Article: The Global Hierarchy of Race

This article was linked in a community I was browsing, and thought you all should read it. It's about white privelege, and also about how it's...pervasive - it's not just something that happens in the Western world. It's also about a hierarchy, and how cultures rank themselves (and each other) next to White. It's much better than anything I could write on racism and white privilege.

So, go. Read.

The Global Hierarchy of Race Martin Jaques

Quote:

"Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply in an abstraction - western societies - but in the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our colour. It is something we are largely oblivious of,and consequently take for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen.

The existence of a de facto global racial hierarchy helps to shape the nature of racial prejudice exhibited by other races. Whites are universally respected, even when that respect is combined with strong resentment. A race generally defers to those above it in the hierarchy and is contemptuous of those below it."