In the United States, whiteness as a concept and racialized identity has always been placed at the top of the societal hierarchy. As a result, white people in this country continue to benefit from a wide range of unearned privileges based solely on their race. These privileges are the direct and indirect result of practices, policies, and procedures stemming from a system of white supremacy, out of which the United States was formed and in which it continues to operate.
The key to understanding white privilege is that whiteness is an unearned advantage of a white person. Studies continue to provide evidence of distinct differences in survival, opportunities, access, resources, and benefit-of-the-doubt available to white people that are not available to people of color. Despite overlapping oppressions that apply to many people in the United States, i.e., sexism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, classism, etc., racism is a determinative factor, that operates at a visible and invisible level.
Poverty and prison sentences, economics and education, law enforcement and the legal system, health care and housing, are among the systems found to have discrepancies based on race and color. These systems create a compound effect of unearned racial privilege for white people. For example, racialized housing discrimination creates racial inequity and segregation; housing loans are based on the neighborhoods and preexisting stereotypes of residents; and schools are funded by tax dollars from housing that is calculated on market values affected by segregation and discrimination.
Thus we urge The United Methodist Church at every level and form to disrupt and dismantle all manifestations of white privilege. We challenge the General Conference to recognize white privilege as an underlying cause of injustice in United States society and to commit its resources, energy, and accountability measures to ensuring its elimination in church and in society. It is impossible to recognize the image of God as nonnegotiable for everyone when our church allows unearned benefits for people racialized as white, at the expense of people of color.
We challenge white people to disrupt and dismantle white privilege by committing to and living into a tangible and practical repentance for the sins of racism and the hoarding of unearned benefits due to race. To this end, white people should engage in an overlapping and never-ending threefold practice of awareness (learning to recognize one’s white privilege); internalization (making connections between one’s whiteness and how it provides privileges and benefits in everyday life); and action (committing to and enacting decisions and practices that will dismantle white privilege in all the places it presents itself—our lives, our churches, and the country.
We challenge each local church and connectional church body in the United States to access the extent to which white privilege has created racial inequity within their membership, leadership, budget, governing practices, values and mission, outreach, and definitions of “welcome,” “effectiveness.” “faithfulness,” and “full participation.”
Finally, we call on all persons of any racial or ethnic heritage, to engage in disrupting and dismantling white privilege together in order to restore the broken body of Christ. To do so honorably and in a spirit of mutuality, without replicating white privilege, we recommend the following:
- white people will increase risk and responsibility for the purposes of repentance and repair;
- people of color will work to recognize and engage in forms of resistance that highlight their dignity, worth, and wholeness, despite the harm that comes from white privilege;
- white people will refuse to expect/demand that people of color teach them about white privilege; share their stories of being harmed by white privilege; or care for them while they reckon with the harm they have caused by helping the system of white privilege exist.
ADOPTED 2000
AMENDED AND READOPTED 2008, 2016, 2024
RESOLUTION #3376, 2012, 2016 BOOK OF RESOLUTIONS
RESOLUTION #3379, 2008 BOOK OF RESOLUTIONS
RESOLUTION #170, 2004 BOOK OF RESOLUTIONS
RESOLUTION #166, 2000 BOOK OF RESOLUTIONS
See Social Principles, ¶ 162, Other Social Issues, L.
From The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church - 2020/2024. Copyright © 2024 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.
