Everett Tilson: Pioneer in the Condemnation of White Privilege

Abstract

Everett TilsonPioneer in the Condemnation of White Privilege Paul Burnam (bio) In 1986, Dr. Peggy McIntosh of Wellesley College delivered a paper at the Virginia Women’s Association conference in which she explained at length the phrase “white privilege.” McIntosh began her presentation by explaining how she became deeply aware of what she called “male privilege”—that is, how most men unconsciously accept many advantages in higher education curricula that women cannot access. At that time, McIntosh taught women’s studies at Wellesley. She offered examples of male privilege in higher education beginning with the claim that men figure most importantly in the curriculum because they are the principal actors in life and civilization. McIntosh proceeded to explain that in discussions about curricular development when the reduction of the prominence of men’s contributions gets proposed, then male academics fall back on the inevitability of present gender relations and the distribution of power. She continued by pointing out how precedent, socio-biology, and psychobiology served as justifications whereby male domination functioned as a norm and resulted unavoidably from evolution. Other defenses of male privilege show in arguments putting forth human experience, religious doctrines, and social responsibility.1 After that acknowledgement of male privilege, McIntosh raised the bar by identifying white privilege. She [End Page 87] explained white privilege as a bundle of many advantages white people invoke without awareness every waking hour using terms such as “codebooks,” “emergency gear,” and “passports” that people of color can seldom, if ever, employ.2 In a later essay, McIntosh pointed out how oblivious whites are to the advantages and dominance they enjoy in society. She stated how strongly enculturated this attitude is in the United States to perpetuate the myth of meritocracy and the myth that democratic choice is available to all.3 With McIntosh’s juxtaposition of those two words, “white” and “privilege,” one encounters the phrase “white privilege” daily thanks to the explosion of multiple forms of media that swirl around and throughout contemporary American society. The phrase accelerated in its use and public awareness with the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008. Then white privilege became even more frequently mentioned with the 2016 election in which the Republican presidential nominee laced his rhetoric with frequent derogatory remarks about people of color, women, Muslims, LGBTQ persons, and anyone else outside the white male power structure. The concept of white privilege certainly existed long before McIntosh delivered her presentation in Richmond. She invested the most effort to construct and define the notion that makes white privilege a very important element in any discussion of economic, political, and social conditions in the United States today. Many others besides McIntosh wrote about and discussed the concept of white privilege years before she did. A late member of the faculty at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) railed against the concept of white privilege at least 30 years before Peggy McIntosh. Charles Everett Tilson (1923–2006) taught theological students about the Old Testament at Vanderbilt University Divinity School before he joined the faculty of the newly created MTSO (located in Delaware, Ohio) in 1960. Therefore, the purpose of this essay will be to highlight how Everett Tilson recognized and condemned the phenomenon now commonly called white privilege starting in the 1950s and on through his life. This essay will commence with explaining the significance of Everett Tilson in relation to the civil rights movement and his involvement in that historic turn in American history. The essay will point out where Tilson [End Page 88] identifies white privilege during the momentous events in which he participated. The two most well-known civil rights events in which Tilson played a part—the efforts to overcome lunch counter segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1960 and the integration of white churches in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964—serve as examples of Tilson’s opposition to racial segregation. In addition, those events offer evidence of Tilson’s early criticism of how whites acted without understanding or sensitivity in their relations to people of color. Everett Tilson, in an oral history he recorded for the Nashville Public Library, told how his life started in a part of the...