Christine Emba's White Privilege?

In her 16 January 2016 The Washington Post editorial, “What is White Privilege?”, Christine Emba asserts white privilege is a societal advantage inherent in people who are white, irrespective of their “wealth, gender, or other factors.” According to Emba, white privilege makes life smoother and is an entity that is hidden or unknown until the privilege is taken away. Although racism is still a rampant issue in society today, white privilege is a concept created by the progressive left in order to brand whites as a scapegoat for issues and adversities that non-whites face. This concept of privilege ultimately causes further dissension between whites and non-whites.

Our contemporary understanding of the term “white privilege” originates from

the journal article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, written in the late 1980’s by Peggy McIntosh. McIntosh, a professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College, came up with the term “unacknowledged male privilege” which are the privileges males have in society solely due to their gender (McIntosh). However, McIntosh also believed a certain “white privilege” was analogous to male privilege. Due to her personal observations and publications on the subject, the term “white privilege” was born and permeated throughout society, gaining much traction in recent years with progressive groups such as feminists, LGBT groups, the Democratic Party, and numerous racial equality groups (Chattopadhyay).
Even though the term “white privilege” has been popularized in recent years, individuals unaware of the concept regularly ask, “What is white privilege?” The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society,” has a recommended definition of white privilege excerpted from Jennifer Holladay’s book, White Anti-Racist Activism: A Personal Roadmap (Southern Poverty Law Center).

On their site, Teaching Tolerance, Holladay’s definition is as follows, “White skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose. Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of racism... white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society” (Holladay). In this definition, Holladay asserts that white privilege, in a way, attaches to individuals whether they want it or not. Holladay’s definition can be likened to Emba’s definition, as both women have similar stances on the

concept.
Many other individuals and organizations have proclaimed that white privilege does indeed exist and society should attempt to alleviate the issue.

However, Dave Nappi, an editor for Thought Catalog, challenges the concept of white privilege and its validity within society. Nappi believes white privilege can only be proven if “one allows themselves to stop using logical reasoning and start jumping through illogical hoops with [a] triad of fallacies.” He goes on to say that people like Holladay and Emba “aim to degrade the social cohesion of the population,” and that the public believes both women even though their arguments contain hand-picked logical fallacies (Nappi). Various other individuals agree with Nappi on the basis that there is no substantial evidence to support white privilege. Of these individuals, syndicated columnist Dennis Prager believes that white privilege “turns out to be largely meaningless… more significantly, it does great harm to blacks”

(Prager).
The alleged societal advantages and perks that come with white privilege can range from “flesh-colored band-aids” generally matching the skin tone of whites and “complimentary [hotel] shampoo” working best for caucasian hair to law enforcement officers pulling over non-whites more often than whites (Holladay). In the case of personal-care products, not limited to band-aids or complimentary hotel shampoo, companies most likely cater to whites because they make up the majority of the United States population, which according to the United States Census Bureau is about seventy-seven percent (“QuickFacts”). With this information, companies seemingly make an educated guess that more whites will buy their products over other ethnic groups, leading to more profit for the companies. Aside from these menial perks, statistically, law enforcement officers may pull over more non-whites over whites due to heavier police presence in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods, which are disproportionately non-white. For example, Detroit, Michigan, touted as the most dangerous city in the world due to its high murder and violence crime rate, has a high percentage of African-Americans as compared to whites (“Demographics”).
Another core principle of the concept of white privilege, aside from societal perks and advantages, is unconscious bias. According to the University of California, San Francisco, unconscious biases are “social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness” (Navarro). The widely, more known interpretation of this occurrence is that individuals associate negative thoughts with non-whites and positive thoughts with whites, such as violence with non-whites and safety and wealth with whites. Unconscious bias can even allegedly go to the extent of bus drivers preferring whites over non-whites to ride free in public buses, as observed by a study in Brisbane, Australia (Ayres). The individuals who cite unconscious bias as a way to prove white privilege often assert that diversity training is a necessary solution because racially biased thoughts are harmful and our thoughts often manifest in our behavior (Goodman). However, the problem with this assertion is that not all of our thoughts manifest in our behavior.
Although humans have miscellaneous thoughts often, very few of our thoughts actually manifest in our behavior. For example, every time a heterosexual man saw a good-looking woman walking down the street, and his thoughts manifested in his behavior, society would have a real problem on its hands. The other flaw with unconscious bias is that people aren’t aware that they are having racially biased thoughts, hence “unconscious”, so how would someone be able to train themselves to stop their chain of thought when they don’t even know they are having it? Ultimately, diversity training would be highly ineffective, as proven by a major study done by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity on unconscious bias. The results from their research showed that “being alerted to potential bias and limited response control through a direct personal experience... can lead to worse rather than better behavioral regulation” (Staats). With this evidence, it is illogical to blame unconscious bias for adversities that non-whites face because the concept has yet to be factually proven and there has been no proven way to alleviate this so-called issue. Clearly, instead of chasing this "ghost" entitled unconscious bias, individuals should learn how to control their own behavior and the choices they make.