White People Will Never Get Sick and Tired of Racism Because They Benefit
By: Allison Gaines
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Race, Equality, White Privilege, White Supremacy

Imagine strolling into a densely wooded area and discovering a tree stump. As curiosity creeps in, you decide to add up the dark rings inside to determine how old the tree is. You can trace each year of the tree’s life; it came from a long chain of seeds, saplings, and mighty oaks. Like trees, people come from an unbroken line of humans. While we do not have rings to count, we record the year of our birth just like a mighty oak tree. Like trees, we connect to the people and systems which came before.

When considering socioeconomic status, people often forget to count the dark rings around our American tree stump. They think their station in life is due only to their hard work, failing to recognize that most people are hardworking. People inherit wealth, privilege, and socioeconomic status.

When white and or wealthy people see a person of lower status, they often attempt to justify their place in the social hierarchy. Perhaps they think they are more creative, talented, or hardworking than people with less money. Similarly, they believe their parents have money because of their hard work as well. Somehow, they justify that their hard work is worth more than the baker, the construction worker, or teacher. In embracing the merits of their superiority and privilege, they attempt to place a wedge between their status and the community’s social ills.

They think that poverty results from a lack of intelligence or resourcefulness. Others consider themselves mediocre and thus do not attribute their station in life to anything malignant. Wealthy people in general and white people in particular often deny the power bestowed onto them. It is easier to think of themselves as superior or mediocre, opposites. Ironically both of these perspectives avoid the obvious — we all wield power, and those with privilege are culpable for systemic inequities.

If we found the tree stump reflecting our nation, it would tell the real story. Each event in history is part of a long chain connected to the lives and communities we share today. To understand our modern social hierarchy, people should acknowledge that hard work is only one drip in the ripple of reality. Race and sex are more significant determinations of status than a good work ethic. However, many people seem willingly unaware of the power they possess.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white privilege, like the obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already (McIntosh, 1990).

Many white people remain in denial about white privilege. They can maintain their power if they always deny having it. Having a Black friend, family member, or respected colleague does not disavow their white privilege. Each white person benefits from the color of their skin by receiving social and systemic benefits. Our educational, criminal justice, healthcare, and banking systems need to account for systemic inequities. Ironically, many white, as well as wealthy people, oppose addressing systemic racism.

Privileged people want to believe that each person gets a fair shake in life. Sipping espresso while wearing cashmere sweaters, they think that they honestly deserve everything they have. In thinking they earned their station in life, they also feel that impoverished people and minorities need to work harder to be like them. This type of character will say, “I donate to a charity every year. You know, I never owned slaves. I am definitely not a racist person. No one has done more for Black people than me.”

They think that being racist is a life-long title., refusing to acknowledge that each person has the power to change. Just because you have the privilege and misused, it does not mean you have to continue to do so. Without acknowledging the benefits they wield, privileged people will continue to justify their socioeconomic status, enjoying the advantages of a white-dominated racist system.

The term ‘privilege’ refers to the unique advantages that a particular group has. While white people never asked for the privilege, it is not something they can abandon. In America, their skin color provides them with better treatment, and feeling uncomfortable about this will not change their privileged status. Americans need to understand that privilege is both subconscious and omnipresent.

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group(McIntosh, 1990).

Some white people are conditioned since childhood to think of themselves as mediocre. While they may think of themselves as just a regular white man or woman, they are far from it. While all white people benefit from an anti-black system and have white privilege, they control how they wield their power. One need only consider the difference between white abolitionists and white confederates; decisions define us.

We cannot separate ourselves from American history. As a Black woman, my lineage ties me directly to the chattel slavery system. I exist and write using Standard English because of the dominance that Europeans exhibited over centuries. Every American knows that Europeans are not Indigenous. Still, few discuss how brutal their power-grab was — even Europeans who came through immigration benefit from a system built for their benefit.

After hundreds of years of thankless hard work, Black families had to watch immigrants come into the country at higher socioeconomic status. Their relative success was not because they were savvier; instead, the system provided them opportunities deprived of African descendants of slavery. White people never relinquished power, and thus, we cannot discuss Black economic disparity without understanding that it results from white privilege.

Understanding privilege is paramount to dismantling a white supremacist system. If someone wants to live in a color-blind society, they must first eliminate the structures that make race relevant. They must first understand white privilege and how it operates. Now it is time for us to analyze this stump to know how each person’s livelihood is impacted by more than hard work or effort.