White Privilege

White people need to acknowledge
benefits of unearned privilege
by Robert Jensen

This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper and was written by a professor of journalism at the U of Texas.]

Here's what white privilege sounds like: I'm sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that being white has advantages in the United States. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege – unearned white privilege - how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I asked. He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter." That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: The privilege to acknowledge that you have unearned privilege but to ignore what it means. That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us every day: in a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk open and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant nonwhite population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes - I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves - and in a racist world, that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

Continued here:
http://www.dickshovel.com/priv.html

about privilege that many would like to ignore.

The whole "Yeah I'm white, but I feel really shitty about it, so it's ok" genre.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

If that had instead said, "I walk through the United States of America with white privilege", would there be any difference worth commenting on?

True or false: Arabs walk through Saudi Arabia with Arab privilege.

We are founded on the theory that "All Men are Created Equal." Yeah the founders didn't see that the same way we do, but there it is. That's why the idea of a United States of America with a caste system that punishes one race while favoring another is distasteful. So we are playing on a different playing field than other nations.

Bryant

From an important UN document:



http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

How does that seem to be working out?

At any rate, the UN charter is not a founding document of Saudi Arabia (nor is a founding document of any nation).

Bryant

Do you agree that men are endowed by their Creator
with certain rights that cannot be revoked by legislative or judicial fiat?

I think he overstates it a bit, but the concept of race, sex, class, etc. privilege is sound.

advanced degrees as well. My great uncle was a regent at 'our' university here in Austin. The atmosphere in which I grew up couldn't have been more privileged (I drove my family's Rolls Royce here my senior year)and at the time, I just thought it was my due. After much living, I have learned what a tremendous advantage I had and at the time, really took for granted. There isn't a level playing field and this transcends many factors - race being perhaps the most salient, and I don't believe, given human nature, that there ever really will be. (sorry for the rosie o'donnell grammatical style).


There is a story I remember from my childhood that I tell occasionally to friends about CHristmas. Christmas was a very big deal in my family and we had a number of African American people that worked for my family. On each Christmas, I really looked forward to all of the festivities and part of it was the participation with my 'Aunt Fanny' and Aunt Rose'. As far as I was concerned, they were a part of the family and CHristmas wouldn't have been the same without them - I loved them dearly. What I never realized until I was a 'very' grown man, was that they had family as well and instead, they spent Christmas with us, only going home to their families at the end of the day. This has come to color the way I remember my early Christmases.

by Peggy McIntosh
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"


". . . As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?" ...

-MORE- http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html



"The Checklist"

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Nor is/was Viet Nam, where the Vietnamese of Chinese ancestry were treated akin to Jews in Eastern Europe and the Vietnamese of tribal origins were treated somewhat like the Native Americans in the early 20th century. We can somewhat easily see pervasive (institutional) racism in Mexico, Korea, Australia, and several nations in Africa. It's a global condition and it's almost always associated with colonialism and feudalism/monarchism and the preservation of the ruling elite's entitlements and privileges - i.e. it's inherently conservative.

How about Swedes and Serbs?

This list is about race in America in the first place, and the racial situation in the U.S.

there is a reason I stopped responding to your posts many months ago.

I should have remembered. Now I do.

"But probably the most important response I got was from non-white folks, predominantly African-Americans, who said something like this: "Of course there is white privilege. I've been pointing it out to my white friends and co-workers for years. Isn't funny that almost no one listens to me, but everyone takes notice when a white guy says it.""

http://www.dickshovel.com/priv2.html

grandmother didn't - and YES! It made a huge difference.

No one has ever asked me if I was someone's nanny while out with children

with my newborn strapped to my chest in a Snugli, the woman behind me in line remarked on how cute he was. Yes he was. He was also very white looking. "Are you babysitting?" I replied, "No." She went to the store manager demanding he call the police because a black woman had stolen a white baby. Fortunately, I was a Stammkundenin there and the manager on duty had been the last to wish me all things good before my C-section. He told her to mind her own bidness. She got animated and he told her to FUCK OFF!!!

Think about what happened with the economy back in the late 70s, early 80s. Where did all that land go that was practically given away by the RTC.(sp?) There were lots of land development that went belly-up which had a multitude of easements that might have made interesting walk paths or rec grounds for the public...for free if the local government had acted in a responsible manner. But, of course, local government is controlled by people., and how those easements disappeared, is a chapter in white privilege/white mafia.

