White Immunity: Working Through Some of the Pedagogical Pitfalls of “Privilege”

This paper engages, critiques, and develops McIntosh’s concept of White privilege. The author argues that this concept mislabels the nature of racism, and unintentionally derails racial dialogues. He then offers White immunity as a concept that helps address some of the conceptual and pedagogical limitations of “privilege.” Finally, he addresses possible misinterpretations of this new terminology to avoid some of the misapplications that have plagued “White privilege.”