White is Right!

I’m three jugs of purple rain into the night at ‘Spoons’ when to my luck, all my friends decide to leave for the toilet at the same time, leaving me to man the grounds of a territory I had already lost: a group of middle-aged women decided to take refuge in my booth, where I befriended one of the women. She began to tell me many stories from her past, but the one that struck me was about her daughter attending a primary school in the early 90’s, how she came home one day and told her mum that everyone in class was frightened of the new black kid who’d just transferred into the all-white school. But instead, my attention was left wondering how the black student must’ve felt in that situation. Given that the event did take place in the 90’s, yes, you could argue that the attitude towards people of colour were outdated compared to today’s culture, and that such a situation would not occur similarly in most institutions today, and up until recently, I would’ve accepted the idea that society is en-route to abolishing racism as a whole. But unfortunately, that’s not the case. Yes, we could compare now to 40 years ago, times have changed, and we no longer segregate white people from the coloured, but an underlying issue still deeply roots in our daily lives, what I’m talking about is ‘white privilege.’ 

The term sounds much more complex, but really, it’s quite self-explanatory. It’s a form of aversive racism which advances the lives of white people, due to generations of racist culture that we brought with us into the present day. I myself as a Chinese citizen, am a victim of this. For example, I could walk into a room full of white people and assure you I would be stared at and singled out. Before walking into the room, I would anticipate this, and I will admit it, does knock my confidence a little. Now take the same analogy, but instead, change me for a white person walking into the room, the reception would be much more welcoming. There are many examples of privileges that white people benefit from, some more obvious than others, and some you would be surprised at. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all white people are racist, this will not be a blast piece trying to condemn white people. 

For the majority, it is an unfortunate result of failing to completely remove ourselves from our predecessors. We have built an attitude into culture where ‘white is right.’ The educational system acts as a major player in reinforcing this idea. For example, in most secondary schools across the country, the syllabus for History before GCSE cover topics such as Tudors, Romans and Anglo-Saxons, progressing into GCSE’s, the topics to choose from were between Medicine through time, German history, and American history – these topics all predominantly focus on white figures. Similarly, in Art degrees, the history would focus on artisans, philosophers and such of white descent, history of any other colour is merely cast aside and forgotten about: the American/Canadian syllabus for History predominantly focuses on their own country instead of focusing on broader content, Black history, a rich topic which plays a huge part in our world history is condensed into a mere few weeks beforebeing shelved again. Even the educational system lacks in diverse professionals, depriving students of diverse perspectives, instead serving them one side of the story. This intense (mainly positive) focus of white people during the entire course of our academia, forges and unconsciously oppress’ a constant reinforcement of white people as always being the alpha race throughout history. 

These themes echo throughout many other mediums today, most notably, the lack of representation, or rather, positive representation for people of colour in the media. The majority of content we consume daily, whether on our phones, in magazines, billboards, on TV or wherever, you will find that white people are constantly present in media, for example in film, 73.1% of characters on screen white, and more than often, people of other colour are represented as the antagonists to the plot. These ‘little’ things all add up to subliminally brainwash us into an illusory colour blindness that entrenches white privilege. 

The face of a man who knows when to smile and nod.

 Justin Lubin/Universal Pictures

Until we drastically change things such as the educational syllabus, or lack of diverse representation in media, only then can we begin to move forward with breaking social taboo’s. However, we'll still be faced with the issue of our history with white privilege in the 21^st century, and history isn’t something we can just erase. The blindness and recklessness of our past will always shadow us as we move forward, which means unfortunately for us, we’ll have to endure the social disabilities of white privilege for a long time to come, possibly even for the rest of our lifetime, but we've all got to start somewhere.