I'm surprised how many DU'ers think aknowledging white male privilege is somehow bigoted

[thucythucy]

291. Here's an example of white privilege that doesn't often get acknowledged:

Last edited Mon Jan 7, 2013, 11:17 AM - Edit history (1)

For the majority of middle class families, the root of their capital wealth is the first home ever owned by that family. Often, this came in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the GI Bill offered federal underwriting to veterans returning from WWII wanting to purchase their family's first ever home. This fueled both the enormous expansion of home-owning among the middle and working class, and the rise of the suburbs (which was also subsidized by multi-billion dollar federal investment in the interstate highway system and state subsidies of intrastate freeways).

At that time--the 1940s into the 1950s (and in some areas well into the 1960s) "red lining" was still a common practice. Red lining meant that banks would not offer mortgages to families living in certain areas--minority neighborhoods. At the same time, African American and Hispanic (and sometimes Jewish) families were out and out prohibited from moving into certain neighborhoods.

This meant that, at the time of the greatest expansion of home ownership in American history--bringing many working class families into the middle class--blacks and Latinos in particular were all but excluded. By the time that exclusion ended -- with the Fair Housing Act of the 1960s -- the post war boom of home ownership brought about by the original GI Bill was over. And so, communities of color absolutely missed out on this opportunity, through no possible fault of their own.

As I said, family after family can trace their current financial status to that initial period when, unlike times since, the federal government actually invested and underwrote home ownership to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars. This investment went overwhelmingly to white families.

Anyone who has inherited a nest egg that originated in that era -- any white person whose family was able to secure them a college loan by using their home as collateral, or was able to trade up to a better home by using that first house as collateral, or was able to purchase a home in a more affluent neighborhood, thus ensuring a better education for their children because of better funded schools, is a recipient of white privilege.

This doesn't make you a racist, it doesn't make you evil, it shouldn't necessarily even make you feel guilty. But this built-in disparity in the way our society developed HAS to be acknowledged if we're going even to begin to address the racism so inherent in our society.

I could offer similar instances of white MALE privilege, as opposed to simply white privilege, but this post is already too long.