Poor, But Still Privileged: What White Folks Need to Understand About the System That Still Benefits Them
Written by Christian ZacaTechO Ortiz
You Weren’t Born White, You Were Made White
Let’s begin with a painful truth wrapped in love: You weren’t born white. You were categorized as white by a colonial system built to divide and dominate. And that category came with privileges, unearned, often invisible, but very real.
This isn’t about shame. This is about truth.
In a world structured by the system of white supremacy, a global caste system engineered during European imperial conquest, whiteness operates like a credit card with no visible bill. Even when the account holder is broke. Even when you’re standing in line at the food bank. Even when you’ve lost your job, your home, or your community.
Yes, you can be poor, and still be privileged.
Because privilege isn’t about how hard your life is. It’s about how much harder it would be if you weren’t seen as white.
This is difficult to admit, especially if your daily experience is shaped by economic struggle, mental health battles, addiction, or generational trauma. Those are real wounds, and nothing in this article is meant to erase them. But this is also true: Being poor while white means your pain is often viewed as circumstantial. Being poor while Black, Indigenous, or Brown? Your pain is viewed as inherent. That’s the cruelty of racialization.
When white people suffer, society asks, "What happened to them?" When people of the global majority suffer, society asks, "What’s wrong with them?"
That difference, subtle, systemic, and devastating, is white privilege.
You were not born with this advantage by merit. You inherited it through a system that has always used race as a tool to hoard resources, erase memory, and maintain control. The very concept of whiteness was created to elevate some and erase others. And it has succeeded, not because it’s true, but because it has been ruthlessly enforced through education, media, borders, and violence for centuries.
But you are not a passive participant. You are a human being with agency, responsibility, and power. The system may have made you white, but you have the choice to become whole again. That’s what this piece is about: not guilt, not erasure, but return.
Because whiteness is not your origin story. It is a cage wrapped in wallpaper that says, “normal.” And the key to unlocking that cage isn’t shame, it’s truth.
Section 1: The Invention of Whiteness
Whiteness wasn’t always a thing. Before the 1600s, nobody was “white.” People were English, Irish, Polish, Armenian, Sicilian. People were defined by their language, village, ritual, and spiritual ties to land, not by skin tone. The concept of race as we know it today was not a global truth, but a colonial invention.
This invention didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It was born during the rise of European colonialism, a time when empires needed a story to justify mass enslavement, genocide, land theft, and global extraction. And so they created race. And with it, they created "whiteness."
In 17th-century Virginia, colonial laws began to separate poor Europeans from enslaved Africans. They didn’t want these groups uniting in rebellion. So they offered poor Europeans a deal: align with the plantation class, and in return, you’ll be granted just enough status to feel superior. You might still be poor, but at least you weren’t enslaved. This racial bribe was the birth of whiteness in legal, economic, and social terms.
Whiteness became a constructed class, not of wealth, but of proximity to power.
Irish people, once colonized by the British and considered inferior, were told they could be white if they disavowed solidarity with Black folks. Italian and Jewish immigrants, once viewed as non-white, were granted “conditional whiteness” in exchange for assimilation into anti-Blackness. Whiteness was never about who you were. It was about what you were willing to give up, your culture, your language, your resistance, in order to gain protection under empire.
This is why whiteness is not culture. It is erasure.
The privileges attached to whiteness, access, safety, empathy, were always designed to be distributed unevenly, so long as you played the role empire scripted for you. It wasn’t about being better. It was about being useful to systems of control.
Whiteness became the lie that silenced your ancestral tongue, replaced your ritual with capitalism, and turned your ethnic memory into a box marked “Other” for everyone else.
It was never about culture. It was about control.
Section 2: Presumed Innocence Is a Privilege
You may have never felt protected by the police. But they weren’t trained to fear you, either.
When law enforcement was built, especially in the U.S., it was not founded to protect all people equally. In fact, modern American policing evolved directly from slave patrols in the South and settler militias in the North. It was constructed to protect property, whiteness, and empire. That legacy has never been dismantled. It was rebranded.
This means that even in the midst of struggle or addiction, even when you’re poor, if you’re white, you are not perceived as inherently criminal. You may still face injustice, but you are not criminalized for your race.
If you walk down the street, you are unlikely to be stopped for "looking suspicious." If you’re pulled over, your chances of surviving that encounter are exponentially higher. That’s not opinion. That’s not political correctness. That’s not a “woke” exaggeration. That’s documented, statistical fact.
White folks are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt by judges, cops, teachers, and journalists. You’re more likely to be called “misguided” instead of “dangerous.” If you’re struggling, the system asks how to help you. If someone from the global majority is struggling, the system asks how to punish them.
