UNDERSTANDING WHITE PRIVILEGEby Francis E. Kendall, Ph.D., 2002“We need to be clear that there is no such thing as giving up one’s privilege to be‘outside’ the system. One is always in the system. The only question is whether one ispart of the system in a way that challenges or strengthens the status quo. Privilege isnot something I take and which therefore have the option of not taking. It is somethingthat society gives me, and unless I change the institutions which give it to me, they willcontinue to give it, and I will continue to have it, however noble and equalitarian myintentions.” Harry Brod, “Work Clothes and Leisure Suits: The Class Basis and Bias of the Men’s Movement,”in Men’s Lives, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael Messner (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 280.What Is White Privilege?Privilege, particularly white or maleprivilege, is hard to see for those of uswho were born with access to powerand resources. It is very visible forthose to whom privilege was notgranted. Furthermore, the subject isextremely difficult to talk about becausemany white people don’t feel powerful oras if they have privileges others do not.It is sort of like asking fish to noticewater or birds to discuss air. For thosewho have privileges based on race orgender or class or physical ability orsexual orientation, or age, it just is- it’snormal. The Random House Dictionary(1993) defines privilege as “a right,immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by aperson beyond the advantages of most.”In her article, “White Privilege and MalePrivilege,” Peggy McIntosh (1995)reminds us that those of us who arewhite usually believe that privileges are“conditions of daily experience [thatare] universally available to everybody.”Further, she says that what we arereally talking about is “unearned powerconferred systematically” (pp. 82-83)For those of us who are white, one ofour privileges is that we see ourselvesas individuals, “just people,” part of thehuman race. Most of us are clear,however, that people whose skin is notwhite are members of a race. Thesurprising thing for us is that, even thoughwe don’t see ourselves as part of a radicalgroup, people of color generally do see usthat way.So given that we want to work to createa better world in which all of us can live,what can we do? The first step, of course,is to become clear about the basics of whiteprivilege, what it is and how it works. Thesecond step is to explore ways in which wecan work against the racism of which whiteprivilege is a cornerstone.White privilege is an institutional (ratherthan personal) set of benefits granted tothose of us who, by race, resemble thepeople who dominate the powerful positionsin our institutions. One of the primaryprivileges is that of having greater access topower and resources than people of colordo; in other words, purely on the basis ofour skin color doors are open to us that arenot open to other people. For example,given the exact financial history, whitepeople in the United States are two to tentimes more likely to get a housing loan thanpeople of color access to resources.Those of us who are white can count on thefact that a nation’s history books will ourexperience of history. American Indianparents, on the other hand, know that theirchildren will not learn in school about thecontributions of their people.All of us who are white, by race, havewhite privileges, although the extent towhich we have them varies depending on1
ourgender,sexualorientation,socioeconomic status, age, physicalability, size and weight, and so on. Forexample, looking at race and gender,we find that white men have greateraccess to power and resources thanwhite women do. The statistics from the1995 Glass Ceiling Commission showthat, while white men constitute about43% of the work force, they hold 95% ofseniormanagementpositionsinAmerican industry. Looking purely atwhite privilege, white women hold about40% of the middle managementpositions, while Black women hold 5%and Black men hold 4%. Unless webelieve that white women or AfricanAmerican men and women areinherently less capable, we have toacknowledge that our systems aretreating us unequally.White privilege has nothing to dowith whether or not we are “good”people. We who are white can beabsolute jerks and still have whiteprivileges; people of color can be themost wonderful individuals in the worldand not have them.Privileges arebestowed on us by the institutions withwhich we interact solely because of ourrace, not because we are deserving asindividuals. While each of us is alwaysa member of a race or races, we aresometimesgrantedopportunitiesbecause we, as individuals, deservethem; often we are granted thembecause we, as individuals, belong toone or more of the favored groups in oursociety.At some colleges anduniversities, for example, sons anddaughters of alumnae and alumni mighthave lower grades and test scores thanother applicants; they are accepted,however,becausetheirparentsgraduated from the institutions. That isa privilege that the sons and daughtersdid nothing to earn; they were put aheadof other possible applicants who mayhave had higher test scores and gradesbecause of where their parents had gone toschool.The Purposeful Construction ofWhite Privilege: A Brief HistoryOften it is not our intent, as individualwhite people, to make use of the unearnedbenefits we have received on the basis ofour skin color. Most of us go through ourdays unaware that we are white or that itmatters. On the other hand, the creation ofa system in which race plays a central part one that codifies the superiority of thewhite race over all