Note: This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper and was written by a Caucasian professor of Journalism at the University of Texas. The article appears here on Living Life Abundantly Marenda.Biz with permission directly from the author.
White People Need to Acknowledge
Benefits of Unearned Privilege © by Robert Jensen
White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one’s identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn’t live near a reservation, I didn’t even have exposure to the state’s only numerically significant nonwhite population, American Indians.
I have struggled to resist that racist training and the racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I “fix” myself, one thing never changes – I walk through the world with white privilege.
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don’t look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves – and in a racist world, that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I’m white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don’t know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it’s possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn’t meant as an insult to anyone, but it’s a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them. I am not a genius – as I like to say, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full time for six years and I’ve published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, is worth reading. I worked hard, and I like to think that I’m a fairly decent teacher. Every once in a while, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my pay check, I don’t feel guilty. But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from among other things, white privilege. That doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve my job, or that if I weren’t white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position by the predominantly white University of Texas, headed by a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one nonwhite tenured professor. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself, and my work, I do not have to believe that “merit” as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege. At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture’s mythology that I couldn’t see the fear that was binding me to those myths.
Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn’t really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn’t heroic or rugged, that I wasn’t special. I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn’t special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked to my benefit. Until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate – that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose – then we will live with that fear.
White privilege is not something I get to decide whether I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.
| Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org.He is the author of:
Robert Jensen can be reached at [email protected] and his articles can |
I’m tired of hearing about racism. Being wary of that which is ‘not us’, and promoting that which is, is a basic animal response.
If you want to avoid being discriminated against, set up your own country. Migrate, like the Protestants did from England. Waving your little fist against the powers that be (only because they let you) will sap all your energy.
Racism is just bad manners. I’m sick of how political correctness (good manners) has been made into law. Won’t change people’s basic attitudes at all, just encumber us with more ways for ‘The Man’ to get at us.
Very interesting view Shylock. Thank you for commenting.
Are you saying that racism is a basic animal response?
PEOPLE are not animals, PEOPLE are humans. Racism is not natural or instinctual it is learned behavior.
Did you actually read this article? It was written by a White man. He said nothing about being discriminated against…nor is there anything here about waving fists… So is your response to this article or to people that speak against racism and discrimination?
I think many people are tired of hearing about racism but as long as it exists and as long as it continues to affect humans we will all continue to hear about it until we DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Its funny that you suggest “to avoid being discriminated against, set up your own country. Migrate, like the Protestants did from England.”
Are you serious?
Thank you for sharing this information with us. I am aware of Dr. Jensen’s essay on white privilege. There is no doubt that it would help to improve race relations if white people would accept responsibility for the problem. It is not a “Black” problem. It is a problem that can only be solved if everyone comes correct to the discussion.
Stay strong… Villager
Hello Marenda,
Kudos to you for posting this article. I’m quite familiar with Dr. Robert Jensen’s efforts to expose the truth about “white privilege” and “racism.” Dr. Jensen is one of the few Caucasian men in this country with the courage to speak truth to power in the spirit of love from an intellectual position rather than an emotional one.
Isn’t it interesting that mainstream media has not embraced Dr. Jensen? America would be a much better place for us all if more people followed his example of leadership. I agree with you that discriminatory behavior is learned behavior.
Shylock is apparently a “product” of all that’s wrong with America’s fatally flawed ideology as it applies to how fundamentally unfair Black people are treated by powerful people in lofty positions of influence.
Shylock’s “thoughtless” remarks are indicative of a much larger issue still looming over the skies of America’s melting pot. I applaud Dr. Jensen for having the heart to challenge the Shylock’s of this world to “think for themselves.” Only a bad wind refuses to change directions.
Marenda, thank you for caring by sharing this insightful article with your readers.
Manchild
I can think just fine for myself, thank you. In the English language the work ‘like’ (to admire) is the same word used for things which are similar. We ‘like’ that which is ‘like’ (similar). We favour that which is ‘familiar’ (pertaining to a family).
I don’t approve of racism. What I dislike is being nagged about it. I live in the UK, which is doing a good job of racial integration. I live in a borough in which white people are in a minority, with a huge mix of different races and nationalities, and we’re all getting along just fine.
I don’t approve of racism. What I dislike is being nagged about it. I have a mental picture of nice liberal white people preaching one thing, then heading for the suburbs when a few black families move into the street.
White or Black, everyone still is a human. Stop racist, and have a peace world. If everyone wanna fight, please save our world. When the world end, everything is nothing.
As a Financial Planner I have actually have almost identical applications for specific financial products and yet I notice an easier time getting approvals on applications that Caucasian was marked. It is just sickening.
I lived in the US for 12 years as a child. So my experience is based more on my life in Europe.
People of all races or common backgrounds tend to congregate together. This is human nature. People are more comfortable in being with others of the same background and customs.
I lived for quite a while in Geneva Switzerland. Geneva is home to many international organization giving it a very multiracial society. The locals tend to not even help their own but they do present a unified front against all that is considered a foreign threat to their culture. On the other hand this will not stop anyone from any race from successful on his own merits in the business or academic worlds.
David
I dislike affirmative action as I see it as a kind of reverse prejudice – gotta hire so many white, black, male, female, Christian, atheist whatever per company. I absolutely hate what started this whole nonsense in the first place – and that would be racism, anti-Semitism, anti-male, anti-female, etc. Plainly put, bigotry is furbrained and it just stinks no matter where it’s coming from.
Thank you for sharing this information with us.May God help the villagers.
Your writing really touches me. Its quiet a sympathies news. May god help them.
what difference does it make about whether whites agree or not to this guy’s statements. Nothing will be done about it. Racism is and was the most effective marketing campaign ever conducted in america.
So effective it has never worn off. The only way to reverse it’s curse is to provide an equal counter strategy. This is not happening, so, racism will continue to live in the hearts of all americans. PERIOD.
I always wondered if we are focusing too much on our differences instead of what we have in common? My friends from Brazil (a very diverse, eclectic culture) always marvel at our divisions here. I guess we have the baggage and they do not.
@michael I completely agree!
The racism is so boring.However not all have the same rights.Black people are not inferior to the white.
White people have to sacrifice some to maintain their social status.Ironical.