On "White Privilege"

Dennis Prager had a good piece here on so-called "White Privilege."  There it was noted that the poverty rate among two-parent black families is 7% and the poverty rate among single parent white families is 22%. Statistics like this lends credence to the claim that whatever white privilege is, there are other privileges that outweigh it and are worth more of our attention.

But what is "white privilege"?  As a philosopher, I've been asked this on several occasions, and in general I think it's a good idea to get clear on what one is talking about before diving in (how many times have you heard the term "racist" from someone who has no idea what it means?). On one way of understanding white privilege, it is white people having more benefits on average than other racial groups.  Of course, as Prager notes, by the standards of what typically counts as a benefit, Asians fair better than whites, so one wonders why the left isn't talking about Asian privilege, or white and Asian privilege.  Is it because there are more whites in the United States?  I don't think so, for that wouldn't explain why the left talks about the privileges of the "1%" who are also a minority.  (Prager gives the real reason in the excerpt below).

More importantly, this sense of white privilege isn't a very interesting one.  We could just as well talk about "rich privilege," "American privilege," "healthy privilege," or "having all four limbs privilege."  Moreover, this is not the sense of "white privilege" that people who talk on and on about white privilege need in order to shame white people, stir up white envy or hate for political purposes, or assuage their own "white guilt."

What "white privilege" needs to mean is the unearned benefits one has in virtue of one's own whiteness.  That is, it won't do simply to note the benefits--earned or unearned--of whites which have nothing to do with their being white. It needs to be because of the whiteness. The whiteness needs to enter into the explanation of why they have certain unearned benefits.

So what unearned benefits do whites have in virtue of their whiteness?  Well, this will largely depend on the individual.  Certain whites in backwoods communities might have unearned benefits due to their racist neighbors who think less of blacks qua black.  At the same time, it should be noted that they lack the unearned benefit of growing up in a non-racist community.  It is certainly not a moral advantage to grow up in a racist household and community.  In addition, they lack minority scholarships and privileges of affirmative action; in part by lacking education, they continue to be racists. Such unearned benefits need to be weighed with the unearned disadvantages, and there are many disadvantages of growing up uneducated and hating other people simply because of their race.

Speaking of my own case, I'm unaware of unearned benefits that I have due to my whiteness, although I certainly can imagine that there have been times when I benefited.  For instance, it's plausible that I was less observed for possible theft while in stores as a youth compared to blacks my age.  Cases like this can perhaps be multiplied.  At the same time, when in a company in the Army where the chain of command was all black, I was subjected to racism due to my whiteness (one of many, many examples of explicit racism to which I've been subjected).  I also lacked the unearned benefit of affirmative action going through school.  So it's difficult to tell the extent to which my whiteness causally contributed to my stock of unearned advantages.  Of course similar things could be said of blacks, but the devil is in the details. The truth is, most people just don't know the extent to which they've received gained and losses due to their race over the course of a lifetime.
 
What is almost always confused in these discussions is the difference between the totality of advantages whites have today on average compared (e.g.) to blacks, and what unearned benefits they have because of their own whiteness.  Whites could have more wealth, education, live in safer communities, be raised in two-parent households, etc. and none of this due to their own whiteness.

What about the fact--and it is a fact--that part of the cause of the black plight in the U.S. is due to past slavery by racist whites?  And what about the fact that some whites today (particularly ones with Southern heritage) have benefited downstream from slavery?  Isn't this white privilege?

No, it's not. The fact that I am white and had slave owning white ancestors isn't sufficient for saying that I have white privilege, at least not in a meaningful sense (and, in truth, I have a northern heritage with no known ancestors who owned slaves--but let's suppose I do for the sake of argument).  My whiteness is not the cause of the unearned benefits.  My whiteness in fact is explained by my biological past (supposing for the sake of argument that whiteness is a biological kind and not a social kind), so it can't be an explanation of that past; explanations can't be circular.  Still, let's go ahead and say that I have benefited by white racism in the past.  I have "privilege" in some sense, not because of my own whiteness, but because I received unearned benefits from racist whites in the past.

But then of course we have all received benefits from whites in the past, just as we've all received benefits from all sorts of other people groups from the past. There is a causal chain stretching back to the beginning of mankind from which we've received unearned advantages as well as disadvantages.  And there is no way to sort out the extent to which my unearned advantages are due to prior whites, blacks, browns, and so forth.  (This is a fact that makes reparations for past injustices logistically impossible).  So I think it best to ignore "white privilege" in this sense and focus just on what privileges I have due to my own whiteness.

And now to drive home the main point once again since so few appear to get it: In almost all discussions of so-called "white privilege" there is a deep conflation between unearned advantages that whites have on average and what they have in virtue of their being white.  I came from a small town where there were a lot of  farmers with common sense, where people went to church, there was low crime, drug use, and violence, the county was one of the poorest in the state of Ohio but the schools were decent and relatively safe, people weren't rich but they weren't desperately poor, I had two parents who loved me and disciplined me, etc.  Most importantly, the culture was saturated with people who possessed a good deal of moral virtues.  These are all unearned advantages.  And my community was mostly white, so whites had these unearned advantages.  But none of the things mentioned are unearned advantages due to my own whiteness.  Why not?  Because there are blacks, Hispanics, etc. who also have these same advantages. 

So for those who want to say that whites have "privilege" due to their own whiteness, they need to separate what unearned advantages whites happen to have today and what they have due to their own whiteness.  What unearned advantages do non-racist, poor whites have in virtue of their whiteness?  This would be the place to start.

