The Tailwind of White Privilege...and What We Can Do About It

You set off on a run. Or a bike ride. Or in a kayak. The wind is strong and pushing against you. You feel yourself working hard for every step, pedal, or paddle. You are constantly thinking how can the wind make it this much harder? You try to put it out of your mind, but it is always there reminding you of its impact. You get to the halfway point, turn around, and begin back the way you came. The breeze—now at your back—feels helpful for a few minutes. But not nearly as strong as it did when it was in your face. After a while, you don’t even notice it.

If you have experienced this, you understand the concept of headwind/tailwind asymmetry, a phenomenon studied by Thomas Gilovich and Shai Davidai. In a nutshell, we tend to overweight the influence of barriers to our successes and underweight the influence of bridges. Consider the winter morning when your car doesn’t start, or when your colleague gets the promotion at work, or when your classmate gets the ‘easy’ group project and you get the ‘tough’ one. These are true headwinds with real repercussions. But now consider the accompanying tailwinds: you own a car, you have a good job, you are receiving a high-quality education. While the net impact of the underlying tailwinds is stronger by magnitudes, the feelings associated with the headwinds are more salient. The bias stems from the fact that the obstacles in our life are so tangible, obvious, in-our-faces, while the benefits we enjoy blend into the scenery and the normalcy of everyday life.
 
This headwind/tailwind asymmetry bias can be applied to white privilege, and I believe it contributes to the difficulty some have with accepting it exists. It is rational to take credit when things go well. We like to think that personal achievements are the result of our hard work and that failures are due to factors outside of our control. I’ll be the first to admit that when I have a good teaching day it is because—in my mind—I prepped like mad, perfectly blended content and humor, and just crushed the lecture. Alternatively, when I have a bad teaching day, it is not my fault. More likely I come up with an excuse, a headwind: the room was too hot, the A/V didn’t work, last night was Green Beer Day and so the students had no energy. Each of those headwinds disproportionately influenced my assessment of the outcome. Could it be that I just had an off day?
 
Privilege is related to gratitude, and gratitude requires accepting that you had help. No matter how much energy you put into an accomplishment, there are always underlying tailwinds that push you along the way. Gratitude does not minimize the success; it just acknowledges these tailwinds. I think it is easier to recognize white privilege as the headwinds that black people experience and white people do not. We witness things like disproportionate police brutality and higher incarceration rates, and we can take specific steps to reduce them (e.g., activism, voting, funding organizations). However, there are tailwinds that white people enjoy that black people often do not, and these tend to be less conspicuous. Things like growing up in a community with social programs or getting a job interview because our name ‘sounds white’ are tougher to observe. For instance, it’s easy to forget about the tailwinds (white skin, male gender, middle-class upbringing, access to education, etc.) that led to my opportunity to become a professor to begin with—let alone have a good or bad teaching day.
 
This is not to say that every person does not have to overcome struggles. Regardless of color, we all run into and against headwinds. Some are systematic (e.g., gender, appearance, ethnicity) while some are individual (e.g., fill-in-the-blank of your own experiences). Similarly, we all experience systematic and individual tailwinds. The challenge for white people, I believe, is to simply accept that we are pushed forward by certain tailwinds that do not exist for people of color, and we undervalue them because of the asymmetry bias.
 
My last post was about embracing the mistakes I will make when attempting to be anti-racist. So instead of ending with that ‘food-for-thought’, I will attempt to do something about this asymmetry. My endeavor is to try and provide that individual tailwind for someone who does not have it systematically built-in. The first step is to think about specific (often subtle) ways that being white has made my life easier. Have I walked by police officers without anxiety or fear my entire life? Have I been recommended for a position over someone else with the same credentials? Have I not been given the side-eye by clerks and cashiers? Are products always geared toward me? Is my understanding of art, music, and literature actually just white art, music, and literature? And on and on.
 
How have those tailwinds, compounded over time, shaped my life? They have offered a steady breeze at my back, pushing me through the sporadic headwinds. What can we do about it? Once we acknowledge our tailwinds, we should not feel guilty or shameful—that does not help anyone. Instead, we can be grateful and become that tailwind for someone who needs it.
 
One example. On TV and in the movies, successful and powerful people have always looked like me. The doctors, lawyers, CEOs, politicians—and college professors—are most often white males. How has that been a tailwind? Over time, that consistent cue subconsciously instilled confidence in me, driving me to believe I could achieve the career I wanted. College professors are white males, therefore I can—or even should—be a college professor. A black person my age would not have had that constant reminder, that representation, and would perhaps lack the same confidence. The opportunity for me is to make a concerted effort to instill that confidence in, say, one of my black students who would not otherwise have it, to provide an individualized tailwind where the systematic one does not exist.
 
But perhaps we have the capacity to create a systematic tailwind. In the model of #BlackBirdersWeek, #BlackHikersWeek, and #BlackBotantistsWeek, let’s create  #BlackProfessorsWeek, August 23-30, the first week of the fall semester for most universities. Black professors can share their stories and pictures on social media, representing and demonstrating how the profession is accessible to young black people. Equally important, it can show how the profession needs MORE people of color. White people who wish to be involved can share stories and photos of black professors who changed their lives. It’s a small start to creating the systematic tailwind that so many white people like me have enjoyed, but it is a start.