By Ben Jealous
Guest Commentary Last week I wrote about something my father, who is white, has said for years: when many white Americans hear the phrase “white privilege,” they respond by listing all the ways their lives have been hard. But if you talk about “white advantage,” the conversation changes. Advantage is measurable. It doesn’t erase suffering. It simply acknowledges that race still tilts the system.
After that column ran, readers reached out asking me to elaborate.
To understand why, we have to go back to the beginning of the American story.
Early in colonial America, poor Europeans and enslaved Africans sometimes recognized that they shared a common predicament. They ran away together. They rebelled together. For a brief moment in our history, working people across color lines sometimes saw each other as allies rather than enemies.
That possibility deeply unsettled the people who held power. So over time, colonial elites built a system designed to prevent that unity. Europeans were given small advantages—permission to carry weapons, positions in militias, small measures of authority over enslaved Africans. At the same time, racial contempt was deliberately cultivated between the groups.
Racism itself became a tool of political control. The wedge worked. In many ways,
it still does.
White communities across America are hurting. Factories have closed. Life expectancy for many workingclass Americans has fallen. Addiction and suicide have devastated entire towns.
Acknowledging white advantage doesn’t deny any of that.
It simply says this: if two people walk into the same job interview with the same résumé, race still affects the outcome. If two families try to build wealth across generations, race still shapes the odds. Social scientists have measured this for years. In a well-known study, Princeton sociologist Devah Pager sent out identical résumés to employers.
Applicants with traditionally white-sounding names received far more callbacks than those with Black-sounding names, even when their qualifications were the same.
Suffering and advantage can exist at the same time.
My father understood something many activists forget: language can open conversations, or it can shut them down.
For decades he worked with thousands of men— mostly white—helping them confront trauma and take responsibility for their actions. He saw how quickly people shut down when they feel their suffering is being dismissed.
That’s the predicament. The reality of racial advantage is undeniable. But the language we use to