What does it mean to have ‘privilege’—and is it a bad thing?

Privilege is such a fraught word. People can’t help but pay attention when they hear it.

For many, it’s a dirty word and an even worse concept. It usually implies potentially unfair or undeserved access to any number of benefits: money, jobs, networks, housing, even basic civic freedoms. 

In our modern democracies, privilege is meant to be a thing of the ancient, aristocratic past. We live in the Golden Age of Equality, where everyone should have the same rights to life, liberty, and at least the opportunity to pursue happiness.

A short history of privilege

Back in the day, before the big revolutions in France and America that asserted the “natural law” of equality, privilege was distributed according to strict class hierarchies. If you were a noble, your king or queen granted you privileges—property, concessions, monopolies—in return for your loyalty. The middle classes had to scrape and scratch their way to position and influence. And the lower, landless, working classes, who made up the majority of every nation, barely registered on their overlords’ radar.

This system protected privilege, an invisible, sacred right inherited from one upper class generation to the next. All sorts of laws, theories, and systems grew up in its defense. Property law protected privilege. The theory of monarchy protected privilege. And feudal systems kept workers tied to their lords’ lands, preserving an inexplicable privilege of dominion for thousands of years.

The thing we hate so much about the idea of inborn privilege, especially in our modern meritocracies, is that it isn’t earned. Privileges of all sorts still exist in a democracy, but the difference is we expect people to work for them.

You should get into a good school—and enjoy the privileges of superior education, networking, and development—because you’re a talented student. You should get a job because you’re objectively more qualified than other candidates. You should earn your money and wealth because you worked hard for it, not because your parents inherited and passed it onto you. 

There’s a big difference between winning the genetic lottery and playing society’s game.

Privilege compared to whom?

But we all know that isn’t how the world works in practice. Humans are hierarchical, irrational, and self-interested. We still live in societies that protect privilege. We’ve just found new ways to do it.

In many western countries, privilege operates differently depending where you are. The great source of privilege in America is not class, as it historically was in European countries, but money. In America, we don’t care where you come from—if you made your own money, most people won’t fault you for enjoying its privileges. In fact, if you come from nothing and make your way to the top, unaided—the great myth of the American Dream—you have even more right to do as you please.

But there are caveats to this. Money and opportunity haven’t historically been available to all Americans to the same degree. If you were an Irish or Italian immigrant in the late 19th century, you would have been expected to work a blue-collar job. And if you were a person of color at the same time, depending on whether you lived North or South, you could be expected to earn a lot less or even nothing at all for your labor.

Privilege is therefore always relative. When we think about our own personal sources of privilege, we have to ask ourselves: compared to whom? Privilege necessarily suggests relationships of power, and it’s only in defining those relationships, in seeing those connections clearly, that we can acknowledge our respective privileges and work to mitigate their negative effects.

The meaning of “white privilege”

Discussions about privilege inevitably center on “white privilege,” because it’s a perfect example of unearned advantage.

In the United States, white skin has been a de facto leg up in society since the colonial era.

Other skin colors, including those that result from a white and nonwhite parent, were classified, controlled, and limited in their rights. In some southern states, descendants of Black people had to prove they were sufficiently genetically distanced from their ancestors (anywhere from three to five generations) to be considered exempt from Jim Crow restrictions.

Even if white skin hasn’t earned all white people the same privileges historically—and it most certainly didn’t—we have to think comparatively when tracing privileges and their effect on people’s lived experience.

In the era of Jim Crow, a white man could never be arrested for “idling,” and sentenced to effective slave labor to pay off legal fines; a Black man could. 

In the era of segregation (and the first attempts at desegregation), a white woman could move freely through “white” and “colored” sections of public facilities, like schools, or even private businesses like hotels; a Black woman could not.

White skin entitled American citizens to all sorts of basic benefits at different points in American history, from housing and employment to freedom and equal treatment before the law.

In all these examples, white privilege generally gave white people the benefit of the doubt. Whether interacting with public institutions or public benefits, white skin granted access without raising any eyebrows. The same cannot be said for its Black and brown equivalents.

White privilege also exists in less visible, cultural ways. For most of our history we have centered white people in media, popular stories, government, and business. Representation at all levels and all industries has been meager for people of color at best. The psychological legacy of this leaves deep scars: white children imagine themselves freely in all sorts of life paths and stories. Children of color do not necessarily enjoy the same freedom of imagination and self-esteem, when they see people who look like them in fewer narratives.

