alwaysbewoke:

jean-luc-gohard:

My favorite is that story every white person has that’s like, “My friend didn’t get into her dream school because they took a black guy with a lower GPA instead.” As though they were in the admissions office and heard the admissions officers going, “Well, there’s one spot left, and we have to choose between this brilliant white girl or this black idiot. I guess we’ll choose the black guy, because Affirmative Action means we have to!” They don’t know their friend’s exact GPA or that of the person who “got in instead,” or if they applied to the same program, or if one had a lower GPA but better test scores or extracurriculars or volunteer hours or personal statement, or if the other was a legacy. All they know is, “My white friend got rejected, but there are black people at the school,” and they see their white friends as being inherently smarter and more worthy of an education, so they assume automatically that the black people there are unqualified and were unfairly accepted.

“A much more subtle and complex version of white privilege sometimes appears in discussions of the fairness of affirmative action programs. Many whites feel that these programs victimize them, that more qualified white candidates will be required to sacrifice their positions to less qualified minorities. So, is affirmative action a case of “reverse discrimination” against whites? Part of the argument for it rests on an implicit assumption of innocence on the part of the white displaced by affirmative action. The narrative behind this assumption characterizes whites as innocent, a powerful metaphor, and blacks as‑what? Presumably, the opposite of innocent. Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent. The interplay of meanings that one attaches to race, the stereotypes one holds of other people, and the need to guard one’s own position all powerfully determine one’s perspective. Indeed, one aspect of whiteness, according to some, is its ability to seem perspectiveless, or transparent. Whites do not see themselves as having a race, but being, simply, people. They do not believe that they think and reason from a white viewpoint, but from a universally valid one‑"the truth"‑what everyone knows. By the same token, many whites will strenuously deny that they have benefited from white privilege.”

- “Critical Race Theory” by Richard Delgado