others has been in noway accidental or haphazard. ThroughoutAmerican history white power-holders,acting on behalf of our entire race, havemade decisions that have affected whitepeople as a group very differently thangroups of color.History is filled withexamples of the purposeful construction ofa systemic structure that grants privilegesto white people and withholds them fromothers. The writing of the U.S. Constitution which,in ten articles, very intentionally confirmedthe holding of Black people as slaves, asproperty. White people’s believing that our destinywas to “own” the land on which we allcurrently live, even though that requiredforcibly removing the native people whohad lived here for centuries. Our breaking apart of Black familiesduring slavery, sending mothers oneplace, fathers another, and babies andchildren yet another. Choosing to withhold from AfricanAmericans the ability to read so that theycould not reproduce any of their culture orfunction well enough in our literate societyto change their status. The removing of American Indian childrenfrom their homes, taking them as far aspossible from anything they knew, and2
punishing them if they tried to speak intheir own languages. The passing of laws that were createdto maintain the legal separation andinequality of whites and AfricanAmericans (Plessy v. Ferguson) The making of “politically expedient”decisions by many (if not most) whitesuffragists to align themselves withwhite Southern men, reassuring themthat by giving the vote to women (read“white women” since at that timeabout 90% of the Black women livedin the South and were not by law, ableto hold property and thus vote) thecontinuation of white supremacy wasinsured. The manipulation of immigration lawsso that people of color, particularlyChinese and Mexican as well asEuropean Jews, were less free toimmigrate to the U.S. than Westernand Eastern Europeans. The removing of American citizens ofJapanese ancestry from their homesand taking their land and theirbusinesses as our own during WorldWar II. The using of affirmative action topromote opportunities for whitewomen rather than for people of color.It is important to know andremember this side of American history,even though it makes us extremelyuncomfortable. For me, the confusionand pain of this knowledge is somewhateased by reminding myself that thissystem is not based on each individualwhite person’s intention to harm but onour racial group’s determination topreserve what we believe is rightly ours.This distinction is, on one hand,important, and, on the other hand, notimportant at all because, regardless ofpersonal intent, the impact is the same.Here are a couple of examples. Formany years, it was illegal in Texas forSpanish- speaking children to speakSpanish at school. This meant that everyindividual teacher and principal wasrequired by law to send any child home forspeaking his or her own language whetherthe teachers and/ or principals believed inthe law or not. Based on the belief thatpeople who live in the United States shouldspeak English, mixed with racial bigotryagainst Mexicans, the law was passed by agroup of individual white legislators whohad the institutional power to codify theirand their constituents’ viewpoints. Once aparticular perspective is built into law, itbecomes part of “the way things are.”Rather than actively refusing to comply withthe law, as individuals we usually go along,particularly if we think the law doesn’t affectus personally. We participate, intentionallyor not, in the purposeful construction of asystem that deflates the value of onepeople’s culture while inflating the value ofanother’s. More recently, this same kind ofthing occurred in a county called Georgiathat was experiencing a large influx ofMexican immigrants.By saying thatfirefighters might not speak Spanish andwould therefore not be able to find thegrocery store that was on fire if the signoutside said “Tienda de Comida,” thecounty officials made it illegal to have storenames in languages other than English.However, the bakery, Au Bon Pain, was notasked to change its sign. Presumably, thefirefighters speak French better than theyspeak Spanish.As we see from these two examples, thepatterns set in history are continued today.Not only in the on-going pervasive andsystematic discrimination against people ofcolor in housing, health care, education,and the judicial systems, but also in the lessobvious ways in which people of color areexcluded from many white people’s day- today consciousness. Think, for example, ofhow regularly you see a positive story aboutan American Indian or a Latina/o on thefront page of the newspaper you read. Howlong would it take you to name ten white3
heroes? Could you name ten women ofcolor, other than people in sports andmusic,whohavemademajorcontributions to our society?Thefreedom not to notice our lack ofknowledge about people of color isanother privilege that is afforded only towhite people.All of us, includingstudents of color, study the history ofwhite, Western Europeans everyday inour schools unless we take an ethnicstudies course or a course consciouslydesigned to present the many otherthreads of the “American experience.”Privilege from ConceptionWhitepeople’sprivilegesarebestowed prenatally. We can’t not getthem and we cannot give them away, nomatter how much we do not want them.For example, if I walk into any drugstore in the country that carries hairproducts, I can be sure that I will findsomething that was designed for myhair. Black hair products are muchharder to find; often African Americanshave to drive for miles to buy what theyneed. Further, I know that when aBand- Aid