The concept was introduced in the USA in 1989 by Peggy McIntosh, highlighting the ways in which being white brings unrecognised advantages. She referred to it as ‘an invisible package of unearned assets’. The term is now widely used, and came to the fore in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder in 2020 of George Floyd. The UK Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities defines it as ‘the idea that there is a societal privilege that benefits white people over other ethnic groups in some societies’.
In June 2021 a report was published by the House of Commons Education Committee on ‘the decades-long neglect of the let-down white working class’, whom it referred to as ‘the forgotten’. Looking at the under-achievement of members of this group, the report claimed that using the term ‘white privilege’ may be alienating to disadvantaged white communities and may have contributed to a ‘systemic neglect’ of white people facing hardship. The authors said that ‘our inquiry has shown that poor white pupils are far from “privileged” in education’. The report caused considerable controversy and reignited the debate about factors that contribute to educational underachievement and other forms of inequality among different ethnic groups.
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