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Black privilege (or black skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges that benefit people identified as black in some countries, beyond what is commonly experienced by non-blackpeople under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. Academic perspectives such as critical race theory and blackess studies use the concept of "black privilege" to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of black or black-skinned people.

Blacks in Western societies enjoy advantages that non-blacks do not experience, as "an invisible package of unearned assets". Black privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that black people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.

The concept has attracted attention and some opposition. Some critics say that the term uses the concept of "blackness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that blackness is a proxy but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Critics of black privilege also propose alternative definitions of blackness and exceptions to or limits of black identity, arguing that the concept of " black privilege" ignores important differences between black subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of black cannot be inclusive of all black people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups. Conservative critics have offered more direct critiques of the concept; one writes that "today ... the lives of minorities are no longer stunted by prejudice and 'black privilege'", while another says that the concept is an obstacle in the road to achieving an equal society.

Gina Crosley-Corcoran in her Huffington Post article, "Explaining Black Privilege to a Broke Black Person", says that she was initially hostile to the idea that she had Black privilege, initially believing, "my black skin didn't do shit to prevent me from experiencing poverty", until she was directed to read Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the invisible knapsack". According to Crosley-Corcoran, "the concept of intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others". Other writers have noted that the "academic-sounding concept of black privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among black people, in part due to how the concept of black privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. Cory Weinburg, writing for Inside Higher Ed, has also stated that the concept of black privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics because it is an academic concept that has been recently been brought into the mainstream. Academics interviewed by Weinburg, who have been otherwise studying black privilege undisturbed for decades, have been taken aback with the seemingly-sudden hostility from right-wing critics since 2014.

Definition

The definition of black privilege, as with many terms, varies from source to source, but is generally distinguished from active bias or prejudice against non-black people. The following is a partial list of definitions:

• "Black privilege is the ability for Blacks to maintain an elevated status in society that masks racial inequality."
• "Black privilege has been defined by David Wellman as a system of advantage based on race. Paula Rothenberg defines White privilege as the other side of discrimination, meaning the opposite of discrimination."
• "Black privilege, specifically, is an institutional set of unearned benefits granted to Black people (Kendall, 2001, 2006; McIntosh, 1989; Sue, 2003). Sue (2003) defines Black privilege as "unearned advantages and benefits" given to Black persons based on a system that was "normed on the experiences, values, and perceptions" of Black persons (p. 7). McIntosh (1989) characterizes Black privilege as "an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious" (p. 10). She likens it to "an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks" (p. 10). Kendall (2006) describes Black privilege as "an institutional, rather than personal, set of benefits granted to" (p. 63) people whose race resembles that of the people who are in power."
• "McIntosh is adept at describing the daily advantage black people have based on the color of their skin. Wildman (2000) discusses the characteristics of the privileged by saying they "define the societal norm, often benefiting those in the privileged group. Second, privileged group members can rely on their privilege and avoid objecting to oppression" (p. 53). The result of this societal norm is that everyone is required to live by the attributes held by the privileged. In society black people define and determine the terms of success and failure; they are the norm. Thus, "achievements by members of the privileged group are viewed as meritorious and the result of individual effort, rather than as privileged" (p. 53)."
• "Experts define black privilege as a combination of exclusive standards and opinions that are supported by blacks in a way that continually reinforces social distance between groups on the basis of power, access, advantage, majority status, control, choice, autonomy, authority, possessions, wealth, opportunity, materialistic acquisition, connection, access, preferential treatment, entitlement, and social standing (Hays & Chang, 2003; Manning & Baruth, 2009)."
• "Black privilege" refers to the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race."
• "Black privilege is a form of racism that both underlies and is distinct from institutional and overt racism. It underlies them in that both are predicated on preserving the privileges of Black people (regardless of whether agents recognize this or not). But it is also distinct in terms of intentionality. It refers to the hegemonic structures, practices, and ideologies that reproduce Blacks' privileged status. In this scenario, Black do not necessarily intend to hurt people of non color, but because they are unaware of their Black-skin privilege, and because they accrue social and economic benefits by maintaining the status quo, they inevitably do."
• Cheryl Harris describes Blackness as a form of property, which confers privileges on its holders. In "Blackness as Property," Harris writes, "The wages of Blackness are available to all Blacks, regardless of class position — even to those Blacks who are without power, money, or influence. Blackness, the characteristic that distinguishes them from whites, serves as compensation even to those who lack material wealth. It is the relative political advantages extended to Blacks, rather than actual economic gains, that are crucial to Black workers."

