A few days ago, an article popped up on my Facebook timeline. It was a link titled, "Why I'll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege," and as if something had possessed me, I immediately clicked on the article. I'm not going to lie – once I saw TIME as the source, I thought that this would most likely be a satirical letter that points out the ignorance in not apologizing for white privilege. However, unfortunately, I came up completely and utterly wrong.
This opinion-driven article was written two years ago by Tal Fortgang, a freshman at the time who was attending Princeton University. It started aggressively with the sentence: "Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn't always told by sex or skin color." This alone should have been my red card. It was the most obvious excuse that is used against the issue that racism is alive today. However, I gave the author the benefit of the doubt. And as irritated as I found myself with the content the rest of the article contained, I am glad that it pushed me to write an article about it.
Hopefully, this educates some of the folks out there that are persistent in their beliefs that they should not be apologizing for what they already have that many people of color have to work a thousand times harder to achieve.
By the first few paragraphs, it was easy to see that Fortgang, like many others, had gotten "prejudice" and "racism" confused. While prejudice deals with adversity being faced by judgment, racism deals with adversity being faced when one race believes they are superior to another race and attempts to distinguish that particular race. This is precisely what is happening when Fortgang refuses to apologize for his male white privilege.
His words were written as if he were the only person in the world to have faced oppression. By completely ignoring the history of systematic racism and the racism that people of color actively face today, he contributes to the population that lives by the motto: "If it's not happening to me, then it's not happening at all." Fortgang focuses selfishly on his family's struggles that virtually have no problem today. He erases the problem of police brutality, the problem of Islamophobia, the problem of being racially profiled everyday with constant judgment from others. He erases the problem that people of color face disadvantages and conveniently focuses on his own "struggles." By doing this, he misses what white privilege actually is.
White privilege isn't "something white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose." It is more institutional and is transpired from a system of racism. The small advantages of white privilege include: nude makeup colors, nude pantyhose, nude undergarments are usually fit the shade of white people rather than people of color, "the complimentary shampoo at a hotel generally works with the texture of white people's hair," and many more. It happens without even white people realizing it – a sort of accustomed perk. The more serious advantages include: "skin color does not work against me in terms of how people perceive my financial responsibility, style of dress, speech, and/or job performance," and "security personnel or law enforcement do not usually harass or follow me due to race."
What Fortgang and many don't realize is that white people are born into this privilege, and while they can attempt to work against it, they have no choice but to have white privilege. See, the main problem with this article is that not only does he misunderstand what the phrase actually means, he also ignores the fact that institutionalized racism even exists. In turn, he attempts to justify himself by focusing on the constant repetition of "I did this," and "I did that," instead of acknowledging the hardships people of color are facing right now in the world. And this is precisely what white privilege is.
While my frustration over this article is among millions, what scares me more than ever is the amount of Facebook posts agreeing with Fortgang's mentality. The increasing number of college students that do not completely understand white privilege is scary, especially since we are at the age of making a difference in the world. The more people talk about how they won't apologize for their white privilege and ignore racism today just adds fuel to the fire. We will always be moving one step forward, two steps back if there is no change to the system.
So if there's one thing you should get from this article, it is this: educate yourself and help make a change to this system. Don't contribute to the ignorance and hatred. And, last but not least, check your privilege and make sure you are in the right place.
