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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

It's a backwards framing of the problem. Think about it: in a country where everyone is white, is there “white privilege?” How can the majority of people in a country be “privileged?” Is that how normal people talk? The issue isn't white privilege. By almost any metric, the most "privileged" demographic in the U.S. is actually Asians. (A U.S.-born Asian growing up in the bottom 20% of the income distribution has a 27% chance of ending up in the top 20%. That's far ahead of whites born in the bottom 20%.) The real problem is that African Americans are disadvantaged. The "privilege" that whites enjoy is that they don't suffer all the social disadvantages of being African American.

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As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor. Privilege means that if something horribly unfair happens to you, you can shout about it, and people will listen. Lacking privilege means that, when you shout about it, society will tell you to STFU. Having privilege means you can forget about having privilege. Lacking privilege means you need to constantly worry about losing it.

The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.

The minority can never, ever forget that they are the minority.

> As I understand it, "privilege" has nothing to do with income metrics and what have you. Privilege means that you can assume that society and all its mechanisms will work in your favor.

When an Asian American born in the bottom 20% is much more likely to end up in the top 20% than a white person in the same situation, how is that not “society and it’s mechanisms working in favor” of the Asian person?

> The reason that a majority of people in a country can be privileged is that, as the majority, they can forget that the minority exists. They can forget that they are the majority.

That’s just a roundabout way of saying that minorities have disadvantages. Obviously that’s true. But expressing it as “white privilege” is a bizarre rhetorical device that doesn’t reflect how normal people talk. We don’t talk about the “privilege” of being average height, we talk about the challenges of especially tall people fitting into airplane seats or of especially short people in finding suits that fit.

Exactly. The absence of disadvantaged isn’t privileged.

Besides, all those people in America talking about other people’s privilege often neglect the massive one they have - living now, in a first world country.

At the end of the day, thumping your chest saying you’re a bigger victim because x, y, z will only go so far. It will get you favor with some, but eventually people tire of being attacked.

It seems to come as shock that lots of white men don’t support people who call white men the root of all evil. There seems to be another shock that white women often support the men. I don’t know why they’re surprised. They have fathers, brothers, and sons.

Guilt by born identity is a farce. This isn’t the Bible. We don’t have original sin, and while we do have historical sins, everyone has it. everyone.

Yeah, I think a better framing is "black disadvantage". Whites won't object to this.

Framing is a challenging problem but you are right that it is important.

Locally we have a lot of black immigrants, they of course have a lot of challenges. They often get lumped into a "black" group.

But looking at the statistics closer indicates they are making fast progress in many areas, similarly to a local immigrant Asian population made many years ago.

However, the local African Americans generally are not making a lot educational or economic progress.

The differences are striking and really change where you think more / different resources are needed and what is going on for a given group.

I read somewhere that the vast majority of black students in elite universities are either biracial (like Obama) or of Caribbean descent, not of former US slaves.

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