And of course, in everyday life, nonwhite skin can invite discrimination, hate speech, and outright violence. Unconscious bias is unavoidable because it operates unconsciously. The learned associations we maintain around race, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, religion, and national origin (or any other “status markers”) are very difficult to erase or control.

As I mentioned above, privilege is relative. It’s not the case that all white privilege is created equal. “Whiteness” intersects with all sorts of other identity markers and their associated privileges, from social class and employment status to education. White people enjoy different levels of privilege, depending on any number of external factors.

Similarly, people of color exist on a spectrum of our own sets of privileges. While white skin provides white people with the benefit of the doubt and (often) unobstructed access to systemic privileges, the supposed “disadvantages” of nonwhite skin can be mitigated (or exacerbated) by any of the factors mentioned above, like money, personal connections, or national origin.

Earned privilege vs. unearned privilege

The big difference for people of color is that many of our privileges when it comes to wealth and status have had to be earned. For example, the story of my family’s ability to create wealth in my dad’s and my generations cannot be read outside the context of direct attacks on Black wealth creation in the 20th century.

Many Black families in America managed to acquire wealth, employment, and educational opportunities in the past century—but far more did not. As white America moved to the suburbs and settled into home ownership, college education, and white-collar employment, the Black population (as well as other immigrant populations) moved into urban centers and lacked sufficient educational and employment opportunities to lift their families out of inner city poverty. 

Federal bills aimed at providing social support to these families often did not reach Black communities. The GI bill, designed to help WWII veterans get back on their feet with attractive mortgage rates and zero down payment housing, as well as educational opportunities, was not extended to many Black soldiers. Affirmative action only picked up speed in the ’60s and ’70s, following the Civil Rights era of antidiscrimination legislation.

In some ways, I benefited from the privileges my parents worked hard to secure; though that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to work just as hard to maintain them. And when I went to Yale, I was introduced to a universe of privilege I hadn’t previously understood. After I left school and started my own company, I realized how little support and representation existed for founders from underrepresented backgrounds.

All of which is to say: No matter what your skin color is, you probably enjoy some kind of privilege when compared to other groups. And just because you’ve earned certain privileges doesn’t mean you didn’t benefit from other unearned ones.

Plenty of successful people have had to overcome significant barriers to success while still maintaining (and capitalizing on) their own unique advantages.

Take, for example, the story of Mellody Hobson, a prominent Black businesswoman who is currently co-CEO of Ariel Investments and chairwoman of Starbucks Corporation.

Hobson came from a poor family in Chicago and worked her way up to a spot at Princeton. When she graduated, she took an entry-level job at Ariel Investments, a minority-owned investment firm.

In the space of a decade, she rose to become president of the firm, which manages billions of dollars in assets. As a Black woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, it’s clear that Hobson had to work extra hard to achieve all that she did.

And yet, we could tell this story in a different way. Hobson is not only a Black woman—she is also young, American, English-speaking, cis-gendered, able-bodied, and straight. All these aspects of her identity undoubtedly helped her in her journey from Princeton to a lucrative job in finance. They provided her, in various ways, with different privileges that might not have been available to, say, a first-generation immigrant whose native language wasn’t English.

There’s no doubt that Hobson worked for everything she has—and even harder than many of her male peers. No one could fault her for the privileges she had; after all, most of them are accidents of birth. But privilege exists in many forms—earned or unearned. It plays a role in many different contexts in our lives. If we acknowledge it openly, we can think our way through how it helps or hinders a person’s ability to access the resources and opportunities they need. It means that by acknowledging our different forms of privilege, we can take the first step in designing equitable systems.

Different forms of privilege are much more immediately pertinent to an individual’s success, of course. That’s why it’s so important to fight for equitable access to the fundamentals of a level playing field, like housing, education, healthcare, and employment.

But the most important point to remember is that most privileges—earned or not—aren’t inherently bad or good. Because privilege is socially constructed, it’s contextually dependent. We can’t fault anyone for having white skin, or being young, or being born able-bodied. But we can examine those privileges and understand their histories in order to navigate their role in modern society.

Above all, it’s what we do with our privilege that determines its true social value.

I remember a white friend of mine growing up who interceded on my behalf when a policeman apprehended us on the street for no reason. My friend didn’t skip a beat when the officer asked us where we had been, what we were doing, and why we were outside. Although he probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, my friend was putting his own privilege—his benefit of the doubt—to excellent use, defending me when I was too frozen to reply.

Privilege will always exist as long as we do. Acknowledging it, exploring its provenance, questioning its legitimacy, and putting it to good use where we can are the best ways of making this intrinsically unfair aspect of our society work better for everyone.