White Privilege Reframed as the Most Powerful Means for Curing Racism

I feel pathetically resigned when I say that white privilege is almost as permanent a factor as any other force in nature, it is that entrenched…at least here in America. And this, too, I understand, remains a dire certainty so long as it also holds true that, demographically, white people continue to make up the plurality of America’s citizenry. Even DEI work and white involvement within its initiatives—at schools as well as at other kinds of institutions—is subject to the impact of this reality.

Nevertheless, because this is so, it also remains within the very power of white people to push DEI further than even perhaps we people of color could, which, once again, of course, demonstrates their privilege at work. Even so, privilege of any sort, no matter how maligned, still has a place and a purpose when leveraged for good—in fact, must be leveraged for good, since such privilege has the capacity to do so much with greater efficiency where other efforts may not. Racism, after all, is a white occasion, a white creation, and so, is really a white problem, and so one that white people happen to possess more than a capacity to fix, not only on account of a supreme moral obligation to right the wrong, but also on account of the sheer capacity—material and economic, social and political—garnered off the unearned power of their skin.