White people talk about “our society” and make judgements about what is right or the best for everyone, not even realizing they are talking about “white society.” Of course, people are going to say, wait a minute, I don’t mean “white society” when I talk about “our society,” I am including everyone. The problem with that is that if you are white you are automatically looking at everything from the lense of a white person. To make a blanket statement about what is right or best for everyone, you cannot help but be looking at the situation from the point of view of being white and all the privilege that comes with it. Does this mean you are racist? No. Most likely you are unaware that your perspective is different just because you do not realize how much you benefit from White Privilege.
White Privilege is often not something tangible to white people because it does not affect us in any adverse manner as individuals in our everyday lives, at least not obviously. We expect the treatment we get based on our innocence or guilt, our abilities, our economic status, etc. Let’s take income inequality. We all know it definitely exists and those on the bottom rung are often disparaged and treated like lepers by our government. Income inequality needs to be dealt with. But hiking the minimum wage and getting free college and leveling the income tax playing field does not mean that all of a sudden the unemployment disparities between whites and PoC are going to change. PoC are at a disadvantage because hiring practices will still reflect the point of view that for whatever reason, white people do a better job. In other words, White Privilege will still exist. Until we stop and acknowledge it, and listen to what PoC have to say about their own experiences, accept that their experiences are actually different from ours, and accept that they really and truly do know what is best for themselves and begin to incorporate their needs and their solutions into our way of thinking, White Privilege will always be a problem.
Explaining away PoC’s experiences, downplaying the importance of their voices, and ignoring or, worse yet, denigrating their opinions and their expertise is NOT the way to go about mitigating White Privilege. You may get angry when you are called out for doing this, but that does not change the fact that you are bathing in White Privilege and are either innocently ignorant or willfully ignorant of what you are doing. It is completely up to you to rectify that ignorance. It is NOT the responsibility of those affected by White Privilege. It is up to you to open your mind and your heart and see that YOU, as a WHITE PERSON, may actually be WRONG and that you have room to learn and grow as a human being. Perfection is not a requirement. Gaia knows I have caught myself many times thinking through things and speaking through the lense of White Privilege and have had to stop and try to get perspective through reading, having conversations, and whatever else to readjust my viewpoint. It is hard not to look at things through the lense of White Privilege when you are white. The important thing is to be open to correction and other points of view.
We can further focus this conversation to White Heterosexual Cisgender Male with No Disabilities Privilege, because in the end the vast majority of our laws, judicial decisions, etc. are made by that very group of people. Until everyone not included in the group gain true proportional representation within our government, it is inherent for us to keep bugging the group with the majority of power and call them out when they are obviously coming from the perspective of that privilege, even if they mean well. No, we may not change their minds. As I said it is up to them to change. But it is up to us to keep up the pressure with our voices and our votes and perhaps slowly we can replace those who remain willfully or gleefully ignorant with those who will listen and acknowledge when they make the mistake of viewing through the lense of such privilege, or better yet replace them with those who know from experience the damage that privilege has done to this country and the majority of people in it.