Pillar 2: Understand Your Privilege

Familiarizing yourself with equity data and recognizing the need for an educational equity framework are important first steps in revolutionizing your pedagogy and curricula, but it is of the utmost importance that we as educators also understand and critique our privilege and power inside and outside the classroom. For many of us, this privilege comes in the form of white privilege (though not always). Failure to recognize our privilege could have adverse effects on the ways we interact with and support our marginalized students even when we have the best of intentions. But recognizing privilege, particularly privilege associated with one’s race or gender, can be a difficult and uncomfortable process. Nonetheless, it is a necessary step in our growth as equity-minded educators, and once we are able to identify and critique our privilege, it can be liberating both for our students and for us.

So why do we need to undergo this process? How does something that is personally and privately uncomfortable actually help our students? There are two fairly complicated answers, which I will try to explain in as uncomplicated a way as possible: first, we need to recognize that white privilege stems from our country’s history of white supremacy, which helps us better understand the roots of the inequalities many of our students face every day – poverty, prejudice, and a lack of representation in the education system; second, this recognition will help us avoid the “white savior syndrome,” which describes a hierarchy of power with roots in colonialism and slavery.

We will look at each of these in greater detail, but, first, it is necessary to define exactly what privilege is, especially white privilege. Many confuse the meaning of white privilege and will argue that they had to work hard for what they have accomplished. However, it is important to understand that white privilege doesn’t equate to a “silver spoon” or a “leg up.” Instead, white privilege is more akin to a tailwind or head start because whites do not experience the race-based obstacles and barriers that people of color do. Peggy McIntosh describes this type of privilege in her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She describes 26 privileges that whites experience every day, including shopping without being followed or profiled, school curricula that celebrate the accomplishments of whites, and being employed without co-workers suspecting affirmative action was involved. She argues, “In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made inconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.” In other words, white privilege is not a hand out as much as it is the freedom to pursue success and happiness without interference based on one’s race.

As I described in my essay, “Pillar 1: What is Educational Equity and Why do We Need it?” our students experience a number of obstacles and hurdles in their pursuit of their educational goals. If you have moved from that essay to this one, you have accepted that those obstacles do exist. However, what is more discomforting is that our educational systems, like the country writ large, are built on a system of white supremacy, a term that deserves further explanation.

When we hear the term white supremacy, it often conjures images and knowledge of white supremacists, aka skinheads and neo-Nazis, and yes, these individuals believe that members of the white, Aryan “race” are superior to other races. However, from a socio-political standpoint, white supremacy simply describes an ideology that first, whites are superior to nonwhites and, second, that we should design and manage our government, schools, or economy in ways that protect and cater to that superiority. This may seem like a radical interpretation, but if you take a moment to think about it, you will actually see how our institutions have traditionally been and continue to be built on a belief in white supremacy.

Consider, for example, that our government was designed by and meant to serve landowning white males or that our universities were originally founded and endowed by wealthy white families to serve their white sons. More recently, consider that our government, corporations, military, and schools were all segregated until the 1960s, which meant that these institutions were designed for white employees, customers, and students.

Furthermore, our economy has been designed to funnel wealth into white communities, families, and companies. The three most effective initiatives for doing so were the Homestead Acts in the 19th century, the Federal Housing Administration, and the G.I. Bill.

The Homestead Acts were a series of laws that granted white families land in the western United States for virtually no cost. An acre of land under the Homestead Act cost $1 ($14 when adjusted for inflation) in addition to a $14 fee ($196 in 2015), and the most fundamental requirement was that the applicant be a U.S. citizen, which officially excluded enslaved African Americans and unofficially excluded most people of color. According to Larry Adelman (2003), “white Americans were also given a head start with the help of the U.S. Army. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee, Creeks and other eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River to make room for white settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit, giving away millions of acres – for free – of what had been Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10% of the total land area of the United States, was converted to private hands, overwhelmingly white, under Homestead Act provisions.”

Similarly, the G.I. Bill, which was passed shortly before the end of World War II, was intended to help veterans obtain college degrees and acquire home loans that were backed by the United States government. In other words, the government subsidized veterans’ educations, which provided access to higher salaries and upward mobility, and guaranteed their mortgages, through the Federal Housing Administration, so that veterans could move their families from the urban centers to the suburbs, which would also include access to better schools, food security, and most importantly, real estate and housing equity (read: wealth).

The problem, however, was that the G.I. Bill by and large excluded nonwhite veterans. According to Michael Brown et. al. (2003), “unlike the experiences of white veterans, readjustment benefits did not translate into high-paying, high-status job for African Americans. One reason blacks did not receive their fair share of veterans’ benefits is that they were more likely to be rejected by the armed services than whites (48 percent of black inductees were rejected compared to only 28 percent of whites) . . . whatever advantages they gained through the veterans’ education and training programs were undermined by labor market discrimination. And while black veterans lost, white veterans gained” (76). This inequity in job opportunities would lead to an income deficit in which “the median income of black college-educated veterans was only 65 percent of white college-educated veterans” (77).

Finally, the FHA, in conjunction with the VA, severely limited the opportunities of prospective African American, Latinx, and Asian homeowners. According to Brown et. al., the FHA financed $120 billion in new homes. Furthermore, the FHA would only insure loans in segregated neighborhoods, and the administration allowed banks to legally discriminate against people of color in that the banks did not have to approve loans in urban areas. And since the suburbs were open only to whites, people of color were excluded from home ownership. Brown et. al. conclude by noting that “black families living in the city were denied mortgage insurance, and when they did receive a mortgage, the terms were less favorable” (77).

