Teaching white working-class boys that they are "privileged" is pernicious

It isn’t often that an expert drops a bombshell at a House of Commons select committee hearing. But it happened this week when Matthew Goodwin, a prominent political author and academic, told the education committee about the damage that being told to apologise for “white privilege” was doing to white working-class boys. Society, he said, “was sending these kids the message that higher education or pursuing further education isn’t for them.”

Asked by a Labour MP about “white privilege”, Professor Goodwin replied: “What do we even mean by that? And what’s the empirical evidence that, for these children, this is actually a salient and relevant concept?” He castigated the way in which these boys were “given a status deficit”, excluded from “the national conversation” and given less “recognition and esteem” than others. “They are way behind everybody else,” he added. “They’re falling through the cracks.”

Professor Goodwin warned that the problems of white working-class boys would be compounded if, in addition to overcoming the barriers they inherited within their communities, they were told that “they need to now start apologising for belonging to a wider group that strips away their individual agency”. The message of “white privilege” was, he said, a “completely nonsensical response to this problem.

The professor is right — and he ought to know where this dubious doctrine, imported from the entirely different circumstances of the United States, could lead. A TV pollster and Professor of Politics at Kent University, Matthew Goodwin is also the country’s leading expert on far-Right populism. Such movements appeal to groups with low status, income and educational achievement. Despairing of recognition by mainstream parties, groups such as the “Football Lads Alliance” mobilise white working-class anger and resentment. Unlike their black or Muslim contemporaries, these youths are denied legitimacy for their protests. They are easy prey for demagogues.

Even those white working-class boys who do succeed are made to pay for their privilege. One example must suffice for many. At Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, a Foundation Year has been introduced to provide students from less affluent backgrounds with the equivalent of a “gap year” before they begin their degrees. The scheme — which was introduced some years ago by the college Principal, Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of the Guardian — is seen as having helped to address the dominance of privately educated undergraduates at the university and is being imitated by other colleges.

So far, so good. However, in the 2020 college report, one of the first cohort to have stayed the course from Foundation Year to Finals tells his story. David Howard-Baker came from what he describes as a “deprived area of Plymouth”. He had to deal with “overwhelming family circumstances” when his father became ill and he lacked confidence to apply to university. Thanks to an inspirational music teacher, he not only got into Oxford but ended up with a First.

Yet having achieved so much, from a background that by his own account was anything but privileged, Howard-Baker still feels the need to apologise. “My white privilege means that although I can comment on class discrepancy in access to university, my experience does not represent that of the BAME community,” he writes. It seems absurd that this talented young musician and composer should have been taught to discount the obstacles he has overcome merely because of his skin colour. The academic achievements of boys from working-class communities should be celebrated just as much as those of others. The proper ethos of a university such as Oxford should be a colour-blind one based on merit, not one dictated by the guilt of the elites that will only reinforce the new hierarchy of British society, with the white working class stuck at the bottom.

Racism continues to be a serious problem in Britain, just as it is elsewhere. But the concept of “white privilege” is not helping to ameliorate racial prejudice. It may even be exacerbating it, by encouraging cynicism and distrust among those who already lack respect. Discrimination against ethnic minorities seems to have been replaced by discrimination against the least fortunate members of the white majority.

As Professor Goodwin says, society should be treating white working-class boys as individuals who matter, encouraging their efforts to educate themselves, not marking them down on the grounds of their race. “White privilege” has no empirical basis and its effect on those to whom it is ascribed can be pernicious. This concept should have no place in our educational system, least of all in schools that cater for the most underprivileged and underperforming group of children in British society: white working-class boys.