“Why White People Downplay Their Individual Racial Privileges”
“in a new study, Stanford researchers found that on an individual level, whites do not think that the privileges extend to them.
The research by L. Taylor Phillips, a PhD student at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Brian Lowery, the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford GSB, foundi that whites exposed to evidence of racial privilege responded by claiming their own personal hardships. Those surveyed didn’t deny the existence of racial privileges held by whites as a group, they just came up with other reasons — namely, personal obstacles — why they should be considered differently from that overall group.
How does Lowery explain this? He says, “You like to have nice things. But you don’t want to think you got those things as a result of unearned advantages.” People feel better about what they have if they believe they have earned those things as a result of hard work, not via birthright. So denying built-in advantages is essentially a form of self-protection…
“We show you can turn off the ‘denial’ effect,” Phillips says. “The self-affirmation task helps people reduce their feelings of defensiveness,” which makes them more open to acknowledging their own privilege.”
Related: “Transforming White Fragility Into Courageous Imperfection” and some other posts on white fragility and anti-racism activism.
