White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.
—Reni Eddo-Lodge
A PRAYER ON PRIVILEGE | Rainey G. Dankel
Merciful God, I claim Your promise to be with us when two or three are gathered. You know that each of us has a unique heart and history and so I can only speak from what I have seen and known and become as one who enjoys the privilege of being born white in the United States.
As I try to understand the ways in which I benefit from that history, or deprive others of life and happiness and all the things I take for granted, I pray that You will open my heart, my mind, my imagination, and my eyes to see this country as it is and not as I want it to be or think that it is.
Even as I utter words with the best of intentions about “the poor,”“those who are dispossessed,” “those who are disrespected,” “those who are subtly or overtly treated as less than,” those who fall in that thoughtless, painful category of “you people”, I feel that I am distancing myself from these “others,” and contributing further to the fissures that divide all of us from each other and You.
Help me, O God, to acknowledge honestly the ways in which white privilege in America is perpetuated, the ways in which racism thrives systemically, and the ways in which our “Common Prayer” furthers these divides.
Dear God, I trust your Spirit to guide us in our common life and enlighten us to the injustices of white privilege in this country. Make our common prayers occasions for your Spirit to break into our hearts and lives, that we may finally see our world with a glimpse of your love and light. I pray that we may all be healed of our hurts and divisions, so that we may become agents of the reconciliation and peace that you desire for this world. This is my prayer.
Amen.
Prayer reprinted from The Anti-Racism Prayer Book: Poems, Prayers and Reflections From Various Sources
Selected by the Rev. Rainey G. Dankel, Janis Pryor, Judith Lockhart Radtke, and Damon Syphers for The Anti-Racism Team of Trinity Church Boston, 2014
To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.” This invisibility is political.
—Michael S. Kimmel
White privilege is about the word white, not rich. It's having advantage built into your life. It's not saying your life hasn't been hard; it's saying your skin color hasn't contributed to the difficulty in your life.”
― Emmanuel Acho
According to Merriam-Webster, white privilege is the set of social and economic advantages that white people have by virtue of their race in a culture characterized by racial inequality.
It is having your race, outward appearance and all aspects of your existence normalized, whereby all other people and cultures are abnormal. It is the freedom to be.
VIDEO | Deconstructing White Privilege
Dr. Robin DiAngelo has been an anti-racist educator, and has heard justifications of racism by white men and women in her workshops for over two decades. This justification, which she calls “white fragility,” is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.
VIDEO | How to Recognize Your White Privilege — and Use it to Fight Inequality
Peggy McIntosh, author of “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” explains how to use privilege to fight racism
ARTICLE | White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
In 1986, Peggy McIntosh published a groundbreaking article making the idea of white privilege easy to understand and impossible to ignore. In it she wrote, “As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.” Click below to read the piece which is still being used today to explain the disadvantages which people of color face.
ARTICLE | Understanding White Privilege
In this article, Dr. Francis Kendall breaks down white privilege, and how the United States was conceptualized around it, and to promote it.
ARTICLE | Why Talk About Whiteness?
In an article for Learning for Justice, Emily Chiarello tackles the question of what to do with privilege once it is recognized.