TRURO, N.S. — Bring up the concept “white privilege” in a room, and you immediately raise the ire of most of the white people within it.
This bandied-about label creates a swell of emotion. As a seasoned debater, I know that once you inject emotion into a reasoned argument, all reason goes out the window. This term is valueless in its accuracy, applicability, and as a vehicle with which to move forward in effecting societal change in an increasingly diverse and inclusive environment.
I propose we flip the script.
The current use of the term white privilege appears to date back to about 1988, when scholar Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper partially titled, “White Privilege and Male Privilege.” In this paper, she speaks of earned and unearned advantages.
I have been thinking about this for a while, weighing all arguments, and trying to decide on which side greater reason lies. Two recent experiences have prompted me to write about this now.
The first experience was viewing an article online written by Gina Crosley-Corcoran, one in which she relates that when she was first told, even as an impoverished white person living in America, she was privileged. She didn’t feel privileged, so she rejected the notion out of hand until later, when she was exposed to McIntosh’s paper while pursuing a post-secondary education.
My second experience came from a recent discussion with my 23-year-old niece, attending third-year studies at the University of Alberta. According to her, I don’t need to like the term privilege, but it is something I should acknowledge about myself – that I am a cis-gendered, white male, born into a middle-class family, able bodied, that I afforded an education and that I was born a Canadian citizen. She went on to speak to the concept of intersectionalities that McIntosh made liberal use of.
I don’t know about you, but I do not like it when other people try to define who or what I am, automatically making assumptions about me in the absence of any real first-hand knowledge. Everyone has struggles, and they use the tools or advantages at hand in order to overcome them.
The term white privilege is divisive. It is a convenient tag to run up the flagpole because it speaks to elitism, and people love to hate the elite. It makes for a great we/they dichotomy. Always keep in mind that just because a large group of people think in a certain way, they may not be wrong, but it does not automatically make them right.
The concept of privilege is a moving target, and here dictionary definitions are of little avail to us. Consistent with most definitions, as well as mentioned in McIntosh’s paper in her attempt to define privilege, is the term advantage. I believe this is the word to hang our hats on.
While we may differ as to our opinions of privilege, we have no problem at all in recognizing whether or not an individual or group possesses particular advantages or disadvantages in any given context. In moving forward with planned or unplanned societal change, this needs to be our focus. We can work with this.
Those folks who are attached to the concept of white privilege may be reluctant to change their view of the world to something as simple as advantages, because it requires a paradigm shift in their thinking that they may not be willing to make.
One thinks of privilege as something bestowed, earned or inherited. Advantages, or the lack thereof, on the other hand are things more innate. We can be born with advantages, we can seek to acquire further advantages, and we can choose to position ourselves where being who we are is an advantage. In our culture it is an advantage to be right-handed. I can’t imagine right-handedness is a privilege, the way that we have always considered privilege. If we are born smarter than the average bear, and we have that intelligence nurtured growing up in our homes, that is not privilege, it is an advantage.
I acknowledge this is a very debatable and potentially inflammatory topic, and I do not expect I will have the last word on it. Moving forward, I do caution against continuing to use the term white privilege, because this will not take us anywhere we want to go.
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Rob MacLellan is an advocate for education and non-profit organizations. He can be reached at 902-305-0311 or at [email protected].
