Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Chapter 3 addresses white privilege, that is, the privileges societies afford white people over people of color simply because of their skin color. Eddo-Lodge explains the concept with a heartrending anecdote. When Eddo-Lodge was four years old, she asked her mother when she would become white, explaining that “all the good people on TV were White, and all the villains were black and brown” (85). Eddo-Lodge describes whiteness as “neutral” and “the default” (85). By contrast, Blackness is “other” and something that raises suspicion. These social codes are so apparent that even children can recognize them, as Eddo-Lodge’s opening anecdote demonstrates.

White people undeniably experience hardships, but these hardships are never based on their race. The same cannot be said for people of color, whose lives are impacted negatively simply because they are not white. As Eddo Lodge observes, however, white privilege is about absence as much as it is about advantages:

White privilege is an absence of the 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.