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White privilege, or White Skin Privilege, is a popular social concept today denoting a social relation that can exist as a right, advantage, exemption or immunity granted to or enjoyed by white persons beyond the common advantage of nonwhites. It is a form of racism expressed as preferential treatment within a society. As racism is usually understood to be punitive towards people of color, white privilege is said to be a universal benefit to its recipients. It explains such phenomena as Caucasian boxer, Gerry Cooney, receiving an very large amount of money for his 1982 fight with African American Larry Holmes, even though he was an untested contender. Examples from popular music include Elvis Presley, credited with popularizing "black music" with white audiences, as well as Eminem's popularity as a rap singer.

Parallels are often drawn between white privilege, male privilege and heterosexual privilege. The white skin privilege theory is often sympathetic to black nationalism and other forms of ethnic nationalism and identity politics.

Critics of white skin privilege from the political left sometimes point out that the white skin privilege analysis belittles or ignores the class and economic nature of racism (i.e., that racism ultimately hurts every person, including whites), and that in its zeal to brand all white people regardless of economic stature (including, presumably, working-class whites) or social or cultural history as "beneficiaries" of racism, proponents spend less time actually taking concrete actions against racism on the job, in surrounding culture, etc. However, such criticism is not widespread, and most left groups -- including some favoring socialism and communism as endgoals -- fully endorse and support the white skin privilege analysis.

Proponents of this concept maintain that often whites, especially those considering themselves "liberal," are unaware of how their skin privilege operates on a daily basis. Thus they may consider themselves anti-racist but are not pro-actively conscious of their own unfair advantages. Because it has a tendency to be invisible to the very people that profit from it, many argue that white privilege is a particularly insidious construct to combat.

Whiteness studies is a branch of academia that emerges from the desire to address white privilege and to understand and dismantle it.

References

WhitePrivilege.com, an anti-racism resource
Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Verso, 1999)
Rothenberg, Paula S., ed. White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (Worth, 2004)
Williams, Linda Faye. Constraint Of Race: Legacies Of White Skin Privilege In America (Penn State, 2004)
Wise, Tim. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull, 2005)

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 Critics of white skin privilege from the [[political left]] sometimes point out that the white skin privilege analysis belittles or ignores the [[social class|class]] and economic nature of racism (i.e., that racism ultimately hurts every person, including whites), and that in its zeal to brand all white people regardless of economic stature (including, presumably, [[white trash|working-class whites]]) or social or cultural history as "beneficiaries" of [[racism]], proponents spend less time actually taking concrete actions against racism on the job, in surrounding culture, etc. However, such criticism is not widespread, and most left groups -- including some favoring [[socialism]] and [[communism]] as endgoals -- fully endorse and support the white skin privilege analysis.
-Advocates of this concept maintain that often whites, especially those considering themselves "liberal," are unaware of how their skin privilege operates on a daily basis. Thus they may consider themselves [[anti-racism|anti-racist]] but are not pro-actively conscious of their own unfair advantages. Because it has a tendency to be invisible to the very people that profit from it, many argue that white privilege is a particularly insidious construct to combat.
+Proponents of this concept maintain that often whites, especially those considering themselves "liberal," are unaware of how their skin privilege operates on a daily basis. Thus they may consider themselves [[anti-racism|anti-racist]] but are not pro-actively conscious of their own unfair advantages. Because it has a tendency to be invisible to the very people that profit from it, many argue that white privilege is a particularly insidious construct to combat.
 [[Whiteness studies]] is a branch of academia that emerges from the desire to address white privilege and to understand and dismantle it.