If you are offended already, please hear me out. Just the phrase “white privilege” still makes me uncomfortable. I don’t feel particularly privileged. It’s been a slow process of listening, observing, and thinking that has led me to acknowledge, that white privilege is real - and really a problem. And it’s not about whiteness, it’s about privilege.
This brings us to the logical conundrum of denying there is such a thing as white privilege, or privilege in general.
Oh I know, here come the catchphrases. Virtue signaling. White guilt. I’m drinking the progressive Kool-Aid and must be a Marxist. Nope. It wasn’t feelings that convinced me. It was logic and Scripture. Let’s start with Paul.
Galatians 3:28 (NET)
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female - for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
What does that have to do with white privilege? Nothing on the surface. But when you consider the culture of the time this was written in, it was radically progressive at the time.
Both Jews and Greeks had exclusive ethnic and racial identities that did not want to be polluted by the other. That Paul would call them equal was incredibly counter-cultural. Not to mention the equality of males and females, slaves and free.
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan also turned the culture’s racism upside down. The concept that people are equal was revolutionary. Thankfully the Declaration of Independence got at least that wording right in the opening line.
This may seem contradictory, but my goal is to show that White Privilege actually exists because people ARE equal, no matter their skin color. Crazy, huh?
In the interest of brevity (it could happen…), I’m not going to cite exact statistics or sources. There are many. This is going to be a discussion of general examples and their relation to choice. That is the primary argument I hear, “I’m not privileged because I’m white! It’s a free country and everyone has the freedom to choose!”
However, choice and equality are what brought me to understand this conundrum. Let’s first look at some examples.
No rational-thinking person could deny that people of color are disproportionally poor in our nation. The percentage of differences between black and white poverty is off the charts. Income, home ownership, jobs and promotions - and the list goes on.
One can’t deny that the percentage of blacks incarcerated is much more than the number of whites. Or that there are more single-parent homes, more crime committed per capita, and more drug convictions.
Why? Logically there are only two possibilities. Either something is systemically wrong, or these are all just bad choices.
Could it be that slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, prejudice, hate, and oppression play a role? Why does almost every town and city have a black part, or a ghetto or “hood?” Did the systematic oppression of several hundred years possibly help create those? You may think that liberal policies like welfare perpetuate the cycle but there has to be some reason that there are such distinct differences in this land of opportunity.
If all men are created equal. If all people have the very same life options. Then most of the people still living in a culture of poverty have something in common.
They chose it. Right? Or wrong?
What’s the difference between those statistical anomalies? If everyone is equal, with equal rights, abilities, and opportunities, then there really is only one difference.
Skin tone.
That’s the logical problem with denying there is a systemic root to all this. Can I deny that being white exempts me from the cultural effects of slavery and segregation - and that blacks have every opportunity that I have?
If I do, then unwittingly I have made the point that a whole group of people have made the worst choices in history because of the quantity of melanin in their skin.
To deny white privilege is to say there is an equal, fair playing field, and black people just don’t choose as well as white people.
I can’t say that anymore with intellectual integrity. The fact that it took me this long to realize it has now surpassed logic and become a heart issue. My heart had to change in response to the actual logical facts.
We can’t work together to fix the problem if we don’t even acknowledge the problem exists. There is no magic wand to wave that will level the playing field. Legislation has been woefully inadequate.
Change will only happen when we stop trying to prove we aren’t privileged and start trying to understand how in the world a civilized society has allowed such inequity to perpetuate based primarily on skin color.
Privilege is just privilege though. And it exists in many forms. It’s not just about whiteness.
The Will Smith Oscar slap is a powerful example of privilege. When you hear white privilege many think it’s only about white and is therefore biased and racist. But privilege isn’t about the color. It’s about the privilege.
In my lifetime I can’t recall another celebrity event that so typified privilege. Can you even imagine being able to do what Will Smith did? At this privately exclusive yet extravagantly public event, he not only walked up to interrupt the scheduled host... he punch-slapped him. And then walked back to his seat to vulgarly heckle him. No security response. No immediate repercussions at all.
Who among us non-celebrity mortals would have gotten away with that? None. You or I would have been at best escorted out by security no matter what color we are or at worst arrested and jailed. You are not Will Smith. You don’t have his wealth or position of power in that industry. But the actual rules are the same for all of us. Assault is assault, right?
Unless you have privilege.
Whether or not the joke was offensive is irrelevant. The only exceptions for assault our legal systems recognize is some form of justified self-defense. His position and the nature of the event extended privilege to Will Smith. It had nothing to do with color. Privilege never does. It’s about the power of exception to the rules. In this case, the celebrity system.
Now consider this. My son never got into trouble in high school or with the law. I’m good friends with one of his classmate’s dad. His kid has never been in trouble either. They played on the same team. Shopped at a lot of the same stores.
One of those good kids and his dad had often been followed by security and accused of shoplifting, another had not. Neither had any kind of history of criminal activity. The only difference? Me and my son are white, and he and his son are black. Guess who systematically got accused?
Not me or my white son. That’s privilege. We can argue all day long about why the playing field is not equal, but did this kid choose to be viewed as suspicious and my kid didn’t?
No. One is white, one is black and all things are not equal in our cultural system because of that. And that’s a mild example.
If it’s all about choices, then you have to admit that darker people just make worse choices than us white people.
Or there is privilege.
We are either all created equal or we are not. Skin tone makes no choices. Grey matter does. Let’s not let our feelings drive our logic, but let our logic change our feelings.
That’s the real choice.
It’s not about whiteness, it’s about leveling the playing field when privilege is systematic.
Romans 2:11 (NET)
For there is no partiality with God.