This phenomenon is not isolated to policing. It echoes in media coverage, school suspensions, healthcare diagnoses, and mental health interventions. White children are more likely to be referred to therapists. Black children are more likely to be referred to police. Same behaviors. Different outcomes. That’s how whiteness functions as armor.
Even when you're in poverty, that armor still fits. It may be scratched, worn, or rusted, but it still deflects violence that others absorb directly.
And if you're never taught to see it, you're less likely to believe it's there. That’s the final trick of privilege: it conceals itself from the privileged. But for everyone else, it’s a daily, brutal reality.
Section 3: The Default Setting
You’ve never had to prove your humanity. You’ve never been asked where you’re "really from." You’ve never had to answer for a cultural practice that seemed unfamiliar to others.
Because whiteness is the default setting, the unspoken baseline against which everything else is measured. In schools, it’s the standard language, history, and dress code. In workplaces, it’s the tone, demeanor, and “professionalism.” In medicine, it’s the norm for research trials and diagnostic models. In media, it’s the central character, the love interest, the savior.
When everything around you reflects your image and story, you’re never forced to explain your existence. You are seen as neutral, normal, universal. Everyone else becomes a variation, a deviation, a “diversity.”
But this normalization of whiteness is not benign. It’s erasure. It renders people of the global majority hyper-visible as outsiders yet invisible as contributors. It marginalizes their knowledge, misrepresents their stories, and trivializes their genius.
Whiteness doesn’t just get centered. It gets defaulted, embedded into the very architecture of society. That is privilege.
Section 4: You’re Not Being Watched
When you walk into a department store, you’re not being followed. When you apply for an apartment, your name doesn’t raise red flags. When you move through public space, you do so with invisibility that protects you.
That invisibility? That’s the unspoken privilege whiteness grants. It’s the freedom to be unseen when it benefits you, and hyper-seen when it brings empathy. It’s the luxury of neutrality, of not being interpreted through centuries of colonial stereotype.
Meanwhile, Black, Brown, and Asian people are watched not just by store clerks, but by surveillance cameras, security guards, data profiling systems, AI facial recognition tools, and by everyday civilians weaponizing 911. And yes, by neighbors with smartphones ready to film, but not to protect.
Ask yourself: when was the last time your presence in a store was questioned, your pockets assumed guilty, your hoodie made you a threat, or your name caused concern on a lease application?
This isn’t about being followed or not, it’s about being targeted by design.
Surveillance is not neutral. It has always been racialized. From colonial censuses to Jim Crow policing to the modern surveillance state, the gaze of power has never looked equally at all. To be white is to be given the presumption of belonging, of innocence, of normalcy.
People of the global majority are not just watched. They are policed into silence, documented into erasure, and monitored into dehumanization.
Poverty doesn’t protect them. In fact, it often intensifies the scrutiny. Whiteness, however, offers a pass. An unspoken exemption. A camouflage born from centuries of indoctrination.
You are not being watched. That is not by chance. That is privilege.
Section 5: Your Struggle Is Valid—And Still Different
Let’s be clear. White poverty is real. White trauma is real. White suffering is real.
This is not a denial of your pain. It is a naming of the system that interprets pain differently based on race. When a white person experiences hardship, society often looks for an explanation or a cause. When a Black or Brown person experiences hardship, society assumes it is their fault.
That doesn’t erase the very real barriers white people face, especially in rural areas, low-income communities, and systems built to exploit the working class. But those barriers do not come with the added burden of racial stigma, cultural erasure, or institutional suspicion.
A poor white man walking into a job interview may still face bias based on appearance, class, or education. But he is not presumed lazy because of his race. A poor Black woman walking into that same interview is judged by her skin before she speaks. If she asserts herself, she is labeled angry. If she is quiet, she is labeled unqualified. The same system reads them differently.
Studies have shown that identical resumes with white-sounding names receive significantly more callbacks than those with African-American-sounding names. And that bias extends into housing, education, healthcare, and loan approvals. Whiteness acts like a silent co-signer on applications that others never get to bring with them.
Generational wealth was built on policies that explicitly excluded the global majority. Redlined neighborhoods were denied investments. Black farmers were denied federal subsidies. Indigenous land was stolen. And through it all, whiteness was protected. Even poor white communities benefited from proximity to a system built to center and cushion their hardship.
Privilege doesn’t mean your life is easy. It means race isn’t what’s making it harder. And if you carry that privilege without awareness, it becomes a wall. With awareness, it can become a bridge.
Section 6: You Got the Better History Books
In school, you probably learned about George Washington’s honesty before you learned about Indigenous genocide.
You probably celebrated Thanksgiving before you understood it was a myth wrapped around a massacre. The smiling pilgrims, the friendly feast, the feel-good version, none of it prepared you for the truth of stolen land and state-sponsored violence.
