Should progressives deploy the concept of white privilege to build and deepen a movement for economic and racial justice?

Ultra-radicals in the late 1960s answered strongly in the affirmative as they became extremely self-conscious about how skin color impacted the everyday actions of white people, including themselves.

Self-styled revolutionaries like the Weathermen used the term white skin privilege as a putdown of less radical activists. The attack implied that you werent fit for revolutionary struggle against global imperialism and white supremacy because you hadnt owned up to, and given up, your racial advantages. For radical Weathermen and women this only could be accomplished through excruciating criticism/self-criticism sessions (borrowed from Maoism). As Angela Nagle writes in Current Affairs (Feb. 2017) :

The Weathermen used a style of criticism-self-criticism sessions, also called Weatherfries, which were described by the author of Bringing the War Home as the most harrowing aspect of life within the collective. Based on Maoist struggle sessions, these were used to root out subconscious racism and sexism within their own psyches. Individuals were reportedly hazed for up to twelve hours without a break until the white radicals confessed their deep white supremacism, homophobia and misogyny to their fellow white radicals thus achieving catharsis through their own admission of guilt.

Later, the term took on a broader meaning: If you were white you were born with basic privileges that people of color just didnt have. It was time to recognize the widespread impact of this latent racism on everyday life not just in the South. No matter how liberal you are, according to this view, youve got some racism in you because of the privileges a racist society bestows upon you at birth.

The Racial Bribe

This idea stems from the historical term racial bribe which described how plantation/merchant elites in the South kept poor whites and blacks apart by making sure Jim Crow segregation offered certain privileges to whites based entirely on skin color. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. (See Adolph Reed Jr., Du Bois and the Wages of Whiteness. Nonsite.org, June 2017)

Scientific Racial Hierarchies

As industrialization accelerated and immigrants were drawn into the country, the racial bribe became a refined instrument to divide the workforce, in large part, to prevent labor unionization. Below is one of the most overt examples of how white skin privilege was baked into the workplace.

This hiring chart was created for the management of a Pittsburgh steel company in 1925 based on what was considered at the time to be the most advanced race science. (From John E. Bodnar, Roger Simon and Michael P. Weber, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960 .)