Renouncing White Privilege

I used to be in favour of white privilege but I’m not any more.

I read ‘White Privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack‘ about a decade ago. I thought it was a neat exposition of a range of phenomena I’d been trying to think about clearly but couldn’t express.

I still think it’s an interesting essay but I don’t think the concept of white privilege is very useful anymore.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that white privilege makes for interesting reflections but it doesn’t really suggest any action for tackling racial injustice. At most, it prompts an audit on the individual level, of the various ways one has benefitted from being white.

Having conducted that audit, however one is provided with very little in the way of actionable guidance on what to do about it.

I think racial injustice is a society-wide, structural issue best tackled by collective endeavour. I think individual action untethered from the collective is of quite limited value.

Openly acknowledging your white privilege may be encouraging for a non-white person to hear. And that is not nothing. But I’m skeptical it does much to address structural inequality.

Some people will then go on to join in the collective endeavour but I think they were likely engaged with the issue already.

If that were all white privilege did I would have little criticism of it.

But more often it prompts people to defend themselves against the charge of privilege. This normally involves detailing the various forms of disadvantage to which they are subject: sex, class, gender identity etc.

At its most jarring this can involve people declaring that their white, male status is the source of their oppression.

But in truth those occasions don’t bother me as much. The man who argues that white and male are the really oppressed classes, was probably not going to be an ally in the first place.

Far more troubling are those who point to e.g. their working class status, or their gender. Because those genuinely are sources of oppression in society. And they should be points of solidarity between groups. Instead, white privilege often functions to cut across potential alliances.

A sensitive reading of white privilege would make clear that it does not rule out being subject to other forms of disadvantage. And I’ve spent time making that argument myself. But the fact remains that once the frame is triggered a lot of effort has to be expended litigating and relitigating the nature of privilege in order to reassure people who might otherwise be allies. I no longer feel sure the effort is worth it.

The second objection is to the frame itself.

As a friend pointed out (in a conversation that eventually convinced me to change my mind on this matter) the things identified as white privilege aren’t privileges at all. A privilege is an extra thing you’re granted. If everyone was entitled to it, it wouldn’t be a privilege.

To take a couple of the “privileges” at random from ‘Unpacking the knapsack’:

I can arrange to protect my children, most of the time from people who might not like them
I am never asked to speak on behalf of my racial group

The fact that white people have these things isn’t the problem. The fact that non-white people don’t, is.

Framing these as “privileges” centres the people who have them, when the focus should be on the people who don’t. And often people will assume tackling white privilege means stripping them from white people rather than extending them to others.

I don’t want white people to renounce their “privilege“. I want everyone to enjoy their basic rights.

The privilege of being generic

Some White people don’t like being called “white“.

Why do we need labels? Why can’t we all just be people?

Those of us with post-colonial backgrounds, and elsewhere might raise an eyebrow at this,

“Why indeed?”

Some people have always had labels affixed to them. If you’re not white in the U.K. you likely spend a lot of time negotiating various labels both those you affix yourself for others and those they place upon you. Where you’re from, where you’re really from.

But being white does not normally necessitate this. If you’re white you’re assumed to be from here. This is perhaps where the anger comes from. If you’re accustomed to being accepted wherever you go it can be difficult to feel that you suddenly require explanation.

There’s a historical irony to this. White as an ethnicity was a conscious creation of racial theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was shaped by the need to differentiate Europeans from inferior, colonised races; and by efforts to fashion and preserve hegemony by Protestant elites in America. Who got to be white has always been up for negotiation, but the principle of exclusion was vital.

Having moved from an identity based on reified differentiation, Whiteness became the default from which everything else is an exception. If you are the generic option then you must, by definition belong. However much space is allowed for people that differ from you (and that space can contract as much as it expands) it is clear that you are making space for others at your indulgence. They might be allowed to stay (or they might not), but that’s not the same as belonging.

The consequences of this trope become clear when a broadcaster comments on the number of white people that attend a Brexit rally and unleashes a torrent of white grievance. Grievance that would be called identity politics if the parties involved had more melanin.

But the consequences are bigger then just Jon Snow being made to give a public apology. The consequences of the White default are that members of the Windrush generation can face sudden deportation to countries they left as children. They are that MPs like Diane Abbott and David Lammy can face continual vicious racist abuse and death threats. Because some people think that just being born here and then getting elected does not give one carte blanch to criticise a state that fundamentally isn’t for you. They are that the Mail can decide a Black MC is being “ungrateful” when he castigates the failure to offer justice for the Grenfell disaster. The consequences are that Shamima Begum’s newborn baby can be left to die in a camp for the sin of having an abused teenager for a mother. Because the rule of law is only conditional for people who are exceptions to the rule.

It does not matter that the Home Secretary who revoked Shamima’s citizenship is not white. Not being white does not necessarily inoculate you from the overwhelming logic of the white default. Especially if your career ambitions rely on it not doing so.

White is not the only default. A recent book has pointed out how much of our lives takes men to be the basic unit of measurement, across culture, design, healthcare. And people who are LGBT have a lot they can tell you about the assumptions of heteronormativity that run though discussions of sexuality. These are just two examples. Each of these defaults have their own historical roots, and modes of expression. But all of them reinforce the idea that the generic is the common good. Everyone else has narrow sectional interests which are granted more or less tolerance depending on the times. To draw attention to this dynamic is to engage in divisive identity politics, and even the default are not free to do that.