The people we hope to bring into the justice community with us — our friends, parents, brothers and sisters, partners and loved ones — are sometimes not familiar with the idea of white privilege, or perhaps some of them resist any suggestion that they have had it easier than someone else. The insidiousness of white privilege is that it’s so built-in that it’s like the water the fish swims in — it’s a given to the fish, to the point that he can’t conceive of any other mode of existence.

But although it’s invisible to white people, it isn’t invisible to anyone else. Our job is to awaken people to the fact of white privilege, and to lead by example in opposing it and working to consign it to the trash heap of history.

This fact sheet simply lays out some facts about the structure of the system of white privilege — how it got established, how it has existed out-of-sight and out-of-mind. We have to wake up and ditch this system if we want our own children, and all children, to inhabit a liveable world in the future. We have to work together if we’re going to overcome the daunting economic and environmental challenges we face.

It can be done! The first step from where we are now is to invite people to abandon their denial.

This fact sheet prints front-and-back on an 8.5×14 sheet. Please feel free to copy and distribute.