I’m a member of the school board and during a recent debate I used a word that angered members of the audience. The word was privilege. In particular I was referring to white privilege. What the anger made clear is that the word requires explaining.
Some still think privilege refers exclusively to material advantage. It’s a bit of a red herring. “I’m not better off,” someone said afterward. And that may be true. But that’s not the white privilege that’s most pervasive. It’s not primarily about having more things. More money. More clothes. More entertainments. Or better: better jobs, better homes, better cars. It’s about having something intangible. Something that makes all white people immediately better off than people of colour. Something we typically don’t even know we possess. And owing entirely to the colour of our skin.
At a collection of points in the now distant past our predecessors successfully established skin colour as a thing of importance. More importantly they established one skin colour, one race, as superior to all others. And that race, white, became a requirement for access. A passport to all the best freedoms. It became the basis of systems and processes and ways of relating to one another that continue to dominate to this day. There is comparative ease in being white. Shopping while white is easier. Driving while white. Applying for jobs while white. Walking down the street while white. Renting an apartment while white. Everything’s less challenging. That’s privilege, “a special right, advantage or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.”
But there’s nothing inherently superior about being white. There’s no good reason for colour providing advantage or advantaging white people in particular. The advantage is unearned. The inequity unwarranted. But it continues regardless. Our white predecessors succeeded in claiming superiority based purely on colour, arbitrary but effective, and we have been cashing in on that success ever since.
For white people who are reading this and still question my description of privilege try this. Think about the life you now have. The life you’re living right this moment. And now imagine yourself as a person of colour. Your life is different. Stop. Stay in the moment. Avoid explanations. Listen to your hesitation. How is life different? Are people looking at you differently? Are they looking at you at all? Making eye contact? How does it feel? What have you had to give up? Or how about this, does the mere suggestion of imagining yourself as a person of colour make you defensive? Dismissive? Angry?
It was the latter that greeted my use of the word at the school board meeting. Anger’s not inappropriate, it’s just misplaced. We can put the energy of that anger to use in understanding and accepting the reality of privilege and then changing it and its effect on people of colour. It’s on us.
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This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2016.
The problem with the “white privilege” argument is: one can’t stop being white.
The white privilege argument shames good people along with the bad guys.
No one should be ashamed or apologize for their race. Everyone should work to stop oppression.
If “changing it” implies creating artificial privileges (say hiring quotas, or law school spaces) then I would argue you can’t fight racism with race-based rule sets.
I seriously wish I was aboriginal though, so I could take advantage of constitutional privileges afforded that race.
If the word you are using doesn’t communicate the thing you want to communicate to the audience you are addressing you are wrong. Privilege means something to most people. If your meaning is different, you need to address that, and you need to do so without judging your audience.
As I read this, I wonder what kind of sheltered life would one have to live in order to condescend to an entire race in such a smug manner … in order to be so out of touch with the reality of the lives of those all around her.
I can only guess that the writer has lived her whole life in the echo chamber of academia. I fear for the current generation of student for whom this this person, as a school board member, might have some influence.
It’s just that, a theory. Impossible to verify empirically
Cindy Littlefair, many of the people you directed your original comments to ARE white and ARE privileged, including me. That is nothing to be angry about, that is a fact. A consequence of the systemic racism ingrained in our society that some of us work very hard to try to change. Much of the anger you encountered as a consequence was because you accused us of USING this privilege to try to deny some of the city’s most marginalized populations something positive. This is fundamentally untrue. It was never about one community taking something from another. YOU made it about that when you so smugly delivered your judgement to a group of people who did not deserve it.
I am a white male and I strongly agree with the author’s view on white privilege. I’d like to address some of the comments in this discussion board:
1. The author is not shaming white people. She is simply trying to illustrate that being white means that you have an “unearned” advantage over some other people whether that is job prospects, service at a restaurant, or your ability to travel freely. If you’re white, you should be aware of your privilege and use its influence to empower people who are fighting for racial equity. It starts with recognizing that others are struggling too.
2. The author is educated and is sharing her knowledge. Education does not shelter…it enlightens people. The very reason why she can recognize that there is a problem is because of her education. Belittling education is bigotry.
3. Her use of the term “white privilege” was not wrong simply because it’s not what the audience wanted to hear. Communication is not telling people what they want to hear, it’s about creating meaning from words to express opinions. If your opinion is that white people are not more privileged, then I suggest that you do some more research and educate yourself on why white privilege exists.
Moral: Use your white privilege to fight stigma, not to disregard its influence.
Discussing privilege, as used here, is not about apologizing or being ashamed of your race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, etc.
