According to the taxonomy of racism represented by the pyramid featured in a couple of previous posts, white privilege is a form of "covert racism," but why is that so?
Even if we assume it to be true that whites enjoy a privilege in this country that other races don't, an assumption with which I have problems, why is it racist to be born with a particular kind of privilege?
Many people are born with all sorts of characteristics that privilege them in our society - wealth, intelligence, good looks, physical assets, good parents, etc. so why is being born white singled out as particularly egregious to the point where some whites are claiming on social media that they're ashamed of being white?
Moreover, when one is asked to denote the privileges that accrue to whites by virtue of their whiteness the advantages they list are often trivial - not being followed in a store, not having people cross the street when they see you approaching, not being stopped by police for walking in a neighborhood not one's own, etc.
Parenthetically, I've been stopped by police at least twice and had residents drive by slowly when walking both in my own neighborhood and a neighborhood not my own. And I'm white. On each occasion I simply explained that I was walking for exercise, we had a friendly chat, and that was that.
Almost all of the more serious privileges - like not being denied a loan or an apartment simply on the basis of race, etc. - have been illegal in this country for decades, and it's hard to see how something that's illegal can be a privilege.
The idea that white privilege, if it exists, is a form of racism is hard to understand. Racism is an evil, but it's not evil to be born with privilege. Whether you are black or white, if you are born into an intact family with a father and mother who love you and love each other, you are privileged and will benefit for a lifetime in ways that others will not, but that's not evil.
Whether you are black or white, if you are born into the middle class you will have benefits for the rest of your life that those born into the lower classes do not have, but there's no moral fault in being born into that class.
Whether you are black or white, if you are born into a (relatively) free country like America you are privileged and will benefit for a lifetime in ways that others will not, but you certainly shouldn't feel guilty about it.
But, it will be objected, the particular privilege that's called "white privilege" evolved to the detriment of others and as long as you enjoy the benefits of that oppression, even if the oppression is historical and not current, you share in the guilt.
This objection is hard to credit. It's probably the case that everyone living in almost every country of the world is living in a country that was established through the conquest of other peoples and perpetuated by various other forms of injustice and oppression. There are probably few, if any, countries or peoples of which that is not the case.
So, should every person in the world today feel guilty for enjoying the benefits of what was done by others long before they were born? Should blacks feel guilty for enjoying the benefits of living in a country which severely mistreated Native Americans?
In his book I'm Not a Racist, But ... philosopher Lawrence Blum says that white privilege is not racism, but it's nevertheless a "racial ill."
I disagree. It's only a racial ill if those who enjoy the privilege are insensitive toward those who do not and/or actively seek to exclude those who do not from enjoying the same benefits.
But unlike intellectual and physical gifts, whatever serious privileges whites are alleged to enjoy are not, or should not be, exclusionary. Anyone can aspire to them. That's why millions of immigrants have risked their lives and the lives of their children to come here.
The biggest problem with the notion of white privilege, though, is that it implies that people are to be regarded according to the group to which they belong rather than as individuals. You, yourself, may not be an oppressor, the argument goes, but other members of your race were, and are, therefore you're implicated in their guilt.
But why should you be held responsible for what others who happened to have the same skin color have done? If you're a white Jew are you nevertheless responsible for the Nazis' crimes? If you're a black male are you therefore responsible for the disproportionate number of assaults by blacks on whites?
The attempt to impute guilt to an entire group is a derivative of the Marxism that has influenced so much of contemporary racial thinking. For Marx and his ideological descendants everyone is guilty or innocent based on their socio-economic class.
For our contemporary race theorists, race is simply substituted for class.
But it's just silly to claim that if persons are white they are ipso facto privileged and if persons are black they're not. Surely, Barack Obama, Denzel Washington or Oprah Winfrey are far more privileged in our society in most ways that most people think really matter than are 99% of the whites living in America.
In fact, it doubtless strikes a white single mother struggling to feed three children while keeping her creditors at bay as laughable to be told that she's a racist because she has "white privilege."
It would be a good thing if we retired the idea of "White Privilege" altogether. All it does is breed resentment and division. What we should focus on instead is what makes us the same and not what makes us different.
