A look at White Privilege (Sociology 356 Blog 1)

For my first blog entry, I wanted to discuss the idea and effect of white privilege. The main point I want to get across are the advantages and disadvantages that white privilege provides, even when you are not aware. We should be aware of these unfair opportunities and be mindful that groups will have more opportunities than others. I believe that a good starting place to discuss white privilege is to learn what it is, the history, and long lasting effects of it.

A video from sociology live gives a good overview on this topic. The video explains the history and unfair opportunities that come with white privilege.

Now that we have a general overview on the topic of white privilege, we should take a look at an example of the effects that white privilege plays in society.

From an article posted on October 1, 2019 to “The Guardian” and written by Poppy Noor, it states that research was done on Harvard’s selection of “legacy students”. Legacy students at Harvard are individuals “who are either related to staff and donors or on the dean’s interest list”. The big takeaway is that legacy students are “accepted at a higher rate than other applicants, even though they have worse grades. They also tend to be overwhelmingly white: roughly a third of legacy students are African American, Hispanic or Asian American.” Now looking from a distance and seeing real life examples of white privilege in action, we see that for individuals who are Caucasian are being given unfair treatment compared to those that are not Caucasian. The fact that even with lower grades, Caucasian's have an equal chance of being legacy students compared to non Caucasian students with high grades. The article ends with its finding that, “researchers estimate that roughly three-quarters of white legacy students would have been rejected if they had been treated the same as white non-legacy students.” After this research we can see that Caucasian legacy students would be rejected if compared to Caucasian non-legacy students and individuals that are not Caucasian. This is a real life example of the unfair treatment of individuals on both parties that white privilege creates.

Another way that white privilege creates unfair treatment with individuals is through its distribution of material resources in areas. From the scholarly article, An empirical analysis of White privilege, social position and health written by Naa Oyo A. Kwate, it brings up the problem that, “Whites disproportionately hold desired material resources, so that better quality of life is more tightly bound to White space and health-deleterious exposures are more acutely concentrated in Black communities, this may produce cities with wider racial disparities in health”. Even if we are not aware of this unfair treatment that white privilege creates, it can be seen in residential areas that distribution of resources is unfair and that Caucasian groups have more quality of life resources compared to those individuals that are not Caucasian. For individuals that are not Caucasian, they are given more health harming resources and furthering the gap between unfair treatment in society.

As I learned in my Sociology 356 class, this distribution of resources can be seen as Karl Marx’s theory of means of production in which materials, resources, and social relationships in society are produced and distributed. We see this in the example earlier that Caucasian areas have a better distribution of quality of resources compared to those individuals who are not Caucasian and are given more harmful resources. This example follows the model of Karl Marx’s means of production theory and we see all the unfairness that comes with it. We see a gap in resources from the same scholarly article by Naa Oyo A, Kwate in which, “…poor Whites may face health risks not merely due to meager resources, but because being poor disconfirms expected rewards from being White. Those who then grow up to be better off may be healthier because they experience “relief at having fulfilled a cultural aspiration for wealth and from finding the rewards consistent with their expectations””. As we see from the article, even with individuals being Caucasian and poor, they still do not feel the same hardships that non Caucasian individuals feel in the same situation. Even if a Caucasian individual is poor, they are still given more opportunities due to the location and resource distribution compared to non Caucasian individuals.

Continuing on the point of unfair distribution of resources, in the scholarly article Dismantling White Privilege written by Cheryl Teelucksingh, the article discusses the issue of racism and white privilege in Toronto. The article goes on to state that, “The uneven access to resources that disadvantages Black communities is tied to the rise in occurrences of everyday racism in Toronto, a city where the majority of the population is foreign-born, many are racialized, and there is an espoused culture of multiculturalism. White privilege is associated with economic, social, and environmental advantage”. Once again, we see the issue of unfair distribution of resources to individuals who are not Caucasian. Not only does this create the same gap of resources as before, but brings in the argument of racism as well. This is backed up with another point in the same article by Cheryl Teelucksingh in which it talks about non Caucasian individuals living in lower income communities and how it has, “less green space, fewer healthy food options, a lack of affordable housing, less access to public transit, and greater amounts of policing and social stigma. Even the allocation of municipal services, like garbage pick-up, varies significantly across racialized and non racialized neighborhoods.” We are then faced with seeing the effects of white privilege in action. How those who are Caucasian are given unfair treatment compared to non Caucasian individuals. In this case, it more on area space, food options, housing, and public transport.

In conclusion, white privilege creates unfair opportunities for those individuals that are non Caucasian and other opportunities for individuals that are Caucasian. The results have led to declining health due to unfair resource distribution, racism, and the benefits when compared to others of a different group. The issue is that individuals that are Caucasians are not doing much to fight for fairness for all and some do not see the unfair opportunities that they are being given. An article from “The Guardian”, Ijeoma Oluo the author stated that, “Just once I want to speak to a room of white people who know they are there because they are the problem. Who know they are there to begin the work of seeing where they have been complicit and harmful so that they can start doing better”. This problem of white privilege will not be solved overnight, but being mindful of the unfairness it brings to every individual is a good first step towards equality for all.

Works Cited

Esguerra, Tamatha (2020). Sociology 356, Module 2

Kwate, N., & Goodman, M. (2014). An empirical analysis of White privilege, social position and health. Social Science & Medicine, 116, 150–160.

Noor, P. (2019, October 1). This is how white privilege plays out in the Harvard admissions process. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/oct/01/harvard-admissions-process-white-privilege

Oluo, I. (2019, March 28). Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/28/confronting-racism-is-not-about-the-needs-and-feelings-of-white-people

Teelucksingh, C. (2018). Dismantling white privilege. Kalfou, 5(2), 304. doi:http://dx.doi.org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/10.15367/kf.v5i2.215