The Privilege of Being Normal
You can't explain "white privilege" without first acknowledging that "privilege" used to mean something else.
A little over a week ago, Kirsten Gillibrand was confronted on the campaign trail by a woman who challenged what "so-called white privilege" could possibly mean in a place like Youngstown, Ohio. Youngtown has lost its factories and is ground zero of the opioid crisis. White people there are suffering. So how can they be "privileged"?
Gillibrand's answer got applause from the room, was described by Vox as "spot on", and was widely shared on social media: She acknowledged the distress of Youngstown's whites, clearly stated that it's "not acceptable and not OK", but then segued to institutional racism, which she characterized as "a different issue".
While in general I agree with what Gillibrand said, I wonder if the woman who asked the question really heard her yes-but answer. Gillibrand allowed that "no one in that circumstance [i.e., unemployed in Youngstown] is privileged on any level", but then went on to talk about their privilege anyway. I wonder how many struggling whites will dismiss her response as confusing double-talk.
I think a proper answer to the Youngstown woman's question has to start by recognizing that we use the word privilege differently than we used to. When that woman was growing up (or when I was), privilege was a kind of abnormality: Being privileged meant that you didn't have the same worries as ordinary people. Privileged teens didn't have to sweat about their grades or test scores, because of course they'd get into the same Ivy League college Dad and Grandpa went to. If they had trouble finding a first job, an uncle would invite them into the family business. If they had an idea for a business of their own, start-up capital would be available. And if that business failed, there would be more capital for a second or third try.
Privilege in that sense — which the Youngstown woman has probably never had — was summed up in the Barry Switzer line that Ann Richards applied to George Bush: He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
But white privilege (like male privilege and straight privilege and all the other privileges we talk about these days) is fundamentally different: It's the privilege of being seen* as normal. You still have to follow the rules, do the work, pay the bills, and so on, but whoever set the system up had people like you in mind. So the effort you put in has a chance to succeed. You weren't born on third base; you had to hit the ball and run like all the other players. But nobody challenged your right to have a turn at bat.
Take me, for example. As the son of a factory worker and a secretary, I never got the kind of exceptional treatment a Bush or a Kennedy could expect. But all my life I have had the advantage of being classified as normal in a variety of beneficial ways: Police see me as a citizen to protect rather than a malefactor to control. Neither I nor anyone else ever had to wonder whether "people like me" can succeed in my chosen profession. Doctors take my complaints seriously. When I walk into a store, clerks think about what I might buy rather than what I might steal. The public has never debated whether people like me should be allowed to join the military or get married. No one stares when my wife and I walk down the street together. I can find a restaurant on Yelp and have confidence that the front door will be accessible to me, the staff will speak my language, the menu will include food I can eat, and no one will object if I use the bathroom.
None of that is anything like having a spot reserved at Harvard or a corner office waiting for me when I get out. But these days we call those things "privileges" in order to recognize that not everybody gets them. In some sense, my "privilege" has been to be treated the way everybody should be treated. But everybody isn'ttreated that way in 21st-century America. And that's the point we're making when we talk about "white privilege" or any similar privileges.
* It's important to understand something about normal: It's not about what you are, it's about how systems treat you. If some system works for you the way it's supposed to, without anybody needing to step in and make some special exception, then for the purposes of that system you are normal. You may have purple skin and three heads, but if a bus picks you up and takes you where you're going without incident, that bus has normalized you.
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