5 ms·

This isn’t about taking the poorest white folks in society, looking at their lack of economic empowerment and calling white privilege a flawed concept. IMHO the

by zd123 5y ago

This isn’t about taking the poorest white folks in society, looking at their lack of economic empowerment and calling white privilege a flawed concept. IMHO theres more to it than that, and white privilege does exist. For example, there have been a number of studies that show having a non-white sounding name during a cv screening process leads to far less callbacks, even if the remainder of the CV is identical. Is this not white privilege? What about how the media treats different crimes. Take a look at the Daily Mail website, arguably the most popular UK tabloid and tell me it’s not designed to paint migrants and minorities in a negative light. For example, when there are acts of violence perpetrated in the name of islam, terrorism as a phrase is used frequently in the headlines. However when white nationalists do the same thing, the phrasing is completely different. Another example would be the coverage of the royals ie Kate vs Meghan. Acknowledging white privilege doesn’t mean that those poor white folks in post industrial towns have it easy. It means that there are certain areas of society where being white does afford a privilege. It comes down to the tribal mentality at the end of the day. People still seem to like to favour people similar to them.

AussieWog93 5y ago
I'll admit I could have been more informative and less pithy, but the idea of white privilege being a foreign concept in economically underprivileged communities is more complex than "white people can experience poverty too". I've lived in working class neighbourhoods for the majority of my adult life, and there are so many observations that fly in the face of white privilege as a theory. Most of the poorest people I would encounter were white. The people most likely to be long-term unemployed were white. The people whose children were least likely to get an education and escape poverty were white. Almost all of the junkies were white. Every single homeless person was white, no exceptions. Whether or not HR staff hiring for a white collar job prefer white names is irrelevant when you and the people you are competing against didn't complete high school. What the Daily Mail think about Meghan Markle or Islam is less important that what the Vietnamese fruit shop owner thinks of you because you share phenotypal characteristics with the homeless ice addict that sleeps three doors down and scares away customers. This doesn't even start to cover ethnic tensions (Serb vs. Croat, Indian vs. Pakistani atc.) which exist with no regard for the typical sociological black/white/asian racial boundaries and can cause real violence and discrimination. I will admit that there are racial groups that have it rough simply because of their skin (black people in America, Aboriginals in Australia, Gypsies in Europe), but the idea that being white grants you privileges over and above all other racial groups ignores the lives and experiences of an enormous segment of the population. (Just to clarify, I do accept that John Smith has an unfair advantage over Rajesh Kumar when applying for a software job at a FAANG. I also admit that this has worked out well for me. This doesn't extrapolate to the whole population, though; many white people will experience little to no privilege because of their race.)
- zd123 5y ago
  I would agree with most of what you say above, in my life I have seen the disadvantages you highlight for the white working class (many kids I went to high school fell in this category). To be clear, I am not claiming disadvantaged white folks don’t have it rough. However, my point is when we take folks from a similar socioeconomic background, being white does confer an advantages in a lot of cases (in western, white majority countries). I would say the majority of the disadvantages for working class whites is not due to their race. Whereas on the other hand, certain ethnicities do have disadvantages due to their precisely their race. Both are disadvantaged but for different reasons imho. Personally if it were up to me, I would exclude poor working class whites from any notion of privilege as they clearly aren’t. I also think they need more representation in the work place (ie being included in diversity targets rather than excluded). IMO we need a better term that’s more nuanced and can capture the disadvantages of these groups, but I dont know what that term would be.
  - bingbong70 5y ago
    >Personally if it were up to me, I would exclude poor working class whites from any notion of privilege as they clearly aren’t. When the world's wealth was stolen and concentrated in a few locations on the planet, the majority of the people living in those locations were/are white and one of the primary barriers to earning a piece of that wealth was and still is race. What we see today is less explicit than racial laws but things like immigration restrictions have the same effect. I think the 'white privilege' label is appropriate, anecdata doesn't change the larger historical observation.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >However, my point is when we take folks from a similar socioeconomic background, being white does confer an advantages This is exactly the point I'm refuting. In all of the working class neighbourhoods I've lived in, poverty seemed to have a greater adverse affect on white people than other racial groups. Being poor while Indian, for example, doesn't seem to be so closely associated with family breakdown/fatherlessness, drug abuse, malnutrition/bad diet, chronic unemployment, trouble with authority and just this constantly bleak outlook on life in an unbreakable spiral of poverty. I'm not trying to say that they have it easy. They work bloody hard for what they've got and are an integral part of society. Still, despite their life being tough there's at least light at the end of the tunnel in the form of hope for the next generation. I would much rather be poor and brown than poor and white.