box says “fresh color,” itmeans my skin color, not those of myAsian or Latina friends. If, in an attemptto “give back” my privileges, I said to thedrug store clerk, “I don’t want theprivilege of always being able to getshampoo for my hair when my Blackfriend can’t,” the clerk would think I wasnuts. What we can and must do is workdaily to combat our privilege by bringingto consciousness others’ and our own,the system in which we are living.White People:Taking Racism SeriouslyFar too many of us who are whiteerroneously believe that we do not have totake the issues of racism seriously. Whilepeople of color understand the necessity ofbeing able to read the white system, thoseof us who are white are able to live out ourlives knowing very little of the experiencesof people of color. Understanding racism orwhiteness is often an intellectual exercisefor us, something we can work at for aperiod of time and then move on, ratherthan its being central to our survival.Further, we have the luxury of not having tohave the tools to deal with racial situationswithout looking incompetent.I was working with a college at whichsenior administrators were trying to decidehow to move forward with diversity intake.One of the vice principals said, “There areso many people who want diversity to fail.”The conversation seemed theoretical andremoved to me. What an odd thing to say:“There are so many people who wantdiversity to fail,” with the attitude of, “well,we tried, it was an interesting experiment,now let’s send all of ‘them’ back to thecountries they came from. Too bad it wasan exciting thought.” If, instead, someonehad said, “There are so many people whowant diversity to fail. I’m afraid we won’tsucceed,” an action plan would be drawnup in a heartbeat and monitored daily to getthe school back on track. Or would that bethe response? Is there a sense that, at theroot, “We don’t need to worry; we willalways be here”? I think the underlyingsense is there: for some eliminating racismis life and death, a question of survival,being seen as opposed to being invisible.For others, this is an interesting intellectualexercise from which we can be basicallyremoved.4
Making Decisions forEveryoneWhite privilege is the ability to makedecisions that affect everyone withouttaking others into account. This occursat every level, from intellectual toindividual. The following story couldlook simply like an oversight: “Oops, Iforgot to ask other people what theythought.” However, it is typical behaviorfor white women who want women ofcolor to join them in their endeavors.During a visit with an out-of-townfriend another white woman and alibrarian – we began to plan aconference for librarians on racism thatwe named “Librarians as Colleagues:Working Together Across Racial Lines.”We talked and talked, making notes ofgood exercises to include, videos touse, materials that might prove helpful.It was absolutely clear that we needed adiverse committee to work with me, thefacilitator, and we created one thatwould include all voices: two whitewomen (one Jewish), a Latina, aChinese American woman, straightwomen and lesbians, and severalAfrican Americans. By the end of ourconversation, I was extremely excitedand couldn’t wait to contact the womenon the “planning committee.”At the first meeting with thesewomen, during the introductions, I talkedabout my twenty-five year history ofworking on issues of racism andparticularly my own work on what itmeans to be white and Southern. ThenI presented what my friend and I hadthought up as the plan for theconference and all of us talked aboutthe particulars.(In other words, Ipresented my credentials as a “goodwhite person” and then proceeded tocreate a conference that was exactlywhat my friend and I had planned withoutany input from people of color.)A couple of weeks later, at our secondmeeting, the women of color pointed outthat I had fallen into the classic trap of whitewomen: the come-be-part-of-what-we’redoing syndrome. “If you truly want us towork with you to create a conference, wewill. But it means starting over and buildinga plan together. If you want us to enter theplanning process in the middle and add ourideas to yours, we’re not interested.”White People Don’tHave to ListenBeing white enables me to decidewhether I am going to listen to others, tohear them, or neither. As one of those inwhat Lisa Delpit calls “the culture of power,”I also silence others without intending to oreven being aware of it. For example, acolleague of mine, and African Americanwoman, attended a conference on theprocess of dialogue.Of the forty-fivepeople there, she was one of four who werenot white.The whites were of theintellectual elite: highly educated, bright,and, for the most part, liberal people. Asthemeetingunfolded,itbecameincreasingly clear that, if the women of colordidn’t mention race, no one would. Thewhite people were not conscious enough tothe fact that race their race was anintegral aspect of every conversation theywere having. When the women of color didinsert the issue into the dialogue, the whitepeople felt accused of being “racist.” In thisinstance, “silencing” took place when theplanners were not clear that race waspresent at the conference even if no peopleof color attended; the white participantsdidn’t include the reality of others in theirplan; and, when the issue was raised by mycolleague, she was made to feel that shewas the one who was “causing trouble.”5
