Have you ever been told to “check your privilege?” Were you upset by it?
There are many misunderstandings regarding what white privilege means. Essentially, deconstructing and acknowledging white privilege entails calling attention to power structures and institutions that have been created to favour white people.
This means imparting to them certain social, political, and economic privileges that people of colour may be denied on account of their race. However, it is important to acknowledge that although the topic of white privilege has gained more attention recently—especially outside of academia—this dialogue has existed for decades.
Many white people are offended by the concept of white privilege. They perceive it as a personal attack on their character when they are asked to review the privileges they are unwittingly bestowed while navigating this world.
A common misunderstanding is that having white privilege means you do not experience personal problems. White privilege does not exclude white people from experiencing hardships in life such as poverty, mental illness, and discrimination due to other facets of their being.
There are, however, important points of intersectionality which may determine how severe these disparities are felt by certain individuals. They are dependent on factors such as age, body size, sexual orientation or identity, and class, among a myriad of others.
If the most uncomfortable thing you ever have to do is contemplate your white privilege, consider how uncomfortable it must be to live in a world that seeks to oppress and disadvantage you simply because you are a certain race. It is a privilege in and of itself to have never had to think about your race and how it effects your interactions with/in society.
White people should channel the anger and discomfort they feel when asked to check their privilege into something productive, like targeting the very injustices that help cradle and nurture said privilege, which ultimately harms the lives of people of colour. Join the fight for justice, human rights, and equality alongside them instead of getting angry at them.
It is crucial that white people do not leave the education, unlearning, and deconstruction of white privilege solely to people of colour. It is everyone’s duty to evaluate the privileges they may have obtained based on certain attributes in accordance with intersectional discourse.
White people need to educate themselves by listening and by being mindful of the past and present treatment of certain groups of people.
So before you say, “I don’t see race, we are all the same,” in a state of euphoric colour-blindness in the hopes it will accomplish equality, remember the often invisible yet overt acts of violence perpetrated against people of colour which are performed everyday—and have been for centuries.
