Alison Bailey

This essay is a personal philosophical reflection on particular dilemma privilege-cognizant white feminists face in thinking through how to use privilege in liberatory ways. Privilege takes on a new dimension for whites who resist common defensive or guilt-ridden responses to privilege and struggle to understand the connections between ill-gotten advantages and the genuine injustices that deny humanity to peoples of color. The temptation to despise whiteness and its accompanying privilege is a common response to white privilege awareness and it is this initial frustration with the perceived inescapability of white privilege that I explore here. What I call the "dilemma of white privilege awareness," leaves privilege-cognizant whites trapped in the awkward position of knowing that privilege is at once impossible to dispose of, and impossible to use without perpetuating those systems of domination I wish to demolish. The dilemma works like this. On the one hand, if my racial appearance and mannerisms act as a magnet for special treatment, then I cannot simply arrange my life so as not to have benefits and immunities extended to me. There appears to be no way to divest myself completely of race privilege. On the other hand, if the focus on privilege divestment is misguided, then perhaps whites ought to find responsible ways of using race privilege that do not perpetuate structural inequalities (e.g. assisting persons of color in surmounting everyday obstacles). Yet, if the power accorded to privilege is made possible by structural inequalities, then the very act of using privilege will automatically reinforce those structural inequalities. If the claims made on both sides of the dilemma are true, then I am trapped: I can neither divest myself of unearned privileges nor can I use them without reinforcing the systems I wish to demolish. I carefully unpack each side of the dilemma marking detours, diversions, and natural sticking points (e.g. cultural impersonation, retreats to white ethnicity, and the temptation to shift discussions away from race to other oppressions) that prevent me engaging critically in discussions of racism. I suggest two possible solutions to the dilemma: conceptual and pragmatic. If there is one lesson we carry away from the dilemma, it is that privilege is impossible to shake, and that using privilege reinscribes it. Rather than frustrating us, this phenomenon should alert us to the strengths of privilege as a resource. To use privilege as a resource for anti-racist activities is to give up its abusive power.

This essay serves as both a response and embellishment of Marilyn Frye's now classic essay " Oppression." It is meant to pick up where this essay left off and to make connections between oppression, as Frye defines it, and the privileges that result from institutional structures. This essay tries to clarify one meaning of privilege that is lost in philosophical discussions of injustice. I develop a distinction between unearned privileges and earned advantages. Clarifying the meaning of privilege as unearned structural advantage makes visible the role white privilege plays in maintaining complex systems of domination such as racism, sexism, heterosexism and classism. Using a critical reading of both Frye and Young's accounts of oppression as a springboard, I develop a definition of privilege as a particular class of unearned advantages. -/- I distinguish my account of privilege from standard legal and philosophical definitions of privilege. The general distinction I make between privileges and advantages rests on three interrelated claims: that benefits granted by privilege are always unearned and conferred systemically to members of dominant social groups; that privileges granted to members of dominant groups solely on the basis of their membership in these groups is never justifiable; and, that privileges have an unconditional value that can be explained not only in terms of immunities, but also in terms of additional benefits.

I address the problem of how to locate "traitorous" subjects, or those who belong to dominant groups yet resist the usual assumptions and practices of those groups. I argue that Sandra Harding's description of traitors as insiders, who "become marginal" is misleading. Crafting a distinction between "privilege-cognizant" and "privilege-evasive" white scripts, I offer an alternative account of race traitors as privilege-cognizant whites who refuse to animate expected whitely scripts, and who are unfaithful to worldviews whites are expected to hold.

In this paper I address a tension in Samantha Vice’s claim that humility and silence offer effective moral responses to white shame in the wake of South African apartheid. Vice describes these twin virtues using inward-turning language of moral self-repair, but she also acknowledges that this ‘personal, inward directed project’ has relational dimensions. Her failure to explore the relational strand, however, leaves her description of white shame sounding solitary and penitent. My response develops the missing relational dimensions of white shame and humility arguing that this strand, once visible, complicates Vice’s project by (1) challenging her unitary and homogenous view of white identity, and (2) demonstrating the important role vulnerability plays in our understandings of white shame.