White People Overcoming Racism Can Be A Function of Privilege
Channel: Alex Zorach
Date: 2018-09-08

I frequently observe highly-educated, liberal white people judging and condemning other white people for expressing racist viewpoints, sometimes even subtly or mildly racist ones. This judgment often has a hidden subtext of privilege or social status, in which knowledge of racism and use of "politically correct" language becomes a tool through which highly educated, urban white people of high socioeconomic status bash or condemn white people of lower status, especially those who live in or come from isolated rural areas and are likely to have grown up in highly racist environments.

Often, the white people doing the judging are themselves doing less work to root out their own institutional racism and experiencing less personal growth than the people they are condemning.

In this video I share my own personal story of how I became aware of my own white privilege, and how this process was facilitated by many types of privilege, including coming from an educated background, and growing up in an urban area where I came into contact with different races and was exposed to progressive thinking in my daily life through my social network.

I hope that through sharing this story, other similarly privileged white people can be more compassionate and understanding towards other white people who may be having a harder time and going through a slower process of rooting out their own racist views, so that we can treat these people with compassion and support them in overcoming and growing out of racism.

I ultimately think this approach will be much more effective at overcoming racism!