White Privilege
Discussion
Dyab Abou Jahjah:
“Next to defining the identity of the other as “problematic” and giving it an essentialist pejorative qualification as “whiteness” and hence silencing every debate by pointing out features of that “whiteness”, and imposing the “shut up and listen” relationship pattern, these POC and intersectionality activists are abusing the concept of privilege and using it in an absurd manner.
Not being discriminated is considered to be a privilege enjoyed by whites in the context of racial discrimination and by heterosexual men in that of gender discrimination. So instead of putting the emphasis on the plight of the discriminated and the wrongdoing of the discriminator(s) they are pointing the finger to those who are not discriminated and calling their privilege out, asking them to take distance of it.
Not being discriminated is not a privilege, it is the default status that should be enjoyed by everyone. When we are calling for equality and advocating measures to eliminate discriminations, the emphasis must not be on targeting the group that is not discriminated because of it enjoying an imaginary privilege. The true privilege in society does exist, but it is not the absence of discrimination on racial and gender features. The real privilege is that of people who can get away with wrongdoing, tax evasions, major crimes and who can abuse power. No regular white person can get away with wrong-doing because of their color. Only elites can, and elites come in all colors and ethnicities. The only privilege that exist is elite privilege and yes it must be abolished. Moreover, male heterosexual members of the majority in any country are all discriminated on age, on disability, on social status and financial situation. That they are not discriminated on their ethnicity or on their gender does not mean they are privileged, and they cannot and must not take distance of that. “ (https://www.aboujahjah.org/articles--columns/on-whiteness-privilege-and-other-tropes-of-minority-identity-politics?)
Research
* Article: Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Schiffhauer, K. (2007). Racial attitudes in response to thoughts of White privilege. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(2), 203–215. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.348
URL = https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-04184-001
"Thinking about the benefits gained from a privileged group membership can threaten social identity and evoke justification of the existing status difference between the ingroup and a disadvantaged group. For White Americans, racial privilege may be justified by concurring with modern racist attitudes. In Experiment 1, White Americans randomly assigned to think about White privilege expressed greater modern racism compared to those assigned to think about White disadvantage or a race-irrelevant topic. In Experiment 2, we found that increased racism in response to thoughts of White privilege was limited to those who highly identified with their racial category. In contrast, when White racial identification was sufficiently low, thoughts of White privilege reliably reduced modern racism. We discuss the implications of these findings for the meaning of modern racism and prejudice reduction."