Oh, when I think of how my Republican relatives were so convinced that latinos and blacks had a natural criminal element because there were more of them in jail. If only latinos and blacks were aware of the riches that were being stolen by white America, every day.

A wealthy person, regardless of color, will be invariably treated differently than a non-wealthy person.

An African American millionaire will have privileges that a poor Hispanic or a poor African American will never (or rarely) have.

In order to make a good idea like affirmative action work best, we should also look at a person's economic situation, not just his/her race.

Lastly, I have had various experiences with racism throughout my life as I have several friends of various ethinicities. But the most memorable one was in my senior year in high school, when I went to the prom with my best (African American) friend in a rural NC town. The reason why this is so memorable is because the meanest insults and racist remarks came from African American students and most were directed at my date. It goes to show that racism is not the province of only one ethnic group.

The VAST majority of wealthy people are white. Or hadn't you noticed?
Lee

In 1999 there were 32 million households with income less than $25,000. There were 17.3 million with income less than $15,000 and 9.6 million with income less than $10,000 (yes, the groups over-lap). Of the last group 6.8 million (or 71%) were white, of the middle group 12.98 million (75%), and of the first group 25.2 million (78.6%) were white.

Yes, as we all are always made aware 18.5% of black households are in the bottom group, compared to 7.8% of whites. If over $50,000 income is considered wealthy (a definition loudly denied on DU (and denied by me too, as $50,000 - $80,000 I would call upper middle class)) then only 42.8% of white households are in that group. There were 3.37 million black households in that group. Too bad they didn't have the privileges of the 25.2 million lower income whites.

a person of color owns less than a dime. The disparity in wealth is even greater than the disparity in income, because systemic racism has made it easier for white families than for black to pass down inheritances to their children. How? Redlining meant that houses in black neighborhoods didn't appreciate in value the way houses in white neighborhoods did. People who worked in certain occupations traditionally held by people of color (domestic workers, farm laborers) were excluded from social security. The GI bills which made it easy for white veterans to life themselves and their families into the middle class did far less for black veterans because there weren't enough spaces in black colleges to accommodate them.

I learned this from a wonderful book, "The Color of Wealth." I can't recommend this book highly enough.

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Wealth-Behind-Racial-Divide/dp/1595580042/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7194486-7360809?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176246731&sr=8-1

to whites who lived in white areas. By perpetuating housing segregation, it prevented blacks from accumulating wealth in the form of valuable private property.

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/housing05.htm

From 1920 to 1960, the rate of owner occupancy in the American housing market rose from 46% to 62%. These numbers, however, explain only a small part of the significance of the federal government's New Deal intervention in the housing market. The creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure lenders against the risk of default on single-family mortgages fundamentally transformed what it meant to own a house in America. Prior to the 1930s, owner-occupied housing was a good held primarily for reasons of consumption--not investment--and usually acquired late in life. Through New Deal reforms, homeownership became the primary mechanism that middle-class Americans use to build assets. Today, 60% of the total assets of middle-class Americans are held in owner-occupied homes.

(jump)

As historian Kenneth Jackson and others have described, the FHA's core insurance program, section 203(b), systematically discriminated against African-Americans. The FHA produced underwriting guidelines based on an economically and historically flawed understanding of a "natural" progression of neighborhood racial change from all-white (with high property values) to all-black (with low property values). These guidelines rated a neighborhood's suitability for insurance based on racial composition, encouraged or mandated racial covenants as a condition for insurance, and discouraged integrated neighborhoods.

so average wealth for whites is ten times that of blacks. Two white guys, Bill Gates and I, have an average net worth of 25 billion. All those wealthy whites do not do a tanj thing for the 6 million white families with a net worth less than $2,500, any more than the 1.6 million black families with a net worth of more than $100,000 do a tanj thing for the 30.8% (compared to 10% for whites) of black families with a new worth of less than $2,500. Two thirds of all white families have a net worth of less than $250,000.

"In 2001, whites had a median net worth over $120,000, while that of blacks was under $20,000." (pg. 75, same book.)

"Half of all white families, but only one-fifth of black families, have parents who can help them buy a home." (pg. 77.)

You are correct that mean, rather than median, is perhaps skewed. However, it is not a level playing field, no matter which statistics you use.

Many white people did not have parents who paid for their college like I did, and my dad did (and it was 'luck' on my dad's part since grandma had a first cousing who died young and left her a bunch of money that came from her husband who also died young).