Dennis Prager, take it away:

[I]f [white privilege] were true, why would whites commit suicide at twice the rate of blacks (and at a higher rate than any other race in America except American Indians)? According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, white men, who the Left argues are the most privileged group of all in America, commit seven out of every ten suicides in America — even though only three out of ten Americans are white males.

Whatever reason one gives for the white suicide rate, it is indisputable that, at the very least, considerably more whites than blacks consider life not worth living. To argue that all these whites were oblivious to all the unique privileges they had is to stretch the definition of “privilege” beyond credulity. Second, there are a host of privileges that dwarf “white privilege.” A huge one is Two-Parent Privilege. If you are raised by a father and mother, you enter adulthood with more privileges than anyone else in American society, irrespective of race, ethnicity, or sex. That’s why the poverty rate among two-parent black families is only 7 percent. Compare that with a 22 percent poverty rate among whites in single-parent homes. Obviously the two-parent home is the decisive “privilege.”

[...]

So then why all this left-wing talk about white privilege? The major reason is in order to portray blacks as victims. This achieves two huge goals for the Left — one political, the other philosophical. The political goal is to ensure that blacks continue to view America as racist. [TB: Prager is not denying that there is any racism, just the extent to which it is a cause today.]  The Left knows that the only way to retain political power in America is to perpetuate the belief among black Americans that their primary problem is white racism. Only then will blacks continue to regard the Left and the Democrats as indispensable.

The philosophical reason is that the Left denies — as it has since Marx — the primacy of moral and cultural values in determining the fate of the individual and of society. In the Left’s view, it is not poor values or a lack of moral self-control that causes crime, but poverty and, in the case of black criminals, racism. Therefore, the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by black males is not attributable to the moral failure of the black criminal or to the likelihood of his not having been raised by a father [TB: or the failure of Democratic policies], but to an external factor over which he has little or no power — white racism. 

White privilege is another left-wing attempt, and a successful one, to keep America from focusing on what will truly help black America — a resurrection of the black family, for example — and instead to focus on an external problem: white privilege.

Why Race Will Always Be an Issue

For every white racist there are at least three whites who see having a (e.g.) black friend as a mark of elite status and a rite of passage to the inner circle.

Morgan Freeman gets it right; but he's fighting a losing battle. 

Black Privilege

I hope this guy doesn't work for a typical university.  This is the sort of heterodoxy that won't help advancement through the ranks.

Right and Left Explained in 5 Minutes

Right: Does it do good?  Left: Does it feel good?

This seems about right, at least as far as pithy explanations go.  It's certainly true that the left tends more towards subjectivism about value.

These fundamental stances explain the outrage and cries of racism directed towards Justice Scalia for noting a fact--that a lot of blacks flunked out of school due to affirmative action policies--and that they might be better off going to a lower tier school and passing.  (Of course, as Scalia himself noted, this question only applies to those blacks (etc.) admitted with lower qualifications.)  In short, he asked whether those policies actually do good.  Simply asking that question is impermissible.  Why?  Those questions might make some people feel bad.  This is essentially the objection that a panel on NPR reached the other day.

"Colorblindness Will Not End Racism"

From our Public Broadcasting Network (PBS).

Pay attention to 9 and 10:

TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE

Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?

There's less - and more - to race than meets the eye:

1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn't even have the word 'race' until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.

2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.

3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.

4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone's skin color doesn't necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

5. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.

6. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.

7. Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that "All men are created equal." But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.

8. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became "common sense" in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.

9. Race isn't biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.

10. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn't exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.

RACE - The Power of an Illusion was produced by California Newsreel in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Major funding provided by the Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Diversity Fund.

9 says that race isn't biological, but racism is real.  Is race biological?  No, if we mean biological in the natural kind sense of the term.  Races are neither like species nor like different breeds of cats or dogs since the people who normally fall under our race terms (e.g. Caucasian, black, etc.) have no significant genetic dissimilarity; for instance, one is likely to find more genetic similarity between some who we call "black" and "hispanic" than between some who we call "black" and others who we call "black."  This leaves open whether races are (a) unreal (that is, there is nothing which our race terms and ideas refer to), or are (b) real but not natural kinds; instead they are social kinds (like citizens or bankers) perhaps partly grounded in phenotypical features, or (c) some other thing altogether.

According to 9, race isn't grounded in phenotypical features at all; rather race is simply an idea. And there seems to be nothing to which the idea of race refers.  Moreover it's an idea which privileges whites. How?  In what way?  No examples are given.  But these advantages are there, even if we aren't aware of it.  (Trust us.  They.  Are.  There.)  Presumably, though, these advantages do not exist in the form of affirmative action programs!

According to 10, we shouldn't presume that race doesn't exist.  What does this mean?  If 9 is correct, race is only an idea--and nothing whatsoever is mentioned about any extra-mental reality to which our idea refers.  Blacks and whites are like unicorns and centaurs.  Still, racism is real.  Even though there are no blacks to which our idea of race refers, a Klansman can still be a racist.  Racism is real, but race is an idea.  Got that?

Still, we need the idea of race.  Why?  10 tells us.  So that we can have social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups (non-whites) over others (whites).  In other words, even though the idea of a particular race does not refer to anything in the world--it's a mental fiction--we need to pretend there are extra-mental races, so that people like Al Sharpton, race studies professors, diversity officers, etc. have employment and can privilege some over others--in the name, of course, of remedying alleged advantages given to whites by institutions and policies.  Ignoring race as the (alleged) fiction that it is would have the undesirable result that affirmative action policies and institutions go out of business.

One wonders, if colorblindness would not end racism, what would?