Subject Guides: Anti-Racism Resources: White Privilege and White Supremacy

White Privilege and White Supremacy

White Privilege
White Supremacy

What is White Privilege?

The unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed upon people solely because they are white. White people who experience such privilege usually do so without being conscious of it (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, n.d.).

Examples

I can walk around a department store without being followed.
I can come to a meeting late and not have my lateness attributed to my race.
I can turn on the television or look to the front page and see people of my ethnic and racial background represented.

Reference

W. K. Kellogg Foundation. (n.d.). Racial equity resource guide. https://www.canr.msu.edu/od/uploads/files/Multiculturalism_Diversity/Racial_Equity_Resource_Guide1.pdf

Websites

Save the Tears: White Woman's Guide
From the author, Tatiana Mac: "If you're a white woman who is watching the world burn because of police murder against Black people, and you don't know what to do, I wrote you a guide."
What is White Privilege, Really?
Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself. From Teaching Tolerance. By Cory Collins, 2018.
Whiteness Project
Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
A 1989 essay that provides examples of the privilege white people experience in everyday life.
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
For years, racism has been defined by the violence of far-right extremists, but a more insidious kind of prejudice can be found where many least expect it – at the heart of respectable society.

Books

eBook: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)
The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
eBook: White Like Me by Tim Wise
From "one of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation" (Michael Eric Dyson), this now-classic is "a brilliant and personal deconstruction of institutionalized white supremacy in the United States.

Videos

The Root. (2018, August 18). How white privilege works: Unpack that [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/4I84jxCNsmo

What is White Supremacy?

The idea that white people and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions are superior to those of People of Color (Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks), 2021).

White supremacy is present in our institutional and cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group while casting people and communities of color as worthless (worth less), immoral, bad, and inhuman and "undeserving.

Reference

Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks). (2021, May). What is racism? Racism defined. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/racism-defined.html

Websites

Not Just in America: Hate and White Supremacy Have Always Been Just as Prevalent in Canada as in the “Land of the Free”
QAnon, Soldiers of Odin, and the KKK are just a few of the conspiracy and supremacy groups operating in Canada, while the infamous Proud Boys call this country home
The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada
Dr. Henry Yu writes, "I have found over the years that people have difficulty talking about, let alone understanding the legacies of historical anti-Asian racism on the world we live in today, and so it might be useful to talk about it through elephants, and how that might help us understand the enduring power of white supremacy in Canada."

Video

Singh, L. (2021, January). Let’s call it what It Is, white supremacy: A little late with Lilly Singh [Video]. https://youtu.be/eHY_KXEWBUY

Lilly breaks in her new rant room to talk about Black Lives Matter protests, the U.S. Capitol riot and her hopes for love and light in 2021.