You probably learned about MLK’s dreams, but not about how the FBI surveilled him, how the media ridiculed him while he was alive, or how he was assassinated for demanding economic justice, not just polite integration.
You may have heard about Rosa Parks, but not Claudette Colvin. You may have heard about Abraham Lincoln, but not about the Dakota 38 or the Sand Creek Massacre. You may have heard about the Holocaust, but not the Congo under King Leopold, or the boarding schools that targeted Indigenous children across North America.
None of this was accidental. It was engineered. Whitewashed history is not just biased, it is strategic. It erases resistance. It sanitizes conquest. It produces a version of reality that keeps white innocence intact and Black, Brown, and Indigenous pain invisible.
That’s not your fault. That’s whiteness in the curriculum. But now that you know, it’s your responsibility to unlearn and relearn. Because history isn’t just about what happened. It’s about what we choose to remember, and what we’re told to forget.
Section 7: The Face of the Hero
When you watch a movie, you see yourself as the hero. As the president. As the doctor. As the savior.
You see your story told in its fullness, your flaws forgiven, your redemption arc honored, your humanity made complex. You see yourself in sci-fi, in love stories, in courtroom dramas, in dystopias and fairy tales. You get to imagine a thousand versions of yourself because Hollywood has always cast you as the center.
Meanwhile, Black, Brown, and Indigenous characters often exist as sidekicks, victims, criminals, or tokens. And when they do get leading roles, those stories are almost always steeped in trauma, poverty, violence, or survival. They are allowed to exist when they are educating, suffering, or dying.
Rarely do they get to be ordinary. Rarely do they get to be fully human without explanation or justification. Rarely do they get to be complex without being criminalized.
This imbalance is not just about film or TV. It shapes the public imagination. It informs how juries see defendants, how voters see candidates, how employers see applicants, how children see themselves.
Media is not neutral. It tells us who matters and who is expendable. And it tells white people they are not just central, but righteous.
That reflection is not universal. It is curated. And that curation is a form of power.
The face of the hero is still overwhelmingly white not because white people are inherently more noble, but because white supremacy has shaped the lens of storytelling for centuries.
That reflection is a mirror polished by empire. And being able to see yourself in it as the full-spectrum human is a privilege.
Section 8: You Speak Only for You
No one expects you to represent all white people.
If you mess up at work, it’s your mistake, not a referendum on your race. If you commit a crime, your entire racial group won’t be blamed.
That is not accidental. It is the result of centuries of positioning whiteness as the norm, the individual, the default. When you move through the world, you get to be one person, not a proxy for millions. You are judged on your actions, not a racialized stereotype. You get to define yourself, rather than being defined by the worst assumptions society projects onto your group.
Now imagine the opposite. Imagine constantly being asked to explain your community, your culture, your behavior. Imagine being told you are articulate, not because of what you said, but because someone did not expect intelligence from your skin tone. Imagine knowing that if you speak up, people will see you as angry. If you stay quiet, they’ll see you as unqualified. And if you make a mistake, it will be seen as proof of your group’s inferiority.
That is the weight that people of the global majority carry in white spaces. They are rarely allowed to just be. They are required to educate, decode, perform, and assimilate. Their errors are magnified. Their achievements are scrutinized. Their presence is politicized.
You get to speak only for you. That is a form of freedom that many others are still denied.
Section 9: Power Is Still White
Look at who owns the companies. Look at who makes the laws. Look at who gets the funding.
Whether you live in Detroit or Denmark, white people still disproportionately hold power in government, academia, healthcare, media, philanthropy, and tech. That power is not simply the result of individual brilliance or effort. It is the legacy of centuries of colonial empire-building, slavery, land theft, and resource extraction.
The system is still running on colonial software, where whiteness is the administrative login that grants access. This access determines who gets to speak, who gets heard, and who gets funded. It defines who controls the narrative, who builds the algorithms, and who sits on the boards. It even shapes who gets to be considered “objective,” “qualified,” or “neutral.”
This concentration of power is not invisible. It is so visible that it has been normalized. It shows up in every photo of corporate executives. In every university syllabus. In every Senate hearing. In every algorithm that fails to recognize Black faces. In every medical protocol written without accounting for nonwhite bodies. In every newsroom’s editorial board that decides what’s newsworthy.
And even when a person of the global majority makes it into these spaces, they are often surrounded by systems that were not built for them, led by people who were never trained to see them as equals.
That’s not because white people are more capable. That’s because the system was built to favor and replicate itself.
That is not merit. That is design. That is the inheritance of empire.
Section 10: You Were Protected From Knowing
Most white people weren’t taught about white supremacy, not the real history.
You were shielded from learning that police forces in the United States were born out of slave patrols meant to capture and punish Black people seeking freedom. You weren’t told that lynchings were public spectacles. You weren’t taught that Indigenous land theft was formalized through government policy and backed by religious doctrine.
