Here’s an email I got a few minutes ago promoting a white privilege presentation being put on here:
Ironies abound here. For example, having email access could well be chalked up to privilege. Having the disposable income to spend on a T-shirt could be a result of privilege. Having the time in the evenings to spend at a white privilege presentation — and not with family or at a job — could be a result of privilege. In fact, using this rather clumsy attempt at defining “white privilege”, pretty much anything can be attributed to white privilege. (As long as you are white, that is; I guess my kids would have to invent something like “Asian privilege” or “Asians living with white parents privilege” or “big girl privilege” or something.) And in order to take advantage of this presentation and to purchase the accompanying t-shirt, you have to make use of several of those things. Even if you don’t dismiss the notion of white privilege, doesn’t a t-shirt seem to be kind of a diminutive way to express yourself about the idea?
I wonder what colors that t-shirt is available in?
Technorati Tags: Asian-American, Higher education, White privilege
Casting Out Nines 
I knew a student once who had an Anglo father and a Taiwanese mother. In a riff on the tee shirts with “It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t understand.” he sometimes wore a home-made tee shirt that said “It’s a half-Taiwanese, half-American thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
I bet that white soldiers in Iraq haven’t been feeling too privileged.