Naturally I was surprised when recently I got informed I have white privilege by a bunch of spoiled children who've never known a day of hardship in their lives.
I'm not terribly enamoured with the Silicon Valley political atmosphere these days.
However, you have misunderstood what "white privilege" means: it's not that your life has been easy, it's that the same situations would have been even harder if you had not been white.
[1] https://twitter.com/mikeyfrecks/status/896362940634472449
A wether is a castrated ram. (Like a steer, speaking bovinely.) In a flock, a wether would be outfitted with a bell to serve as the lead sheep and herald the flock's motions, which is where we get the modern-day term.
White privilege is not remembering the last time you were pulled over for nothing.
White privilege is not being afraid of the police.
White privilege is getting let off with a warning.
White privilege is expecting to be judged on your merits.
White privilege is getting the benefit of the doubt.
White privilege is having a family that got to use the GI bill.
White privilege is having a family that was able to build a little bit of generational wealth from government housing policy.
White privilege is thinking racism is over.
White privilege is starting at 0 when the rich kids start at 50 and black kids start at -15.
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.
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.
Also, even if you only looked at white people American police shootings are at a much higher rate than comparable countries.
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.
I am disturbed by this false equivalence.
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.
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.
Where is that happening? Everyone should be afraid of the police, everywhere, as authority, their word is over yours.
Ian Murdoch, RIP.
If you're white, you have white privilege, but you don't necessarily have class privilege. Class privilege isn't just about money either. If you grow up without much money, but to highly cultured and educated parents, you still have some class privilege.
I also think the parent comment does address something important, namely that while many people may not be particularly comfortable with introspection or the notion of privilege, there are likely many who would be more receptive to these ideas if the people labelling them privileged, often along rather one dimensional attributes without taking in to consideration areas in which they are decidedly underprivileged, didn't hail from some of the most privileged demographics in the US.
Posters in this thread have shared a number of feelings that hit very close to home regarding my own experience growing up impoverished in this country, and I make a very conscious effort to try and remain aware of the incredible number of unearned privileges and good fortune that I've been the recipient of, but even someone like me often can't help but recoil when I hear some of the most privileged people in SV, and consequently probably the country and world, so confidently label and denigrate others as privileged.
Perspective is always important when considering any subject. The subject of "white privilege" when it comes to the debate over poverty and power is often misguided, just like any blanket judgements made based on race. The fact that the oligarchs who have ruled the world for centuries are virtually all white means little to nothing to the millions of poor white people that have, in many cases, been destitute for generations.
A good friend of mine, who happens to be white, was born in a very bad neighborhood in Queens, New York to two poor, white parents. He went to school in one of the worst schools in New York. His father pumped gas and his mother was unemployed, spending her time with him and his two siblings. Both of his parents came from a poor family, neither of them had attended college. When he was 14, his mother died of a treatable disease because they couldn't afford health insurance. After that, he took care of his sister and brother after he got home from his afterschool job. When he was 23 his father was shot and killed during a robbery at the gas station. 50 years old now, no education, he scrapes out a living working at a gas station himself, barely able to afford the rent on his rented, basement room.
Poverty doesn't discriminate. Many if not most Americans in 2017 are in or near poverty themselves, with no savings, one crisis away from homelessness or bankruptcy. Those trying to make it a racial issue are distracting from the very real problem we face.
[NB I'm not from the US]
This is something I only thought about after moving away from where I grew up. Poorer white people would moan about black people and Mexicans all day but I wish I had pointed out to them that they're all poor together and have more in common than they do with the rich people they love to watch on TV.
Agreed, and my genetic combination of healthy, cis, hetero, white, and male put me on the "more privileged" end of that spectrum.
Recognizing privilege in oneself leads to recognizing it—and the desire to have it at least acknowledged—in others. It also empowers me to leverage that privilege to benefit others who don't share it. As an example, I think Tim Cook does a great job of this at Apple.
There's a lot of nuance that often gets lost or forgotten in people's knee-jerk reactions to being told/reminded of their privileges: often one understandably thinks about all the ways in which one still had to struggle, rather than recognising that there were ways in which one didn't.
Long term I think his article on being poor may be longer lasting and more influential than anything else he does - with the possible exception of taping bacon to a cat. http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/the-canonical-bacon-page/