In 1995, I graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC, with a degree in African-American Studies and a minor in U.S. History.
One of the most indelible lessons I learned while taking classes at Howard is that America is a country of Haves and Have Nots. A small minority have a huge percentage of the wealth, and a larger majority — to include black, brown, red, yellow AND white people — have it not. This was a recurring theme in every, single class I took.
I once did a research paper with the title Multicultural Education is an Assault of Black Studies Programs in Colleges and Universities. That was my title before I started my research, because I had preconceived ideas base on what was being said by others. When I delved into the research by both white and black scholars, I could find nothing to support my original title. Nothing. Not one thing. I had to change my title to Multicultural Education and Black Studies Programs in Colleges and Universities are Mutually Exclusive and can Exist Alongside One Another.
Based on everything I've lived and learned, I confidently assert that there is no such thing as white privilege.
There is wealth privilege.
The operative word in that sentence being privilege.
White privilege is a myth; a misnomer designed to make it appear that all white people in America have the same lived and learned experiences and behaviors.
White advantage is the actual reality.
If you think privilege and advantage are one in the same, then you would be incorrect.
I looked up privilege and advantage on dictionary.com. Here’s what the site had to say…
advantage: any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end [https://everyonesasleep.com/adv]
privilege: a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most. [https://everyonesasleep.com/prv]
Do you see it?
You can have advantages without being privileged, but privilege is based on advantages that exceed a regular person’s state, circumstance, opportunity or means.
Go further and check out thesaurus.com.
Synonyms for advantage [https://everyonesasleep.com/tadv] do not include the word privilege.
Please search the entire page, and you will not find the word privilege anywhere on it.
However, the first synonym listed for privilege is advantage [https://everyonesasleep.com/tprv].
I would assert that if you’re a white person who can’t find a job or who couldn’t afford college or whose children go to bed hungry every night, you do not feel privileged at all. That’s because white people as a whole are not privileged.
However, in a society where premiums and privileges are attached to white skin, white people have an advantage over those who have not been folded into the “white people” category.
A white person may be struggling to find a job, but they’re not walking into a place for a job interview wondering if the color of their skin or their made-up name is going to be one or two strikes against them before the interviewer even bothers to look at their qualifications. These are advantages, not privileges.
A well-dressed white person standing outside a high-end jewelry store who cannot afford to purchase anything in that high-end jewelry store will likely be buzzed in and welcomed by the person behind the counter looking at them thinking, “Okay, this person is no threat.”
Ironically, this prejudice could be the case whether the person behind the counter is white or a person of color. That’s an advantage, not a privilege. The privilege comes with being able to go into the high-end jewelry store AND to also purchase anything and everything they want.
On the flip side of the same coin, there are very rich affluent people of color who would not be buzzed into that same jewelry store solely based on the color of their skin and the possible prejudice of the person behind the counter thinking, “They are probably up to no good.”
Working/wage/welfare-class white people have been lied to for so long–for as long as there has been a United States–that they also parrot the idea that they have privilege.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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