Since 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement has often emerged at the forefront of America’s headlines. With race riots in large cities and incidents of racially-driven police shootings, the movement sees African-Americans as being underprivileged — the idea that purely because of their race, individuals are put at an inherent disadvantage in society.
This racial privilege can often determine the trajectory of one’s life — the opportunities presented simply because of one’s race result in disparities between the amount of money people make, and between the perceptions of race within society.
One of the effects of this privilege is clear in U.S. incarceration rates. A Pew Research Center study found that African American men were six times as likely as Caucasian men to be incarcerated in U.S. jails.
Racial privilege cuts across multi-ethnic lines. Sophomore Stefan Veizades is equal parts El Salvadorian, German, Greek, and Spanish. Although Veizades passes as Hispanic, his twin sibling, sophomore Sofia Veizades, passes as Caucasian. Despite having the same genetic makeup as his sister, Veizades feels that at times, he is treated differently than his sister because of their different appearances.
“People who are Latino,” says Veizades, “are more comfortable to start speaking Spanish right off the bat [with me, even though both my sister and I speak Spanish. It sort of has to do with the ‘what you see when you first look at them’… and [people] begin to assume things.”
On the other side of the issue, Caucasian individuals are often given an inherent advantage because of the way society views them. Junior Josh DeWitt is 75 percent Caucasian, and 25 percent Korean, and experienced a subtle advantage, which he felt came because of his racial appearance. He recounts,“There are people who I have met as a Boy Scout whose opinions I think were swayed towards me getting an award, as opposed to Scouts who were African-American or Middle Eastern. I don’t think that the award was given merely based on [racial appearance], but I felt like my interview process for the award was shorter and easier [because of my racial appearance].”
Racism also comes from microaggressions — subtle comments that reinforce a stereotype about a gender, class, or race. These types of comments often put off their subjects, but are usually socially accepted, thus silencing objections.
Says junior Miles Olson. “Everyone can be just a little racist at times and that can add up to larger things like institutionalized racism that continues to put a race in a poor socioeconomic stance on a generational level.”
DeWitt notes that what someone says doesn’t always reflect their intentions. “[microaggressions] are influenced by the way a person is raised, because many people aren’t aware that they are saying something subtly racist,” says DeWitt, “There needs to be some amount of mercy extended and a level of conversation to be had.”
Although America has a come a long way in the fight against racism, the issue of racial privilege reveals that stereotypes solely based on the color of one’s face still pervade our society.
