White Male Power and Privilege: The Relationship Between White Supremacy and Social Class

Counseling psychologists have studied privilege as an individual behavior, belief, and attitude related to an individual's privileged identity such as masculinity, Whiteness, or Christianity. Conceptualizing individual privileged identities in this way means that privileged identities may exist alongside marginalized intersectional identities. However, in this article, the author defines privilege as a multi-identity act that is facilitated and supported by institutions and organizations (e.g., banks, law enforcement, and schools). These institutions are defined as power-governors that regulate access to scaffolds of privilege afforded to the affluent and wealthy. The author posits that power-governors were created to support an ideology of White supremacy and to organize actors within the system to perpetuate and legitimize the status quo. The author describes the ways in which White wealthy men use privilege as a means to access and gain power while White men in lower-and working-classes use privilege to build relationships and legitimize inequality. The author also discusses the proxy privilege of White women and people of color and how this privilege is in fact restricted to specific physical spaces and is limited due to their overt marginalized identities. Recommendations for privilege research are provided.