By Marcelle Meyer
I witnessed an argument on Facebook last week that most of us have probably seen several times: an African American girl posted something about an injustice caused by white privilege, and a white person commented to aggressively defend her lack of privilege. She grew up poor. She had to work through college. She has to support her children on a single-parent salary. And, for some reason, all of these things mean that she has had no advantages in society by virtue of being born white.
In American culture, we very strongly value the sentiment of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Independence, self-reliance and hard work are some of the most admirable qualities in our society. So when you tell someone that there are things in his or her life that they did not earn, he or she often take offense. But white America needs to stop pretending that white privilege does not exist.
The most fundamental misunderstanding about privilege is that it is all-encompassing. If you have white privilege, then your life is easy. However, this has never been the argument.
Being born Caucasian in America means that your cultural history is the primary historical perspective taught in schools. It means that you will not have to explain to your children that many people dislike the color of their skin. It means that, when you are articulate and well-spoken, nobody is surprised or says that you speak like a member of a different race. It means that not everything you do with your hair, body or clothes is a social statement about your demographic group. It does not mean that you are rich, well-educated or have an easy life.
When white America denies that we have any advantages in society because of our skin color, we also deny that black Americans are in any way disadvantaged — we deny that racism still exists. The implications of this are numerous, the most harmful of which being that we never do anything to address racist practices in America.
Every day, people of all races work hard and overcome obstacles to achieve personal success, and admitting to having some advantages does nothing to lessen the significance of that. People are born with certain privileges if they are male, cisgender or physically able among other things. When we fail to acknowledge this, we focus on protecting the feelings of the majority, rather than the safety of the minority.
Although this may seem like a sensitive topic to discuss, it is a necessary one if our society is going to get better.
It is time for us to stop fighting about whether or not our lives are easy and start fixing real problems.
