white privilege

a range of overt and covert benefits and immunities that people with "white" skin enjoy compared with what people of color experience in the same situation. "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks" (Dr. Peggy McIntosh, in Harriet Lerner, Life Preservers). Sharon Martinas (Challenging White Supremacy) calls the web of institutional and cultural preferential treatment "300 years of affirmative action for white people." As James Baldwin said, "To be white in America means not having to think about it." In the same way that "money makes money," privilege makes privilege, and after centuries of accumulated and interrelated advantages, white privilege shows up in differences in life expectancy, health, wealth, education, and other statuses, partly due to different accesses to resources and opportunities. These disparities are maintained both by denying that they exist and by refusing to address them at the policy level. Note that non-ruling-class white people may be significantly unprivileged on the basis of age, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religion, physical abilities, or other factors, but they still have advantages that people of color very similar to them do not have. When writing about white privilege, specify what aspects of it you're talking about. You may also need to clarify the term; many disadvantaged white people have a difficult time understanding it. For a clarifying overview on the topic, see Cory Collins, "What Is White Privilege, Really?" Teaching Tolerance, fall 2018: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really.