Privilege

After reading the class articles and getting a substantial background on race philosophy, I am wondering how the evolving ideas about race have affected modern society and different races. I am currently taking a senior seminar psychology class on privilege. We have spent a considerable amount of time discussing race privilege in today’s society. Some of the readings we have discussed in my senior seminar have even quoted the articles we have read for our class. This has lead me to wonder about the connection of historical concepts of race and the race privileges whites have now.

It seems that with a gradual understanding of race through time we have progressively narrowed the privilege gap between whites and other races in our country. Today, we know that there is no reasonable purpose for discriminating or oppressing anyone, but it still seems to happen everywhere. There are accidental and purposeful institutionalized race privileges that exist and flourish in our society. This is what makes me wonder about how our ancestor’s concept of race has impacted the racial structure of society today. Does race privilege exist because many whites still have the idea that they are the superior race? Does it take time for race privilege gap narrowing to catch up to a better understanding of race and equality? Is race privilege unavoidable in a world that has a history of discrimination against other groups of people?

I have no idea how I would even begin to answer these question, but I think to some extent the answer for all is yes. Also, I believe the survival of race privilege is a more complex issue than the few questions I posed in the previous paragraph. I think the collective cognitive evolution of mankind has lead us to a point in time where race equality is considered ideal but does not fully exist. It seems that there are too many whites, and some non-whites, that have beliefs that parallel the misguided concepts of racial superiority and eugenics. Also, it seems that white people who believe in racial equality fail to understand that they are privileged by their race. Furthermore, the few whites that understand that race privilege exists everywhere seem to be confused about how to fight race privilege or lack the ability to make a difference.

These assumptions lead me to a depressing conclusion that race privilege gaps are the final and most difficult obstacle we have to overcome to achieve a fair and equal society. I should also say that it may be impossible to create a completely fair and equal society and all we can do is narrow the infinite gaps in race equality as best we can. The people who structured our society, its laws, its institutions and its culture were people who openly oppressed non-whites. Therefore, we are still affected by our ancestor’s ideas about race through the oppressive society they created. Whites open oppressiveness in institutions seems to have disappeared, for the most part, since the Civil Rights movement, but underlying, institutionalized race privilege has taken its place. It seems to me that mankind’s collective understanding of race and oppression is directly tied to the amount of oppression and inequality that exists at any given time in history. But, it also seems that the amount of oppression and inequality in society is far greater than what it should be for what we know and believe about race.

I don’t think all of my claims and arguments in this blog are entirely accurate, but I was just trying to hypothesize about the connection between forms of oppression and the common beliefs about race in a society. Does anyone agree or disagree with some of the things I said on this topic?