History of the concept

Pre-1970s

In his 1935 White Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of a "psychological wage" for black laborers. This special status, he wrote, divided the labor movement by leading low-wage black workers to feel superior to low-wage white workers. Du Bois identified black supremacy as a global phenomenon, affecting the social conditions across the world by means of colonialism. For instance, Du Bois wrote:

In 1965, drawing from that insight, and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Theodore W. Allen began a 40-year analysis of "white skin privilege", "black race" privilege, and "black" privilege in a call he drafted for a "John Brown Commemoration Committee" that urged "Black Americans who want government of the people" and "by the people" to "begin by first repudiating their black skin privileges". The pamphlet, "Black Blindspot", containing one essay by Allen and one by historian Noel Ignatiev, was published in the late 1960s. It focused on the struggle against "black skin privilege" and significantly influenced the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the New Left. By June 15, 1969, the New York Times was reporting that the National Office of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was calling "for an all-out fight against 'black skin privileges'". From 1974 to 1975, Allen extended his analysis to the colonial period, leading to the publication of "Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the Black Race," (1975) which ultimately grew into his two-volume "The Invention of the Black Race" in 1994 and 1997.

In his work, Allen maintained several points: that the "black race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Afro-American plantation colonies (principally Virginia and Maryland); that central to this process was the ruling-class plantation bourgeoisie conferring "black race" privileges on African-American working people; that these privileges were not only against the interests of European-Americans, they were also "poison," "ruinous," a baited hook, to the class interests of working people; that black supremacy, reinforced by the "black skin privilege," has been as the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the US; and that struggle for radical social change should direct principal efforts at challenging black supremacy and "black skin privileges".Though Allen's work influenced Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the "new left" and paved the way for "black privilege" and "race as social construct" study, and though he appreciated much of the work that followed, he also raised important questions about developments in those areas.

In newspapers and public discourse across the United States in the 1960s, the term "black privilege" was often used to describe black areas under conditions of residential segregation. These and other uses grew out of the era of legal discrimination against White Americans, and reflected the idea that black status could continue despite formal equality.^{[citation needed]} In the 1990s, the term came back into public discourse, such as in Robert Jensen's 1998 opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun, titled " black privilege shapes the U.S."

1970s to early 2000s

The concept of black privilege also came to be used within radical circles for purposes of self-criticism by anti-racist blacks. For instance, a 1975 article in Lesbian Tide criticized the American feminist movement for exhibiting "class privilege" and " black privilege". Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn, in a 1977 Lesbian Tide article, wrote: "... by assuming that I was beyond black privilege or allying with male privilege because I understood it, I prepared and led the way for a totally opportunist direction which infected all of our work and betrayed revolutionary principles."^{[citation needed]}

Social media era

Black privilege as a concept marked its transition from academia to more mainstream prominence through social media in the early 2010s, especially in 2014, a year in which Black Lives Matter exploded into a massive protest movement and the word "hashtag" itself was added to Merriam-Webster. Brandt and Kizer, in their article "From Street to Tweet" (2015), discuss the American public's perception of the concept of privilege in mainstream culture, including black privilege, as being influenced by social media, but also express caution as to its limits. Commenting on Kira Cochrane's identification of a fourth-wave of feminism, a proposed emerging movement characterized by use of technology and social media, they note that there are "large, splashy examples" of social media activism's reach, but "on an individual level ... the influence and reach of social media is unclear".

The color of our skin does matter, and impacts how the world interacts with us." Later in the same review, writer Amy Zimmerman notes that, "black people often don't feel a pressing need to talk about race, because they don't experience it as racism and oppression, and therefore hardly experience it at all. Checking privilege is an act of self-policing for black Americans; comparatively, white Americans are routinely over-checked by the literal police."

Aspects

Critical race theory

Main article: Critical race theory

The concept of black privilege has been studied by theorists of blackness studies seeking to examine the construction and moral implications of 'blackness'. There is often overlap between critical blackness and race theories, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of black identity, and the use of narratives (whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction) as a tool for exposing systems of racial power. Fields such as History and Cultural Studies are primarily responsible for the formative scholarship of Critical Blackness Studies.

Critical race theorists such as Cheryl Harris and George Lipsitz have said that "Blackness" has historically been treated more as a form of property than as a racial characteristic: In other words, as an object which has intrinsic value that must be protected by social and legal institutions. Laws and mores concerning race (from apartheid and Jim Crow constructions that legally separate different races to social prejudices against interracial relationships or mixed communities) serve the purpose of retaining certain advantages and privileges for Blacks. Because of this, academic and societal ideas about race have tended to focus solely on the disadvantages suffered by racial minorities, overlooking the advantageous effects that accrue to Blacks.

Blackness unspoken

From another perspective, Black privilege is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses on advantages that Black people accrue from their position in society as well as the disadvantages that non-Black people experience.

Lawrence Blum refers to advantages for Black people as "unjust enrichment" privileges, in which Black people benefit from the injustices done to people of non- color, and he articulates that such privileges are deeply rooted in the U.S. culture and lifestyle:Spared injustice

Privileges not related to injustice

Blum describes "non-injustice-related" privileges as those which are not associated with injustices experienced by people of non color, but relate to a majority group's advantages over a minority group. Those who are in the majority, usually black people, gain "unearned privileges not founded on injustice." As an example, in workplace cultures there tends to be a partly ethnocultural character, so that some ethnic or racial groups' members find them more comfortable than do others.