feature: study shows that “white people react to evidence of white privilege by claiming greater personal hardships”

Raw Story reports that a new research study at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business has found that “white people respond to evidence that they are privileged by their race by insisting that they face greater hardships in life”. WTF?! The study was conducted by researchers L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery, and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Phillips and Lowery state: “Despite this reality, policy makers and power brokers continue to debate whether racial privilege even exists and whether to address such inequity […] One reason for this inaction might be an unwillingness among Whites to acknowledge racial privilege — acknowledgment that may be difficult given that Whites are motivated to believe that meritocratic systems and personal virtues determine life outcomes.” The denial is real! CLICK HERE to read more.

By Alexander Aplerku, AFROPUNK Contributor

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“Our work suggests that privilege reduction efforts might need to focus not only on convincing or educating advantaged group members about privilege, but also on reducing the feelings of self-threat this information induces […] The existence of hardships does not reduce racial privilege, since racial privilege entails comparison to someone of a different race with equivalent hardships. People may erroneously think privilege entails complete ease in life and that the presence of any hardships denotes an absence of privilege.”