For me it is about accepting that some of us have an advantage simply by being born a certain way. By accepting that we have privilege, it allows us to look at the world and perhaps see how others who do not share our advantage might have difficulties in this world. Just the simple act of accepting my privilege completely changed the way I viewed other people and their circumstances. (I admit, I resisted it for years.) I am not ashamed of my whiteness or straightness, nor am I apologizing for it. I am just realizing that it can afford me advantages. That’s unfair. I don’t know if I can change that. But I hope that in acknowledging it and showing empathy to those who do not share certain privileges, together we might, just might, start to change the world.
My advice is to stop trying to win the argument. Stop arguing and start listening and accepting. When you are trying to win the argument, you are missing the point. If you are white, accept that you have an unearned privilege that others do not. Don’t get your hackles up. Do not defend it. Don’t come back with how tough your life is. Just accept it. Once you do, you may actually start to think differently.
Try it. Just accept. See what happens.
And, City Mouse – if you seriously believe that natives are advantaged in this country, you need to get out more.
Nice one, Cindy. Thanks for submitting that; it’s so important to open people’s eyes to this stuff, even though they’ll feel guilty and then get mad at you for making them feel guilty when that obviously was not your intent.
I think the big reason people have knee-jerk reactions to the pointing out of systemic privilege is that it goes against one of the biggest myths of capitalism: that it’s supposed to give equal opportunity to all. People in the “have” category like to believe that they got there purely through their own hard work or good sense, and not because of some historical, arbitrarily assigned advantages they never asked for. If my success in a capitalistic society rests largely on where, when, and to whom I was born, in what sense am I any better than a feudal lord using serfs to maintain his family’s wealth?
It feels bad to notice that we’ve made so little progress in terms of fairness of distribution, and even worse to think that it’s our own willful ignorance that has prevented that progress from happening. But bad feelings are temporary and can be assuaged every time we notice unfairness and try to do something about it.
So, I said at one point that the term privilege is a problem. Not the underlying concept by the way, the term itself. It’s a problem because it has a meaning in academic feminism, and a different meaning in general language. Now, if a term has dual meanings like that, you need to communicate to other people using their language, not the language of a very narrow and small group. An additional issue with feminist language in particular is that only a very small percentage of feminists even understand it fully (intersectionality is so much more nuanced than the way it is typically used in public discourse).
Here is the barrier associated with using the term privilege – in general language it means (and the meaning is very fuzzy) having good things, having things that most people don’t have. In feminist academia it is a much more specific term. It means the basket of things that you have as a result of what you are, instead of what you have done.
So, when you tell someone who has white skin, but who grew up without money, without prospects, without expectations, that that person has privilege, they think you are saying their life has been easy. That’s a hard thing to swallow.
By modifying language (again, not meaning) you are removing a barrier to communication that was created, largely as a result of differences in language between social classes.
Basically, those of you who are defending the use of the term privilege, you are actually showing class privilege. Please check it.
What colour are Asians ?
Good points, Traverse Davies.
I accept that I have a degree of class privilege.
So what is your suggested solution? What term can be used instead to address the sentiment that I think many of us here are agreeing on? I do not mean this is a snotty way at all – I sincerely want to know how we can get the idea across without using loaded terms, like privilege. Because that has to be sorted so people will listen rather than defend/critique…
HaliGal19: I didn’t say natives are advantaged. I said they have constitutional privileges. Do you deny they have constitutional privileges?
Mitchell Thompson: You can say “The author is not shaming white people”, but that doesn’t make it true. It is pretty clear that is the motivation. Guilt is the tactic.
Very well written Cindy, as always. Point taken I think, be mindful of others…couldn’t you just have said that, saved all this hassle over you ‘daring’ to bring colour into the conversation. Perhaps you’ve been inspired by the ‘Donald Trump’ school of publicity (I can just imagine you dying a little inside at the comparison to Trump and at the apparent insinuation (none was intended) that you did this for ‘publicity’).
That being said, as a white English speaking male who once dreamed of working in government, let’s just say I didn’t feel terribly privileged as that dream crashed and burned – but why did it crash and burn, well, in part because I didn’t make the effort to learn French – which I have to own. I can’t do anything about the fact that I wasn’t born Purple and absent a limb or two but neither can people who aren’t white change the basic facts of their existence. So yes, if all of us, regardless of our situation, could just be a little more mindful the world would be a better place. Agreed.
If only you’d let it go there, but no, you had to go into the anthropology and that’s where you lost me. Our culture has evolved over thousands of years and to simply ‘broad brush’ why and how people of European ancestry came to dominate the culture of North America shows a lack of respect for the history. You wrote “Our white predecessors succeeded in claiming superiority based purely on colour” Seriously Donald? So the fact that they were more curious, adventurous and willing to risk life and limb to see what was on the other side of the horizon meant basically nothing…it was all skin colour. Okey doke. I’m sure that the couple of billion folks living in Asia might disagree with the basic premise of ‘superiority’ as well. If we’re all being more mindful, lets do so while still respecting the fact that nobody just woke up one day and found themselves in charge.
