Who benefits from racism?
While statistics may show that attitudes of the majority of whites have shifted over the last 35 years, there remains the common perception particularly among the left that all whites benefit from the racial oppression of African Americans. There is little argument that whites who run the boardrooms in corporate America, control the courtrooms in the judicial system and exert the most influence in the government benefit not only from the oppression of African Americans but also from the oppression of all workers. Nevertheless, many left-wing intellectuals argue that all whites derive some benefit from being white. Indeed, many academics, notably historian David Roediger, call these so-called benefits “white privilege.” Roediger s book, The Wages of Whiteness, as its title implies, confirms the idea that there is a benefit or a “wage” for simply being white in the U.S., regardless of class or consciousness.34 Manning Marable spells out the “benefits” of whiteness in his book, The Great
