up-and-coming singer Jamila Woods) the last word." Spencer Kornhaber, a reviewer for The Atlantic, calls the song "brave" and "both a statement ... and a demonstration" and writes that Macklemore "spotlights the voices of actual black activists". He also criticizes the song for "forgoing metaphor or ambiguity or impressionism". More critically, Kris Ex of Pitchfork Media called the song a "mess", saying that it's "too much to work as hit and not enough to work as a piece of agitprop." According to Fredrik deBoer, it is a popular trend for white people to willingly claim self-acknowledgement of their white privilege online. deBoer criticized this practice as promoting self-regard and not solving any actual inequalities. Michael J. Monahana argues that the rhetoric of privilege "obscures as much as it illuminates" and that we "would be better served by beginning with a more sophisticated understanding of racist oppression as systemic, and of individual agents as constitutively implicated in that system." A 2022 study found that mentioning white privilege results in online discussions that are "less constructive, more polarized, and less supportive of racially progressive policies." Applications in critical theory Critical race theory The concept of white privilege has been studied by theorists of whiteness studies seeking to examine the construction and moral implications of 'whiteness'. There is often overlap between critical whiteness and race theories, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of white identity, and the use of narratives — whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction — as a tool for exposing systems of racial power. Fields such as history and cultural studies are primarily responsible for the formative scholarship of critical whiteness studies. Critical race theorists such as Cheryl Harris and George Lipsitz have said that "whiteness" has historically been treated more as a form of property than as a racial characteristic: in other words, as an object which has intrinsic value that must be protected by social and legal institutions. Laws and mores concerning race — from apartheid and Jim Crow constructions that legally separate different races to social prejudices against interracial relationships or mixed communities — serve the purpose of retaining certain advantages and privileges for whites. Because of this, academic and societal ideas about race have tended to focus solely on the disadvantages suffered by racial minorities, overlooking the advantageous effects that accrue to whites. Eric Arnesen, an American labor historian, reviewed papers from