White privilege is real and must be acknowledged

How refreshing to hear Joe Biden say he has benefitted from white privilege.

The Democratic presidential contender told a CNN town hall earlier this month he hadn’t had to “go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through.”

Contrast Biden’s response to Donald Trump’s. The president apparently finds even the discussion of white privilege offensive. He told Bob Woodward earlier this summer that the renowned journalist “drank the Kool-Aid” when Woodward asked about the isolating effects of white privilege and how it blinded recipients to the challenges facing minorities.

The differences in the responses speak volumes about how each man views the advantages typically bestowed on European Americans in this country. One candidate acknowledges such benefits exist, which presupposes he will work to even the playing field, if only by talking about it openly.

The other won’t even entertain the notion.

For those in the cheap seats, which usually means white men — and some women, although most women have seen how bias, intended and unintended, affects them — let me repeat: White privilege is real.

As a result, institutional racism is real, lurking beneath the bylaws and regulations of many organizations and groups that believe they deal fairly with all people.

Racism affects even those people who say they don’t “see” color and “don’t have a racist bone” in their bodies. Maybe it especially affects these people, as they have used their certainty to bar the door on further debate.

It also bears repeating that white privilege does not mean white Americans have not worked hard for what they have or do not deserve what they have earned. They have, and they do.

But white privilege does mean certain aspects of society are stacked against minorities, so when they work equally hard, they encounter additional roadblocks that often do not trouble whites in this country.

Take job searches, for example.

A 2017 article in “Administrative Science Quarterly” presented the results of a study where minority applicants removed references to their race on résumés to see if the change garnered more calls for interviews. The process is called “whitening” résumés.

It worked. Only 11.5% of non-whitened résumés submitted by Asians received calls, compared to 21% of the whitened résumés. Among Black candidates, 10% received calls off the non-whitened résumés, vs. 25% for the whitened versions.

Sadly, the results were the same for businesses that identified as “pro-diversity” and encouraged minorities to apply.

The study is not meant to suggest some chortling gatekeeper is separating applications based on race and intentionally slighting minority candidates. But it does indicate, perhaps at some subconscious level, people are reacting to ethnic-sounding names or activities like black-student unions, or perhaps selecting individuals whose résumés look more similar to their own experiences.

This is why it is so important to have better representation by minorities in the upper echelons of business administration, on various boards of directors, in government, policing, clergy, everywhere.

Again, not because whites are explicitly racist, but because the systems and institutions that have served white America so well over the decades and centuries are still doing so today.

Change starts with acknowledging a problem exists, and one of the best places to start is the highest office in the land.

But when we have a president who refuses such acknowledgement, the chances dwindle for honest dialogue, let alone substantive change.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter