About 25 years ago, my university received a grant to offer executive-education programs in Southeast Asian countries. An Indian colleague and I, both experienced professors in our Top 10-ranked MBA program, were selected to teach. But we had a hard time selling the program in Singapore, despite our school’s reputation.

Potential clients told our local partner, “Why should I pay American prices for one Chinese and one Indian?” Many of them expected an American professor to be a white male.

So to open each session we trotted out my husband, a white American who looked like (and was) a professor. We later learned that other North American business schools also did this.

White privilege has many manifestations, causes and consequences, which vary by situation. I focus here on the tendency to equate white with expertise at higher levels of education and the labor force, in the West as well as in Asia.

In American universities, studies have shown that female and ethnic-minority instructors are given lower performance ratings by male and female students of all races. In Singapore’s multicultural universities, even white male faculty acknowledge that a white premium exists, with white professors, especially men, receiving higher teaching evaluations from Asian students.