by CHRIS BERTRAM
Chris Bertram published two posts on Crooked Timber last week, the first1 challenging critiques of the concept of “white privilege”, the second2 arguing that certain claims about race and class are irrational. As one of the targets of these articles (Chris linked to one of my posts as exemplifying the problem, and we had previously debated the issue on Twitter), this is a response. Chris’ two posts are not directly linked, but they clearly deal with linked issues, and it is worth looking at them in tandem.
In the first post, Chris argues that “the ‘white privilege’ claim sits best with a certain sort of metaphysics of the person, such that individuals have a range of characteristics, some of which are more natural and others more social, that confer a competitive advantage or disadvantage in a given environment, where that environment is constituted by a range of elements, including demographics, institutions, cultural practices, individual attitudes, and so forth.”
But he also acknowledges that “I’m not establishing that, as a matter of fact, “white privilege” in the form I describe is a real thing, although I believe that it is”. It is difficult to see, though, how one can have a debate about whether “white privilege” is a meaningful category without have first established whether it is “a real thing”. It is possible to have an abstract debate about whether such a phenomenon could exist, but not to critique those who challenge the concept as inchoate in reality. Chris, in common with many proponents of the “white privilege” thesis, takes as given that which has to be demonstrated.
Underlying the “white privilege” thesis are two basic claims. First, that being “white” is a useful category in which to put everyone from the CEOs of multinational corporations to the cleaners in an Amazon warehouse. And, second, that being in such a category imbues people with privileges denied to those not in that category. Are either of these claims true?
The idea of whiteness as a “certain sort of metaphysics of the person” derives, of course, from racial thinking. In recent years it has found an important expression in the notion of “white identity” – the idea that all those deemed white have a common identity and set of interests which may conflict with those of non-whites. Most anti-racists (and, I assume, Chris, too) reject such a claim. We recognize that all whites do not have a common identity, that the interests of white factory workers or shelf-stackers are not the same as those of white bankers or business owners, but are far more similar to those of black factory workers or Asian shelf-stackers.
Why, then, do we ignore this when it comes to the question of “white privilege”? Because, proponents of the white privilege thesis argue, white people do not suffer the kinds of discrimination suffered by non-whites by virtue of their skin colour. At one level this is true. “Racism” refers to the practice of discrimination against, and bigotry towards, certain social groups; there may be many reasons for such discrimination and bigotry, but one is clearly that those who are non-white are often treated unequally. Viewing the issue in terms of “white privilege” is, however, deeply flawed for a number of reasons.
Crooked Timber for more
On an objection to the idea of “white privilege”
by CHRIS BERTRAM
The term “white privilege” has been getting a lot of play and a lot of pushback recently, for example, from Kenan Malik in this piece and there are some parallels in the writing of people like Adolph Reed who want to stress class-based solidarity over race. Often it isn’t clear what the basic objection from “class” leftists to the concept of “white privilege” is. Sometimes the objection seems to be a factual one: that no such thing exists or that insofar as there is something, then it is completely captured by claims about racism, so that the term “white privilege” is redundant. Alternatively, the objection is occasionally strategic or pragmatic: the fight for social justice requires an alliance that crosses racial and other identity boundaries and terms like “white privilege” sow division and make that struggle more difficult. These objections are, though, logically independent of one another: “white privilege” could be real, but invoking it could be damaging to the struggle; or it could be pragmatically useful for justice even if somewhat nebulous and explanatorily empty.
One particular type of argument is to deny that some white people
enjoy privilege on the basis of noticing that some groups of white
people suffer outcomes that are as bad or worse than non-white people on
average or some non-white groups in particular. The claim is then that
it is nonsensical to think of these white people as enjoying “white
privilege”, or, indeed, any kind of privilege at all. But whatever the
truth turns out to be about the explanatory usefulness of “white
privilege”, I think these outcome-oriented assessments, sometimes based
on slicing and dicing within racial or ethnic groups in ways that create
artificial entities out of assemblages of demographic characteristics
(white+rural+poor, for example), don’t ground a valid objection because
they misconstrue what the privilege claim is about.
As I understand it, the “white privilege” claim sits best with a certain
sort of metaphysics of the person, such that individuals have a range
of characteristics, some of which are more natural and others more
social, that confer a competitive advantage or disadvantage in a given
environment, where that environment is constituted by a range of
elements, including demographics, institutions, cultural practices,
individual attitudes, and so forth. The claim is then that perceived
whiteness confers a relative advantage on its bearer in a society where
some combination of other facts holds true, where those other facts may
include (and each to varying degrees) overt racism towards non-white
people, or a perception of perceived phenotypical “whiteness” as the
norm, or institutions that end up discriminating against non-white
people because they reproduce existing patterns of advantage, etc.
If we understand “white privilege” in this frame, then it is easy to see that its possession (or lack) is entirely consistent with some non-white groups doing better than some white groups. So, take, for example, a group of non-white people of recent immigrant origin, which possesses a strong culture of parental ambition for children and set them alongside the demographicaly constructed assemblage of poor+white+rural, which perhaps turns out to be statistically associated with low levels of parental ambition for children. It may very well be that members of the first group do better, on average, than members of the second group. But is may also be the case that if we select a member from each group and make sure that they are identical on the full range of other characteristics (height, physical strength, gender, educational attainment, job experience), then the member of the white group will have an advantage in a job or college application over the non-white group.
Crooked Timber for more