:: what is white privilige?

It is not often that we hear the words white privilege. "Racism" is a term that we hear more regularly. These words are actually closely related, although the parallel is almost never drawn.

Some people have described white privilege as the flip-side of racism. Behind the violence and discrimination of racism that people of color are subjected to in this country are the advantages and protections of having white skin. Peggy McIntosh, a scholar on white privilege, describes it as "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks."

White privilege is not only about experiences on an individual level, but it is a web of institutional and cultural preferential treatment.

Sharon Martinas describes white privilege as the preferential treatment, on an individual, institutional, and cultural level, to individuals whose ancestors came from Europe over people whose ancestors came from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Arab world. This preferential treatment exempts European Americans from the forms of racial and national oppression inflicted upon people whose ancestors are not from Europe. Although this is true today, it has not always been true. The ethnic groups who are considered White have changed many times over the years.