White Privilege Research Paper
Jordan Neuenschwander
Human Resource Management [ Text Assignment-Rothenberg, Part 3 ]
May 8, 2013
White privilege is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of colour experience. This privilege is shown when a certain group of people aren’t allowed in this area or men are only approved in this club. Blatant exercise of perivalage definitely exists, but not in the way most people think. It is only the very top of the iceberg (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 110). Everyone is measured against whether they succeed or fail. This is the norm and anyone who isn’t the norm is an alternative (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 111).
Racism can only …show more content…
happen where the behaviours and veils are culturally, socially, and legally supported. Words like “racism” and “sexism” to describe certain groups of people merely is saying that it is shorthand for meaning undesirable. Just the same, “ism” itself gives the false impression that all patterns of authority and subordination are the same and interchangeable. (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 109). It is said that even though someone works hard to not be racist, the simply are.
Bell hooks says, “liberal whites do not see themselves as prejudice of interested in domination through coercion, yet ‘they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of the racist domination and oppression that they profess to wish to see eradicated’” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 112). All whites are racist. This is because we benefit from systematic white privileges. Instead of thinking that racism is voluntary and a tensional behaviour, we should come up with a way to fix it (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 113).
Most such theories focus on American and European societal condition, since inequality between whites and non-whites is a long-lasting aspect of these academic areas. White privilege differs from conditions of obvious racism or prejudices, in which a dominant group aggressively seeks to, oppress or suppress other racial groups for its own advantage. People may profit the privileges from a group and gain benefits through the affiliation with the dominate section of power system (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 111). People should live with linguistic juxtaposition, as equal counterparts (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 109). Instead, theories of white privilege suggest that whites view their social, cultural, and economic experiences as “the normal’ that everyone should experience, rather than as an advantaged position that must be maintain at the expense of others.
This normative assumption unreservedly limits discussions of racial inequality within the dominant discourse. Such rationalizations are limited to factors specific to disadvantaged racial groups - who are viewed as having failed to accomplish the norm - and resolutions focus on what can be done to help those groups achieve the 'normal ' standards experienced by whites. White supremacy is linked with a lunatic fringe, and not with the everyday well-meaning white citizen (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 110).
Privilege invisibility strengthens the power it creates and it maintains. Because of this privilege “perpetuate, regenerate, and re-create itself” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 107). Language is a factor of privilege and silence, being lack of voice and sound, may be the product from the craving to be quite, but it is a main part of mental concentration. This could also come to pass from fear itself. When silence doesn’t occur and people try to speak up about it, it is deemed wrong for not sticking to the status quo (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 107).
Not focusing on what group of people we are talking about, privilege generally allows others a certain level of acceptance, addition, and respect in the world to function within a relatively wide comfort zone. This means giving people privilege means. This means that people are given the chance to be taken seriously, who gets the attention, and who is held responsible for whom and for what (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 115).
People are put into categories on ways they appear. Some are instantly considered a “white” even if the family has Mexican or Jamaican in them. Sociologist call the comparison of people as standards as people being part of a “reference group”. So because someone looks like they are heterosexual or white they are in that group due to their appearance. This happens without knowing a single thing about that person. Same goes with sexual orientation. A paradoxical experience could occur then. This means that a person gets the experience of being privileged without actually feeling privileged (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 155-116). Adrienne Rich, a social critic and poet, wrote about the compulsory heterosexuality and the place it takes in the gender power system (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 108).
Just like how privilege opens doors of opportunity, oppression shuts them shut. Oppression points to social focuses that tend to “press” upon people and hold them down. Misapplying the word oppression, though, also if men and women are both oppressed than neither can have privilege exist because their oppressions balance one another’s out. The complication is that they each one can display oppression if other factors are in the equation (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 118).
A society as a whole isn’t something that can be a recipient of privilege unless a person in that society belongs to a privileged categorized group compared to others. Just because that privileged group is connected to an oppression group, though, doesn’t make the privileged group and the people in it oppressed (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 119).
The common claim of theories of white privilege is that racial inequity cannot be resolved solely by looking at the life conditions of disadvantaged groups. They suggest that solutions to problems of racial inequality can only be achieved by explicitly discussing the implicit advantages that whites as a group hold in society.
Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere financial issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich African Americans and Mexican people, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often do not know they 're rich and so view them as categorically not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools.
So, for instance, even the children of well-off black families are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than the children of poor white families. This is true despite the fact that there is no statistically significant difference in the rates of serious school rule infractions between white kids or black kids that could justify the differences.
Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine people who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied people have certain advantages or certain privileges if you will, which disabled people do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It 's too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles in life. And although many people with disabilities overcome those obstacles, the fact of the matter is that it doesn 't take away from their existence.
Likewise, those people with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day. This doesn 't deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an “edge”. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, going to a workplace, or just trying and navigating the complications of daily life. The fact that there are a lot of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled individuals who are rich, doesn 't alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied over being disabled.
A colleague of the author pointed out that whites are taught to think of themselves and others in their race as normal, average, and normative. They work together to benefit one another and this is seen to make “them” seem more like “us”. There has always been a more attached skin-colored privilege (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 122).
Hierarchies, or the pecking order, are interlocking in societies. This web was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was denied and protected. These hierarchies resulted in unearned assets for whites that are taken for granted every day. The author writes’ “Having described it, what will I do to lessens or end it?” This should be every unearned, over privileged persons attitude. Some privileges the writer says she can identify in her everyday life are:
“I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.”
And,
“I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.”
“Whether I use check, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.” (Rothenberg, 2012, pp.
121-123).
If these types of things are true then the United States isn’t such a free country after all. There is a pressure to avoid these great things and in facing giving those up just to fulfill the myth of meritocracy (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 123).
Now we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive. Privilege was a word known as somewhat of a reward, whether received by working for it, birth, or luck. Now it is more of a scientifically overpower certain groups (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 124).
This such privilege is merely confers dominance because of someone’s sex or race. We truly need to then distinguish between unearned power and earned strength. By distinguishing this we can reconstruct power systems on a more extensive basis. Racism is only means of individual acts of meanness. Individuals acts can palliate (be unpleasant), but cannot end, these problems (Rothenberg, 2012, pp.
124-125).
Whites are, on average, more likely than other racial/ethical minority group members to:
“Earn higher salaries”
“Experience more favorable housing conditions (less crowding, less crime, less litter and deterioration, and fewer problems with public services.)”
And,
“Be covered by health insurance and consequently gain access to health care.” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 128)
If you are just looking at statistics between black and white families, United for a Fair Economy in 2004 states:
“The typical black family had 60 percent as much income as a white family in 1968, but only 58 percent as much in 2002”
“Black infants are almost two and a half times as likely as white infants to die before the age of one, a grater gap than in 1970.” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 128) But, in stats that will take decades or centuries to close the gap between black and white are:
“At the slow rat that the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years, until 2152, to close.” “Although white home-ownership has jumped from 65 percent to 75 percent since 1970, black home-ownership has only risen from 42 percent to 48 percent. At this rate, it would take 1664 years to close the gap, after fifty-five generations.”
“If current rates of incarceration continue, one out of three African American males born today will be imprisoned at some point during their lifetimes.”
“At the current pace, blacks and whites will reach high school graduation parity in 2013, six decades after Brown v. Board of education school desegregation decision. And college graduation parity would be reached until 2075, more than 200 years after the end of slavery.” (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 128-129) The general patterns of “white being more privileged” needs to decrees faster or just be eliminated entirely. Statistics tell how blacks and browns are disadvantaged, but this is just saying how advantaged white are, like said in The Ball Curve. “That of which keeps people of color off-balance… keeps whites in control.” This is saying that if things are meant to transform then people need to work for change (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 133).
Since 1980 30 new prisons have opened compared to the only 2 four-year colleges opening in California to accommodate space for the colored people. This may be for the growth of prison-industrial complex. “Cop Watching” programs have also been set up to watch for abusive behavior towards colored people. And in 1964 “freedom schools” were established in Mississippi by students of the Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 134-135).
A biological category is meaningless, as is the concept of race normally. Besides some commonly known diseases, there is no biologically distinction between blacks and non-black people (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 137). So if a colored qualified applier is eligible just as much as white appliers then why not choose the colored applier?
That 's all I 'm saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn 't mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that white racial groups receive. So, for instance, studies have found that job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview over the applicants with black-sounding names. This is even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same.
People can’t just “get over race”. Different races will always be around and unfortunately will always raise conflict. Model minorities will keep fighting to prove that “people of color” can “make it” and they have, they have made it. Racism and reaching the white privilege have come a long way, but sadly, the reality of racism is that racism is real (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 138-139).
Work Cited
Rothenberg, P. S. (2012). White Privilege (4th Edition). New York: Worth Publishers.
