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Running Head: WHITE PRIVILEGE
1
Destiny Wheeler
May 2, 2016
ETST 3704
White Privilege
White privilege is a set of bonuses that white people benefit from on a
daily basis that is beyond those common to all others. White privilege does
exist even without white people's conscious knowledge of its appearance
and it helps to preserve the racial hierarchy in this country (Avakian, 2003).
Whites have always had it easier. White immigrants who arrived aboard the
Queen Mary were always escorted through immigration first and were auto-
matically assigned upper-class positions within the American system (Dunn,
2015). White privilege has many functions. First, it creates real advantages
for white people. White people are resistant to a lot of challenges of daily life.
Secondly, it provides white people with benefits that are not earned, just
handed to them. Finally, white privilege forms the world in which we live by
the way that we operate and communicate with each other.
Although white privilege is not something that white people necessarily
do, create, or enjoy on purpose, it is still relevant every day. White privilege
creates a lot of advantages for white people. There are many of things that a
white person does not encounter, have to deal with, or even recognize. A
contemporary example of this is that being white does not work against
them regarding how people perceive their financial responsibility, their style
Running Head: WHITE PRIVILEGE
2
of clothing, their public speaking skills, or their job performance (Holladay,
2000).
White people receive all types of perks as a function of their skin privi-
lege. From 1924 to 1965, this was the time when racial and ethnic hierar-
chies generated in earlier eras took their firmest hold (Spickard, 2007). Store
security or police officers do not harass white people, pull them over, or fol-
low them because of their race.
Another example of this is when white peo-
ple buy hair care products in a grocery store like Walmart, their shampoos
and conditioners are in the aisle that is labeled ‘hair care’ and not in a sepa-
rate section for ‘ethnic products', where you would find very few African
American hair care products. Also, white people can turn on the television or
open to the front page of the paper and see other white people being widely
represented (McIntosh, 1998).
White privilege shapes the way in which we view the world and the
way in which the world sees us. A state of not knowing is a factor that causes
white privilege to carry on. Color-blindness is an example of this. Color-blind-
ness is a denial to see race or acknowledge white privilege. It is a self-im-
posed blindness that white people are taught, that instructs them to ignore
race. When someone looks at the national currency or sees photographs of
monuments on the National Mall, they would see people of the white race
being widely represented and celebrated.
White people have the privilege of playing the colorblind card that
wipes their slate clean of the centuries of racism. The race is a fundamental
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