One example of “white privilege” is this. I can ignore white privilege, or publicly dismiss it and anyone who talks about it, or learn about it and try to lessen it. “But in any case,” wrote Peggy McIntosh, “I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.”

This is the fourth week I’ve written about faith and racial identity, after the Charleston massacre. You can read the first three installments here.

Learning about “social location” and “white privilege” changed my life and my faith. And McIntosh’s examples of white privilege really brought it home for me. Here are a few of them.

1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
3. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
4. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
5. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
6. I can be sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge” I will be facing a person of my race.
7. If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
8. I can go home from most meetings or organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
9. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
10. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

White skin grants more privileges than these, even more than the 50 McIntosh named. But in the almost 30 years since she wrote, many have become more relevant, not less.

Take #4, in light of 12-year-old Tamir Rice shot and killed by Cleveland police in November 2014.

Unpacking the invisible backpack of white privilege is not easy. That’s because this isn’t just information. It asks something of me. As a white person, that something is not “to feel guilty for being who I am.” Instead, as a core value of my faith, I now work to change the imbalance of power that is the root cause of white privilege.

You may have many questions about these four articles about faith and racial identity. But I’ll end for now with more words of McIntosh, on this question of, “What is being asked of me?” There is a difference, she wrote,

between earned strength and unearned power. Conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies.

Peace, PC