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Hypothesis:People deny privilege to maintain their self-worth.

People deny privilege to promote their self-worth to the detriment of others in society. Some individuals have advantages and we refer to this as Privilege."... privilege perpetuates inequity by giving unearned advantages to certain groups over others." (Philips & Lowery, 2020)When people are confronted with the reality of their privilege, many people choose to deny they have unfair advantage(s). In the case of white privilege,Knowles et al (2014) refers to the psychological threats that some whites identify with as the reasons to maintain their status over other members of society.

Privileges have existed throughout history. Harris & Twomey (2019) proposed that progress in civilization, civic and economic, requires reducing the concentration of privileges. There are many who have worked towards eliminating this divide but there are those who work to maintain division. Philips and Lowery (2018) explained that the civil rights movement is evidence of the United States finding its moral compass but this ignores the large population that fought against civil rights. An example of this today is the resistance to the Black Lives Matter movement.

White privileged individuals have seen the injustices that are caused by the lack of equity, yet many are resistant to change. Knowles et al (2014) points out that Whites have difficulty seeing that their perceptions of the world are seen through the lens of racial group membership. This whiteness holds power in its ability to fade into the background without ever having to be acknowledged, thus enabling a wide range of privileges to white group members.(Knowles, et al, 2014)

Whites have experienced ingrained privileges for so long as part of our culture that some are not aware of its existence. This has led to some whites maintaining they do not have advantages even when inequalities are presented. Philips and Lowery (2018) define this as herd invisibility, "individuals acting to protect their own innocence leads to the emergence of invisibility at the societal level. A herd invisibility results, protecting both the innocence and privileges of individual Whites, but without their necessarily having to act on individual innocence or maintenance motivations."

As individuals and groups have continued to benefit from these privileges, they fail to see the disparity of rights that others should enjoy equally. The "fluid and dynamic perspectives on privilege shift focus from disadvantaged individuals' active struggles against oppression versus advantaged people's passive maintenance of privilege." (Atewologun & Sealy, 2014)