White male privilege isn't just as overt as the racism of President Donald Trump telling four congresswomen of color to"go back" to where they came from, reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett Price told Boston Public Radio Monday.
It also comes, they said, in the more nuanced forms — like when white men deny their privilege by saying they've "worked hard for everything they have."
White male privilege is rooted in a sense of ownership, said Price.
"The notion [is] that this is their place, this is their space, this is their world, and everyone else who's not part of the white male clan is interloping, is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and needs to ask permission to be there," he said.
And, Price and Monroe argued, the working class or poor white men in this country are also afforded a basic privilege that blacks often are not: the ability to feel safe and supported in public spaces.
Monroe noted that the racial stereotype of equating "poor" to "black" harms white working class people, and while Trump is tapping into long-held views on race in this country — garnering support from poor whites — he is doing them a disservice.
"When we talk about poverty," she said, "when you racialize it as black, you miss all these poor white folks up along the Appalachian range all the way up to Maine, these people become invisible. So, while Donald is trying to give them representation and visibility, he's not empowering them."
Reverend Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology
Emmett G. Price II is Professor of Worship, Church & Culture and Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Together they host the All Rev'd Up podcast, produced by WGBH.
