Ideas for pointing out white male privilege
This happened on a site that you probably don’t have access to. I wasn’t the only respondent, but I liked what I’d written and would like to reproduce it here. I should note that the questioner was a Californian, so my answer is from a US perspective.
Tha Question:
How can I explain white male privilege to my white male boyfriend? We had a big fight about this the other day, sparked by a misogynistic commercial that he refused to admit was a problem. I can has ideas pls?
Below are some suggestions and thought processes that have worked for me. As a side note, sometimes I spend so much time in my feminism talking to women about women that I forget all about white men!
Did he live in an mostly white neighborhood? Odds are pretty good that he did; many white people grow up with few people of color around. Look up de facto segregation in neighborhoods in your area, and in schools. Look up the differences in funding in your schools. Surely he remembers a school in his neighborhood being known as the “rich” school or the “poor” school. What were the differences in the education that students in poor neighborhoods received from those in rich neighborhoods/schools? Ask him what effect this might have had on their lives. What effect did his school quality have on his life? Share the effect that it had on yours.
Get out his movie collection, or his music library. Go through and figure out how many acting leads are men, or white, or both. How many directors? How many singers? How many executives of television studios or record labels? How old is the oldest man, and how old is the oldest woman? How fat is the fattest man, and how fat is the fattest woman? Odds are REALLY good that his movie and music libraries are HUGELY disproportionate. (If he reads, this is going to be true for his books as well.) Remind him that women make up more than half of the population, and white people are quite the global minority–if he objects that most of his music is from the united states, or that most people around the globe “don’t make music/movies” ask him WHY. Plus, his library is still very likely to be disproportionately white from US demographics anyway. If he objects that women “don’t make music/movies” in the genres he likes, ask him WHY.
Ask him: WHERE are the women and people of color in the music/movie/lit industries? WHY are they missing from his library? Suggest that seeing almost all men and white people on the screen or as the makers of music he likes normalizes white male people for him. Suggest that it does this for EVERYONE.
If he starts to feel like you’re accusing him of doing something wrong, explain that even if he didn’t buy any movies or music, or never went to school, the bad proportions would still exist in the industry. Emphasize that in this way privilege is systemic Neither the problems nor the solutions can ever arise from individual action, but only from collective action. It doesn’t come down to him–it’s the people who do the hiring, who make the art, who market it. Suggest that normalizing white maleness is a societywide effort.
THAT’S why the commercial is such a problem. It’s part of the societywide effort to denigrate women. Talk about the commercial as a REMINDER of all the ways that, throughout your life, whiteness and maleness have been normalized, and that this has marginalized YOU.
He SHOULD care that you have been hurt by society’s privileging of men. That should be the important thing. He should be mad that there’s a societywide effort to hurt and marginalize all women.
Quercki said,
March 6, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Would you do a post about how to bring about this collective action that will solve privilege? I know that sounds like a huge task. I’d be grateful for any clues. I don’t understand collective action. I DO understand individual action, I think. That’s teaspooning, right?
This post is bookmarked! The topic is valuable.
Theresa Null said,
August 10, 2010 at 9:00 am
My husband loves me. I point out things that happen to me and explain my thoughts on why someone has treated me a specific way. There are some things that he still doesn’t get, like racial profiling because he has not been subject to it. I love him and have to be patient. Sometimes, I just open my Bible, read and pray. I feel peace knowing that God works all things for good. And, sometimes we just have to drop a subject because it so emotional.
Likewise, there are some things I will never know / understand about him and his culture because I’m not a white man. I think he gets just as frustrated with me.
We’ve learned to remember that the other person loves and isn’t hurting on purpose; that probably both of of us are hurting. When I hurt, I’m thinking about myself and not actively loving him. When he hurts, he’s thinking about himself and not actively loving me.
God bless you.
Greg said,
November 29, 2010 at 4:03 pm
[link redacted for tediousness]
the first question is ‘how do you define privilege?’
any large discussion with a large number of people and different opinions will end up with half a dozen definitions of privilege.
privilege in the strict sense is a benefit the dominant class grts as a result of discrimination. one example would be the pay differnece between men and women for doing the same job. if companies were required to pay women the same, womens saleries would go up and mens salaries would go down.
people use a bunch of other definitions that don’t actually match the strict definition of privilege. for example people sometimes refer to detrimental discrimination as privilege even though it does give the dominant group an unfair advantage. police doing racial profiling is such an example. whites don’t get stoped by police because of their skin color. but if equality were achieved, no one would so it isn’t an actual privilege. racial profiling is discrimination. but does not create a privilege.
an important concept to distinguish detrimental discrimination from privilege is the ‘equality waterline’. How is the dominant group treated while there is discrimination? how would the dominant group be treated if there were equality? if there is no change then there isn’t privilege.
another common definition for privilege is actually ‘apathy’ or ‘lack of awareness’. which isn’t privilege.
if you don’t know which definition you’re using, you are going to have a hard time defining privilege.
quixotess said,
November 29, 2010 at 11:45 pm
that’s arguing over semantics, and trying to go against established usage!
