The American and Canadian societies are defined based on race. In most cases, whites are more privileged than others, thereby making it for people of color to excel in almost every aspect of their lives. Despite schools being supposed to be fairgrounds and providing all the students with equal opportunities, white privilege has dominated most educational institutions, especially the higher institutions of learning. Here, white privilege is manifested among the educators, the administrators, and the students, where such people are bound to have varying experiences in the institutions based on their race. In institutions of learning, white privilege operates by defining the curriculum that is offered in the institutions, determining the schools the students get admitted to, and involving black scholars in research.
The curriculum in learning institutions in the U.S. is designed in such a manner that it is meant to enhance white supremacy and present whites with more benefits. According to Bhopal (2023), white educators tend to invest heavily in Whiteness using the school curriculum, which works through the use of color-blind strategies that are meant to maintain the supremacy of whites. As such, whites tend to pursue strategies that do not enhance equality but rather protect their own white interests. The white teachers will focus their efforts on reflecting on the histories, perspectives, and achievements of the white people while undermining the contributions and experiences of the black people. This, in return, reinforces the sense of belonging and supremacy among the white students, an aspect that leads to the continued oppression of the blacks or their marginalization in the community in general (Bhopal, 2023). The products of this white-privileged curriculum tend to perceive the world in a way that does not provide opportunities for people of color, hence their continued suffering and marginalization.
Higher education is also dominated by white groups capable of defining what is regarded as legitimate knowledge for the learners. This approach shows that whites in higher education are responsible for defining what the learners acquire through their education, and this tends to be a definitive aspect of what they engage in later in their lives (Cabrera, 2012). Knowledge production is subject to translation in the public discourse where knowledge is negotiated around the interests of those producing, overseeing, and consuming it, and in this case, white privileges become a major determining force of the nature of knowledge that is produced and regarded as useful among the learners. White knowledge tends to be produced by whites as it reflects their interests, with scholars of color usually positioned as outsiders in higher education, making it difficult to participate in defining what is legitimate knowledge for the learners (Bhopal, 2023). Scholarships by people of color remain on the margins and go unrecognized, especially when such studies focus on issues of race and seek to continue shaping education, research, and scholarship in higher education.
In higher education institutions, white privilege facilitates the disproportionately high representation of whites, especially in four-year institutions, an aspect that has been linked with increased racial conflicts. From student admissions to the hiring of administrators, people of color are usually underrepresented, and this tends to inhibit their impact in defining the operations or the running of the institutions, including the curriculum offered. Students of color are excluded from selecting members of the fraternity system. Increased racial conflicts in higher education institutions have been linked with the fraternity systems as the inability of the people of color to meaningfully participate in such systems, which is considered a great deal of racial strife leading to the formation of social organizations that only aim towards catering to a particular racial group (Cabrera, 2012). In universities where white victimization is experienced, white students tend to maintain their racially homogeneous environments. In this case, in the universities where the whites are perceived as the victims, there is the creation of their enclaves as a means of creating social comfort in the form of racial segregation, which results in an increased sense of victimization. Besides, in hate crimes registered on campus, race plays a major role, and although they are mostly handled behind closed doors, this aspect does not underscore the role of white privilege when addressing the crimes.
Another area in which white privilege manifests and operates in higher education environments is through biased resource allocation. Essentially, schools in white neighborhoods are bound to receive more funding and resources than those in areas occupied by people of color. The blacks in the United States are also mostly disadvantaged, as they are more likely to attend schools that are under-resourced and are more likely to face grading and assessment bias (Bhopal, 2023). As a result of this, black students are less likely to graduate, more represented in low-wage employment, and likely to earn less than their white colleagues. Through this, it is clear that white privilege is earned at the expense of people of color who are disadvantaged in almost every aspect of their lives, an aspect that is bound to enhance and protect white privilege. The basis of white privilege is based on the need to create a society in which whites will remain privileged in every aspect of the society as a way of avoiding any form of resistance or chance that people of color may be forced to rise as a result of their treatment in the societies. Even when admitted to white-privileged universities, students of color, especially blacks, tend to take courses that are associated with enhancing their social status in comparison with white students (Cabrera, 2012). This shows that white privilege does not only determine the number of students of color in higher institutes of learning but also determines the courses that they take.
In conclusion, white privilege can be regarded as one of the most profound forms of force that is found within American and Canadian societies. White privilege can be witnessed in every sector of society, from the judicial justice system to the educational system to employment and the healthcare sector. In education, white privilege operates by determining how students are admitted, the curriculum covered in the universities, the administrators in the universities, race-based conflicts, and the kind of knowledge that is regarded as appropriate to be offered in the institutions. Although a rather concealed aspect, white privilege is crafted in such a manner that it is meant to ensure the majority of whites remain in control of the minority blacks by having better economic and educational conditions among the whites while the blacks struggle in the low economic levels in society. Addressing this problem calls for the creation of more inclusive and equitable educational environments that are informed by diversifying the curriculum content and educational resources and involving blacks and other people of color in the development of the curriculum, among other effective practices.
References
Bhopal, K. (2023). Critical race theory: Confronting, challenging, and rethinking White privilege. Annual Review of Sociology, 49, 111-128.
Cabrera, N. L. (2012). Exposing Whiteness in higher education: White male college students minimizing racism, claiming victimization, and recreating white supremacy. Race Ethnicity and Education, 17(1), 30-55.
write