by zd123 5y ago

AussieWog93 5y ago

I'll admit I could have been more informative and less pithy, but the idea of white privilege being a foreign concept in economically underprivileged communities is more complex than "white people can experience poverty too". I've lived in working class neighbourhoods for the majority of my adult life, and there are so many observations that fly in the face of white privilege as a theory. Most of the poorest people I would encounter were white. The people most likely to be long-term unemployed were white. The people whose children were least likely to get an education and escape poverty were white. Almost all of the junkies were white. Every single homeless person was white, no exceptions. Whether or not HR staff hiring for a white collar job prefer white names is irrelevant when you and the people you are competing against didn't complete high school. What the Daily Mail think about Meghan Markle or Islam is less important that what the Vietnamese fruit shop owner thinks of you because you share phenotypal characteristics with the homeless ice addict that sleeps three doors down and scares away customers. This doesn't even start to cover ethnic tensions (Serb vs. Croat, Indian vs. Pakistani atc.) which exist with no regard for the typical sociological black/white/asian racial boundaries and can cause real violence and discrimination. I will admit that there are racial groups that have it rough simply because of their skin (black people in America, Aboriginals in Australia, Gypsies in Europe), but the idea that being white grants you privileges over and above all other racial groups ignores the lives and experiences of an enormous segment of the population. (Just to clarify, I do accept that John Smith has an unfair advantage over Rajesh Kumar when applying for a software job at a FAANG. I also admit that this has worked out well for me. This doesn't extrapolate to the whole population, though; many white people will experience little to no privilege because of their race.)

zd123 5y ago
I would agree with most of what you say above, in my life I have seen the disadvantages you highlight for the white working class (many kids I went to high school fell in this category). To be clear, I am not claiming disadvantaged white folks don’t have it rough. However, my point is when we take folks from a similar socioeconomic background, being white does confer an advantages in a lot of cases (in western, white majority countries). I would say the majority of the disadvantages for working class whites is not due to their race. Whereas on the other hand, certain ethnicities do have disadvantages due to their precisely their race. Both are disadvantaged but for different reasons imho. Personally if it were up to me, I would exclude poor working class whites from any notion of privilege as they clearly aren’t. I also think they need more representation in the work place (ie being included in diversity targets rather than excluded). IMO we need a better term that’s more nuanced and can capture the disadvantages of these groups, but I dont know what that term would be.
- bingbong70 5y ago
  >Personally if it were up to me, I would exclude poor working class whites from any notion of privilege as they clearly aren’t. When the world's wealth was stolen and concentrated in a few locations on the planet, the majority of the people living in those locations were/are white and one of the primary barriers to earning a piece of that wealth was and still is race. What we see today is less explicit than racial laws but things like immigration restrictions have the same effect. I think the 'white privilege' label is appropriate, anecdata doesn't change the larger historical observation.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >However, my point is when we take folks from a similar socioeconomic background, being white does confer an advantages This is exactly the point I'm refuting. In all of the working class neighbourhoods I've lived in, poverty seemed to have a greater adverse affect on white people than other racial groups. Being poor while Indian, for example, doesn't seem to be so closely associated with family breakdown/fatherlessness, drug abuse, malnutrition/bad diet, chronic unemployment, trouble with authority and just this constantly bleak outlook on life in an unbreakable spiral of poverty. I'm not trying to say that they have it easy. They work bloody hard for what they've got and are an integral part of society. Still, despite their life being tough there's at least light at the end of the tunnel in the form of hope for the next generation. I would much rather be poor and brown than poor and white.