Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It

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This is an edited extract from Lies, Damned Lies – A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation, by Claire G Coleman (Ultimo Press), out now. Look — I’m okay living in a society with minimum intervention where the outcomes are determined by the market and they are what they are. Many societies in the world don’t even have Black people, yet it was still a topic of conversation in those societies. Yet in comparison to white privilege, an invisible assortment of unearned entitlements enjoyed by whites, which in many instances they are unaware of and that are a consequence of their race, 11 black privilege is restricted in terms of the rewards that are associated with it. Focusing the discussion on the individual is especially effective for the purposes of anti-racist teaching and advocacy.

Ugandan author Rosebell Kagumire said the campaign ignored local efforts to handle the conflict and played into harmful narratives of African helplessness. I meet her one afternoon at a restaurant a few blocks from the brownstone where she lives in Harlem. Your boss is like, do I really want to put my black associate there [in front of clients], or should I take my white analyst and put them there because at least they have some type of commonalities. What is clear is that, as a tool for advocacy, 'white privilege’ cannot be an end but rather a beginning, one of many concepts that can lead individuals toward a critique of systemic racism and global anti-blackness.

The book draws from evidence collected in an interview-based study I conducted between 2009 and 2014 in the New York metropolitan area with fifty-four middle-class blacks.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotta take our reparations where we can, so we’re just not saying “excuse me,” to white people anymore. Yet, we are still obsessed with pushing up those numbers to achieve some sort of society that we deem as more equal. Darryl also activates his black cultural capital as he keeps his shoe game tight and makes sure to be dressed to impress whenever he goes out.

It also requires a sensitivity to the specific, local conditions in which race and racism touch the everyday lives of people. Let’s not forget that socioeconomic status is made of two dimensions: social standing AND economic standing. Consequently, he believes that they are inclined to believe that his white peers, even if they have less work experience, are naturally a “better fit” for engaging with prospective clients because it is assumed that they share the clients’ cultural tastes, sensibilities, and leisure pursuits. At his firm, Darryl perceives that old white men—whether his superiors or prospective clients—make the rules and that they value cultural “commonalities. Even with the changes, Mwesigire is sceptical of the organisation and its work, saying that a better way to fight the white saviour complex is to support informal “non-structured” community efforts.