Defining the problem of 'white privilege' and reporting on its prevalence is one thing. But is the concept of white privilege getting us anywhere in 2019?
In October, a Latina author was talking about white privilege at a Georgia college when a student confronted her about whether she had the authority to talk about race on campus. Students at the same university later burned the author’s book. Videos show students gathered around a flaming grill on campus, watching and laughing as ripped-out pages of the novel burn.
This, while troubling, is one of many similar instances recorded in the media this year. While whiteness is no longer protected by law, as in segregation, the Deep South still has a long way to go when it comes to understanding white privilege and racism as a multidimensional system. So does the rest of America.
VIRAL WHITE PRIVILEGE IN 2019
Despite efforts for more radical action, conversations around white privilege were omnipresent in 2019. As a social media buzzword and an overarching narrative for major events in pop culture, the catch-all term blanketed the web. What follows is a rundown of moments that exemplified race in America, detailed by the experts who studied them.
1) The college admissions scandal
Hollywood actress Felicity Huffman was the first parent sentenced to jail in the college admissions scandal that saw affluent parents use illegal means and bribery to get their children into elite universities.
Huffman’s 14-day sentence is a small punishment for our culture of incarceration that puts people in jail for years or even decades for small offenses.
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2) Green Book’s big win on Oscar night
The film Green Book took home the prize for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, but the movie was mired in controversy over its oversimplification of decades of racial dynamics in America. Green Book depicts the friendship between a well-off Black classical musician and his working-class Italian-American driver as they travel through the Jim Crow South in the ’60s on a concert tour.
Critics of the film, which is based on a true story, saw it as another in a line of white savior movies, one that glorifies a racist and puts him in charge of telling a Black man’s narrative.
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3) Chelsea Handler’s “woke” documentary leaves more questions than answers
Comedian Chelsea Handler confronted her white privilege head-on in a Netflix documentary, Hello, Privilege, It’s Me Chelsea. The former late-night talk show host explored her newfound awareness that white privilege has helped her career. After the film’s release, Handler faced backlash from people who questioned her motives and argued that a white person doing a documentary about white privilege is a privilege unto itself.
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4) The sentencing of Amber Guyger
Moments after former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing an unarmed Black man, Botham Jean, while he was watching TV and eating ice cream in his own apartment, an emotional scene went viral on social media. It was a hug between Guyger and the victim’s brother, which the mainstream media framed as a story of forgiveness or a family overcoming tragedy. Critics—especially among Black Twitter users—saw that narrative as a lie.
“It’s an example of white supremacy,” professor and journalist Jason Johnson told the Daily Dot. “That is to tell the victims of white violence that they have to respond to it in a different way. The story was presented as a story of white forgiveness, instead of a story about privileges and holding police officers accountable.”
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We also talked to several experts about white fragility, white “innocence,” and modern racism. Check out their (and our) analyses on the roots and modern repercussions of these systemic issues in our end-of-year cover story.
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