:O
Greg said,
December 1, 2010 at 11:36 am
if you had followed the link before it was so generously deleted, you would have found that my definition comes from the very words used by Peggy McIntosh in the paper that coined the term.
but hey, why let “semantics” get in the way of trying to explain the meaning of a word to someone. that was, after all, the point of the original post, right?
better to let multiple, inrelated definitions be forwarded simultaneously without distinguishing them.
the privilege denying dude meme perfectly illustrated just how many different meanings people attach to the word privilege.
[link redacted for tediousness]
if you want to talk about the ‘established meaning’ of privilege, its all right there with numerous quotes from different people using the word to mean different things.
if you want to explain the ‘established meaning’ of privilege, there are quotes there showing people using the word to mean discrimination, lack of awareness, apathy, hypocricy, denial that the person is bigotted (and if there were evver proof positive that someone has privilege it is must undeniable if they ever try to deny they have it), and then a number of nonsequitors, includi.g my favorite, denying global warming. yep, the ‘established usage’ of privilege says that anyone denying the reality of global warming is actually demonstrating privilege.
so if the question is ‘how do i explain the ‘established definition’ of white male privilege to my white male boyfriend?’ the answer is to explain that privilege means all of the above. that’s how people use it, right? so that’s what it means.
quixotess said,
December 1, 2010 at 4:36 pm
You’re boring!
Gravey said,
December 1, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Greg is missing something fundamental here. The issue isn’t “How do I provide a definition of the words white, male, and privilege to my white make boyfriend?”
It is “How do I explain the **concept** of “white male privilege” (note the bound phrase) to my boyfriend?”
To be honest, I wouldn’t bother. People either get it or they don’t. I first became aware of it in high school – nearly 30 years ago.
You can certainly point him in the direction of http://www.cpt.org/files/US%20-%20Male%20Privilege%20Checklist.pdf
So Greg – you are playing a semantic game, and missing the concept of the phrase and getting too hung up on the individual words.
It isn’t hard to see it, if you are that way inclined. When it was first brought to my attention (me being a middle-class white male) I was astounded at just how far these things go.
I like to call it “the death of a thousand cuts”. It isn’t anything significant. There are thousands of tiny ways in which male dominance is insinuated.
Refer him to the Michelle Obama “nude colored dress” incident (I’m from NZ so chose to spell ‘color’ the US way – but we spell it right!), ask him whether a really dark-skinned person can wear “flesh-toned” bandages. And in our culture and religion – we can’t have people looking too “ethnic”. Images of Christ tend to be a lot whiter than he probably was.
Why is God a ‘He’?
All these things that speak to us – they all talk about the social place on those who aren’t white or male.
Quixotess – you might (or might not) like to check out http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/4407891/Axing-gender-studies-setback-to-rights and just have a look at the discussions. Sheesh.
Greg said,
December 2, 2010 at 1:52 pm
PGravey, I have read countless papers explaining privilege. none of them make any distinction between discrimination that doesnt benefit members of the dominant class and discrimination that does benefit the dominant class.
police profiling doesn’t benefit me in any way. it does not create a privilege. it is racist bigotry, but it does not create any benefit to whites as a class. take away racial profiling and whites as a class LOSE NOTHING.
the federal housing authority back when it started in 1934 instituted redlining, which was nothing more than another way to say racism. it offered mortgage insurance to whites but not people of color. this would mean that if the fha had not been redlining, poc would have been gettinng some of the loans that white people got instead. which also means some white people got loans who wouldn’t if the FhA had treated people equally.
THAT is a privilege. its a system that rewards a class of people above and beyond what they would have gotten if the discrimination were removed.
Peggy McIntosh said in her paper ‘Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack’ that men are overpowered by privilege and that they do NOT want to give up that power, that the only way to achieve equality is to convince men to give up their power. those are her words, not mine.
what do I lose if racial profiling by the police stopped? what power does it give me that i would lose if it stopped? why would I RESIST getting rid of racial profiling?
there is no benefit to racial profiling. it creates no privilege. it is blatant racism, but it does not create a privilege.
Gravey said,
January 6, 2011 at 2:20 am
Greg – racial profiling creates privilege because you can be confortable in not being profiled. You need to think beyond the obvious, more tangible benefits you refer to.
The concept of white male privilege means that you don’t have to worry about certain things other people do. It means you can live your life free from any concern about being questioned because of your gender or race.
You are right – taking away profiling means you lose nothing (well, even that is debatable) but it means everybody else gains something.
Your reference to your own class is suggestive of your own privilege – you are not thinking from the perspective of those who do not have the same privileges you do.
It is quite interesting to put yourself in someone else’s position. Try it some time. You might just like it.