluent neighborhoods of my youth were an inconvenience to a few keggers, and I maintain that a traffic violation from the late 90s was unfair, but I grew up thinking of the police officers as a source of safety if I were ever in danger; I certainly never viewed them as the source of danger. In 1999, Amadou Diallo—and the 41 bullets that police officers in plainclothes discharged at this unarmed Black man with no criminal record—taught me that not all share this privilege. Diallo was for me what Michael Brown has been to some White people. Too many Black and brown people are not safe with the police. 

Not even if you are child, a lesson Tamir Rice and Dajerria Becton taught me. Not even if you are seeking medical help, a lesson Jonathan Ferrell taught me. Not even if you call the police for help with your mentally ill son, a lesson Paul Castaway’s mother taught me. Not even if your back is turned, a lesson Rekia Boyd and Walter Scott taught me. Not even if you tell the police you “can’t breathe,” a lesson Eric Garner taught me. 

Not even if you have your hands up, a lesson Antonio Zambrano-Montes and Michael Brown (according to sixteen witnesses) taught me. Not even if you are “safe” in custody, a lesson Tanisha Anderson, Natasha McKenna, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland taught me. Not even if you plead for help while in custody, a lesson Sarah Lee Circle Bear taught me. 

These are just a fraction of my teachers, those whose names reached the media, which too often neglect reporting police killings of women of color and Indigenous people. Of course, I might not have learned any of these lessons if not for the efforts of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement that is changing White perceptions of racist policing, not to mention our entire political landscape.

2. I Have The Privilege Of Being Favored By School Authorities
Kiera Wilmot and Ahmed Mohamed, both of whom were arrested for bringing science projects to school while Black or brown, helped teach me this lesson. Recently, one Black 12-year-old was suspended for intimidating a White girl through his staring—staring that took place during a staring contest. Huh? Studies confirm such mistreatment of Black and brown students. In one, White students who reported that they committed 40 crimes in a year were “as likely to be imprisoned as black and Hispanic students who reported committing just five offenses.” 

In my hometown of Seattle, Black middle school students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as White students, a reality that has attracted an investigation by the federal government. One federal study found similar disparities start as early has preschool. Preschool. As a parent of a White 4-year-old, I can’t fathom how such heavy-handed practices would ever help my child (who recently smacked my face because he didn’t want me to leave his room at bedtime). But because we’re White, I’m unlikely to ever receive the call from school officials that Tunette Powell recounts in her article, “My son has been suspended five times. He’s 3.”  READ MORE...