Human Resource Management [ Text Assignment-Rothenberg, Part 3 ]
May 8, 2013
White privilege is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of colour experience. This privilege is shown when a certain group of people aren’t allowed in this area or men are only approved in this club. Blatant exercise of perivalage definitely exists, but not in the way most people think. It is only the very top of the iceberg (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 110). Everyone is measured against whether they succeed or fail. This is the norm and anyone who isn’t the norm is an alternative (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 111).
Racism can only …show more content…
happen where the behaviours and veils are culturally, socially, and legally supported. Words like “racism” and “sexism” to describe certain groups of people merely is saying that it is shorthand for meaning undesirable. Just the same, “ism” itself gives the false impression that all patterns of authority and subordination are the same and interchangeable. (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 109). It is said that even though someone works hard to not be racist, the simply are.
Bell hooks says, “liberal whites do not see themselves as prejudice of interested in domination through coercion, yet ‘they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of the racist domination and oppression that they profess to wish to see eradicated’” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 112). All whites are racist. This is because we benefit from systematic white privileges. Instead of thinking that racism is voluntary and a tensional behaviour, we should come up with a way to fix it (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 113).
Most such theories focus on American and European societal condition, since inequality between whites and non-whites is a long-lasting aspect of these academic areas. White privilege differs from conditions of obvious racism or prejudices, in which a dominant group aggressively seeks to, oppress or suppress other racial groups for its own advantage. People may profit the privileges from a group and gain benefits through the affiliation with the dominate section of power system (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 111). People should live with linguistic juxtaposition, as equal counterparts (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 109). Instead, theories of white privilege suggest that whites view their social, cultural, and economic experiences as “the normal’ that everyone should experience, rather than as an advantaged position that must be maintain at the expense of others.
This normative assumption unreservedly limits discussions of racial inequality within the dominant discourse. Such rationalizations are limited to factors specific to disadvantaged racial groups - who are viewed as having failed to accomplish the norm - and resolutions focus on what can be done to help those groups achieve the 'normal ' standards experienced by whites. White supremacy is linked with a lunatic fringe, and not with the everyday well-meaning white citizen (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 110).
Privilege invisibility strengthens the power it creates and it maintains. Because of this privilege “perpetuate, regenerate, and re-create itself” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 107). Language is a factor of privilege and silence, being lack of voice and sound, may be the product from the craving to be quite, but it is a main part of mental concentration. This could also come to pass from fear itself. When silence doesn’t occur and people try to speak up about it, it is deemed wrong for not sticking to the status quo (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 107).
Not focusing on what group of people we are talking about, privilege generally allows others a certain level of acceptance, addition, and respect in the world to function within a relatively wide comfort zone. This means giving people privilege means. This means that people are given the chance to be taken seriously, who gets the attention, and who is held responsible for whom and for what (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 115).
People are put into categories on ways they appear. Some are instantly considered a “white” even if the family has Mexican or Jamaican in them. Sociologist call the comparison of people as standards as people being part of a “reference group”. So because someone looks like they are heterosexual or white they are in that group due to their appearance. This happens without knowing a single thing about that person. Same goes with sexual orientation. A paradoxical experience could occur then. This means that a person gets the experience of being privileged without actually feeling privileged (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 155-116). Adrienne Rich, a social critic and poet, wrote about the compulsory heterosexuality and the place it takes in the gender power system (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 108).
Just like how privilege opens doors of opportunity, oppression shuts them shut. Oppression points to social focuses that tend to “press” upon people and hold them down. Misapplying the word oppression, though, also if men and women are both oppressed than neither can have privilege exist because their oppressions balance one another’s out. The complication is that they each one can display oppression if other factors are in the equation (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 118).
A society as a whole isn’t something that can be a recipient of privilege unless a person in that society belongs to a privileged categorized group compared to others. Just because that privileged group is connected to an oppression group, though, doesn’t make the privileged group and the people in it oppressed (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 119).
The common claim of theories of white privilege is that racial inequity cannot be resolved solely by looking at the life conditions of disadvantaged groups. They suggest that solutions to problems of racial inequality can only be achieved by explicitly discussing the implicit advantages that whites as a group hold in society.
Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere financial issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich African Americans and Mexican people, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often do not know they 're rich and so view them as categorically not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools.
So, for instance, even the children of well-off black families are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than the children of poor white families. This is true despite the fact that there is no statistically significant difference in the rates of serious school rule infractions between white kids or black kids that could justify the differences.
Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine people who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied people have certain advantages or certain privileges if you will, which disabled people do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It 's too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles in life. And although many people with disabilities overcome those obstacles, the fact of the matter is that it doesn 't take away from their existence.
Likewise, those people with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day. This doesn 't deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an “edge”. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, going to a workplace, or just trying and navigating the complications of daily life. The fact that there are a lot of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled individuals who are rich, doesn 't alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied over being disabled.
A colleague of the author pointed out that whites are taught to think of themselves and others in their race as normal, average, and normative. They work together to benefit one another and this is seen to make “them” seem more like “us”. There has always been a more attached skin-colored privilege (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 122).
Hierarchies, or the pecking order, are interlocking in societies. This web was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was denied and protected. These hierarchies resulted in unearned assets for whites that are taken for granted every day. The author writes’ “Having described it, what will I do to lessens or end it?” This should be every unearned, over privileged persons attitude. Some privileges the writer says she can identify in her everyday life are:
“I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.”
And,
“I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.”
“Whether I use check, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.” (Rothenberg, 2012, pp.
121-123).
If these types of things are true then the United States isn’t such a free country after all. There is a pressure to avoid these great things and in facing giving those up just to fulfill the myth of meritocracy (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 123).
Now we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive. Privilege was a word known as somewhat of a reward, whether received by working for it, birth, or luck. Now it is more of a scientifically overpower certain groups (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 124).
This such privilege is merely confers dominance because of someone’s sex or race. We truly need to then distinguish between unearned power and earned strength. By distinguishing this we can reconstruct power systems on a more extensive basis. Racism is only means of individual acts of meanness. Individuals acts can palliate (be unpleasant), but cannot end, these problems (Rothenberg, 2012, pp.
124-125).
Whites are, on average, more likely than other racial/ethical minority group members to:
“Earn higher salaries”
“Experience more favorable housing conditions (less crowding, less crime, less litter and deterioration, and fewer problems with public services.)”
And,
“Be covered by health insurance and consequently gain access to health care.” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 128)
If you are just looking at statistics between black and white families, United for a Fair Economy in 2004 states:
“The typical black family had 60 percent as much income as a white family in 1968, but only 58 percent as much in 2002”
“Black infants are almost two and a half times as likely as white infants to die before the age of one, a grater gap than in 1970.” (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 128) But, in stats that will take decades or centuries to close the gap between black and white are:
“At the slow rat that the black-white poverty gap has been narrowing since 1968, it would take 150 years, until 2152, to close.” “Although white home-ownership has jumped from 65 percent to 75 percent since 1970, black home-ownership has only risen from 42 percent to 48 percent. At this rate, it would take 1664 years to close the gap, after fifty-five generations.”
“If current rates of incarceration continue, one out of three African American males born today will be imprisoned at some point during their lifetimes.”
“At the current pace, blacks and whites will reach high school graduation parity in 2013, six decades after Brown v. Board of education school desegregation decision. And college graduation parity would be reached until 2075, more than 200 years after the end of slavery.” (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 128-129) The general patterns of “white being more privileged” needs to decrees faster or just be eliminated entirely. Statistics tell how blacks and browns are disadvantaged, but this is just saying how advantaged white are, like said in The Ball Curve. “That of which keeps people of color off-balance… keeps whites in control.” This is saying that if things are meant to transform then people need to work for change (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 133).
Since 1980 30 new prisons have opened compared to the only 2 four-year colleges opening in California to accommodate space for the colored people. This may be for the growth of prison-industrial complex. “Cop Watching” programs have also been set up to watch for abusive behavior towards colored people. And in 1964 “freedom schools” were established in Mississippi by students of the Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 134-135).
A biological category is meaningless, as is the concept of race normally. Besides some commonly known diseases, there is no biologically distinction between blacks and non-black people (Rothenberg, 2012, p. 137). So if a colored qualified applier is eligible just as much as white appliers then why not choose the colored applier?
That 's all I 'm saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn 't mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that white racial groups receive. So, for instance, studies have found that job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview over the applicants with black-sounding names. This is even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same.
People can’t just “get over race”. Different races will always be around and unfortunately will always raise conflict. Model minorities will keep fighting to prove that “people of color” can “make it” and they have, they have made it. Racism and reaching the white privilege have come a long way, but sadly, the reality of racism is that racism is real (Rothenberg, 2012, pp. 138-139).
Work Cited
Rothenberg, P. S. (2012). White Privilege (4th Edition). New York: Worth Publishers.