Invisibility of white privilege
Years ago, when I was coming to Canada for the first time, an uncle of mine said something that stung: “I would rather be a first-class citizen in a secondclass country than a secondclass citizen in a first-class country.”
Over time, I’ve flipped this line this way and that. I rejected his “second-class” classification as cynicism when I first arrived, and was forced to see it as realistic as I got racialized over time.
Today, it’s not the secondclass citizen classification that bothers me so much as the normalization of first-class citizenship, that easy acceptance of being “rightfully” treated as superior.
That special treatment, that tacit societal understanding of hierarchy, is at the heart of the concept of white privilege, a subject vast enough to warrant a conference, Canada’s first, which took place at Ryerson University from May 9 to 12.
Some privileges are visible to everyone: the job you have, the car you own, the restaurants you go to, the people you have access to. These are usually privileges associated with wealth.
Some privileges exist in the realm of emotions: It’s a privilege to be alive. It’s a privilege to live in a free country. It’s a privilege to write for this paper.
Then there are privileges that are not visible to, or acknowledged by, those who enjoy them: racial privilege, ethnic privilege, caste privilege, skin colour privilege, class privilege.
White privilege is a term that riles people who don’t un- derstand it, which leads us to another academic term: “white fragility” — but that’s for another day.
I’ve enjoyed class, caste and skin-colour privilege in Asian countries. In India, as with my uncle, I was a “first-class” citizen. When I was looking for a house in Singapore, my real estate agent told me it was a “good thing” I was a lightskinned Indian, “or nobody would give you a place.” In Canada, I have sufficient education/class privilege to compensate for the loss of racial privilege. As someone who has walked both sides of the identity-based privilege line, I can attest to the invisibility of privilege when you enjoy it. I see the genuine blindness to its existence, but also the wilful ignorance of it. I recognize the defensive denial of this racial privilege because acceptance would challenge an enduring and implicit belief in white superiority as being foundational to Canada.
White privilege is a neutral academic observation. It doesn’t mean all white people are rich. It doesn’t mean all white people didn’t have to work hard for their success. It doesn’t imply all white people are racist. It does not attribute to an individual the actions of their race, or damn them for it.
White privilege just means that a white person in the exact same circumstance as a nonwhite person is far likelier to find success and growth. That means being white accrues some unearned benefits to an individual. “White” here depends on the current definition of it; not so long ago, Irish people were called the N-word on this continent. In the early 20th century, Canadians from Ukraine and Eastern Europe were imprisoned in intern- ment camps just based on their origin. Many, but not all, would be considered white today.
If the “white” race was created from an economic incentive to keep “Black” Africans low in the pecking order, or, in other words, if “white” was a term created to distinguish a set of people from “Black,” it’s obvious that a society that privileges whites least favours Blacks.
White privilege comes from the social value automatically ascribed to people just because of the colour of their skin. Add markers such as gender and wealth and education, and the value of white goes up exponentially.
Skin colour is the unkindest measure of a person’s worth and desirability. It’s a stamp branded on one’s body, one that cannot be covered or erased, so that people may be scrutinized and judged at a glance: whether they deserve to be rented a house or given a key to the café washrooms, or whether the mere sight of them is threatening enough to deserve instant death.
From what I’ve seen, the indulgent response to loud drunken white boys on public transit is quite different from the recoiling, recriminating looks shot at a sober Black man speaking somewhat loudly into his phone in a train.
Within whiteness, how closely you conform to British culture or physical type determines your chance of success. Once you meet those racial and cultural criteria, the ladder is yours to climb.
Meanwhile, the rest of the people are left looking at the ladder, realizing the game is already rigged.