I am a whiteboy. I have suffered no disempowerment on the basis of my race, and have no historical legacy of persecution coursing through my veins. Neither has the rest of 77.1% of the U.S. population. Yet since the days of Reconstruction, White America has truly suffered in one crucial respect: the development of a victimization complex which insists that any factual assessment of the power imbalances in this society, or any remedial action taken to correct them, is an attack on Whites.

Why?

Read more below.

Racism obviously. It is the nature of privilege to blind. It is reflex action for groups bestowed with inherent advantages to react with fear and backlash when forced to confront the existence of them.

In the words of Stanley Fish, "Only when the actions of...two groups are detached from the historical conditions of their emergence and given a purely abstract description can they be made interchangeable...If you manage somehow to convince yourself that these are the same, it is you, not [they], who are morally confused, and the reason you are morally confused is that you have forgotten history." (Fish, Stanley. "Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black." http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/199311/reverse-racism)

Perhaps our society gives such credence and credibility to White backlash because we come from a proportedly egalitarian society. We like equality. We speak in liberal principles. But we also have very libertarian sensibilities that makes us assume that equality means "sameness," or "exactly similar treatment." This assumption is predicated on an even greater assumption that government is the prime source of discrimination and inequality, rather than simply a reflection of the society that creates it. This is why mainstream America congratulates itself for "winning" the Civil Rights battle after most of the Southern Jim Crow and miscegnation laws were repealed; this is why affirmative action programs are attacked so violently; this is why facts and figures that show ever-increasing levels of disproportionate prosecution, income gaps, health care coverage and education don't make a damn bit of difference.

Another reason White America is so reactive is because it treats race paradoxically. As constitutional scholar and critical race theorist Derek Bell emphasizes, race must never factor into any decision, yet it is always responsible when White privilege is threatened. The straight White man who applies to Yale and is denied is certain that an 'undeserving minority' got his slot - even though under the law, race is only one of many factors that factors into student admission, including but not limited to: alumni status of the student's parents, athletic or extracurricular activity, military or veteran status, in-state residency, income level, or any other factor that would either augment the school's curriculum, or the school itself. The hidden expectations of privilege have an ethereal ability to appear and dissapear at will.

Yes, Whites, like everyone else, are denied loans, prosecuted, and turned down for jobs every day. But the key is to not focus on the offense itself, but the basis of the offense. No White person in the history of our country has been denied a position of prestige because they were White. Whites suffer in spite of, and not because of, their race. But so long as power mystifies the average American, he will still eagerly ingest the poison of the backlash every day.