The Privilege of Checking White Privilege

[Valin]

The Daily Beast:

When students are compelled to have “White Privilege 101” classes, we have every right to ask: Why, and for whose benefit?

John McWhorter

Mar. 15 2015

 

If you’ve been white lately, you have likely been confronted with the idea that to be a good person, you must cultivate a guilt complex over the privileged status your race enjoys.

 

It isn’t that you are doing, or even quite thinking, anything racist. Rather, your existential state of Living While White constitutes a form of racism in itself. Your understanding will serve as a tool … for something. But be careful about asking just what that something is, because that will mean you “just don’t get it.”

 

To be sure, there is, indeed, a distinct White Privilege. Being white does offer a freedom not easily available to others. You can underperform without it being ascribed to your race. And when you excel, no one wonders whether Affirmative Action had anything to do it. Authority figures are likely to be your color, and no one associates people of your color with a propensity to violence. No one expects you to represent your race in a class discussion or anywhere else.

 

(Snip)

 

I assume, for example, that the idea is not to teach white people that White Privilege means that black people are the only group of people in human history who cannot deal with obstacles and challenges. If the idea is that black people cannot solve their problems short of white people developing an exquisite sensitivity to how privileged they are, then we in the black community are being designated as disabled poster children.

 

(Snip)

 

Is the goal to urge people into activism against the conditions that afford whites their privilege? White Privilege spokespersons would surely agree. After all, the White Privilege Conference’s website noting that it is “About Creating Change.”

 

But two things seem hard to miss.

 

First, making a lot of the changes White Privilege tutors seem to suggest would tie us up into knots, especially in the educational realm. If no one asks black people to comment on racial issues, then the charge will be that whites are turning a blind eye to … White Privilege. As to discomfort from being suspected of being an Affirmative Action hire, to have any but the tiniest of criticisms of racial preferences is considered blasphemy, displaying an ignorance of … White Privilege.

 

(Snip)

[SrWoodchuck]

 

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