Racism is a social construct that differentiates people in the society according to color and privileges. Conventionally, the blacks have no privileges while the whites have privileges in that they can access social, political and economic perquisites in the society.
Since racism is a social construct that renders the whites as privileged and the blacks as unprivileged, social, political and economic status of the whites has set precedent for the ethnic minorities to follow. The disparity that exists between the two is that, although racism is a national problem that needs attention and solution, the whites do not view it as a significant problem for they are more privileged.
According to Wise, a research done to determine whether white Americans believe that racial discrimination is a significant national problem showed that only 6% believe it to be (2008, p. 5). This shows that the whites do not see racial issues to have any significance because of their privileged status. Therefore, the white people appropriate the essence of white privilege because they do not perceive the problem of racism to have any national significance.
Given that racism is a social construct that elevates social status of the whites and degrades blacks’ social status, the whites perceive such differences as normal social process of life attributed to difference in ethnicities and races. Although there is significant decline in the formal discrimination, racial institutional practices that give privileges to the white still continue to operate in the society.
Krysan, Farley and Couper argues that, “contemporary process of discrimination are no less powerful in denying African Americans equal access to the nation’s material, symbolic, and emotional resources, but they are less obvious and observable, allowing whites the luxury of ‘plausible deniability’ and rationalization” (2008, p. 7).
Due to subtle nature of the racism in the modern society, the whites perceive it as just a social factor that differentiate people into privileged and unprivileged classes in the society. Perception of racism from economic point of view has made the whites to realize the essence of white privilege in the society.
The studies on housing patterns show that there is still racial discrimination that leads to residential segregation of the whites and blacks due to perception that the white need more privileged housing as compared to the blacks. Even though all residents have similar quality of housing and amenities, the quality of estates depends on whether the neighborhood residents are whites or blacks. Perception of the residential estates from racial perspective shows that the whites clearly understand the nature of their privileged race.
In the study to determine how the whites perceive neighborhoods shows that, “white respondents who saw a neighborhood with black residents evaluated it significantly more negatively than similar whites who saw exactly the same neighborhood but with white residents” (Krysan, Farley and Couper, 2008, p. 7). The perception of the neighborhood shows that the whites have racial bias in their evaluation of the residential estates for they perceive themselves to be more privileged than blacks.
The white privileged is not only a social issue that occurs due to material possession or power, but also a psychological factor that influences perceptions in the society.
Wise confesses that even though he was unprivileged in class, his teachers perceived him as an intelligent student “…because I was seen as a bright capable white child, while students of color who were every bit as capable as I were tracked low, while I was tracked high” (2008, p.9). Social construct of racial privileges has led to the damaging stereotype that the whites are always better than the blacks, and thus the whites have historically struggled to ensure that they retain their privileged status in the society.
References
Krysan, M., Farley, R., & Couper, M. (2008). In the Eye of the Beholder: Racial Beliefs And Residential Segregation. Du Bois Review, 5(1), 5-26.
Wise, T. (2008). The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial and the Costs of Inequality. Media Education Foundation, 1-17.