James Balwin's Essay: To Be White In America
“To be white in America means not having to think about it”
James Balwin, affirms that is the notion of epistemic privilege, which develops as a result of unequal power relationships in societies. While power is often concentrated in the center of society, those individuals on the margins often gain the greatest appreciation of the existence and complexity of various forms of inequality. This appreciation grants them with a type of epistemic privilege. “The trouble about diversity, then, just that people differ from another. The trouble is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass’.
James Balwin, affirms that is the notion of epistemic privilege, which develops as a result of unequal power relationships in societies. While power is often concentrated in the center of society, those individuals on the margins often gain the greatest appreciation of the existence and complexity of various forms of inequality. This appreciation grants them with a type of epistemic privilege. “The trouble about diversity, then, just that people differ from another. The trouble is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass’.