“Privilege” is simply the latest in a long line of socio-political buzzwords. Think “Kulak” in 1920’s Ukraine or “cockroach” in Rwanda, circa 1994. Important only to those who feel the need to categorize individuals in the taxonomy of cultural marxism. It matters not a bit if you believe it exists, no more than if you believe in essential oils, the healing power of crystals, banning the designated hitter or that transdimensional reptilian aliens meet the Bilderburg Group once a year at Bohemian Grove to pass on the latest artisan beer recipes.
But try not to get angry, hurt, victimized or triggered when you encounter pushback.
No self-respecting individual is going to be chastised for their allegedly “unearned privilege” by someone of equally unearned virtue.
Got it?
I would like to offer the following for discussion.
The term: “people of colour”
Everyone has colour, white is a colour.
By hiving off people by colour and race we perpetuate the categorization of individuals and groups.
White being the dominant colour in a social hierarchy upheld and reinforced by white people.
We are all people of colour. I notice for instance, ‘women of colour’..meaning all those who are not white. In group and out groups.
How does this naming of individuals and groups by skin colour and race impact the concept of white privilege”?
Didn’t Cindy Littlefair fight to keep St Mary’s elementary school open around the time the board closed St. Pats Alexander? There is no better example of white privilege than that.
Ms. Littlefair sees two students entering the school system at the age of four or five. They are alike in every way. Their parents live in the same neighbourhood and work in similar jobs. The children play together with the same toys, they like the same movies and stories, they enjoy the same subjects in school and earn the same grades through the same effort and enthusiasm.
To the observer, Ms. Littlefair, they are alike in every way except one – the pigment of one child’s skin is lighter than the other. Without any other thought, Ms. Littlefair heaps a huge amount of assumptions on the little white child: she is immediately better off than her friend, everything has and will continue to come easy to her, she can never earn an advantage in life.
Ms. Littelfair is a racist!
ahhh…white privilege calling out white privilege. You see, I was at this school board meeting and Cindy seemed to relish using this word. She must have thought she was on the forefront of some truly amazing social discovery! Sadly, this issue was NOT about white privilege, it was about the deviousness of a predominately “privileged” school board, who held a meeting with parents who thought they were present to discuss (only to find out NO public discussion was allowed) the possible closure of their school, Their neighbourhood school.
As Cindy was the ONLY privileged member to bring this issue up, I can only assume she is trying to assuage her white guilt by shaming others who don’t agree with her. So, to all those who are thinking that Cindy was trying to right a white injustice, I can tell you that, sometimes, school closures or downsizings aren’t about white privilege, its about people of all races being able to send their children to a excellent school close to their homes.
To make it about anything but, shows someone who is willing to minimize social injustices to further her own cause.
Ms. Littlefair completely disregards the fact that we were so incensed by her comments because they showed that she did not pay attention to the real issue before the School Board. She ignored the real, legal issue before her by insulting a group of people with this throwaway comment. I usually like The Coast but the fact that they let her have this forum to try and defend her comments when they don’t even understand how fundamentally problematic it was in the first place that she made the comment is infuriating. It shows what privilege she has and her connections that she is using to her advantage. At the end of the day, the issue was simply that an entire group of people of various races and backgrounds (which is irrelevant) from St. Catherine’s school were knowingly left out of a discussion and consultation about their children’s schooling. Period!
She only wrote this article after repeatedly being asked for a formal apology about distasteful and offensive remarks she said at a School Board meeting.
A meeting I might add that had nothing to do with race or privilege.
How about this Ms Littlefair …
” … does the mere suggestion of imagining yourself as a racist make you defensive? Dismissive? Angry?”
There are many ways I struggle with money, sexism, body image, etc. in my life. But it’s accurate to say my whiteness has allowed me to get further ahead than I would have gotten had I been black. The problem of white privilege is systemic and embedded in the invisible everyday. So I can’t, in good conscience, take issue with anything said in Littlefair’s piece because it is factually accurate. Statistics bears this out. Just look at how children of African heritage are over-represented in suspensions in our school system, for example.
This is why, as a parent of a kid that would be going to Oxford in a few years and as a friend to several current Oxford parents, I advise that our energy and efforts to keep Oxford open as a P-9 school not be reactionary. And we must not take issue with the fact of our own white privilege. It is on us to demonstrate that all Oxford parents of all Oxford children are united in the cause of supporting the school and to increase fairness in the review processes. And it’s on us to engage in these details of process, whether or not changes to our own personal comfort is implicated.
Taking Littlefair to task on her comments about white privilege in the Coast is not going to help foster that unity. And it’s ridiculous to see news outlets jump into the story now, when there has been little to no regular coverage of school board issues (context!) until this particular controversial moment.