“White privilege” – The phrase is best understood as a rhetorical strategy rather than as an analytical assertion about race in society

The good people over at Crooked Timber are having a long and complex discussion about white privilege that is spread out over four posts:

• Chris Bertram, On an objection to the idea of “white privilege”, August 27, 2020, https://crookedtimber.org/2020/08/27/on-an-objection-to-the-idea-of-white-privilege/
• Chris Bertram, On a piece of bad reasoning about race and class, August 28, 2020, https://crookedtimber.org/2020/08/28/on-a-piece-of-bad-reasoning-about-race-and-class/
• Kenan Malik, White privilege and class, August 30, 2020, https://crookedtimber.org/2020/08/30/white-privilege-and-class-a-reply-to-chris-bertram-by-kenan-malik/
• John Quiggin, Unmarked Categories, September 1, 2020, https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/01/unmarked-categories/

I’ve glanced through the whole discussion, but not read it in detail. My impression is that the issue is mostly being argued in terms of how race and class function in society. That is an important and complicated discussion. But the discussion needs to be more sophisticated about language if it is to make sense of the notion of white privilege. Quiggin takes a look there, but not quite in the most illuminating way.

Rhetorically it seems to me white privilege functions like the notion of original sin in Christianity. One is born into original sin; there’s nothing you can do about. A Christian atones for original sin by being a good Christian. Similarly, the mere fact that one is white means that one has white privilege. Even if a white person commits no racist acts and utters no racist language, even if one actively supports anti-racist causes, that white person has white privilege. However, that person can atone for white privilege by becoming woke and making the appropriate statements.

How is it that the phrase so easily assumes that rhetorical function? I propose an analysis that begins like this: Racism is something that is directed outward from the racist to others. Privilege, however, is not. If it is directed anywhere, it is directed at the bearer of the privilege.

Consider these phrases:

1) white racism
2) aristocratic privilege
3) white privilege

The first does not explicitly assert that all white people are racist, nor does it even imply that – though the phrase may sometimes used in that way. It merely identifies racism that belongs to people who are, incidentally, white. It does not assume that whiteness is a property inherent in the definition of racism. In this context the mere fact that any given person is white implies little about the larger society in which they live. An individual may or may not be racist, but that is independent of their skin color.

Two is quite different. The notion of an aristocrat only makes sense in terms of larger social arrangements. You simply cannot have aristocrats without having commoners as well. In societies with those kinds of arrangements, however, aristocracy is assumed to inhere in individuals persons in the way that, say, height, or eye color, or skin color does. Aristocratic being and skin color are passed down through the genes. At least that was the belief, shared by aristocrats and commoners alike.

Rhetorically, 3 functions like 2, rather than 1. And it does so because, while privilege and racism both assume some kind of social context, the concepts function differently in that context. Racism is centripetally directed in the social context, from the racists toward others. Privilege really is not. It just ‘sits there’ if you will. So when privilege is paired with whiteness it, in effect, is attracted to, collapses into, that whiteness and becomes an inherent property of whiteness.

As such it would seemed to be passed down through the genes. Here, though, I think we run into trouble. I doubt that those who believe in white privilege would actually say such a thing. They'd likely recognize it as nonsense. And they’re likely to add something about “structural” racism, that white privilege is about structuralism. Yes, it is, and what the phrase does rhetorically is to extricate structural racism from social structure and lodge it in the individual. But the conversation never gets that far. White privilege is able to perform its rhetorical function only so long as we all keep quiet about what's going on.

So, if you’re white, you’re stuck with it. If you don’t like it, well, you can become woke and enter eternal atonement by uttering the appropriate ritual phrases. It would be nice if you also did something that improved people’s lives, but as long as you make the right attestations, that is, at best, a secondary matter. In this business professing the right faith is more important than doing good works. If fact, without right faith, even the best of works is without moral value.