White Privilege Essay Example

Introduction

White Privilege can be interpreted as a derivation of Max Weber's sociological concept of "social stratification", which describes how inequity is formed and perpetuated within society. These divisions are most prominently demonstrated by an individual's ability to achieve their goals and the way in which people form collective groups in order to control the factors that affect their ability to achieve their individual goals. Weber identifies that this capacity is a confluence of three interacting factors, Class, status, and power (Kendall, 2012).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

• Class; Correlating with "Wealth: includes properties such as buildings, land, farms, houses, factories and other goods - Economic situation"
• State; Correlating with "Prestige: the respect with which a person or position of position is considered by others
• Power; In relation to political influence or "Party: the ability of individuals or groups to achieve their goals despite the opposition"

Max Weber's Factors of Class, Status, and Power

Weber describes how portions of these three factors are often used to improve the other factors in an effort to preserve a group's social positioning and exclude other groups from competition. For example, creating a prestigious university helps to establish Status by having exclusive access to the best education (Murray & Smith, 1995). Access to wealth is used to raise status by attracting the most talented teachers by offering the highest salaries and by making it too expensive for other groups to pay. In addition, Power comes into play when relations between Alumni and the administration are used as influential factors to determine access to the institution. Here we can see how the three factors can interact, strengthening each other in an effort to perpetuate inequality.

Historical Factors of White Privilege in Latin America

The analysis of the historical factors of the domination of the European conquistadores in Latin America, the profound social inequality that they established from the moment they assigned private property to large tracts of land in the encomienda system and their association with cultural practices of Hegemonic domination and subjugation indicate the prevalence of several conditions of privilege associated with whites (Wildman, 2005). As the proponents of racial critical theory in the United States have postulated, their dialectical analysis incorporates both class and racial factors, since racial factors play a predominant role in social relations in that country. While the whites of American studies often say they are not aware of their privileged status, whites have superior attitudes towards people of color and grow accustomed to treating them as inferior, relegating them to living in the margins of a society and incorporated into society as servants, cooks, drivers, gardeners, etc. (Kendall, 2012). People of color do not access systems that allow them to have social mobility from one generation to the next. The state of labor marginalization experienced by people of color and mestizo traits in America privileges the white elite. For example, in the United States, only a very limited sector of the population has the luxury of having domestic service given the high cost of labor, with the persons who care for children possibly the most common, usually women.

White Privilege and Racial Critical Theory in the United States

The phrase "white privilege" is an example of Status where the groups are delineated by race. When speaking of white privilege, the term describes how the "white" group provides the opportunity to its members more easily, unlike other racial groups. Ostensibly, since more wealth is concentrated in the "white community", it is argued that whites have a dominant access to wealth. Since more political power is concentrated in the "white community", it is argued that whites have a position dominant of power (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). Surely, the conception of belonging to a race and rejecting people from another is one of the remnants of atavism that only with civilization, with the assumption of a morality of an open and free society, people have been able to mitigate and, in many cases, eliminate. However, not in all cases, and the denunciation of the "white privilege" is one of them.

The Concept of "White Privilege" and its Implications

The idea of white privilege, in the United States, has a very precise historical meaning, a social sense, and a political function. As regards the historical aspect, it comes from the reaction of shame and guilt of an important part of American society for having lived together until the mid-nineteenth century with the odious institution of slavery, inflicted on the black population (Hays, Chang, & Havice, 2008). Servitude, moreover, was accompanied by the denial of other liberties that correspond to them, as persons, by natural right. The idea of "white privilege" argues that this postponement of the recognition of the rights of blacks has subtracted options for progress that whites have enjoyed.

The Perception of White Privilege in American Society

Even after the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the laws of Jim Crow, steeled by the racism of an important, though diminishing, part of that society, continued to restrict their freedom. The idea of "white privilege" argues that this postponement of the recognition of the rights of blacks has subtracted options for progress that whites have enjoyed (Feagin, 2014). In addition, that equality before the law does not immediately restore all the consequences of past injustices. The laws of Jim Crow were lost in their vast majority with the decline of the nineteenth century and has spent more than half a century, two generations, of the Civil Rights Laws. The "white privilege" is an object of history, not of current sociology (Applebaum, 2010). On the other hand, more than half of the whites that exist today in the United States are descendants of a post-slavery era, to the wave of immigration that arrived in the country between 1880 and 1924. According to Pew Research (2018), in the last presidential election, the whites voted for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, with 21 points of difference over the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The goal is to create a new racism, an ideology that distinguishes between races and accuses them of different moral values.

Conclusion

A part of the American society, activist, supporter of an accelerated social change thinks that, with the Republicans in power, it is more difficult to change the way of thinking of the white minority. What change do they refer to? This is how Professor John McWhorter explains it: "The idea is that you learn that you are a privileged white person; you must learn it again and again; you must learn to feel guilty about that; and express it regularly, understanding that at no time in your life will you be a morally legitimate person because you have this privilege" (Feagin, 2014). Moreover, since your skin automatically turns you into an unworthy person, we can limit your exercise of rights. Moreover, we will no longer call them rights, but privileges. Given that it is legally very difficult to introduce new Jim Crow laws against whites, at least we can reduce their social and electoral impact, through cultural means. Those in support of the existence of white privileges give the following reasons (Applebaum, 2010).