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You do have white privilege. White privilege isn't being treated better because of your race, it's not being treated worse. White privilege is not remembering

• Inconel 9y ago
  Those are all valid points but as I tried to address in another comment, it becomes more nuanced when you try and account for various different privileges intersecting. The problem with your point scale for me is that it's fairly simplistic. White privilege might be starting at 0 but as soon as you introduce some other disadvantage, say growing up in an abusive home, you're very quickly in the negative. The same of course holds true for a non-white kid that's already starting in the negative, of course if on the other hand this non-white kid grows up in a stable middle class family with access to a quality education and a safe environment, they can very quickly accrue far more points on the privilege scale than some poverty stricken white male. This is the crux of the problem for me in this debate. I absolutely believe that white privilege does exist, and we shouldn't shy away from confronting it's effects, but we also shouldn't so singularly focus on it that we neglect the many other ways people, even white people, can be disadvantaged through no fault of their own. From a more pragmatic stand point, I think we need to be more nuanced in framing these issues because it can be rather easy to alienate those who might otherwise be receptive to the goals of a more just and egalitarian society when you don't take the totality of their experiences into account. Again, taking my own experiences into consideration, I usually fluctuate between minor annoyance and outright dismissal when someone who grew up in a stable two parent household that stressed the importance of education, attended decent schools where they didn't have to fear for their safety on a daily basis, lived in neighborhoods where straying farther than 20 feet from your front door didn't mean you where going to get jumped, got to go to college with a bunch of kids from similarly privileged backgrounds and now makes $180k in SV, wants to lecture others about privilege. Also, I don't want to be dismissive of your list, and I definitely want to be careful in making assumptions about your background, but some of those things sound more like middle class white privilege than plain old white privilege. I know some poor white folk, I grew up around them on my family's first stop when immigrating to this country, and they tend to be afraid of the police, for good reason, and don't usually get let off with a warning.
  • ivanhoe 9y ago
    Also worth noting, this really only applies to people living in US, and to some extent Western Europe. Lots of people in Eastern and Central Europe are white, but far less privileged in terms of the chances given, living conditions and personal freedom compared to pretty much any American citizen regardless of skin color. To each his own problems always seem the biggest & hardest, but it's important to stay aware of the wider perspective...
• bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  the problem with the word privilege is that well it catches people who were in many ways not privileged, and those people are probably going through life with pretty big chips on their shoulders about how they were screwed over by their environment. Reminding them that hey you could have had it worse is like when rich people tell poor people hey in generations past you couldn't have a big screen TV so don't worry, be happy. In the context of the white privilege list you give I match 2, although I would add another two which is that while I can certainly remember all the times I was pulled over for nothing and while I might have been hassled for hours with a dozen cops threatening me before being let go I was let go at the end and not killed - these things are really part of the white privilege which I have. But I spend more time going around being pissed off about all the times I was pulled over for nothing and not thanking my lucky stars I was white and got to stay alive, which is why I don't feel like I had it that great and your hectoring tone of course makes me mad because 'remembering the last time you got pulled over for nothing', yeah I remember the first time, pretty much was one of the defining moments of my life really. thanks for the reminder. I remember the times in between that and the last time. I remember the last time, had to stand in the snow for a couple hours which I was walking through to get to my parent's house to have the only food I would have that day. But the food was gone by the time I got home. I realize I have a benefit in being white, I just had a lot of other disadvantages that most of the other people I was around didn't.
• celticninja 9y ago
  The thing that annoys me about white privilege is that it is such a US centric thing. You can be poor and discriminated against as a white person by other white people just because you happen to live on the other side of a secterian split. All these things apply in those situations and you don't need to have black or brown skin to experience them. The common factors are being discriminated against and being poor.
• emodendroket 9y ago
  I don't want to minimize racial discrimination, but telling poor people about their white privilege seems not all that different from conservative finger-wagging about how American poverty isn't "real" poverty. Also, even if you only looked at white people American police shootings are at a much higher rate than comparable countries.
  • RodericDay 9y ago
    "It's not race, it's poverty!" is a pretty well discussed idea in philosophy circles. The concept is called "Intersectionality", and you may want to read up on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality). I agree that there are a ton of liberals going around protecting their wealth by trying to get people to focus solely on racism. These people indeed have a lot in common with conservatives. However, just because those people exist, doesn't mean that one should take the diametric opposite position to them, and basically claim that race is an insignificant factor compared to poverty. That would be wildly ignorant as well. Plenty of poor white people enjoy advantages that even the richest minorities don't (eg: societal role models). Same applies to gender, and to sexuality.
  • namlem 9y ago
    White privilege is a bad term. Trevor Noah once said that in South Africa, they call it the "black tax," which I think is a much better term. It's not a benefit that's conferred onto white people, it's a cost that imposed on non-white people.
    • Rzor 9y ago
      Isn't this a glass half full/half empty situation? Why the cost imposed on non-whites doesn't get to be called a benefit on whites since they are exempt from payment? I know I'm arguing semantics, but it is interesting the change in nomenclature.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Technically speaking, yes. But the emotional resonance is very different. If you don't believe me, try telling a libertarian that there is no real difference between giving someone a tax break and a subsidy and see how willing they are to even entertain your argument.
• catawbasam 9y ago
  You overestimate the power of white privilege. It is real, but not as pervasive as you make it out to be. I do remember the last time I was pulled over for nothing. I do remember being afraid of the police. I do remember not being let off with a warning. Looking like a scruffy redneck will get you that treatment in some rich suburbs. The big advantage of being white is that it is much easier to camouflage yourself as an upstanding member of the middle class.
  • micheljones 9y ago
    It is pointless to engage racists in a reasonable discussion.
    • urbanj 9y ago
      Fuck off back to writing shit PHP code you MRA racist cunt
    • fsociety 9y ago
      That's the sad part, that the discussion is shut down with repeatable phrases. Additionally many of the people who repeat these phrases grew up in a life of privilege. Even worse, I think if they travelled the world a bit they'd see that racism against white people does exist and that they are perpetuating it in their own way. On the other hand the world could do a bit better with equal opportunity and the income gap, but that has very little to do with just being white.
• Yizahi 9y ago
  White privilege is the lowest difficulty setting in the game we play.
• faragon 9y ago
  "White privilege is not being afraid of the police" Where is that happening? Everyone should be afraid of the police, everywhere, as authority, their word is over yours.
• chris_wot 9y ago
  It's sad that many of these points are true. Its just as sad to me that many are not. In your anger, you are overreaching.
• Torgo 9y ago
  >White privilege is not being afraid of the police. Ian Murdoch, RIP.