Does white privilege exist?

There are no policies that deliberately benefit white people

Question: Does white privilege exist?
Position1 of 2›: No, white privilege doesn't exist
Argument‹2 of 6›: There are no policies that deliberately benefit white people

For white privilege to exist, there would have to be specific policies in place that explicitly benefit whites at the expense of other races. These policies do not exist.

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that white privilege, if it exists at all, would have to be visible in the design of policy — and that it is not. On their account policies are not race-centric: they are drafted around categories such as geography, income, occupation or household composition, and they are not implemented with the intent of benefiting white people. Since the instruments of government do not name race as the thing they are distributing advantage to, they contend, there is no mechanism by which a deliberate racial privilege could be delivered. The argument does not deny that outcomes are uneven. It accepts that policies will sometimes disproportionately benefit groups living in certain geographies, drawn from a specific economic class, or belonging to a particular working group or demographic, and that the people so benefited may be disproportionately white. What it denies is the inference from that pattern to privilege. On this reasoning a disparity in effect is not evidence of a purpose, because a measure addressed to a region or an income band will track whoever happens to live there or earn that much, and the resulting distribution is a by-product of the category chosen rather than its object. Intent is therefore treated as the decisive test. Proponents hold that an advantage can only be attributed to white privilege if it was conferred with the express objective of advantaging white people; absent that objective, the advantage is attributable to the stated criterion instead. Because, in their view, no policy is enacted with that express objective, the disparities that critics point to cannot be laid at the door of white privilege. On that basis they conclude that white privilege does not exist.

Context

To cite the existence of ‘white privilege’, there must be specific policies that benefit white people at the expense of minority groups. Those policies don’t exist. Therefore, white privilege does not exist.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue that policies are not race-centric and are not implemented with the intent of benefiting white people. [P2] While some policies may disproportionately benefit particular geographic, economic, or demographic groups, that outcome is not their express objective. [C] Because no policies deliberately benefit white people, this position holds that white privilege does not exist.

Counter-arguments

Firstly, real policy objectives are rarely articulated to the public. It is perfectly conceivable that there have been many policy objectives deliberately designed to benefit white people at the expense of other demographics. Secondly, there have been policies deliberately designed to marginalize and assault black communities. One example of such a policy was President Richard Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’. Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman even admitted as such, saying that “we knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." Finally, privilege does not always stem from policy. It could be something as simple as seeing your race represented on television, or being able to buy cosmetic products for your skin tone.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Privilege does not always stem from policy. [Rejecting P2] The real beneficiaries of policy are not always recognisable. [Rejecting P2] Some policies have deliberately sought to marginalize people of colour.