After Boston Marathon Bombing, White Privilege Discussions Storm Social Media

Recently, a slew of events surrounding white privilege in America have made national headlines. One blog post gaining rapid popularity speaks to the very different precautions Americans would take depending on whether the assailant of the Boston Marathon bombings was Caucasian or of an Eastern ethnicity.

Tim Wise, an acclaimed philosopher, posted an essay Tuesday that speaks to an underlying white privilege that will emerge should the person responsible for the Boston Marathon explosions, is white. According to Wise, "if the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in white folks generally being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement." The blog post has sparked both praise and criticism. The opposition believes that Americans will have no problem holding whoever was responsible for the explosions, accountable, regardless of their race.

As more breakthroughs in the Boston attack have been made available, the opposition to Wise's argument has weakened due to racial profiling. Both an international student from Saudi Arabia and a Moroccan-American high school student have been identified as suspects only to be released for lack of evidence. Speaking to the possibility of racial profiling, Wise listed 49 names of terrorists, all of whom are Caucasian, in his essay. He suggests that most people have never heard of those criminals because of white privilege. According to Wise, every white terrorist has so far been "viewed as an exception.... an aberration, an anomaly."

Last week, Kendra James wrote a similar blog post about white privilege that's gone viral on social media. Declined from every Ivy she applied to, Kendra responded to public outcries from Caucasian students who attributed their rejection from the Ivy League to their race.

James' article, "To (All) the White Girls Who Didn't Get Into the Colleges of Their Dreams," is part memoir, part advice-column. The post begins with a memory the writer had: a white girl who graduated the same year as she and had been declined from her Ivy League choice of college. After petitioning for her rightful seat at the college of her choice, she was accepted.

Kendra, a New England prep-school-bred black female, with a family legacy at Brown University, remembers being rejected from every Ivy League. According to Kendra, the combination of her race, economic status, and competitive figure skater past, made her "a freakin' unicorn," that no Ivy could decline. When reality struck, she was forced to accept a seat at one of the colleges she had been admitted to.

Kendra then segues from her memory to the present: "It's moved beyond petitions. Y'all [white girls] are in the Supreme Court now." Afterwards, she summarizes in detail 2 separate cases of white females who believed they were rejected from their college of choice "because there weren't enough spots for white students that year". Kendra argues that these young women are exercising white privilege; "if a non-white girl with an identical profile is rejected, who do they blame? No one. They don't have the excuse; they simply weren't good enough."