Last week I read Thom Hartman’s excellent piece The Snowflaking of White Privilege. Much of it was devoted to responding to Donna, who wrote him complaining about the term “white privilege.” The term is divisive, she said. She’s white and had to work for everything she has. She’s not privileged. She reminds me of my dad, back in the 60’s, when “culturally deprived” was a big sociological buzzword, “I’m culturally deprived. I’ve never been to the opera,” he would say. (In point of fact, he grew up urban poor, raised by an aunt, as his alcoholic parents weren’t up to parenting, with his mother and his other aunt working as cleaning ladies to support both households. He made it into the white collar homeowner world thanks to WWII VA benefits and was blind to the fact that VA educational and mortgage programs were not available to Black veterans.)
“Privilege” comes from the Latin term prive lege, in English, “private law” that applied only to the Roman nobility, as opposed to the common law that applied to everyone else. You can guess which law was more lenient. It has come to connote the trappings of wealth and power. The ability to tell the judge “We’ll take care of this,” when their son is arrested for drunk driving or their daughter for shoplifting. I’m pretty sure that Donna can’t pull that off. On the other hand, I’m betting she never thought of telling her student driver son to keep his license and registration clipped to the sun visor to avoid having to reach into his pocket or glove box and be shot because the cop thought he was reaching for a gun. Sure, she told him not to mouth off to police, “...because you might get arrested and have a record and how would that look on your job or college application?” Not because “You might get killed.”
There’s a danger, I think, in using old, familiar words in a novel fashion. To a white person, being able to walk or drive down the street unmolested by law enforcement feels normal, not like some special status.To someone who feels confident that a burnt out tail light will result in a friendly warning from the officer, and not a citation. To someone who can take an evening jog through their neighborhood without fear of death. It may well feel quite different to someone without white skin, who knows that people like him or herself are at risk every time they step out the door.
Anyone involved in Communications can tell you you have to speak your audience’s language to get your message through to them. (Donald Trump, with his 5th grade playground bully act is a great example of this.) I’m suggesting that we think of a better, more accurate word than “Privilege” to describe this concept. I realize that the term “white privilege” started out as an alternative to “racism,” but we need something that doesn’t require two paragraphs and a shallow dive into Ancient History to get the concept across.
Thoughts?