Inventing “White Privilege”: Pseudo-progressivism in American Political Discourse

A growing number of scholars who study race in the United States are calling on white Americans to advance racial equality by renouncing their “white privilege.” Yet few academics have explicitly defined this term. Here I analyze how scholars who discuss the phenomenon use “white privilege” in their work. In so doing, I argue that examining racial injustice through the lens of white privilege not only fails to subvert racial inequality in the United States but also helps maintain it. It does so by reinforcing racial stereotypes and undermining cross-racial worker solidarity and calls for universal public goods, both of which are necessary to advance the interests of most nonwhite Americans. By analyzing the most common invocations of “white privilege,” I ultimately find that white privilege discourse provides a pseudo-progressive smokescreen that protects the laws, policies, and economic and political interests that perpetuate racial inequality in the United States today.