As previously discussed, anti-racism is about both raising consciousness and taking action. Addressing privilege and power is an important step in raising consciousness of our relationship to structural racism. Reni Eddo-Lodge describes this in ‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’:
“In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon – earned or not – because of their race, their class and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.”
Recognising race and who benefits from their race leads us to the idea of white privilege. Reni Eddo-Lodge considers white privilege in the following quote:
“How can I define white privilege? It’s so difficult to describe an absence. And white privilege is an absence of the negative consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost, an absence of ‘less likely to succeed because of my race’…
Describing and defining this absence means to some extent upsetting the centring of whiteness, and reminding white people that their experience is not the norm for the rest of us.”
Recognising and challenging privilege and the power it brings can support your anti-racism work. In the following exercises, we will explore this further.