Surprisingly, we still don’t know what white privilege is. There has been a concerted effort in recent years — and especially 2020 — to explain what this concept means. I have participated in and seen many conversations about this, but I’m still seeing people post things like “I worked hard for everything I have,” and “I grew up dirt poor; tell me again how privileged I am.” I don’t know what it will take for people to understand that “white privilege” is not about money. In fact, conflating “privilege” and “wealth” may be the defining symptom of white privilege.

I can almost hear some readers respond to that with “Pffft! If you think wealth isn’t privilege, you’re crazy.” I am not saying that wealth doesn’t bring its own set of privileges. There are certainly many. That’s the reason most of us aspire to be wealthier than we are. Wealth is definitely privilege, but its not at all what is meant when the phrase “white privilege” is “thrown at” you.

White Privilege actually means, among others, the following things:

  • The police don’t ask you where you live because you “don’t seem to be from around here” or because “someone” reported you “behaving suspiciously” while you were walking around your neighborhood.
  • You have been pulled over less than three times because you “fit the description” of some unnamed crime that happened in the area.
  • No one at college asked you what sport you were recruited for.
  • You feel no reason to fear an encounter with the police because you haven’t committed any crimes.
  • You don’t believe that a Jeremy is more likely to be hired than an equally qualified Jamal or that Dawn is more likely to be hired than LaDawn.
  • You’ve never seen any racism in your town. (Corollary: “Race wasn’t even an issue in my neighborhood growing up.”)
  • You do not believe that seeing someone “like you” on TV or in a movie is a profound event because “They’re just fictional characters. It’s just TV.” (Corollary: You never noticed just how white NYC is in Friends and Seinfeld. It seemed normal to you despite the fact that NYC is one of the most diverse cities in the world.)
  • You have never been followed around a shoe store or jewelry store.
  • You have never seen anyone cross the street because you were walking towards them on a sidewalk.
  • When you are pulled over by a law enforcement officer, you consider how to avoid a ticket or at least reduce the fine as opposed to going over the checklist of things that increase your probability of merely surviving this encounter.
  • You have never had to think about how early it is to discuss “how to survive a police encounter” with your kids.
  • You think of racism as a problem of America’s past.
  • No one in your family has a name that MS Word says is misspelled.
  • You think the word “privilege” only has to do with money.

I have more bad news for some of you. There is also male privilege. The fact that some women are successful is not proof that this doesn’t exist. Some of the above indications are exacerbated by being a woman. A Leticia is likely at a disadvantage to both a Sean and a Lashon if all three of them are identically qualified. For a profession supposedly dominated by women, education is surprisingly rife with daily examples of male privilege. There are a lot of forms of privilege, and many of them have very little to do with how much money you have.