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`White privilege': A mild critique1

Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA, lawrence.blum{at}umb.edu

White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction — its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.

Key Words: structural analysis • white privilege • whiteness

Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 6, No. 3, 309-321 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1477878508095586


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