My point, however, is that there are a whole bunch of white families - 19, 400, 000 (32.3%) - twice the number of all black families (8.66 million) who have a net worth of less than half the median net worth for whites (less than $50,000). That we do not have a whole lot of this supposed white privilege. That we, in fact, are less privileged than the 1.6 million black families with a net worth of over $100,000, or even the 1.39 million black families with a net worth of over $50,000.

and there are some black families which are doing better than some white families financially. Sure. We agree on that. I don't think that anyone here is assuming that just because someone's white, they've got it easy.

But here's the thing: you call it luck that your father had an inheritance which helped pay for his children's education. (I am not saying it was lucky your family members died young, of course.) I call it white privilege. Why? Because a much higher percentage of whites than blacks have similar stories about family money which helped pay for educations and buy houses. Why, again? Because of institutional racism. Federal policies which denied monetary benefits to people of color, lending institutions which denied loans to people of color, real estate agents who would only show certain houses to people of color. And that is on top of the racism of individuals who denied good-paying jobs to people of color.

As for me, I am white. I used an inheritance of $12,000 as a down payment on a house. I later used a more modest inheritance as seed money to start a business. I got these inheritances because my white grandparents were able, with the help of GI bills, to buy houses which appreciated hugely in value. And my parents were able to pay for much of my education because they earned good money in the '70's when it was a rarity for blacks to earn as much as they did.

I'm pretty broke now. I don't have a car. I earned less than $10,000 last year. But I am definately the beneficiary of white privilege.

Why not? Because it does not goto all white people. Nor is it denied to all black people. Therefore, its distribution depends on something other than race. Plus, it is not some kind of social "privilege" if my family does something for me. The benefit is not coming from society, it is coming from my relatives. My relatives' wealth was also not the result of some race-based social policy - not primarily. (Also, my grandmother's inheritance put my father through college. He put us through college by virtue of his own good-paying job, which not all white people had, and by saving. Ironically, saving meant that we were less able to get 'need-based' financial aid.)

As far as assuming white people have it easy. I think that is the implication - 'statistically it is a cakewalk to be a white male.' "Most of the rich people are white' (as if that implies that most white people are rich). MacIntosh - "My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will."

See, white people, just by being white are 'oppressors' or 'unfairly advantaged' compared, perhaps, to Bill Cosby and Julius Erving.

Yes, I am making an old argument - "Poor and working class whites object to the idea of white privilege, pointing out that not every white person is wealthy or powerful. But other benefits accrue to white people, including one which W.E.B. DuBois called the "psychological wages of whiteness". Membership in the privileged group, even for whites on the bottom economic rung, confers a social status and recognition which is denied to all but the most powerful members of oppressed groups."

With all due respect to Mr. DuBois, first of all, his observation is 100 years old. Secondly, he has no experience of what it is like to be a poor or working class white person. I think he far over-estimates the 'social status and recognition' enjoyed by working class white people.

Everyone's best billionairess girlfriend, Oprah, could educate you on that point.

Your prom experience is an entirely different issue. This is the flashpoint of race and sex. The word "racism" is completely inadequate to describe the dynamics you and your friend faced.

First - it isn't like every white person is further ahead than every black person, but a white person has an advantage over a black person who has the same amount of education and job experience. Unless there is affirmative action, which hopefully balances it out.

Second - you can't always tell just by looking whether a person is wealthy anyway. I was at the mall late this afternoon with my daughter and my in-laws. We were sitting having some coffee and we saw two police officers. Then we saw the object of their focus, among the dozens of teenagers at the mall - one teenager who looked different. Guess how he looked different? It wasn't how he was dressed. They were all dressed basically the same. The only way he looked different is that he was black. The police officers patted him down, in front of everyone. He didn't have whatever merchandise he was accused of stealing on him. But instead of an apology, he was escorted somewhere or another. My father-in-law said, out loud and I don't doubt the police could hear, "Is he in trouble for SWB? Shopping while black?" I've been to this mall a ton of times since *I* was a teenager and I've never seen anyone patted down and publicly humiliated like that before there. That's an example of where how much money you have doesn't matter. If you're in a store, you are more likely to be followed around and watched if you're black.

