Misleading: Brandon Tatum’s success disproves White Privilege in the United States.

By: Devika Kandelwal
July 23 2020

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Brandon Tatum's success cannot be generalized as wholly representing the experiences of Black people in the United States.An ex-cop, Brandon Tatum, posted a video on the Prager University where he casts doubt on the concept of white privilege. He disproves white privilege and says that his being Black did not provide any barrier to his successes. He uses various incidents to justify his stance, from easily getting a bank loan never to be looked upon with suspicion when he enters a store. However, many studies and research papers prove the existence of white privilege and how it affects Black people. In 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, 72% of white household heads owned a home, compared with only 43% of the heads of Black households. 71% of Black people say that they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity. The Pew survey also stated that almost half of Black people reported that in the past 12 months, someone has acted as if they were suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity. Comparatively, only 10% of white Americans reported experiencing race-based suspicions at that same time. Further, according to the Center for American Progress, Black workers also receive fewer employer-provided benefits than white workers. Only a little more than half of African Americans, 55.4 % had private health insurance in 2018, compared with 74.8 % of whites. In recent polls conducted by ABC News and Ipsos, they found that three-fourths of Americans view the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer as a sign of an underlying racial injustice problem.