Honestly, There Are Three Things I Hate About the Term White Privilege

And no, I don’t hate it in the white avoidance kind of way

Photo Credit: Ryan Snaadt

White privilege is a contentious issue and one that remains abstract for many white people. Though the continued violence and policing of Black bodies catapulted the pseudo-white racial awakening of 2020, white privilege seemingly remains too challenging to grasp.

Some argue that the issue is mainly foreign and hard to grasp among white conservatives. Others say that the liberal “I’m not racist” community doesn’t get it either. However, I believe white people of all ethnicities and political parties struggle with the concept of white skin advantage. We grapple, or better still, willfully ignore the very essence of white privilege and the core tenet on which it rests, white dominance.

What is white privilege?

According to Racial Equity Tools, white privilege “refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits, and choices bestowed on people solely because they are white. Generally, white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.”

In other words, white privilege (and privilege in general) is typically an undeserved advantage in society that allows someone to move freely without the mental and emotional burden of experiencing disadvantage. For instance, though this may be an extreme example, men can typically roam the world freely without fear of being physically or sexually assaulted at night. A specific example of white privilege is white women's ability to weaponize their tears. The potency of their tears helps them escape accountability from having perpetuated racism and be viewed as a victim in any race-related context—think Amy Cooper, Victoria Secret Karen, and Carolyn Bryant Donham.

Scholar Peggy McIntosh is a white woman who coined the term white privilege and has described it in her seminal essay as an invisible knapsack. According to McIntosh, this knapsack affords white people many advantages and resources. She includes the following: “I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.”

Though McIntosh's theory has been an influential tool for understanding whiteness, many Critical Whiteness Scholars believe it contains several loopholes. I think it may be time to reevaluate and, at the very least, evolve white privilege into a more operationalized term. That said, I honestly hate the term white privilege, and here are five reasons why:

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