Another example: I had a boss who had just been given a new company car and who was stopped by police for no apparent reason once. He was dressed for work. There certainly wasn't anything about him that would have made people think he was poor. The police department actually called our company to make sure he was authorized to drive this company car. Guess what color he was? I never heard of a white manager who was pulled over to check to see if he really was allowed to drive one of the company cars. Those are just a couple of examples, but they happen over and over and over again to black people. It's a part of their life experience that we don't share. Really open up your eyes - have you ever been with someone who saw a black person with something nice and wondered out loud if it was stolen? Have you ever been with someone who saw a black person during the workday and wondered out loud why they weren't looking for a job, assuming they didn't have a job? Have you ever assisted someone who was in charge of hiring who seemed uninterested in a resume because the person had an address in the city of Detroit instead of a suburb? I see this kind of thing all the time, and I don't understand how other white people aren't seeing it. (And yes I do say something, and the young black woman from Detroit ended up getting an interview after I complained, and she did really well at the interview and got hired.) Imagine being on the receiving end of that kind of discrimination, on a regular basis.

or economic situations. There are already scholarships, etc., which address that issue, and all calls for contaminating affirmative action with an economic or financial layer are intended (whether you consciously understand it or not) to erode or outright eradicate issues of race and racism.

So that social standing, economic privilege is weighted.

I have been on some of the "diverse" campuses and many of the students who were not WASPs were basically just as "white" as the Caucasians if you took their skin color out of the equation.

I mean does someone who tests 1600 on their SAT's and who grew up in a family where both parents were professionals really need to be given extra points because of their skin color?

Right now it is the poor who need help - regardless of ethnicity

The Racial Contract. White privilege is just reality.

who knows, maybe he is just older.

"I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional."

I grew up in South Dakota, which was probably just as all-white, but in my circles there was neither personal nor institutional racism. Perhaps the few Vietnamese or Native Americans would tell a different story, but some of that is childhood - white kids bullied and mis-treated other white kids too.

"Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me they are white."

So, there are no white males who look threatening? Or white females? Plus, both undergraduate and graduate school admission had me dealing with blacks and Indians, and I thought nothing of that. The human resources people have been mostly women, so they don't 'look like me' and mostly I have not gotten jobs that I applied for and once was rejected for an apartment by a presumably white woman (we talked on the phone) and was asked by two middle aged white guys to NOT attend their rural church.

"But white folks have long cut other white folks a break." Lots of people will not cut a break for anybody, and beatiful and charming people seem far more likely to get breaks, not a funny-looking Aspie like myself.

"All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position by the predominantly white University of Texas, headed by a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one nonwhite tenured professor."

That does not match my life at all. The Dean of IT that I talked to about scholarships was black. Dr. Gupta recruited me for graduate school. I was interviewed for my current job by a black man. I applied at a job at a church where the minister is Indonesian. In spite of my 'advantageous' pigmentation, the church hired the pastor's son for the job. It just sounds like he got tenure back in the mid 1980s when things might have been different.

Many of the situations in which you would have advantage would merely seem normal to you.

I think this is particularly atypical:
"The Dean of IT that I talked to about scholarships was black. Dr. Gupta recruited me for graduate school. I was interviewed for my current job by a black man. I applied at a job at a church where the minister is Indonesian."

There is also a great difference between being African-American, and the treatment one would receive being a person of color from any other country here in the USA. The historic racist relationship isn't there, even for modern-day black immigrants from Africa.

It's something that everyone needs to realize and remember.

Also I'm surprised no one has mentioned the disparity in infant mortality
between white and black Americans. Statistically if you are white you are more
than twice as likely to survive birth (if I remember the figures correctly). If
that isn't white privilege I don't know what is.

http://www.chicagogsb.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html



But I'm sure none of this "matters" to the Brendan Bakers basking in privilege.

I feel in many stituations there is no white privilege for me.

I applied for a job a few months ago. I didn't get it. I was early for the job interview. I cleaned up and put on my best clothes. Not a suit but I was dressed nice and clean in a polo shirt and some work shoes (polished) and some khaki pants. I don't own a suit. This black guy walks in 20 minutes late and asks the interviewer if he can go first. The interviewer asks me, and I just say "OK". He's taller than me, wearing a gold chain and a trendy suit. So they make me wait an hour, finally tell me to come back later... a week later. I show up, and I don't get the job after the interview. Did the black guy get the job? Maybe . It makes me wonder if being a nice guy really pays off. Maybe it was a height issue. I'm 5'7, not all that tall, and not all that physically impressive I guess. Maybe I look too meek. Who knows. All I know is I don't feel I was particularly privileged in that situation, and I've learned to stop being a nice guy, or people will walk over you.