In her article “The Silenced Dialogue:Power and Pedagogy in EducatingOther People’s Children” (HarvardEducation Review, Vol.58, Number 3,August 1988), Delpit includes theprofoundly disturbing comments of anAfrican American teacher that illustratehow we silence dialogue without beingaware of doing it or meaning to.When you’re talking to White peoplethey still want it to be their way. You cantry to talk to them and give themexamples, but they’re so headstrong,they think they know what’s best foreverybody, for everybody’s children.They won’t listen. White folks are goingto do what they want to do anyway.It’s really hard. They just don’t listenwell. No, they listen, but they don’t hear you know how your mama used to sayyou listen to the radio, but you hear yourmother? Well, they don’t hear me.So I just try to shut them out so I canhold my temper. You can only beat yourhead against a brick wall for so longbefore you draw blood. If I try to stoparguing with them I can’t help myselffrom getting angry. Then I end upwalking around praying all day “PleaseLord, remove the bile I feel for thosepeople so I can sleep tonight.” It’s funny,but it can become a cancer, a sore. (pp.280-281)As Delpit says, these are not thesentiments of one isolated person whoteaches in a particularly racist school.The feelings are representative of a vastnumber of people of color as theyinteract with white people on a dailybasis.The saddest element is that theindividuals that the Black and AmericanIndian educators speak of are seldomaware that the dialogue has beensilenced. Most likely the white educatorsbelieve their colleagues of color did, inthe end, agree with their logic. After all,they stopped disagreeing, didn’t they?(p.281)White privilege allows us not to see racein ourselves and to be angry at those whodo. I was asked to address a meeting ofwhite women and women of color calledtogether to create strategies for addressingsocial justice issues. Each of the womenhad been working for years in her owncommunity on a range of issues from healthcare to school reform. As I spoke about thework that is required for white women andwomen of color to collaborate authentically,the white women became nervous and thenresistant. Why was race always such anissue for women of color? What did I meanwhen I said it was essential for whitewomen to be conscious of how being oftheir race affects every hour of their lives,just as women of color are? They were allprofessionals, some said, why did it matterwhat color they were? The silencing ofdialogue here occurred because the whitewomen didn’t see the race of the women inthe room as an issue. It did not occur tothem that their daily experience wasdifferent from that of the African Americans,Latinas, and Asian Americans in the room.Had I not been asked to raise the issue, thepossibility of doing so would have been leftto the women of color, as it usually is.Believing that race is “N.M.I” (“Not MyIssue”) and being members of one or moregroups that also experience systemicdiscrimination, we use the privilege ofemotionally and psychologically removingourselves from the “white” group, which wesee as composed either of demonicallyracist people who spout epithets and wearKu
is to become clear about the basics of white privilege, what it is and how it works. The second step is to explore ways in which we can work against the racism of which white privilege is a cornerstone. White privilege is an institutional (rather than personal) set of benefits granted to those of us who, by race, resemble the
-Corlette Sande, The Young Peacemaker -Ken Sande, The Peacemaker and The Peacemaker Student Edition -Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart Thank you so very much for the privilege of serving you at this event! I count it a great honor to learn with you and I hope that we will stay in touch:
3 Christian - Anglican 25.06 Christian - Anglican 15.48 4 Christian - Uniting 5.44 Christian - Other Protestant 6.79 5 Christian - Other Protestant 2.55 Christian - Uniting 2.88 6 Christian - Presbyterian/Reformed 2.53 Christian - Presbyterian/Reformed 1.35 7 Christian - Other 1.83 Christian - Lutheran 0.87
the expiry date for his or her current Status for Privilege Executive and Privilege Elite Members (Privilege Club Member ID cards have no expiry date); the expiry date is the last calendar day of the month displa
Pan-African Baha’i Muslim Interfaith Zoroastrian Taoist Scientologist Catholic Christian Swedenborgian Christian Christian Orthodox Christian Mormon Protestant Christian Jehovah’s Witnesses Hispanic Christian Anglican Christian Ethiopian Orthodox Christian . Founding of the first Church of Scientology in the U.S., the Church of .
Under-privilege prevents users from performing their duties. Poli-cies must balance between these competing goals of minimizing under-privilege vs. over-privilege. The Attribute Based Access Con-trol (ABAC) model has been gaining popularity in recent years because of i
Zero Trust Privilege For Dummies consists of five chapters that explore » The basics of Zero Trust and the emergence of Zero Trust Privilege: what it is, why it's needed, and its benefits (Chapter 1) » Real-world use cases for Zero Trust Privilege in organizations
legal advice privilege always requires a lawyer, while litigation privilege can exist . LEGAL PRIVILEGE 2016 05 without a lawyer's involvement so long as the document was created with the dominant purpose of preparation for litigation, either existing or anticipated.
ASTM – Revision of ASTM B633 - Zinc Electroplating Standard . The IFI 2018 Annual report will detail that: IFI remains healthy and continues to build reserves, which remain over 2 million, which is sufficient for nearly two years of operations. Workforce development continues to be a major objective for the industry. With orders and production in the final months of 2018 .