It follows that lacking access to real estate, which is the most effective means to building wealth in the United States, people of color could not accumulate the same wealth as their white counterparts. Tim Wise, in his book Colorblind (2010), argues, “the impact of this institutionalized discrimination and white racial preference has been profound, and it is mightily implicated in the current maldistribution of resources between whites and persons of color. Returning now to the issue of racial wealth gaps, there is no question that much of that gap reflects the generations of whites at the expense of individuals and communities of color” (75).

The easiest reaction to these facts is to argue that these types of discrimination are in the past. They happened, in some cases, over a century ago (though some experts have found that the wealth derived from the Homestead Acts still exists today). However, many of them persisted well after the Civil Rights Movement, which continued to funnel money and wealth into white pockets while denying the same opportunities to African Americans, members of the Latinx community, Pacific Islanders, and Asians. Such discriminatory practices included redlining, the practice of denying minorities mortgages for certain neighborhoods, and the subprime mortgage crisis, which disproportionately affected African American and Latinx applicants. In fact, according to Wise African American and Latinx homebuyers were more likely to be coerced into a subprime mortgage than a traditional mortgage even though they qualified for the latter. He writes, “by 2006, mortgages sold to Latinos and blacks were 2.5 to 3 times more likely to be subprime than mortgages sold to whites . . . research indicates that that persons of color – black, Latino, indigenous, and occasionally Asian – are more likely to be steered to a subprime loan at higher cost that whites with the same income and credit scores” (98). And as we know, nearly all homeowners who had subprime mortgages lost much of the wealth tied up in their homes when the housing market collapsed, either from foreclosure or loss of equity. Indeed, our country has been set up to serve whites, which has led to the perpetuation of white supremacy to this day.

The bottom line is that these systems still exist and are fueled by fairly prevalent prejudice, ethnocentrism, and racism. The election of Donald Trump, among other things, has made it clear that racism does not only exist on the fringes of America. In fact, instances of race-related hate crimes and discrimination have increased since the 2015 primaries. All one must do to see mainstream racism is hop online, hop on social media, or look at the President of the United States, who continues to tweet and spout racist, nativist, and sexist ideologies. Take for instance his “shithole” remarks with respect to Africa and Haiti, and his statement that we should be allowing more Norwegians to immigrate to the U.S. In other words, Norway, a predominantly white country, is the antithesis to Africa and Haiti. This is white supremacy at its finest.

So why do we as educators need to know this? It simply boils down to the fact that we are employed in institutions that are built on white supremacy, and as a result, perpetuate Euro-centric ideologies, and hence, supremacy. And if you are a white educator, whether you like it or not, you are an embodiment of that supremacy for your minoritized students. You have two options, however: confront it or deny it.

I’ve had many colleagues ask why it is important to confront one’s privilege, and there is one very important reason why: failing to do so will lead to a hierarchical relationship that is described as “white savior syndrome” (also known as “white savior complex”). In a nutshell, white saviors are folks who perpetuate systems of oppression or inequity, but when opportune, will step in to aid the victims of this oppression. Author Teju Cole, in his Atlantic article entitled “The White-Savior Industrial Complex,” illustrates how this syndrome has informed America’s approach to Haiti: “we can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund.” More succinctly, Cole tweeted on March 8, 2012, “The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charity in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.” As a result, in schools, white saviors do not recognize the institutional barriers that their students face, and if they do, they deny that their privilege perpetuates those barriers or has allowed them to avoid those barriers. Invariably, this sets up a dichotomy in which the teacher’s “rugged individualism” has led to their success and in which the students’ lack of grit requires their teachers, their saviors, to “save” them from academic failure. Unfortunately, this approach usually lets the teachers’ inadequate pedagogy off the hook.

Let’s put it more simply: if you deny that white supremacy exists, you must subscribe to the belief that our students do not encounter institutional barriers that are predicated on race or other identity-based prejudice. This belief is the foundation of colorblindness, which asserts that all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc., have equal access to a quality education, housing, transportation, and job opportunities. This perspective, however, can easily lead to an attitude in which the educator, who has clearly succeeded in both schooling and in his/her career, is obligated to aid the poor little black or brown kid who has not. If certain groups of students are doing well in college or in classes, the colorblind perspective argues that because they have equal access and opportunity, their failures must indicate that something is wrong with the students. This deficit-minded approach leads to a power dynamic that has roots in colonialism and slavery, where missionaries, explorers, and slave owners had an obligation to civilize the “savages.” In this case, however, educators have the obligation of “saving” the poor, underprepared black and brown students (read: “civilizing the savages”). This is the white savior syndrome.

On the other hand, if we acknowledge our privilege and the system of white supremacy engrained in our institutions, we can begin to have candid conversations and authentic interactions with our students. Unfortunately, white educators will never be able to shed their privileges associated with whiteness. This is also true for male teachers, heterosexual teachers, native-born teachers, Christian teachers, and the list goes on. But recognizing that many of our students of color are inhibited by systems of privilege allows us to understand the roots of their hardships. It allows us to see that they never actually had equal access to education nor were they afforded the same opportunities in the first place. If we are able to recognize this, we can better serve them from a place of empathy or, better, compassion.