Preamble
Privilege is a touchy subject that makes a lot of people angry and defensive. That is OK. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry and defensive, just so long as that helps you start an honest conversation (with the people around you, but also with yourself) about why you're feeling that way. This writeup was written by someone with massive amounts of privilege, plenty of which still lies unexamined, and it is just as uncomfortable for me to write as it probably is for you to read. Once again: That is OK. Bear with me and bear with yourself; if this writeup has caused you to ask even one hard question that you've never asked before, then I will consider myself blessed.
Why The Fact That You Are Not A Racist Matters Less Than You Think
Many people, particularly white, affluent "liberals" and "progressives," pride themselves on their open-mindedness. They are revolted by racism, sexism, homophobia/heterosexism, ageism, ableism, and all the other -isms that plague our society. They honestly believe that they are working hard toward making the world a better place for various oppressed groups. They say, and mean it when they say, that they would hire a person of any gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity for a job; that they don't restrict their dating pool according to traditional views of race or beauty; that just generally they mean well and are trying hard.
Let's assume for the moment that all those things are true (though there are complexities with this assumption that I'll get to in a minute). The idea of privilege is the idea that none of that is the real problem.
The reason it is not the problem is that whether a white/heterosexual/male/Christian/able-bodied person personally is or is not a racist does not erase the very important fact that the white/heterosexual/male/Christian/able-bodied person is treated differently than other people. In other words, the problem is not "active" but "passive." If you are a white man, ladies do not clutch their purses more tightly whenever you walk by. If you are a black man, they do. If you are a heterosexual, it's not an awkward moment when someone asks you when you plan to "get married and start a family." When you are LGBT, an honest answer to that question might cost you a friendship or a job. When you are a man, you never need to watch your drink in a bar. When you are a woman, not only does that become a part of your routine, but you know you will be blamed if you are raped that night. If you are able-bodied, nobody has ever talked to your friend instead of you in the assumption that they are your caregiver and that you can't speak for yourself. If you are blind or in a wheelchair, that happens a couple of times a week.
Privilege, in this context, is not having to worry about certain stuff. But it is more than that. It is the lack of awareness that society was created with your best interests in mind, and that you can move smoothly through certain encounters that force other people to stop short over and over again.
Whites, whether they personally happen to be racist or not, benefit from white privilege. Men, whether they personally happen to be misogynist or not, benefit from male privilege. And so on down the line. To put it baldly, the world is an easier place for certain people to live in than it is for others.
The idea of "white privilege" and "male privilege" were popularized by Peggy McIntosh, who wrote an influential essay called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack in 1988. As the title makes clear, McIntosh was talking about racism, but her essay arose out of the fact that she (a white woman) had trouble explaining male privilege to her male students. She tried to turn the tables on herself, by examining the privileges afforded to her merely on account of her race.
McIntosh provides a list of 50 items that white people in U.S. culture can take for granted that people of colour cannot. They range from the apparently trivial ("I can choose bandages in 'flesh' color and have them more or less match my skin"; "I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color") to the deeply troubling ("I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time"; "I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the 'person in charge,' I will be facing a person of my race").
McIntosh's point is that, not only do white people enjoy these privileges, but that they tend not to notice them at all. For white people, being surrounded by other white people, not having their flaws ascribed to their race, seeing people who look like them reflected in television and in movies, and so forth, are all seen as "baseline," not even worthy of mention. The system propagates itself by making itself invisible to those who have the most to gain from it. She writes:
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
This is exactly why members of dominant groups in the West are so unbelieving when they are told that race (along with gender, sexual orientation, etc.) are still a problem. Women and PoCs and LGBTs have the vote; women and PoCs and LGBTs can get good jobs and have gotten some excellent ones; hell, the U.S. even has a black President, and the last opponent standing within his party was a woman! What could possibly be the problem?
Though McIntosh wrote her essay before Barack Obama won the U.S. election, her point still stands. There is still a problem, but the problem is invisible to the people who have the power to change it. Obama notwithstanding, a black kid in Philly is still going to be followed into convenience stores by the cops. A white kid generally won't. If you don't believe me, that's only because you've had the good fortune not to be tailed by cops everywhere you've gone; it might be a good idea to ask yourself why that's the case.
Why It's Not Just A Matter Of Pulling Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps
One of the most pervasive and longstanding American myths is that if one works hard, one will succeed. Those who fail do so, the story goes, only because they are lazy or incompetent. Many people (of all races, genders, orientations, body types, and so on) can find examples of poverty and hardship in their own family history, and many people (of all races, etc.) can find examples of family members who overcame those hardships and became successful against all odds.
But the thing to understand about privilege is that it changes the starting line long before the race begins. The "odds" are not what you think they are. A lazy, incompetent white man is treated differently from a smart, hard-working Latina -- this treatment begins before either of them ever starts talking/working/acting. Doors that the man does not even see are wide open, hanging off the hinges in fact, as he moves through the worlds of business, politics, and leisure. He has the luxury of believing that if he is successful it is because he deserved to be. He has the luxury of taking his situation as "normal"; of assuming that if the Latina remains a receptionist while he becomes CEO that the only possible explanation is that she did not have enough ambition.
Quoting McIntosh again:
For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.
This is why it doesn't help for, e.g., a white woman to protest that she grew up poor/her parents never went to college/she's Wiccan/she spent a year in India on a work-study program and "really, really understands" racism. It's tempting to go rooting around for "minority status" in one's life in order to claim triumphantly at the end that one is not privileged after all. This temptation is driven by the powerful desire to believe that it wasn't, e.g., your whiteness that (in part) got you to college. It is driven by the desperate desire to avoid the depressing fact that you didn't just get this job or this mortgage because you are "smart" or "made the right choices."
This is not to trivialize the struggles of people who are poor or Wiccan or what-have-you. Different people are privileged in different ways, and everyone is going to come up against frustrating and unfair roadblocks in life. No, it is only to say that different sorts of privilege are not equivalent, and that the fact that you're one-quarter Irish does not make you any less white in the eyes of the people you deal with every day. The world around you -- shop clerks, police officers, interviewers, everyone -- are making snap judgements about you based on how you look, and that means that someone who can "pass" for white is treated differently from someone who can't even if she is a minority in other ways. (This is why the case of Barack Obama is so interesting: though he is technically "mixed race," and though people spend a lot of time crowing about how he's not actually a "black President," well, to use his own example, when he is trying to hail a cab on the streets of Chicago, taxi drivers see "a black guy" and react accordingly.)
Maybe You're A Little Bit Racist After All
Until we recognize and engage seriously with our privilege, we are not actually removing -isms from the world. And until we ask ourselves honestly -- really, really honestly -- whether we make the same assumptions about women and men, PoCs and whites, LGBTs and cisgendered straights, then a lot of hidden -isms are going to lurk in our behaviour. (Think you're not sexist? Well, tell me: when you are cut off in traffic by a driver you can't see clearly, do you instinctively curse at "that guy"? "Did you see what he did?" If so, then that means that "baseline human being" for you still means male, and that women only enter the picture when you get new information. Believe me, there are many, many, many more examples of this than you think.)
Tragically, this last bit is true for members of the oppressed groups just as much as it is for the dominant groups. To choose a simple example, African-American children don't see faces like theirs in the books of fairy tales they read. Thus, they do not think of themselves as being capable of becoming knights, dragon-slayers, or princesses. They internalize this just as completely and just as invisibly as white kids do, meaning that they grow up believing that "all knights in shining armour are pale-skinned." That is going to alter their own relationships with other PoCs throughout their lives, meaning that they, too, will go on to become part of the atmosphere of hostility and distrust that their fellow PoCs must live in.
Further Reading