ABSTRACT
White privilege (WP) is a concept used to explain the “unearned assets” provided to White people (McIntosh 1988) because of their dominance in the Western world, which includes creating social and legal structures for their benefit. WP is a problem because it hurts people - particularly people of color (POC) - physically, psychologically, economically, and socially, and it prevents the realization of democratic ideals such as freedom and justice for all. The purpose of this chapter is to provide coach developers with an understanding of racial privilege and instructional strategies, and tools to use to develop coaches’ cultural competence. We focus this chapter on race; however, we acknowledge the importance of intersectionality, a term coined by Crenshaw (1989) as a way of talking about how different identities overlap and intersect with systems of power that privilege some and disenfranchise others (Coaston 2019; e.g. White feminism mostly excluded Black women; Black women are nearly non-existent in NCAA administrative and coaching positions). We also contextualize our discussion of Whiteness in coaching within the larger US and global discourses surrounding White racism and White supremacy.
