Self-hating white leftists convene for annual guilt-fest

The DoubleTree Hotel, a sprawling complex just a quick shuttle ride away from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, mostly hosts stranded passengers, pilots, and flight attendants whose shadowy silhouettes can be glimpsed at insomniac hours rolling their suitcases down the plushly carpeted hallways, and windbreaker-clad locals from nearby Puget Sound towns, for whom the hotel’s sports bar and decent cheeseburgers are a draw during the Pacific Northwest’s long, chilly rainy season. The SeaTac DoubleTree also, this year, hosted the Fourteenth Annual White Privilege Conference (WPC14) from April 10 through April 13.

White privilege​—​what’s that? It was a question I was asked several times by the non-White Privilege hotel guests whom I encountered in the DoubleTree’s elevators and stairwells, since I was required by conference rules to wear at all times my official badge, conspicuously hand-lettered and yellow-highlighted “PRESS” by me. I always answered the question as honestly as I could, drawing on the four days’ worth of White Privilege keynote speeches and workshops I attended over a long, wet, April weekend near the airport. “It’s where you learn that white people oppress everybody else,” I said. This seemed fair enough. WPC14’s own website declares that “the WPC has become a venue for fostering difficult and critical dialogues around white supremacy, white privilege, diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social & economic justice, and the intersecting systems of privilege and oppression.”