White privilege

White privilege, or white skin privilege, is a societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, especially if they are otherwise under a same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism as well as imperialism, as well as the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that produce broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.

In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States, academic perspectives such(a) as critical vintage theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies impact the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh forwarded the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites carry on to not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These put cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the adjusting to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.

Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a proxy but that numerous other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose option definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the concepts of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups.

Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such(a) as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the seemingly sudden hostility from right-wing critics since about 2014.

Applications in critical theory

The concept of white privilege has been studied by theorists of whiteness studies seeking to inspect the construction and moral implications of 'whiteness'. There is often overlap between critical whiteness and race theories, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of white identity, and the use of narratives — whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction — as a tool for exposing systems of racial power. Fields such as history and cultural studies are primarily responsible for the formative scholarship of critical whiteness studies.

Critical race theorists such as Cheryl Harris and George Lipsitz have said that "whiteness" has historically been treated more as a form of property than as a racial characteristic: in other words, as an object which has intrinsic utility that must be protected by social and legal institutions. Laws and mores concerning race — from apartheid and Jim Crow constructions that legally separate different races to social prejudices against interracial relationships or mixed communities — serve the goal of retainingadvantages and privileges for white. Because of this, academic and societal ideas approximately race have tended to focus solely on the disadvantages suffered by racial minorities, overlooking the advantageous effects that accrue to whites.