By now, we’ve all heard about Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) concept of white privilege, in which being a member of the dominant group confers unearned advantages on its demographic. McIntosh has created a laundry list of such privileges, including not having to look far if you want to socialize with your own race and not being late to a meeting reflect on one’s entire race. The concept has to be explained at length and often provokes a backlash, such as Tal Fortgang’s article “Why I’ll Never Apologize for my White Male Privilege.”
Once it is painstakingly explained
to you that you do indeed benefit from privilege, no matter your adversity in
life, you are next tasked with working as an ally to undo the systemic racial
system engineered by Caucasians.
However, you must take care to educate yourself, since this is not the
POC’s job, educate your fellow benefiters, and be careful not to “steal the
mic.” Actively working to undo this
injustice beyond awareness is a bit more variegated and can take the form, its
supporters suggest, of anything from standing in the back during a rally to
relinquishing one’s home and job to a POC.
Poor whites, those who are most likely to harbor feelings of racism and xenophobia,
are probably least likely to deconstruct the privilege system and adjust their
attitudes, and conversely, proponents are inclined to view anyone skeptical of the
concept as clueless hatemongers.
One of the most glaring
contradictions is that advocates for the breaking down of privilege seem to
want to level the playing field of a system that oppressed them to begin
with. What, you want my home? The home constructed with Chinese drywall,
made in a factory that would make OSHA cringe?
The home that was built on a bulldozed forest that actively contributes
to global warming, the very same house that sits on land that was inveigled
from an indigenous tribe through a deceptive treaty?
Aside from having to be explained
at length and meeting with fierce detraction, privilege has also assumed the
role of a conversation-ending ad hominem, to be leveled at any cis-het white
male whose opinion the arguer does not agree with. “Check your privilege,” is a show-stopping
phrase that tasks the individual with the fact that they have benefited from
six hundred years of oppression and ill-gotten gains. The sad truth is that all people living in
the U.S. benefit from the poisoned fruits of such oppression, and that the
oppression still is taking its toll.
Everything from using an air conditioner to buying a plastic water
bottle represents a systemic global system of exploitative behavior that marginalizes
unskilled laborers and impoverishes the environment. The privilege concept supports divisiveness, and distracts from progressive solution seeking-it's time for a different critique of social systems shortcomings.