You may not have learned that the GI Bill, which helped build the white middle class, was largely inaccessible to Black veterans due to discriminatory practices. Or that New Deal housing programs excluded communities of color. Or that environmental racism continues to poison the air, land, and water in Black and Brown communities while being absent from white suburbs.
You weren’t taught how Black Wall Street was burned to the ground in Tulsa. Or how Latinx children were segregated in schools across the Southwest. Or how Japanese Americans were placed in concentration camps by the U.S. government during World War II.
And most critically, you were probably not taught that the very idea of whiteness was a political invention designed to secure land, wealth, and control for a colonial elite.
That absence of truth is not a gap. It is a strategy. It keeps white people disconnected from the consequences of the system that benefits them. It keeps them fragile, defensive, and unaware.
That lack of education? That’s not an accident. That’s a feature of the system. And being protected from truth is a form of privilege.
Section 11: You Weren’t Born to Hate. But You Were Taught to Forget.
Here’s the hardest truth:
Whiteness was designed to erase who you were before empire got to you.
Irish. Italian. German. Slovak. Ashkenazi. Slavic. Nordic. Baltic. Your ancestors had culture, land, language, rituals, and then they were told to give it up in exchange for whiteness.
That deal came with a promise of safety, access, and superiority. But the cost was memory. You were taught to forget your songs, your dialects, your folk wisdom. You were taught to be ashamed of your accent. To shorten your name. To abandon your roots in pursuit of assimilation.
This wasn’t just about blending in. It was about being reborn as a racial category designed to uphold empire. Whiteness asked your ancestors to trade lineage for legitimacy. And in doing so, many became complicit in systems of exclusion they once suffered under.
The Irish were colonized, starved, and brutalized under British rule, then encouraged to police Black Americans to prove their whiteness. Italians and Jews faced deep xenophobia, until they assimilated into whiteness and gained access by distancing themselves from other oppressed groups. The story repeated, over and over, with new arrivals to empire’s shores.
That trade didn’t make your people safe. It made them forget. And it made them instruments of the very systems that once threatened them.
You didn’t ask for this. But you inherited it.
And now, you have the chance to remember. Not just what was lost, but what can be restored.
Because before you were white, you were something whole. And you still are. Underneath the armor of whiteness is an origin story waiting to be reclaimed.
Section 12: Guilt Is Not the Goal. Liberation Is.
This isn’t a call to wallow in shame. This is a call to wake up.
Shame is immobilizing. Guilt can be paralyzing. But truth? Truth is activating. It asks something of you. It invites you to stop standing on the sidelines of history and step into the practice of justice.
When we say white privilege, we’re not saying you didn’t work hard. We’re not saying your family had it easy. We’re saying the system wasn’t designed to kill you for being white. You were not targeted, excluded, profiled, or punished because of your skin color. That is privilege.
We’re not saying you’re the problem. We’re saying you’re part of the solution, if you choose to be. Because every system built by human hands can be dismantled by human hearts, if they are willing.
You are not your ancestors’ crimes. But you are holding the keys they forged. You walk roads paved by decisions they made. And now you are the one standing at the door of change. What will you do with the keys?
You can choose denial. Or you can choose repair. You can protect comfort. Or you can protect truth. You can stay centered. Or you can help center those who have been pushed to the margins for generations.
This isn’t about guilt. It’s about responsibility. Not to hate yourself, but to liberate yourself from the lie of whiteness. To stop performing supremacy and start practicing solidarity.
Because guilt might feel heavy. But accountability is what sets us free.
Conclusion: You Can Be Poor and Still Be Privileged. You Can Be White and Still Be Called to Justice.
Privilege doesn’t mean you’re evil. It means you’ve been positioned. And now, you can reposition yourself, on the side of justice.
Dismantling whiteness doesn’t mean dismantling you. It means deconstructing the system that told you being white was all you are.
Because you’re not just white. You’re human. You’re ancestral. You’re capable of truth, courage, and transformation.
And if you’re brave enough to see your privilege?
You might be brave enough to set it down.
And when we all set down the weight of supremacy, we rise.
Together.
Citations
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Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of Black folk. A.C. McClurg & Co.
Hirschman, C. (2004). The origins and demography of the white underclass. Population and Development Review, 30(4), 665–692.
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Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. Verso.
Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist, 60(1), 16–26.
Taylor, K.-Y. (2016). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black liberation. Haymarket Books.
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Outstanding essay on how “White” people should deal with “truths” that are being revealed so they don’t get confused by today’s chaos. I must direct my readers to it as a prerequisite to a project I’m currently publishing on my Substack. Again, outstanding work. 👏🏽
Curious... is this is generated by AI?