In a white supremacy system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin.

White Privilege

Adapted from definitions used by Sharon Martinas and Chris Crass, trainers with the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop in San Franscisco, USA.

A privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. (Websters) White privilege is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of:

  1. Preferential prejudice for and treatment of white people based solely on their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe; and
  2. Exemption from racial and/or national oppression based on skin color and/or ancestral origin from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arab world.

U.S. institutions and culture (economic, legal, military, political, educational, entertainment, familial and religious) privilege peoples from Europe over peoples from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. In a white supremacy system, white privilege and racial oppression are two sides of the same coin.

“White peoples were exempt from slavery, land grab and genocide, the first forms of white privilege (in the future US).”

Source: (Virginia Harris and Trinity Ordoña, “Developing Unity among Women of Color: Crossing the Barriers of Internalized Racism and Cross Racial Hostility,” in Making Face, Making Soul: Hacienda Caras. Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa. SF: Aunt Lute Press, 1990. p. 310).